The Stress of Her Regard (44 page)

The loneliness was appalling. He was a tiny pocket of frightened agitation on the vast, indifferent face of the sea, as frail as a candle in a lost toy boat, and he thought that he wouldn't even mind drowning if he could hear another person's voice just once before going under forever.

He could call her.

The thought sent a shiver through his body. Could she get to him quickly enough? On such a sunny day? Somehow he was sure she could—she loved him, and she must have understood that he hadn't
really
wanted to divorce her in the Alps. It might not even necessarily mean abandoning Josephine—once he was safely back ashore he could figure out some way to deal with that poor lunatic; certainly he'd be able to do more for her that way than by drowning out here.

He had been trying to favor his stiff left leg, but suddenly it knotted up tight with a muscle cramp that wrung a scream out of him. He flailed his arms to keep from sinking, but he knew that he had only perhaps a minute left.

And then to his own horror he realized that he wouldn't do it, wouldn't call her. It meant that he was going to die out here, right now, but something—his love for Josephine, the love she had clearly felt for him on that too brief afternoon a week ago—made dying preferable to being possessed again by the lamia.

He tried to pray, but could only curse in angry panic.

The water closed over his head, and he looked up at the image of the sun wiggling on the surface. One more clear glimpse of it, he told himself desperately, just one more gasp of the sea air.

He made his hands claw out and down through the water, and his head poked out into the air—and he heard oar-locks knocking.

A moment later he heard Josephine's voice screaming,
"Michael!"

He discovered that he did still have a little strength left. He was sobbing with the pain of it, but he made his arms keep pushing the water out and down, and when an oar had spun through the air to splash near him, he managed to pull himself over to it and wrap his aching hands around the wide part of it.

A rope had been tied to the other end, and he nearly lost his grip when the line began to be pulled in; but at last his head collided with the planks of the boat, and he was being dragged in over the gunwale. He even managed to help a little.

His left leg was folded up tight, and hurt so badly that he really thought the bones might snap. He touched his thigh, and the knotted muscles were as hard as stone.

"Cramp," he gasped, and a moment later she was massaging it with hands that had been made bloody by strenuous inexpert rowing. Her left hand, the one she had ruined on the Wengern, was itself visibly becoming clawed with cramp, but she worked strongly, with a nurse's expertise, and after a minute the knot in his leg had been ground out.

For a long time he lay sprawled against one of the thwarts, just filling and emptying his lungs, his eyes shut. At last he sat up a little and looked around. The boat was one that Shelley had found too big to be convenient for rowing, and had stowed downstairs. There was no one in it but himself and Josephine.

He stared at her until he had regained his breath enough to be able to speak; then, "Who are you?" he asked bluntly.

At first he thought she wouldn't answer; then she whispered, "Josephine."

He lay back again. "Thank God." He reached out and gently held her flayed, twisted hand. "How in hell did you even get this boat out of the house?"

"I don't know. I had to."

"I'm glad you noticed me out here. I'm glad
you
noticed me out here." Julia, he thought, would never have done this.

Josephine sat back and pushed sweaty hair off her forehead. Her glass eye was staring crazily into the sky, but her good one was focused intently on him. "I . . . woke up from fright, I came back into my body, staring out the window at you and knowing you were in trouble. I had heard her noticing it—you understand?—and that was what gave me the strength to . . . push her aside, push J-Julia out. And then I was running down the stairs and wrestling this thing out through the arches and over the pavement and into the water."

He saw that she was barefoot, and that there was blood on the floorboards too.

"Josephine," he said unsteadily, "I love you. Don't let Julia, your ghost of Julia, take your body, not ever again."

"I—" For several seconds she tried to speak, then just shifted around toward the bow and shook her head. "I'll try not to."

That night was Midsummer's Eve, and the two of them stayed up later than everyone else, though they could hear Ed Williams talking quietly, presumably to his wife, in his room.

Only one lamp burned, the lamp Shelley insisted burn all night, and Crawford and Josephine had finished the bottle of wine left over from dinner and were slowly working on another one that he had opened after that. They had talked for more than an hour, rarely even brushing any important topics, when, simultaneously, the latest pause in the conversation became the end of it and Crawford noticed that they had finished the wine.

He stood up and held his hand out to her. "Let's go to bed."

They went into their room and closed the door and undressed, and then in the darkness—for he had pulled the curtains across their window—they made long, slow love, stopping short of climax again and again until finally it was unstoppably upon them.

After a while Crawford rolled off of her and lay beside her, feeling her hot, dewy flank against his side; he opened his mouth to tell her softly that he loved her—

—And a shriek from another room interrupted him and sent him bounding out of bed.

For lack of anything else he pulled on Shelley's cut-off trousers, then opened the door and stepped into the dining room; he could hear Josephine behind him struggling into clothes.

The door to the Shelleys' room was open, and the tall, thin figure of Shelley came out quickly but without any sound. His eyes were glowing like a cat's in the lamplight and, before pulling the drapes aside and disappearing onto the terrace outside, he crossed to Crawford and kissed him lightly on the lips. Crawford saw teeth glint in the open mouth, but they didn't touch him.

Then Shelley came out of his room again, and Crawford realized that this was the real one—and when he realized who the first figure must have been, his chest went hollow and cold and he had half turned toward the terrace door before he remembered Josephine.

He made himself turn his back on the terrace and face Shelley.

But the worm shall revive thee with kisses,
Thou shalt change and transmute as a god
As the rod to a serpent that hisses,
As the serpent again to a rod.
Thy life shall not cease though thou doff it;
Thou shalt live until evil be slain,
And good shall die first, said thy prophet,
Our Lady of Pain.

—A. C. Swinburne,
Dolores

"Where did it go?" Shelley demanded.

Not trusting himself to speak yet, Crawford simply pointed to the drapes.

Shelley collapsed against the wall and rubbed his eyes. "It was trying to strangle her—strangle Mary." He held up his hands, which were scratched and bloody. "I had to tear its hands away from Mary's neck."

The Williamses and Josephine were in the dining room now, and Shelley had pulled the drapes aside and, crouching, was licking his finger, rubbing it along the floor by the windows, then moving and licking it again. When he had hunched and licked his way down the whole length of the windows he looked up.

"There's no salt nor garlic here," he said, staring straight at Edward Williams.

Williams flinched, then mumbled, "Is that what that was? The smell—I just thought I'd wash them better—" He had buttoned up the collar of his nightshirt, but Crawford could see a spot of blood staining the fabric at his neck.

Shelley's lips were a straight white line. "All of you go back to bed," he said, "except you, Aickman—we've got to talk."

"Josephine can hear it," Crawford said.

Shelley blinked. "I thought her name was . . . ? But very well, let her stay. Bed for the rest of you."

Shelley was twisting a corkscrew into a fresh wine bottle when the Williamses closed their door, and he poured wine into the only lately abandoned glasses that Crawford and Josephine held out.

"We can't leave tomorrow," Shelley said quietly.

Crawford was glad that the person at his side was no longer Julia. "What are you talking about?" he whispered. "This makes it more urgent than ever that we leave! Did you see Ed's neck? Will you wait until your last child is dead? I don't—"

"Let him speak, Michael," interrupted Josephine.

"She's particularly accessible here," Shelley went on, "and what I have in mind—the only thing left for me to try—requires that she be accessible."

"What is it?" asked Crawford.

"You should know," Shelley told him with hollow gaiety. "It was your idea." When Crawford still stared blankly at him, Shelley added, with some impatience, "That I drown myself."

Crawford flinched. "I—I wasn't serious. I was just—"

"I know. Angry at the death of that unborn child. But you were right, it is the only way to save Percy Florence and Mary." He smiled now—maliciously, Crawford thought. "But you'll have to do something too. And I wonder if you won't find it harder than my own task."

The next day the sun burned more hotly than ever in the empty cobalt sky, and when Captain Roberts returned from a run up the coast for supplies—largely more wine—he reported that the narrow streets of Lerici were crowded with religious processions imploring rain.

That night was the Feast of St. John, and after sunset the people of San Terenzo came dancing down the coastline through the surf, singing holy songs and waving torches; Shelley stood at the rail of the terrace, even after night had fallen and the songs had degenerated into drunken, savage chanting and the figures in the surf had begun to throw rocks at the Casa Magni.

Finally a torch was flung at Shelley, and missed only because Crawford pulled him out of the way, and Shelley dazedly allowed himself to be led back inside. The noise continued until only shortly before dawn, when the fishermen went reeling and singing back to their boats and nets.

The shouting and the oppressive heat had kept anyone from getting any real rest, and when Crawford went downstairs to watch the fisher-folk go lurching and splashing home he saw the dim silhouette of Mary Shelley standing by the seawall and talking to someone up on the wooded slope beyond it.

He hurried toward her, thinking that one of the drunken fishermen might be bothering her, but he paused when he heard her laugh softly.

"John, you know I'm married," she said. "I couldn't possibly go with you. But thank you for the . . . attention."

She turned back toward the beach and Crawford saw that she was holding a dark rose up to her chin, so that its petals seemed to be a part of the bruising that mottled her throat. He looked past her at the shadowy slope, but could see nothing there—though he could hear a slithering rustle receding up through the trees.

Crawford walked forward, sliding his feet in the sand so that she'd hear him approaching and not be startled when he spoke. "That was Polidori?" he asked.

"Yes." She sniffed the rose and stared out at the dark sea.

"You shouldn't be speaking to him," Crawford began wearily. He hoped the coming day wouldn't be so hot as to make sleeping impossible. "He . . . he's not . . ."

"He told me about it, yes," she said calmly. "His suicide, back in England. He thinks they're the Muses, thinks these vampire things are. Maybe he's right—though they weren't that for him. Even after he summoned one and let himself be bitten, he still couldn't write anything publishable . . . and so he killed himself." She shook her head. "The poor boy—he was always so
envious
of Percy and Byron."

"If you know that much about him," Crawford said, forcing himself to be patient, "then you must know how dangerous such people are once they've been resurrected. That is
not
Polidori, not anymore—that's a vampire inhabiting his
body
, like a hermit crab using some sea-snail's shell. Are you
listening
to me, damn it? Hell, ask Percy about all this!"

"Percy . . . ," she said dreamily. "Percy is stopping being Percy, have you noticed? The man I love is . . . what . . . receding, diminishing like a figure in a painting with deep perspective. I wonder how much longer I'll be able to communicate with him even by shouting in his ear."

"Ask
me
then, I'm your doctor, right? Have you invited Polidori into your presence yet?"

"No—though he hinted that he'd like that."

"I daresay.
Don't
do it." He stepped closer to her and put his hand on her chin to tilt her face up. "Percy Florence will die, if you do," he said, staring hard into her eyes. Was she getting any of this? "Repeat that back to me, please," he said in his best professional tone.

"Percy Florence will die, if I do," she said weakly.

"Good." He released her. "Now go to bed."

She tottered back toward the house, and Crawford sat down in the sand; he was aware of someone watching him intently from up the slope, but the sky was lightening toward blue, and he knew that the thing that had been Polidori wouldn't try to approach him.

He remembered Byron derisively quoting some of Polidori's poetry, back in Switzerland in 1816. Crawford had laughed at the inept lines, as Byron had meant him to, but then the lord had frowned and said that it really wasn't funny. "He's terribly serious about all this, Aickman," Byron had said reprovingly. "He's a successful doctor, one of the youngest graduates of Edinburgh University, but his only ambition is to be a poet—like Shelley and I. He approached me for the personal physician job just because he thought that by associating with me and my friends he would be able to . . . learn the secret." Byron had laughed grimly. "I only hope, for his sake, that he never does."