The Stress of Her Regard (58 page)

The skin around his eyes was stiff with dried tears, and he washed his face in the basin before getting dressed and going downstairs. He ignored the corn-meal smell of hot polenta wafting from the kitchen and walked to the inn's front door, trying to suppress his limp.

The air outside seemed even colder than it had last night. Fog hung over the gray slate roofs—for a moment he didn't know in which direction the sea lay, and he was surprised to find himself a little frightened by the uncertainty.

Get used to it, he told himself. Soon enough you'll be crossing the Apennines, and dozens of miles distant from the sea in any direction.

He walked downhill through the narrow streets, shivering whenever a drop of cold dew would fall from one of the iron balconies overhead and strike his bald scalp, and in a few minutes he had left the buildings behind and reached the drab beach; Portovenere was invisible beyond the fog, and the
Bolivar
was a dim, vertical brush-stroke of slightly darker gray far out on the leadenly shifting sea.

He began walking south along the dark, surf-firmed sand, still trying to suppress his limp, and he tried to assess his capabilities, mental and physical.

He had lost the inhuman pallor the
nefando
den had given him, and he really thought he was stronger now than he had been in many years; still, he felt fragile, and he hoped no great exertions would be required of him. His left hand wouldn't be much good for holding a knife or a pistol, with its maimed little finger and absent ring finger, but his right hand was still good. And, since trimming his white beard and remaining hair, he no longer drew wondering stares from strangers.

And he was fairly confident that he would be able to maintain his resolve, for he'd been firmly decided for six weeks now—without any of the passion and drama that accompanied Byron's decisions—that he would do everything he could to free Josephine and his child from the nephelim infection, even if the effort should involve his own death.

The fog was beginning to glow—perceptibly brighter to his left, where the unseen sun was rising over the eastern mountains. He turned and began walking back toward the inn.

The fog had burned off and the sky was a hot, empty blue by the time Byron arose at noon, and Crawford had to find his hat in order to be able to accompany the lord and Trelawny down the hill again to the shore. The sand was hot underfoot.

Byron was sweating and trembling, but after walking up to the surf and letting it swirl around his ankles he suddenly insisted that he would swim out to the
Bolivar
and have lunch alongside, treading water.

Trelawny was unable to talk him out of it, and so once again the two of them stripped and waded into the surf, Byron looking desperate and Trelawny impatient, leaving Crawford to watch their clothing.

Crawford sat down in the hot sand and watched the two heads recede beyond the low waves.

He soon lost sight of them against the distant wedge that was the dark hull of the
Bolivar
, but after a while, squinting against the glitter of the sun on the water, he could see bundles being lowered from the ship's deck, and he knew the swimmers had arrived and were about to start their lunch.

Crawford got to his feet and plodded up the sand toward where the early-morning fishing boats rested upside down against the crumbled edge of the street pavement, faintly shaded by their spread, drying nets. Up on the pavement he turned and looked back at the
Bolivar
. He still couldn't make out the heads of Byron and Trelawny.

The thought of food wasn't at all attractive, but he knew he should eat something. An old woman was selling tiny fried squids out of a wheeled cart nearby, and he walked over, allowing himself to limp, and bought a plateful. They were redolent with garlic and green olive oil, and at the first bite his hunger awoke; he ate the squids as fast as he could cram them into his mouth, and then bought another plate and ate them at a more leisurely pace, standing by the old woman's cart and glancing occasionally at the piles of clothing and out at the
Bolivar
.

At last he could see white arms flashing in the sea between the shore and the ship, and he handed the empty plate back to the woman, hopped down off the pavement into the soft, hot sand, and began limping back toward where the swimmers' clothes lay on the shore.

And he began to run down toward the surf, though there was nothing he could do, when he saw the figure that was Trelawny begin swimming rapidly toward the other.

The two heads were stopped out there; almost certainly Trelawny was arguing that Byron should let him help him, and Byron was—no doubt angrily—refusing.

"Let him help you, damn it," Crawford whispered, knuckling sweat from his eyes.

Trelawny didn't get any closer to Byron, but after a few moments Crawford could see that the two men were swimming back to the
Bolivar
.

Fine, he thought. Now come ashore in the ship's boat. This is no time to be airing your damned
pride
, Byron.

He didn't see any figures climbing the ladder, and no boat was being lowered; and, a few minutes later, he once again saw the swimmers working their way shoreward through the low waves.

"You
idiots
," Crawford said softly.

It took five minutes for Trelawny and Byron to swim in to the point where they could stand, and Crawford met them there, the surf swirling around his waist.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Crawford demanded furiously. "What right have you got to risk your life—unnecessarily!—when so many people are depending on you?"

Byron had waded in a few yards farther and was leaning forward, his hands on his knees under water, apparently devoting all his attention to filling and emptying his lungs.

Trelawny had backed away a couple of steps, so that the incoming swells twitched at the spiky ends of his black beard. "You might go get our clothes," he told Crawford.

Crawford hesitated a moment, then nodded and turned and began wading back to the beach. Luckily no one had stolen the clothes.

Trelawny and Byron dressed in the water. Trelawny started forward toward the wavering surf line, then paused and looked back when he realized Byron and Crawford weren't following.

"You go ahead, Tre," panted Byron. "We'll meet you at the inn. Have a bottle of something cold waiting for us, there's a good lad."

Trelawny's bushy eyebrows went up. "Aren't you at least going to get out of the water?"

"Soon enough," Byron told him. Trelawny shrugged and splashed ashore.

Byron turned to Crawford. "I'm doing this—," he began. Then, "God, you reek," he said. "What have you been eating?"

"Squids. You should eat something, too—we might need our strength tonight." He smacked his lips. "And the garlic can't hurt."

"I already eat God's own amount of the damned stuff. Garlic, not squid." A knee-high wave slapped at them, and Byron stumbled but caught himself. "It's not without defense value, but . . ." He was squinting in the bright sunlight, and his shoulders were already red.

After a pause while another, smaller wave foamed around their knees, Crawford said, "But . . . ?"

Byron visibly regained his train of thought. "Damn you, Aickman, do you suppose I
like
wringing my body out on these swims? Do you imagine I'd do it if eating some . . . goddamned garlicky
squids
would insulate me sufficiently to let me save your strayed wife? Do you . . . do you imagine that I'm
showing off
?"

Crawford could feel his face heating up. "Actually," he said, "I guess I did. I'm sorry."

"I've got nothing to prove when it comes to swimming. I swam the damned
Hellespont
, from Sestos to Abydos."

Ten or twelve years ago, thought Crawford. But aloud he said, "I know."

"
I'll
be ready tonight," Byron said resentfully, limping away through the shallow water toward the sand. "Just see to it that
you
are."

* * *

At dusk Byron and Crawford left the inn and walked slowly and without speaking down the Lerici streets, past windows and doorways that were already beginning to glow yellow with lamplight under the purpling sky, to the lowest, farthest-seaward edge of pavement. Byron gave Crawford an ironic look, and made the sign of the cross before stepping carefully down from the masonry into the sand.

Crawford smiled tightly and followed him, and they plodded side by side down the shoreline. Each of them carried in his pockets a jar full of minced garlic and a pistol loaded with a wood and silver ball, and Crawford kept having to hitch up his pants because of the weight of the coil of rope twined to his belt; the slip-knotted loop thumped his thigh, separate from the coil, at each step. Byron was swinging an unlit torch as if it were a walking stick.

The wind was cold from Portovenere across the gulf, and Crawford shivered and tucked his chin into his coat collar, wishing his scarf hadn't been packed up in the luggage he and Byron would be taking with them later tonight.

After a few minutes of walking, they heard the rattle and jingle of a carriage going by on the road over the beach. Byron nodded. "Tre's right on time," he said quietly.

With my scarf, thought Crawford. "I hope he's done what you said, about bringing a spare horse to ride back to Lerici on."

"So do I," said Byron. "He's far too chivalrous about women—and ignorant of the nephelim—to condone a forcible kidnapping."

They trudged on as the sky darkened, and soon they heard the repeated triple-thudding of a horse riding back, northward toward Lerici.

"He did what I said," observed Byron. "Our carriage awaits us above the Casa Magni." He began coughing, pressing his face into the collar of his jacket to muffle the noise, and Crawford hoped his fever wasn't as bad as it seemed to be. "Teresa is very upset," Byron whispered when he had recovered, "at having to go on to Genoa without me."

Crawford knew this was an appeal for sympathy, but he was too aware of Josephine, somewhere ahead, to spare concern for Byron or Teresa. "If
she
ever gets pregnant, she'll be glad of this."

He thought Byron might get angry at his callousness, but after a long, plodding silence Byron just said, "You're right."

Soon Crawford caught Byron's arm, and pointed ahead. Faintly against the nearly black sky, above the silhouettes of the pines, stood the rectangular bulk of the Casa Magni.

There was no faintest light in any of its windows.

"Do you think she's still here?" asked Byron when they had walked around to the sand-gritty pavement between the house and the sea. He had wedged the torch into a crack in the rocks, and had fished a tinder box from his pocket and was striking showers of dazzling sparks from the flint.

"Yes." Crawford spoke with certainty.

The sparks had ignited a frail flame in the lint in the box, and Byron quickly unwedged the torch and held the splintery, frayed end of it over the light; in a moment the resinous wood was flaring, lighting in its orange glow the startled-looking arches and windows of the house, and he closed the tinder box and tucked it back into his pocket.

"Call her, then," said Byron, holding the torch up so that the trees were visible on the hill behind the house and shadows crawled and darted among the trunks.

"Josephine," said Crawford loudly. His voice disappeared in the vast night like wine spilled on sand.
"Josephine!"
he shouted.
"I need you!"

For several moments the only sounds were the continuing rustle of the wind in the pines and the waves crashing at his back. Crawford looked up at the terrace railing, remembering how Shelley would lean there, staring out at the gulf waters, during the long June evenings.

Then in the pauses between the waves he could hear a soft but echoing shuffling from the darkness behind the ground-floor arches—and a moment later a figure in a tattered dress was visible standing in the central arch, the arch through which Josephine had single-handedly dragged the rowboat on the day she had saved him from drowning.

"Michael," said Josephine hoarsely. Some dark substance was caked around her mouth, as if she'd been eating, but she looked weak and starved, and her eyes were enormous.

Crawford took a step forward, and she instantly disappeared back into the darkness. "Don't . . .
approach
me," she called. "I'm not supposed to let people approach me."

"Fine," said Crawford, backing away with his palms held out. "Look, I'm way back here—you can come out again."

For several moments there was silence—he and Byron exchanged tense glances—then Crawford heard sandy scuffling inside, and, very slowly, she re-emerged into the flickering orange light. Crawford tried to see if she looked pregnant, but wasn't able to tell.

"Can you approach
us
?" Crawford asked.

She shook her head.

"Not even so that we can talk? Maybe I want to rejoin the flock. Byron here is . . . one of you, I'm sure you can see it in him." He felt Byron shift beside him, and he could tell from a wobble in the light that he had moved the torch from one hand to the other. Crawford prayed that he wasn't getting impatient, wasn't going to say anything.

"I can't do anything for you," Josephine said. "You know that. You need one of them to look favorably on you." She smiled, and he could see what her skull would someday look like. "They will, though, Michael. Find one of them and ask for forgiveness. They'll give it. I'm forgiven for . . . for what you and I did."

Her bare feet on the flagstones looked like white crabs.

Crawford blinked back tears. "I want you to come with me, Josephine. I love you. I—"

She was shaking her head. "I think I loved you," she said, "but now I love someone else. We're very happy."

He squeezed the rope, the useless rope. "Listen to me," he said desperately.

"No," she said. "The sun is down, and he's waiting for me." She started to turn.

"You're pregnant," he said loudly.