Crawford shifted uncomfortably in the chair and wished he hadn’t left his flask at Keats’s place, for he didn’t want to think clearly, or remember clearly, right now. None of these questions were his problems anyway—he was only trying to save someone who would otherwise die. Where was the ethical problem in that? Perhaps he should go downstairs and get a bottle to bring back up here.
The thought reminded him of the vial he still had in his hand, and he held it up to the lamplight, which glowed red through the milky fluid within. He remembered that von Aargau’s representative had told him to give it to the nurse in some strong-tasting medium like stew or hot spiced punch and, because her nervous ailment made her needlessly suspicious, not to let her know he was giving it to her.
He pulled out the cork and sniffed the stuff. The harsh, acidic smell was distantly familiar, and reminded him of the first hospital he had ever worked at—something to do with the syphilitic ward. Did Josephine have syphilis? That disease could certainly affect her mind adversely. Perhaps this was the explanation of all her weird behavior.
He smelled it again. The memory was circling in his head like a fly, always seeming on the point of alighting. Something to do with his having got in trouble, having mixed something wrong …
And then he had it, and his belly went cold and, just for one moment of weakness, he wished he had got that bottle of liquor and had drunk himself insensible and not ever opened this vial.
The vial contained quicksilver dissolved in acid mineral spirits, a virulent poison which was sometimes accidentally produced by careless medical students when mercury was being prepared for use on syphilitics in hospitals.
Von Aargau had sent him there to kill Josephine.
But he’s my employer, one part of his mind instantly pointed out, it’s through him that I’m able to care for all the foundling infants in Rome—if I break with him I’ll lose the position and have to go back to being a mediocre veterinarian, once more trying to work up the nerve to borrow money from
Byron; and, realistically, quite a number of those infants will die without my care, and Josephine is hardly a creature with potential, hardly anybody’s idea of a tabula rasa, a blank slate—hell, she’s a slate that’s had bad math scrawled on it and then been waxed so that nothing can ever be written on it again. I’ve treated sheep that had more of a right to live.
He started to recork the vial, intending to put it back in his pocket to await a future decision, but found he couldn’t do it. Was he really even willing to consider giving her the poison?
This would be his first murder by action rather than by inaction, wouldn’t it?
But, he asked himself plaintively, is saving Josephine worth losing the position at Santo Spirito? Somebody else, sure, Keats, his damned sister, the next person to walk across the square, in fact, but Josephine? All those infants who’ll need my help, who’ll die without me, just so that this … wretched construct named Josephine can lurch a few more unhappy miles and years before giving in wearily to death?
Of course, by the time I lie down to die, at the age of seventy or so, all the children I’ll have delivered and cared for will have grown up to become coarse, brutish adults; and hell, Josephine herself was a baby once—her mother died giving birth to her.
This … protectiveness you feel toward newborns, this value you see in them—at what point, exactly, does it all wear off? When is it that a person stops qualifying for life, according to your definition?
Josephine certainly didn’t acknowledge it when she saved your life on the Wengern Alp.
His heart pounding at the prospect of all the questions he’d now no longer be able to evade, Crawford crossed slowly to the window, opened it, stared down at the gray street for a moment and then carefully poured the liquid in a long, separating stream into a puddle under a rain gutter. He considered throwing the vial itself across the pavement into the fountain of Neptune, but decided that it would probably fall short—and if it didn’t, that it might hit that poor stone horse.
The thought of the horse reminded him of the note he’d left under the cherub’s hand. Had von Aargau’s people had time to find it yet? If so, they might very well be on their way to do what Crawford had failed to do.
He threw on his wet coat, ran out of the room and down the stairs, leaving the window and the door open, and sprinted across the rain-slick stones and then cleared the three-foot-tall coping of the fountain in a flying leap. His legs twisted out from under him when he hit the water, and he wound up more swimming than wading as he floundered to the horse.
The note was gone.
Von Aargau’s people wouldn’t be able to deal with Keats until dark, but killing Josephine could be done at any time.
For one falsely hopeful moment he hoped that the rain would have washed the blood-letters away … but then he remembered how efficient von Aargau’s organization was when it came to dealing with blood.
Where had Josephine said she lived? St. Paul’s Home—that was in the Via Palestro. Crawford knew the place, for it was where the hospital hired most of its nurses. It was at the east end of the city, more than twice as far away from here as Keats’s place.
The jets of water from the fountain’s mechanism were being torn to bits by the hammering rain as he climbed out onto the pavement again, and he had to squint to see as he began running, miserably, east.
As he jolted along through the rain he thought about this last case von Aargau had assigned him. Every previous pseudo-consumption patient had been a powerful pro-Austrian politician or writer; why should von Aargau want to save Keats, an obscure poet whose political sympathies, assuming he had any at all, were probably more in line with the Carbonari’s? In fact, how had von Aargau even come to hear of Keats? Lots of tubercular patients came to Rome hoping to stave off death.
It made no sense … unless von Aargau—through his employee, Crawford—was representing the only figure in the conflict who was being thwarted: the lamia herself. And of course the lamia would just as soon see Josephine dead, since Josephine was abetting Keats in his resistance to the lamia’s will.
The thought brought Crawford to a wheezing stop in a narrow street, and he leaned against a lamppost to catch his breath and order his thoughts.
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 nonmember 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?