As he swam, the water seemed gradually to become a denser fluid, like mercury—so that he floated higher and could propel himself along with less effort, almost as if the water were repelling him; and a warm wind had sprung up at his back, thrusting at his clothes and hair and lending him impetus. Thank you, he thought to the mountains and the sky. Thank you, my new family.
Shelley tried to follow him, but the wind over the lake was impossibly erratic, and finally he had to let the sail flap loose. His night-vision had been diminishing ever since he had taken the knife to his own lower ribs in 1811, but he could still see well enough to make out the wide whirlwind that drew spray up in a dim funnel and centered on the receding lump of agitation that was his brother-in-law.
Simultaneous lightning crazed the night sky over the Jura on one horizon and Mont Blanc on the other, and a few moments later the thunder rolled back and forth across the lake, sounding to Shelley like the majestic laughter of the mountains.
For the next week Crawford never went out by day. Often when the sun had set behind the black slopes of the Jura he would climb up the rocky foothills by starlight, or slouch down the steep cobblestoned lanes to the shore of the lake, and then just wander aimlessly. He was acutely aware of smells now, relishing the wild spice scents of the upland flowers, and repulsed by the smoke that whirled away along the shore at dusk when the returned fishermen were cooking their garlicky sausages. There were no tourists out here, and the locals seemed to hurry away when he approached them, and so whole days went by without his speaking a word.
The memories of his past life had lost their driving power—his only concern these days was to be back in his room every evening by midnight for the arrival of her.
And he had only one worry, but it was a consuming one—she was becoming less substantial. The dreams were losing their vividness, and he could find only the faintest red spots now when he looked for her bites in the mornings; he treasured the memory of the first bite, and sentimentally kept picking at it so that it wouldn’t heal.
He had never turned the mirror back to face the room, but he knew what he would see if he did—the bright, ill-looking eyes and hectically spotted cheeks that distinguished the faces of so many of the people he’d been meeting lately.
When he came back up the hill on the tenth night, he found half a dozen people awaiting him outside the rooming house. One of them was the old woman who owned the place. His bag had been packed, and it sat on the grass behind them.
“You cannot stay here any longer,” said the landlady clearly in French. “You did not tell me that you are consumptive. The quarantine laws are very strict—you must go to the hospitals.”
Crawford shook his head, impatient to get upstairs. “It is not genuine consumption,” he managed to reply in the same language. “Honestly, I am a doctor, and I can assure you that I suffer from an entirely different malady, one that—”
“One that can perhaps bring worse things yet down upon us,” said the burly man nearest Crawford’s bag. “The teeth of the middle.”
For a moment Crawford thought the man was making a reference to his bitten finger stump, but then he remembered that that was the name of a cluster of nearby mountains: the Dents du Midi.
Crawford was afraid it might be midnight now, and that she might be waiting for him … or not waiting. “Look,” he said unsteadily in English, “I’ve paid for the goddamn room, and I’m going to—”
He tried to push past them, but an outflung palm thrust him back with such force that he wound up sitting on the grass well behind where he’d been standing. His portmanteau thudded onto the ground next to him.
“Within my grandfather’s lifetime people like you were burned alive,” the landlady called. “Be grateful that you are simply required to leave.”
“But it’s the middle of the night!” Crawford gasped, still nearly breathless from the push. “Uh, mais, c’est en pleíne nuit! They close the Geneva gates at ten! What do you expect me to—”
The burly man pulled something silvery out from under his coat, but Crawford didn’t wait to see whether it was a crucifix or a knife; rolling painfully to his feet, he seized his bag and, wheezing curses, limped away down the hill.
He hoped to walk to Geneva and talk or bribe his way into the city, and then get a room somewhere, but she came to him while he was still on the road.
He had his portmanteau slung over his back as he strode along, and all at once it seemed to grow shockingly heavy; he fell under its sudden weight and rolled several yards down the lakeward slope … and then, with an overwhelming burst of gladness, he realized that the glowing-eyed creature that was crouched on his back and lowering its open mouth toward his neck was her. And he was awake—this was no dream.
When her teeth punctured the skin of his throat he was abruptly somewhere else … even someone else. He was lying on a bed, and he knew he was on the west coast of France, booked to sail for Portsmouth tomorrow. Mary Godwin, his wife-to-be, slept beside him, but his thoughts tonight were of his present wife, Harriet, and their two children, all three of whom he had left behind in England. Then he became aware that his thoughts were being monitored, and he hastily closed his mind … and Crawford was himself again, sprawled across the dewy grass slope under the stars while the cold woman drew hot blood from his throat.
He realized dimly that the flow of his blood into her had briefly linked his mind to Shelley’s.
But now she was speaking to him in his mind, and he forgot everything else. She didn’t use words, but he learned that she had to go away somewhere to fulfill a five-year-old promise, and that there were only two vessels available to her for such a voyage—and one of them was leaving now. She would give his … name, face, identity … to certain sorts of … people, who would try to protect him if he got into danger.
And he had better be … faithful to her.
He tried to remonstrate, to tell her how much he needed her, but even though he shouted at her, staring into her weirdly luminous eyes as her ivory face hovered over him, he wasn’t sure she heard him.
Eventually she left him, but it was too cold on the grassy hillside for him to go to sleep. He got to his feet, refastened his clothes and, with infinite weariness, resumed his interrupted walk to Geneva.
In Le Havre, in northern France, Percy Shelley stepped aboard the ship that was to take him to England …
… And Crawford was alone. She was gone, not only somewhere else but not watching over him anymore. The night was instantly darker; his night-vision had suddenly diminished, and he began dragging his feet as he walked so that he could feel the texture of the road and notice if he strayed off it.
Shelley had been right after all—and had failed to leave her on this side of the channel.
CHAPTER 8
I saw pale kings, and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cry’d—'La belle Dame sans merci
Hath thee in thrall!’
I saw their starv’d lips in the gloam