The Stress of Her Regard (41 page)

He shook his head, looking even wearier than Crawford felt. "Eggshells is all humans are to these things—the bite carries their . . . what, eggs, spores . . . and in the ground the spores replace the organic stuff of their dead host with their stonier substance, like the primeval fish and plants you can find petrified in rocks." Crawford tried to interrupt, but Shelley went on. "I wish it were possible to be certain, absolutely
certain
, that no bit of the soul of the original host was still present in the remade body—but the revivified ones do seem to seek out people they knew when they were alive."

He turned to Crawford, and there were tears in his eyes. "What if Allegra, the real child, is still . . .
in
that head, somewhere, like a child lost in the catacombs of an overthrown castle? Christ, I remember playing with her, rolling billiard balls back and forth across the floor of Byron's palace in Venice with her . . . years ago."

"Why did you come here?" Crawford asked, thinking of the fragility of Josephine.

"Because I want to make a deal with her." Shelley smiled shakily at him. "
Her
—not Allegra. You know who I mean. And, like the rest of her tribe, she'll be more accessible in this place. I want to . . . buy her off."

"With what?"

Shelley took the glass from Crawford's hand and drained it. "With myself—or what makes me
me
, anyway; with the . . . greater part of my humanity."

Crawford stared at him. "Will she take it?"

"Oh, she'll
take
it, sure enough; I just hope she'll remember to adhere to the bargain."

Crawford shuddered, but didn't try to talk him out of it.

That night Crawford was shaken awake by another of the servants, who told him he'd been shouting in his sleep; Crawford blurrily thanked the man, but was almost sorry he'd been awakened—for, though he couldn't remember any of the dream, it was evident to him that it had been intensely erotic, and it was the first time in two years that he'd had any such feelings. At the same time he knew that even in the dream it had only been a tantalizing glimpse of something passing by, not anything for
him
.

He didn't sleep for the rest of the night, and when at dawn he took a cup of coffee out onto the terrace he saw Shelley, pale and haggard, rowing the little boat out to the
Don Juan
; Shelley was facing him, and when he saw Crawford he nodded grimly.

The next day a three-masted frigate sailed into the Gulf and fired a four-gun salute to the moored
Don Juan
—it proved to be Byron's new ship, the
Bolivar
, en route from Genoa to where her future owner awaited her in Livorno; aboard her were a Captain Daniel Roberts and a friend of Shelley's and Byron's from the days in Pisa, Edward John Trelawny.

Shelley was delighted to see Trelawny again, and even Mary revived somewhat from her semi-invalidhood, and for two days the Casa Magni was a cheerful place, with boat trips to Lerici for roses and carnations and spicy Ligurcan food and strong coffee, and long, animated conversations around the dining table, and the sound of Jane Williams's guitar echoing over the water.

Trelawny was a tall, bearded soldier-of-fortune who had known Edward Williams in Geneva; he had asked for an introduction to the Pisan circle mainly in order to meet Byron, whose adventurous poetry he admired, but as it happened he had become friends primarily with the Shelleys. He and Shelley were the same age, and though the one was big and dark and the other frail and fair, they were equally skilled at shooting and sailing, and now spent many hours together in pistol practice and in discussion of improvements Shelley wanted to make on the
Don Juan
.

The holiday atmosphere brought the children out, and Crawford saw Josephine frequently during the two festive days; and on Saturday night when a group took the
Don Juan
a mile north along the coast to Lerici for dinner, and there proved to be too many people for the longest table the restaurant had, he found himself sitting at a small separate table with her.

The waiter brought a steaming platter of trenette noodles covered with green pesto sauce redolent of basil and Ligurean olive oil and garlic, and Josephine said, "I hate this."

She was forking a lot of the noodles onto her plate, so Crawford knew she didn't mean the food. "We could leave," he said quietly.

She looked up at him. "You know why we can't."

The smile he gave her was as affectionate as it was wry, for he knew she wasn't referring to the danger of arrest. He nodded. "The children."

"He's got something in mind, in coming here," she said. "Hasn't he? Something he thinks will save them."

Crawford took some of the pasta himself, and while he nibbled at it he quietly told her about the vague deal Shelley had hoped to make with his unhuman sister, and that he had apparently already made it.

"The one you're married to," said Josephine. "Are you . . . comfortable with the fact that she might be around?"

"
Used
to be married to," he said. "I got a divorce in the Alps." He went on hurriedly, "No, I'm not comfortable with the fact. She . . . killed Julia, after all. As a matter of fact I think she
was
around, night before last—I sort of . . . felt her, in my sleep, I think."

Josephine reddened and looked away. "I know what you mean. Do you think Percy . . . ?"

It was a new thought to Crawford, and he fought down the instant jealousy it roused in him. "I don't know. That might have been part of the bargain, I suppose—he did . . . have her, once before, in 1811." He despised himself for remembering the year. "Yes, I imagine that probably was part of it."

She drank some wine and smiled unhappily at him, and he knew she had been aware of his momentary envy. "It's all just so damned horrible, isn't it?"

Crawford reflected her smile.

Edward Williams piloted them all back home, skating the
Don Juan
across the calm water under a full moon, but when they got back to the Casa Magni Crawford couldn't sleep, and eventually got out of bed and went out to the dining room to read.

The wind was strengthening, and the windows rattled with each gust in eerie counterpoint to the boom of the surf on the rocks, and Crawford kept being distracted by a remark Williams had made about the tides being capricious along this shore. Williams had seemed to find it amusing, but now, as the moon hovered over the massy shoulder of Portovenere, the thought made Crawford uneasy.

After a while Claire came silently out of Mary's room and closed the door behind her. She smiled and nodded to him, but her face was drawn, and he wondered what dream had driven her out of bed. She seemed sober.

"I've got to get out of here, Michael," she whispered, sitting down in a chair across the table from him. "Back to Florence. This is a bad place."

He glanced out at the moon, and nodded. "Shelley should have done this alone," he whispered back.

She stared at him. "Done what?"

He realized that she wasn't aware of Shelley's vague purpose in coming here, and he began to frame some answer having to do with the man's poetry, but suddenly she was looking past him, toward the window, and her mouth was pinched shut and her eyes had gone as wide open as they could. Then she was up out of her chair and running toward the closed door to the terrace.

The violence of the movement startled Crawford half out of his own chair, and when he glanced at the French door he lunged out of the chair entirely and got to the door an instant before she did, and held her back.

There was a little girl out on the terrace, holding up white hands toward the light inside, and though she was silhouetted by the moon, Crawford could see her darkly shining eyes and white teeth as she mouthed inaudible words through the glass.

"What are you doing," Claire panted, struggling to get out of Crawford's arms, "that's my daughter! That's Allegra!"

"It's
not
, Claire, I swear to you," Crawford snarled, spinning her back across the floor to crack her hip against the table. "It's a vampire. Your daughter
died
, remember?"

One of the candlesticks wobbled and then clanked over, and then Shelley's door opened, and Crawford could hear people stirring in the rear rooms.

Claire ran back toward the glassed door, and Crawford caught her, holding her too tightly in his fear.

Josephine, wrapped in a robe, padded up, stared expressionlessly for a moment at the swaying thing on the terrace, and then stood between it and Claire.

Claire's eyes blazed at Shelley, who was blinking around sleepily. "Allegra's on the terrace," she told him clearly. "Tell these two to let me go to her."

Shelley was suddenly wide awake. "It wasn't her, Claire," he said quietly, keeping his eyes away from the windows. "Ed," he added to Williams, who had appeared from his own room, "pull the drapes across, will you? And Josephine, get Claire a glass of something to let her sleep."

Williams walked slowly across the room to the windows, and Crawford, still holding the struggling Claire, glanced at him impatiently.

Williams was staring at the child outside as he dragged the drapes across, and though there was no change in Williams' expression, Crawford thought there had been some kind of communication through the glass in the instant before the drapes cut out the last of the moonlight. He tried to catch Williams' eye as the man walked back across the room, but Williams was staring at the floor.

Claire sagged in Crawford's arms, and he led her to a chair and lowered her into it as Josephine hurried back to the women's servants' room.

Shelley's alertness had faded, and he was blinking around as if he couldn't remember what had just happened—more than ever Crawford was sure he must have consummated his bargain with the lamia, and he gripped the back of Claire's chair very hard. He didn't want to go back to the lamia himself—he swore to himself that he didn't—but he remembered with torturing vividness how hungrily she used to come into his arms, and he remembered his hands on her, and hers on him.

Josephine had returned with a bottle of laudanum, and Claire dazedly drank the dose Josephine measured out, and then let herself be led back to her bed.

Without a word Williams returned to his own room and closed the door.

"You didn't expect this?" Crawford asked.

"Not Allegra, no," Shelley said softly, shaking his head. "I couldn't believe it when we saw her the other night—I was told that the body was shipped back to England. God knows what child's body
was
sent there. I—"

"What do you recommend we do about it?"

". . . All go back to bed?" Shelley ventured.

Not trusting himself to speak, Crawford nodded stiffly and returned to his room.

He still couldn't sleep. He lay staring up at the ceiling, wondering if he should go take some laudanum himself to drive away the memories of cold breasts and a hot tongue, and glaringly alive but inorganic eyes, and the total loss of self to which he had so gratefully surrendered during that most peaceful week of his life in Switzerland six years ago.

Shelley was having her—perhaps even now, at this moment—and her thoughts were all of Shelley and not of him.

He sipped brandy from his ever-present flask instead, and at dawn managed to fall into an uneasy doze.

At eight he was again shaken awake, this time by Shelley, who was pale beneath his tan and clearly on the verge of weeping. "Mary's had a miscarriage," he said tightly, "and is hemorrhaging badly. Hurry—I think she may bleed to death."

Crawford rolled out of bed and pushed back his hair. "Right," he said, trying to gather his wits. "Get me brandy and clean linen, and send someone to Lerici for ice. And get Josephine—I'll need her."

. . . The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,
Met his own image walking in the garden.

—Percy Bysshe Shelley

. . . He had seen the figure of himself which met him as
he walked on the terrace & said to him—"How long do
you mean to be content?"

—Mary Shelley

The sheets had been peeled back from Mary's bed, and blood seemed to be everywhere; it not only soaked the bedclothes and the mattress, but was spattered on the walls and smeared across her face—evidently she had reacted violently when she'd become aware of what was happening to her. By the gray, fog-filtered light from the windows, the blood seemed to be the only color in the room, and it was only after the first stunned moment that he even noticed Mary's naked form lying among it.

The low ceiling of the long-ago hotel room in Hastings seemed to press down on the top of his head, and for several seconds he just stared in mindless horror at what seemed to be Julia's exploded corpse.

"Aickman!" Shelley said loudly.

Crawford dragged himself out of the memory. "Right," he said tightly.

He crossed to the bed and knelt, quickly pressing the heel of his hand against Mary's lower belly.

"Someone's going for ice?" he asked sharply.

"Ed Williams and Trelawny are, in the
Don Juan
," Shelley told him.

"Good. Get me a bowl of brandy."

Josephine hurried in a moment later, and when Crawford glanced back at her he could see that the spectacle had a traumatic effect on her, too—but she took several deep breaths, and then in a flat voice asked him what needed to be done.

"Come over here." When she had crossed to the bed and leaned over, he spoke to her quietly. "It's too late for the fetus. Now we've got to stop the bleeding. Get me a pot of very damned strong tea, and then roll a cylindrical bandage for packing her, and soak it in the tea—the tannin should help. And be ready to bandage her tightly around the hips, with a pad over the uterus here, where my hand is."

He felt that someone else had entered the room and was standing behind him, but he was talking calmly to Mary now, reminding her that he was a doctor, and telling her to relax.