With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke, and found me here
On the cold hill side.
—John Keats, La Belle Dame Sans Merci
… seals—necklaces—balls &c.—& I know not
what—formed of Chrystals—Agates—and other stones—all
of 
from Mont Blanc bought & brought by me on & from
the spot—expressly for you to divide among yourself and the
children …
—Lord Byron,
to Augusta Leigh, 8 September 1816
Lord Byron didn’t appreciate having to be up early and having to be in a carriage with Dr. Polidori; either burden alone, he felt, he could have taken, indeed often had taken, in stride—but both at once today was asking too much. He really couldn’t be held to blame if he lost his temper.
Byron’s gigantic travelling carriage was making poor headway through the traffic around Geneva’s north gate; the carriage had been built in England, copied from the celebrated one of Napoleon’s that had been captured at Genappe, and it contained a bed and a table and silverware … but it was an unwieldy vehicle for maneuvering through crowds.
The young physician didn’t seem to mind the delay, though. Polidori had done a lot of strenuous exercises before they had set out, making a show of his disciplined gasping, and now he was squinting at the distant mountains visible against the blue sky behind the gables and spires of the town, and he was whispering under his breath.
Byron couldn’t stand it. He knew that it was some wretched bit of the physician’s own verse that he was reciting. Why did the man have to have literary ambitions?
Mostly because the physician disapproved, Byron poured himself another glass of Fendant wine.
Sure enough, Polidori glanced over at him and frowned. “That’s your fifth glass of wine today, my lord, and you’ve only been up for a couple of hours!” He cleared his throat. “It has been … medically and mathematically proven, that wine, in excessive amounts, has … catastrophic effects in the … digestive sphere—”
“When I meet a man with a digestive sphere, Pollydolly, I’ll send him straight to you. What I’ve got is a stomach, and it’s partial to drink.” He held the wine up to the sunlight and admired the way the sun made an amber smoldering in the glass. “Liquor’s an old friend of mine, and it’s never betrayed my trust.”
Polidori shrugged sulkily and resumed staring out the window; his lower lip was sticking out more than usual, but at least he had stopped his sotto voce recitations.
Byron grinned sourly, remembering an exchange he’d had with the envious young physician four months ago, when the two of them had been travelling up the Rhine. “After all,” Polidori had said, “what is there that you can do that I cannot?” Byron had grinned and stretched languorously. “Why, since you force me to say,” he had answered, “I think there are three things.” Of course Polidori had hotly demanded to know what they could be. “Well,” Byron had replied, “I can swim across this river … and I can snuff out a candle with a pistol ball at a distance of twenty paces … and I can write a poem of which fourteen thousand copies sell in one day.”
That had been fun; especially since Polidori had been unable to argue. Byron demonstrably had done all those things—except swim the Rhine, but he was known to be a powerful swimmer, who had once swum across the mile of treacherous sea between Sestos and Abydos in Turkey—and Polidori couldn’t even claim to be able to do one of them. That dialogue, like this morning’s, had sent the young physician into a sulk.
The crowd had finally opened up in front of them, and Byron’s driver was able to whip up the horses and get the carriage out through the gate.
“Finally,” snapped Polidori, shifting awkwardly on his seat as if to imply that
the carriage’s construction ought to have provided passengers with more room.
Just to annoy the young man further, Byron leaned forward and opened the communication panel. “Stop a moment, would you please, Maurice,” he called to the driver. He was about to say that he wanted to let the horses rest for a while; but then, glancing out the window, he saw an arm and the back of a head showing like nearly submerged reefs above the sea of daisies along the side of the road.
“What now, my lord?” sighed Polidori.
“It’s some physician you are,” Byron told him sternly. “People are dying by the side of the road, and all you can be bothered to do is recite poetry and tell me about digestive trapezohedrons.”
Polidori was aware that he was missing something. He blinked out of one of the windows in what would have been, if aimed in the right direction, a brave show of alertness. “… People dying?” he mumbled.
Byron was already out of the carriage and limping across the grassy shoulder. “Over here, you imbecile. Exercise your arts on this poor—” He paused, for he had rolled the limp body over, and he recognized the face.
So did Polidori, who came stumping up then. “Why, it’s just that false doctor who nearly gave Shelley pneumonia! Did I tell you I made some inquiries, and found out that he’s actually a veterinarian? I expect he’s just drunk. There’s no—”
Byron had looked closely at the wasted face, though, and was remembering how close he had come to a similar disaster in his youth—and he remembered too the protective carnelian-quartz heart a friend had subsequently given him, and the strangely crystalline skull he himself had later dug up at his family estate and had made into a goblet.
“Lift him inside,” Byron said softly.
“What, a drunk?” protested Polidori. “On your famous upholstery? Let’s just leave word—”
“I said get him inside!” Byron roared. “And pour some wine into that amethyst cup that’s packed in the same case with my pistols! And then,” he went on gently, putting his hand on the startled young physician’s shoulder, “calculate how much I owe you. Your services are no longer required.”
For a moment Polidori was speechless. Then, “What?” he sputtered. “Are you mad, m’lord? A veterinarian? Not even a surgeon, as he claimed that day, but an animal doctor? To replace me, a graduate of Edinburgh University? Five glasses of wine in a morning, no wonder you’re talking this way! As your physician, I’m afraid I must—”
Byron had certainly not intended to hire this unconscious person as Polidori’s replacement, but the young man’s denunciation of such a course made him perversely seize upon it. “I have,” he said in his coldest tone, easily overriding Polidori’s shrill protests, “no further right as an employer to ask you to do anything; but as a fellow human being I’m asking you to help me carry my new personal doctor into my carriage.”
Though choking with rage and perhaps weeping, Polidori complied, and in a few moments Michael Crawford was sleepily spilling wine down his throat and his muddy shirt-front while sitting on the leather upholstery of Byron’s carriage. Soon the vehicle was under way again, and Polidori was walking shakily back toward the gates of the city of Geneva.
Crawford expected the wine to hit him hard, what with his empty stomach and weakened constitution—but instead it seemed to clear his head and restore some of his strength. He emptied the cup, and Byron refilled it.