The Stress of Her Regard (67 page)

"Fine."

The fat man turned and entered the building.

With some of the
lire
Josephine still had they bought a bag of coins and gave it to Carlo, who took it and walked out of the alley into the Piazzetta; Crawford and Josephine followed him at a distance of a dozen feet.

Carlo walked halfway across the pavement toward the basilica, then flipped a coin into the air. It glittered for a moment in the torchlight and then Crawford lost sight of it; a few seconds later he heard a metallic clink-and-roll far out to the right, toward the tall brick tower of the campanile.

Carlo walked in that direction for a few steps, then flipped his thumb up again. This time Crawford never saw the coin, and heard nothing but the voices and laughter from the alley behind them.

Carlo turned around and walked the other way, toward the rear of the basilica. After twenty steps he tossed another coin. Byron was able to keep Crawford's eyes on it, but it landed well behind Carlo, and for an instant after it hit the pavement it was clearly
three
coins, then two, and then it was simply gone.

Carlo nodded, and kept walking.

Crawford took control of his mouth long enough to whisper: "
We
could have done this."

"
So
far, sure," Byron had him saying a moment later. He took a firmer grip of Josephine's arm and walked in the same direction as Carlo without appearing to be following him.

The fat man ambled in an apparently random pattern across the mosaic tiles, each of his tossed coins flying in a different direction and then rolling away at impossible angles.

An alley stretched away in darkness at the northeastern end of the Piazzetta, and after several minutes it became apparent that he was walking inexorably toward it.

Eventually he disappeared into it, and after a pause and a yawn and a bored glance around, Crawford found himself escorting Josephine into the shadowed gap between the tall, ornate buildings.

Crawford could hear running water ahead, and he knew it must be the canal on the east side of the palace. The comparative brightness of the open night loomed ahead, and he saw Carlo toss another coin and then disappear around a corner ahead. The coin bounced once behind Crawford, then again
far
behind him, and then rolled to a stop ahead of him.

Carlo had turned right, and Crawford's left leg ached as Byron began walking faster so as not to lose him.

When they had rounded the corner too they found themselves on a catwalk over the narrow canal, with the skull-like Bridge of Sighs silhouetted ahead of them against the glow of the lights along the broad Canale di San Marco.

Byron followed Carlo more closely now, and walked up beside him when he had paused at a closed, iron-banded door at the end of the catwalk.

"Well?" Byron whispered.

"This is the sacristy of the basilica," said Carlo quietly. "What you're looking for is somewhere inside." He shrugged.

Josephine reached forward and took hold of the door latch, and pulled. The door swung open, revealing a dim, high-ceilinged passage beyond.

Muttering prayers, Carlo went in. Crawford followed him, and Josephine pulled the door shut behind them.

Carlo moved forward slowly, pausing every few feet to send another coin spinning into the air. The coins were landing closer to him now, and not rebounding in startling directions.

Crawford could no longer see anything erratic in the courses of the coins. Carlo was catching them easily—but clearly the man was still aware of deviations, for when confronted with a choice of doorways he stepped toward one as he tossed and caught a coin, then toward the other as he did it again, then nodded and walked unhesitatingly through one of the doorways.

After threading a path through a number of ground-floor rooms, Carlo led his two companions up a stone stairway, and halfway down another hall. Pairs of high narrow windows slitted the canal-side wall between broad wooden pillars, and the light was good enough to throw vague shadows onto the panelled wall on the other side.

All at once Crawford seemed to weigh more, and the light was clearer, and the scuff of his ravaged shirt-sleeve socks on the floor was raspier.

Carlo tossed another coin—he caught it, as he had been doing for several minutes now, but he grunted in surprise.

He tossed it higher, almost to the ceiling, and closed his eyes as he held out his hand.

Again he caught it.

He put his finger into his mouth and bit, and then walked a few yards forward, shook a drop of blood onto the flagstones, and walked back.

He took two more coins out of the bag and began juggling all three, humming a random tune. The coins spun around faster and faster, and his humming became louder and seemed to start up a maddening itch in the stump of Crawford's wedding-ring finger.

Then one of the coins bulleted up, pinging rapidly off the ceiling and against one wall and then the other; it hit the floor spinning so fast that it seemed to be a glassy globe, and it moved in a hissing spiral around the spot of blood, getting closer to the spot with every loop.

At last it wobbled to a stop and fell over, exactly covering the spot.

"We're there," Crawford heard himself say.

"Not quite," came a familiar voice from a shadowed doorway ahead of them. "A tourist has had an accident—quite a bloody accident—in the Piazza." Polidori limped unsteadily out of the shadows into the dim light, and smiled. "Right between the columns."

Crawford was walking toward one of the nearest pair of tall, foot-wide windows, and his hands unlatched one of them and swung it open. He turned and said to Carlo, "Into the canal with you. Swim back, and go home to your family."

The fat man hurried to the window and managed to squeeze his bulk into the gap and halfway over the sill, and then he wriggled furiously and scraped his way through it and fell away forward into empty air; a second later they heard a splash.

Byron turned Crawford's head toward Josephine and raised his eyebrows.

"No," said Josephine. "I'll see this out."

"You certainly will, darling," said Polidori, hunching forward, his smile a grimace of pain now. "You'll see Mister Crawford's
liver
out, torn out by your own hands, and then you'll eat it. Happily."

Crawford's body shifted its weight on his feet as he mentally pushed Byron out. "Where is Werner von Aargau?" he asked, concealing his horror and regret behind a determinedly conversational tone.

"Von Aargau? In his chamber in the Ducal Palace, where else? Perhaps you imagined he'd be out boating on the canal?" He stared at Crawford. "Were
you
looking for
him
?"

Crawford didn't answer, and Polidori turned to Josephine. "Were you?"

She threw a pleading look to Crawford, who stepped forward and put an arm around her shoulders. "Yes we were," he said quietly. He was certain that they had lost everything, including their child, but he couldn't bear to let this . . . rival for Josephine's affections see despair in him.

Crawford looked up at Polidori with raised eyebrows. "Tell me," he said politely, "can one get to his chamber from here?"

Polidori laughed, and Crawford was fiercely glad to hear pain putting anger into the sound.

"Well," said Polidori, mockingly imitating Crawford's courteous tone, "I'll tell you a secret, doctor—yes one can. His projections of himself, the substantial, handsome ghosts through which he lives, often use this hallway to enter and leave the palace discreetly. There's a door at the end of the corridor behind me, and a little dock downstairs—he likes to emerge into Venice from under the Bridge of Sighs."

"Fitting."

"Why were you looking for him?"

"We mean to kill him."

Polidori laughed—a strangled, wheezing sound. "That would be difficult. He's got many, many guards, and none of them will ever take bribes or bring him poison or fight half-heartedly, for they're all his handsome, muscular projections. And even if you
did
succeed in killing him, you'd die yourselves a second later."

Footsteps echoed on the stairs behind Crawford.

"Austrian soldiers," Polidori said. "I'd advise you not to resist."

Crawford let his shoulders slump, and he clasped his hands on the head of the cane, and part of his evident resentful surrender was genuine, for he hated the necessity of letting Byron do this—and then he forced himself back into the bed in Lerici and let Byron take his body.

Instantly the two good fingers of his left hand spun the collar below the cane's grip, and then he sprang forward in a thigh-straining, long lunge, simultaneously whipping free the length of steel and whirling it into line.

Polidori lurched aside to Crawford's right, but in midair Byron twisted Crawford's wrist outward into a deep
sixte
line and managed to drive two inches of the blade into Polidori's side.

"
Eisener breche
, you bastard!" Byron gasped as Crawford's right foot slapped down at the end of the lunge.

Polidori
shrank
off the end of the blade; he was still human in form, but only a couple of feet tall now. His facial features, handsome a moment ago, had now cramped together in a toadishly broad face. He scuttled away backward down the hall, burping and retching.

Josephine, biting her lips, watched him go but at least didn't follow.

The footsteps were in the hall now, and running, and Byron spun to face them. Six soldiers with drawn swords skidded to a halt at the sight of his sword, and then advanced cautiously, their blades extended. Oddly, not one of them carried a gun, and their eyes shone with an uneasiness that clearly had nothing to do with Crawford or Josephine.

Reminded of something by Byron's cry, Crawford took advantage of the momentary pause to override Byron and swing the sword at one of the wooden pillars between the windows, leaving a horizontal dent in the wood.

Byron swore as he resumed control, and then he hopped forward impatiently with a feint at one of the soldiers and a corkscrewing bind to the blade of another; Byron's point darted in and gouged the man's forearm, and then Byron had leaped back out of range.

The wounded Austrian fell back with a startled curse, and the two of his fellows who had been flanking him ran forward with their swords held straight out, and Byron feinted high and then flung himself down and sideways so that he was in a low crouch, supported by Crawford's left hand and holding the sword extended in the right, and the window-side soldier unwittingly lunged himself onto the point.

Byron straightened, yanking the blade free as the man tumbled backward, and Crawford intruded for a moment to make his hand lash the sword at the wooden pillar again, cutting another dent next to the first.

"Stop that!"
yelled Byron as the four unhurt soldiers all attacked at once. Byron swung his blade in a horizontal figure-eight, parrying all four of the blades for the moment, and then he hopped forward in a short lunge and darted his point into the cheek of the man on his far right—instantly he swept the blade down and across, knocking aside the other three swords, and ducked to quickly but deeply stab the kneecap of the next man.

He was going to advance, but Crawford halted him and swung the blade very hard at a section of the pillar below his two previous cuts.

"God damn you!"
Byron yelled, and hopped forward with a furious beat to the blade of the nearest Austrian.

The blow jarred the man's blade out of line, and Byron slashed his throat in the instant before two of the others could bring their own blades to bear. Blood sprayed from the opened throat and the Austrian folded to the floor as Byron shuffled back.

"Your clowning will get you killed," Crawford heard his own mouth say; nevertheless Crawford took possession of his body one more time and, ignoring the advancing men, drove his point into the crude face he'd hacked into the wooden pillar.

The sword's grip was suddenly red-hot, and he had to force himself to hold on to it.

And then one of the advancing sword-points slashed along his right ribs, twisting as it darted in. Josephine gasped, and through the hot flare of the pain Crawford was peripherally glad to know that she was still there.

Byron spasmodically took back control and lashed his sword forward; it chopped across the Austrian's eyes and physically knocked the man over backward, and then Byron was rushing at the three Austrians who were still standing.

None of them were unwounded, and they turned and ran from this embodiment of murderous fury. Their footsteps clattered down the stairs, and Crawford could hear them calling for reinforcements.

Tense with the pain of the gash in his side, Crawford swished the sword through the air, and realized that Byron had relinquished control of his body.

He heard Trelawny's voice, raising no echoes in the narrow room of the inn at Lerici: "How do you feel?"

"Feel!" yelled Byron from his own body on the bed. "Why, just as that damned obstreperous fellow felt, chained to a rock, the vultures gnawing at my midriff, and vitals too, for I have no liver."

Crawford took a step back toward Josephine, and the cut in his side sent such agony lancing through him that he sagged and had to take a deep breath to keep from fainting.

Apparently Byron felt it too, for in his bed he shouted, "I don't care for dying, but I cannot bear this! It's past joking, call Fletcher; give me something that will end it—or me! I can't stand it much longer."

Faintly through the window Crawford heard the echoes of gunshots, and he prayed that they were Carbonari guns summoned by his stabbing the makeshift
mazze
. He took Josephine's arm and limped away up the hall in the direction the midget Polidori had taken, pressing his sword-gripping fist against his bleeding side and leaving the scabbard lying on the floor behind him.

"Here, my lord," said Fletcher, seeming to be speaking at Crawford's ear despite the hundred and fifty miles between them.

A moment later Crawford shook his head and exhaled explosively, for his head was full of the fumes of spirits of ammonia. Then the smell was gone—and so was his link with Byron.