The old clergyman’s room was right up under the steeply slanted roof, with a very low wall on one side and a high one on the other, and the windows that ran at ankle height along the low side were so small that Crawford guessed a lamp was necessary here even on the sunniest day. Rows of old leather book spines along shelves on the high wall seemed to blot up the light from the old man’s lamp as he set it down on a low table and then lowered himself onto the narrow bed and waved toward two chairs at the other end of the room.
“I … did not know who you were,” said the old clergyman, speaking English with a heavy German accent, “when you came here. I would not have let you stay.” Byron had just sat down, and now pushed his chair back to stand up again, but the old man raised his hand. “You may stay now, I will not turn you out. But I have heard from the people about you—you, besonders,” he added, looking at Crawford.
“Means ‘especially,'” put in Byron helpfully. “What did they tell you about us? That old incest story again? Those girls weren’t sisters, you know—Mary Godwin had entirely different parents than the Clairmont girl, even if they do both have the same stepfather. And in any case, is it really worth the effort of your disapproval? These are things that every day occur.”
“This is nothing to do with … plain carnal congresses,” the old curate said. “Worse stories are about. The people tell me that you have dealings with … unheavenly spirits, the things which walk the valley of the shade of death.”
“A nice phrase,” said Byron, grinning. “I like it. So we’ve sinned against your … ordinances? Prove it and punish us, if you can.”
The old man shook his head wearily. “The mountains, the high places, are not the path to redemption now, not anymore. That was long ago—and dangerous even then. Salvation, redemption, are now to be found through the sacraments.” He turned to Crawford, and his lined old face was rigid, as if with the effort of concealing his loathing. “Even such as you might be able, through them, to escape damnation.”
Byron laughed uneasily. “Don’t be so hard on the lad, Father, he’s not nearly as bad as all that. My God, you’re eyeing him as if you think he’ll steal the gold chalices off your altar.”
“Or turn the wine in them to vinegar,” said Crawford, his voice quiet with anger, “just with a look. Is this Christian charity as it’s practiced in Bern?” He stood up, rapping his head against the low ceiling. “The Church has become a more … exclusive club since the founder’s day, it’s clear. No doubt the Devil is more hospitable.”
“Wait,” said the curate, “sit. I want to see you in Paradise, but I also want to see all my parishioners there. If you go to the mountains now, in the state you’re in, things will be roused that will do none of my people any good.” He nodded to Crawford. “Another like you is already in the Alps, but I can do nothing about him, and in any case he’s keeping to the low passes and travelling only at night….”
He had slowly lifted the stopper from a decanter of brandy on a shelf by the bed, and he turned toward a row of glasses beside it. “Will you stay down here, away from the mountains? I can promise you redemption, if you truly want it—and I can promise you death, if you persist in your course. You have not ever had better counsel than what I am saying.”
Crawford sat down, a little mollified, but he shook his head. “No. I’m going up there.”
Byron nodded agreement. “I don’t get dissuaded from my courses by this kind of counsel.”
The curate closed his eyes for a moment, then shrugged and poured the brandy into three of the glasses. He stood up to hand one to each of his guests, and then hobbled back to the bed and sat down.
Behind him a human shadow appeared on the wooden panelling of the wall, though there was no form casting it. The dim silhouette shook its head slowly, and then faded.
Crawford’s heart was thumping, and he looked at Byron; Byron’s eyes were wide—clearly he’d seen it too. Both of them put their glasses down on the floor.
“None for me, thanks,” said Crawford, standing up.
“Me either,” said Byron, who had already got to the door and opened it.
The old man was quietly sobbing on his bed as they drew the door closed behind them, and Crawford wondered if he was repenting having tried to poison his guests, or sorry that the attempt had failed.
On the way back to where Hobhouse waited they passed a big, six-wheeled wagon that had got bogged down in the sudden mud. Byron, still in his wild, contentious mood, insisted that they get out and push, even though the wagon seemed to have at least a dozen torch-carrying attendants who were already laboring at it, and so he and Crawford and the servant got off their horses and dug their heels into the mud and helped shove at the thing.
The attendants didn’t seem grateful for the help, especially when Byron got up into the bed of the wagon to direct the work, but they put up with it until the wagon was rolling again, then made Byron get down and whipped up the horses and resumed their southward progress.
“Coals to Newcastle,” laughed Byron as he got back onto his horse.
“How’s that?” asked Crawford wearily, wishing his boots weren’t now full of cold mud.
“The big box they’ve got in the back of that is full of ice—it leaked on my hands when I leaned against it—and they’re heading into the Alps.”
At seven o’clock the next morning they set out toward the mountains again, fortified with coffee and brandy—their own—against the eternal chill that made fragile cloud-plumes of human speech and then snatched them away into the cobalt sky. Crawford and the guide were on mules, while Byron and Hobhouse rode horses.
The waterfall was now glowing in sunlight; Byron called attention to the rainbow that hovered around it like a halo, but Hobhouse sniffed and said he wasn’t impressed with a rainbow that had only two distinct colors in it.
“At least they’re regal colors, Hobby,” said Byron, and only Crawford heard the tremor in his voice. “Purple and gold, after all.”
The mountains themselves were too big—too high and distant and vastly jagged—for Crawford to comprehend; looking at them was like looking through a telescope at the alien features of the moon. It was only the unnaturally clear air of this high country that let these sights be visible in such awful totality—back down there behind the travellers, in the zones where mankind flourished, hazes and mists and smokes mercifully limited the extents of human sight. As the hooves clopped along the uphill stone path toward the feet of the sky-spanning peaks, Crawford kept catching himself thinking of the mountains as ancient, living entities, and he was nervously reminded of the story of Semele, the human mother of Dionysus, who was struck dead by the sight of Zeus in his undisguised, inhuman glory.
The sun blazed on the expanses of snow and ice, and by midmorning they had all donned blue-tinted goggles to protect themselves from snow-blindness.
The oily scent of the pines was diminishing as the travellers got higher, like the taste of juniper in a glass of gin that’s being refilled with icy vodka, and Crawford thought that all smells, and even the ability of the air to carry them, would soon be among the things he and the others had left behind. The pines they were passing now were all withered and stripped of bark, and Byron stared at them sombrely and said that they reminded him of himself and his family.