The Stress of Her Regard (34 page)

Had he been working for the nephelim cause, these two years? It seemed unlikely, since in every one of von Aargau's cases, except that of Keats, he'd been
insulating
the patient from a vampire; but of course von Aargau had never prescribed any measures that would
free
a victim from a vampire—just . . . hold it at arm's length for a while.

And Keats, Crawford reminded himself, is a member of the nephelim family. For that matter, so was I. I wonder if, considering the nature of the work von Aargau has been giving me, that fact could have been a factor in von Aargau's hiring me. Am I still, in some sense, a member of the family?

It would explain why von Aargau needed
me
, specifically; the nephelim would have no scruples about stopping a
non
member who dared to obstruct them.

Abruptly Crawford wondered if von Aargau's canal-side duel had been staged for his benefit, so that apparent gratitude would conceal the
real
reason von Aargau had been so insistent about hiring him.

That cut in his belly was real, though, Crawford thought. What kind of man could inflict that kind of wound on himself intentionally . . . and then heal so rapidly and totally?

Well, it doesn't matter whether von Aargau is on the side of the nephelim or not, he told himself firmly—just the fact that he sent me there as an unwitting poisoner has made it impossible for me to continue working for him.

He toppled forward into his plodding, splashing run again, resolutely not letting himself think about how cold and wet he was, nor about how cold and wet he was likely to be in the future, now that he would have to give up his employment and return to the life of a penniless fugitive . . . though he did damn Josephine, in jerky whispers through rain-numbed lips, for not having died in the Alps.

The ground floor of the building next to St. Paul's Home was a trattoria, and yellow lamplight from inside gleamed on the abandoned cups and dishes that stood half-filled with rainwater on the tables out on the pavement; only one hooded man still sat in a chair by one of the tables, and he got to his feet as Crawford came limping around the corner from the Via Montebello. The gray sky had begun to darken toward black, and the amber glow of lamplit windows gilded the dark puddles.

"It's all right, doctor," the man said in a low voice. "Go home. Others are taking care of it even now."

Crawford paused, panting too hard to speak, then nodded and leaned on one of the tables as if to let his heartbeat slow down; one hand gripped the edge of the table and the other closed on the neck of a half-empty bottle of wine.

His eyes rolled up and he took a raspingly deep breath and his feet shuffled for balance, and then he lashed the bottle up across the shadowed face; the glass shattered against the cheekbone and the man cartwheeled away to slam into the side of the building.

Crawford was on the limp body even before it had finished collapsing to the pavement, and bits of glass were still rattling and spinning among the legs of the tables as he yanked a flintlock pistol from under the unconscious man's coat and then turned toward the nurses' home next door.

The building was fronted in an arch that opened onto a small courtyard, and he ran inside and, blinking in the darkness, groped his way past half a dozen wooden statues of saints to a set of wrought-iron steps. Orange light now glinted overhead, and he heard boots scuff echoingly.

Men were coming down the stairs above Crawford, cursing and grunting—apparently carrying something heavy. Pausing only to cross himself, he tucked the pistol into his belt and started quickly up the iron stairs.

A bobbing lantern somewhere farther up silhouetted the bottommost man, who was peering down over his shoulder to see where he was stepping, and he was the first to see Crawford.

"Out of the way, Aickman," he gasped, "we've got her."

Crawford could now see that the burden the men were carrying was a rolled carpet that sagged in the middle, and he knew it must contain Josephine; the man who had spoken was holding up one end, and Crawford hoped it was where her feet were.

Crawford smiled and nodded agreeably—and then leaped up four more steps, grabbed the back of the man's collar and pulled, hiking his feet up so that his entire weight was behind the pull.

The man toppled over backward with a panicked yell, and though Crawford tried to twist him around in midair, Crawford was still between the stairs and the heavy body above him when they slammed into the iron stair-treads several yards down; all the breath was punched out of him in one harsh, agonized bark, so that when, a moment later, the dropped roll of carpet thudded solidly into them before going end over end down the stairs, he could only scream in his mind as he felt broken rib-ends grind together in his chest.

The man on top of him had his legs in the air and, screaming and flailing uselessly at the brick wall, he slowly overbalanced and then went tumbling away himself in a backward somersault, off of Crawford. The stairs were ringing dully.

Someone leaped over Crawford and ran on down the stairs, and then someone else hoisted him roughly to his feet, and he was dimly aware of angry faces in lantern light, and loud questions being shouted at him.

He was only able to shake his head. His battered lungs were heaving in his chest, trying to draw in air, and he was distantly aware of hot blood running down his chin from his nose.

Finally one of his questioners spat an impatient curse and looked past Crawford down the stairs. "I can't get any sense out of him, Emile, but there's been too much noise," he called, loudly enough for Crawford to hear him over the ringing in his ears. "Never mind taking her to the river—kill her here, and leave Marco where he is and let's be on our way."

Crawford turned and began frantically shambling down the stairs, his feet flopping and slipping under him, his hands clutching the rail, and sweat springing out coldly on his ashen face. He was able to breathe now, but only in great rasping whoops.

When he got down to the narrow courtyard he was sure he would have to pause to vomit; but by the light from the quickly descending lantern behind him he saw the man who'd hurried past him on the stairs—Emile, apparently—bend over the carpet and drive a knife twice, hard, into the streetward end of the carpet roll.

The light was good enough now for Crawford to see blood on the blade as Emile drew back his arm for a third stab. The roll was heaving now, and Emile seemed to be trying to judge where Josephine's neck was.

Crawford drew the pistol from his belt—tearing some skin, for the jagged lock mechanism had apparently been driven into his stomach—and, whimpering in horror, pointed it at the man and fired it.

Recoil punched the pistol out of his hand, but Emile spun away from the carpet and sat down hard against the wall, and Crawford hunched across the pavement to him, stumbling over the limp body of the man he'd pulled down the stairs, and hurriedly searched Emile's blood-wet pockets.

He found another pistol and, turning on his heel so fast that he thought he might pass out, aimed it back up at the men who by now were nearly at the bottom of the stairs. Lights had been lit behind several of the courtyard-facing windows, and women were screaming and calling for the
guardia
.

"Run," Crawford choked, "or I'll . . . kill you too."

They backed up cautiously until they were out of his line of sight, and then he heard them scramble away—farther up the stairs or down some hall.

Crawford gingerly pushed the pistol down inside his belt, then crouched by the still-heaving roll of carpet.

He noticed that there were two nuns peering at him from a doorway.
"C'e una donna ferita qui dentro—forse marta—aiutatemi srotolare!"

The nuns exclaimed in alarm but hurried over to him, and in less than a minute had unrolled Josephine.

She sat up, and Crawford was relieved to see by the blood on one of her ankles that Emile had been stabbing the wrong end of the carpet. He looked around until he saw Emile's dropped knife, and he automatically bent and picked it up.

The men on the stairs had carried their lantern away with them, but enough lamps had been lit behind the nearby windows now for Crawford to see that Josephine was deep in her mechanical defense—her eyes were wide and her head was snapping back and forth, and she got to her feet like a rusty iron puppet, apparently unaware of the blood coursing down over her right foot.

Crawford glanced nervously back up the stairs, then limped over to her. "We've got to get out of here, Josephine," he said. "Those men won't leave the area until they've killed you."

She stared at him blankly and recoiled from the arm he'd put around her; he was ready to simply drag her away, but then he remembered the nonsense she'd spoken to Byron and him on the Wengern, and remembered the name under which she'd been working for Keats.

"Julia," he said, "this is Michael, your husband. We've got to get out of here."

The rigid blankness left her face, and she gave him a grotesquely delighted smile. She seemed about to speak, but he just grinned as cheerfully as he could and led her toward the arch and the street beyond, waving Emile's knife reassuringly back at the bewildered nuns.

He bumped into one of the life-size wooden statues, and in a moment of panic stabbed at it with the knife, striking it in the face.

The knife-grip was suddenly red-hot, and he snatched his scorched hand away. His palm was red, with a black spot in the center.

He thought he heard a shout far away in the night, and on a sudden impulse that he didn't bother to analyze, he left the knife sticking in the wooden saint's cheek.

He pulled Josephine out into the street.

The rain was coming down even more heavily than before, raising waves of splash-spray that swept like nets across the pavement. There were no carriages on the street, and he hadn't brought any money anyway. He had one arm draped around Josephine; with the other he drew Emile's blood-slick pistol, and he kept glancing back at the nurses' home as the two of them reeled across the street.

They had nearly got to an alley on the far side when something punched his thigh like a hammer blow, and he folded, at the same moment feeling Josephine jerk and pitch forward away from him; and as he landed on his hands and knees on the cobblestones he realized that the two heavy
bams
that had for a moment battered the building fronts had been gunshots.

He knew he was being killed, but he was too exhausted and hurt to derive any alarm from the thought, only depression and a leaden impatience that it was taking so long, and hurting so much.

He wondered if Josephine was dead and, if not, if he could somehow get her free of this before the men behind them came over to finish off the job. He swung his head dizzily back and forth, squinting in the cold rain, and finally saw her sprawled only a few yards from him. Her skirt, already dark from the rain, was pulled up, and he could see the quickly diluted blood running from two gashes in her right calf.

He crawled over to her, dragging his shot left leg, and lifted her face. Her hair was full of fresh, hot blood—evidently she'd been shot in the head—but he put his ear to her mouth.

She was breathing, in fast gasps.

Over the ringing in his ears he could hear footsteps thudding and splashing, louder by the second, behind him. He had dropped the pistol when he fell, but it was next to Josephine's head, and he picked it up; he rolled over, careful not to jar his mercifully numb left leg, and sat up, facing back the way he'd come. It was hard to see through the rain, and he pushed wet hair away from his eyes with his free hand.

He raised the pistol in shaking hands. He could dimly see two figures approaching through the veil of the rain, and he waited for them to come closer.

They did, in great bounding leaps, and at nearly the last moment he remembered to click the hammer back, wondering if he could pull the trigger on a human being again.

Then there was the sound of hoofbeats from the direction of the Via Montebello, and the two men in the street halted and turned toward the noise, raising pistols of their own.

Not caring who the newcomers might be, but grateful for the diversion, Crawford aimed at one of the men in the street and, unconsciously whispering curses and fragments of half-remembered prayers, carefully squeezed the trigger of Emile's pistol.

The
bang
hammered his already abused eardrums and the gun's barrel clouted his face as the recoil kicked it up and back—and the man he'd been aiming at did a backflip and disappeared in the spray of the rain above the pavement. Crawford reversed the spent pistol and held it by the hot barrel and waited for the last man to come for him—but the horsemen were galloping forward now, and then he was dazzled into momentary blindness by a muzzle-flash as the last of Crawford's attackers fired his gun at the riders in the moment before being ridden down.

Crawford couldn't see if the man's shot had hit anyone. One of the riders reined in his horse long enough to fire a shot down into the body under the horses' hooves, and then to call, perhaps to Crawford,
"Questo e' fattodai Carbonari, chiamato dalla mazze"
—
and then all of them rode away south. Crawford tried to watch them, but the rain, and the red dazzle-spots floating in his vision, made them invisible within a few yards.

This was done by the Carbonari, summoned by the mazze
, Crawford translated mentally—and he was profoundly grateful for the impulse that had made him stick the iron blade into the wooden head—and grateful too that the men on horseback hadn't recognized him from having glimpsed him earlier this evening in Navona Square.

But of course he had changed his allegiance since then.

Still sitting on the street, he laid the gun down and put his hand under his thigh, scraping the backs of his knuckles against the wet cobblestones.

He found the tear in his trousers and, though it nearly made him faint with sheer horror, he gingerly probed the hole in his leg with a fingertip. It was bleeding, but not so copiously as to indicate a torn artery. There was no exit wound, so the ball must still be inside—that was good news in some ways, bad in some others. The wound was still numb, but a hot ache was building up in there, and he knew he needed medical attention soon.