Well, it doesn’t matter whether von Aargau is on the side of the nephelim or not; he told himself firmly—just the fact that he sent me there as an unwitting poisoner has made it impossible for me to continue working for him.
He toppled forward into his plodding, splashing run again, resolutely not letting himself think about how cold and wet he was, nor about how cold and wet he was likely to be in the future, now that he would have to give up his employment and return to the life of a penniless fugitive … though he did damn Josephine, in jerky whispers through rain-numbed lips, for not having died in the Alps.
The ground floor of the building next to St. Paul’s Home was a trattoria, and yellow lamplight from inside gleamed on the abandoned cups and dishes that stood half-filled with rainwater on the tables out on the pavement; only one hooded man still sat in a chair by one of the tables, and he got to his feet as Crawford came limping around the corner from the Via Montebello. The gray sky had begun to darken toward black, and the amber glow of lamplit windows gilded the dark puddles.
“It’s all right, Doctor,” the man said in a low voice. “Go home. Others are taking care of it even now.”
Crawford paused, panting too hard to speak, then nodded and leaned on one of the tables as if to let his heartbeat slow down; one hand gripped the edge of the table and the other closed on the neck of a half-empty bottle of wine.
His eyes rolled up and he took a raspingly deep breath and his feet shuffled for balance, and then he lashed the bottle up across the shadowed face; the glass shattered against the cheekbone and the man cartwheeled away to slam into the side of the building.
Crawford was on the limp body even before it had finished collapsing to the pavement, and bits of glass were still rattling and spinning among the legs of the tables as he yanked a flintlock pistol from under the unconscious man’s coat and then turned toward the nurses’ home next door.
The building was fronted in an arch that opened onto a small courtyard, and he ran inside and, blinking in the darkness, groped his way past half a dozen wooden statues of saints to a set of wrought-iron steps. Orange light now glinted overhead, and he heard boots scuff echoingly.
Men were coming down the stairs above Crawford, cursing and grunting—apparently carrying something heavy. Pausing only to cross himself, he tucked the pistol into his belt and started quickly up the iron stairs.
A bobbing lantern somewhere farther up silhouetted the bottom-most man, who was peering down over his shoulder to see where he was stepping, and he was the first to see Crawford.
“Out of the way, Aickman,” he gasped, “we’ve got her.”
Crawford could now see that the burden the men were carrying was a rolled carpet that sagged in the middle, and he knew it must contain Josephine; the man who had spoken was holding up one end, and Crawford hoped it was where her feet were.
Crawford smiled and nodded agreeably—and then leaped up four more steps, grabbed the back of the man’s collar and pulled, hiking his feet up so that his entire weight was behind the pull.
The man toppled over backward with a panicked yell, and though Crawford tried to twist him around in midair, Crawford was still between the stairs and the heavy body above him when they slammed into the iron stair-treads several yards down; all the breath was punched out of him in one harsh, agonized bark, so that when, a moment later, the dropped roll of carpet thudded solidly into them before going end over end down the stairs, he could only scream in his mind as he felt broken rib-ends grind together in his chest.
The man on top of him had his legs in the air and, screaming and flailing uselessly at the brick wall, he slowly overbalanced and then went tumbling away himself in a backward somersault, off of Crawford. The stairs were ringing dully.
Someone leaped over Crawford and ran on down the stairs, and then someone else hoisted him roughly to his feet, and he was dimly aware of angry faces in lantern light, and loud questions being shouted at him.
He was only able to shake his head. His battered lungs were heaving in his chest, trying to draw in air, and he was distantly aware of hot blood running down his chin from his nose.
Finally one of his questioners spat an impatient curse and looked past Crawford down the stairs. “I can’t get any sense out of him, Emile, but there’s been too much noise,” he called, loudly enough for Crawford to hear him over the ringing in his ears. “Never mind taking her to the river—kill her here, and leave Marco where he is and let’s be on our way.”
Crawford turned and began frantically shambling down the stairs, his feet flopping and slipping under him, his hands clutching the rail, and sweat springing out coldly on his ashen face. He was able to breathe now, but only in great rasping whoops.
When he got down to the narrow courtyard he was sure he would have to pause to vomit; but by the light from the quickly descending lantern behind him he saw the man who’d hurried past him on the stairs—Emile, apparently—bend over the carpet and drive a knife twice, hard, into the streetward end of the carpet roll.
The light was good enough now for Crawford to see blood on the blade as Emile drew back his arm for a third stab. The roll was heaving now, and Emile seemed to be trying to judge where Josephine’s neck was.
Crawford drew the pistol from his belt—tearing some skin, for the jagged lock mechanism had apparently been driven into his stomach—and, whimpering in horror, pointed it at the man and fired it.
Recoil punched the pistol out of his hand, but Emile spun away from the carpet and sat down hard against the wall, and Crawford hunched across the pavement to him, stumbling over the limp body of the man he’d pulled down the stairs, and hurriedly searched Emile’s blood-wet pockets.
He found another pistol and, turning on his heel so fast that he thought he might pass out, aimed it back up at the men who by now were nearly at the bottom of the stairs. Lights had been lit behind several of the courtyard-facing windows, and women were screaming and calling for the guardia.
“Run,” Crawford choked, “or I’ll … kill you too.”
They backed up cautiously until they were out of his line of sight, and then he heard them scramble away—farther up the stairs or down some hall.
Crawford gingerly pushed the pistol down inside his belt, then crouched by the still-heaving roll of carpet.
He noticed that there were two nuns peering at him from a doorway, and he called, “C'è una donna ferita qui dentro—forse maria—aiutatemi srotolare!”
The nuns exclaimed in alarm but hurried over to him, and in less than a minute had unrolled Josephine.
She sat up, and Crawford was relieved to see by the blood on one of her ankles that Emile had been stabbing the wrong end of the carpet. He looked around until he saw Emile’s dropped knife, and he automatically bent and picked it up.
The men on the stairs had carried their lantern away with them, but enough lamps had been lit behind the nearby windows now for Crawford to see that Josephine was deep in her mechanical defense—her eyes were wide and her head was snapping back and forth, and she got to her feet like a rusty iron puppet, apparently unaware of the blood coursing down over her right foot.
Crawford glanced nervously back up the stairs, then limped over to her. “We’ve got to get out of here, Josephine,” he said. “Those men won’t leave the area until they’ve killed you.”
She stared at him blankly and recoiled from the arm he’d put around her; he was ready to simply drag her away, but then he remembered the nonsense she’d spoken to Byron and him on the Wengern, and remembered the name under which she’d been working for Keats.