For ten intolerably drawn-out seconds they reeled there on the pavement, grinding against each other as the echoes of the music’s shrill last chord resounded away among the domes and streets of Rome and into the sky….
And then the night broke, and the rain came down again in a cold torrent, and when Crawford lifted his ravaged mouth from Josephine’s he saw two heavy but hummingbird-like flying serpents hanging unsupported in midair, curling and snapping their long tails, at eye level in front of the door to Keats’s building; the music had either stopped or gone very quiet, and the chitinous buzz of their blurred wings underscored the hiss and rattle of the rain, and Crawford could smell the musk of them over the dry-wine scent of the wet street.
The smell only repelled him, and he knew he was immune to the lamia’s attractions for at least a while now.
In the relative silence the buzzing of the reptilian wings wavered up and down the scale, and became words.
Silver in your blood, and garlic.
It was impossible to tell which of the hovering things produced the words—perhaps they both did, in unison, still singing the night’s song though the music had retreated.
Though more exhausted than ever, Crawford was now coldly clear-headed, and he realized that von Aargau’s assassins must have used silver bullets. “Yes,” he said, and the cloud that was his breath reeked so of garlic that the serpents swung ponderously away through the chilly air. “Get out of our way.”
The serpents slowly moved farther back, one on each side of the door, though their eyes glowed with a terrible promise.
Crawford kept one arm around Josephine as the two of them lurched between the buzzing things, through the doorway. They stumbled up the dark stairs, spitting blood and glass and holding on to each other for support.
The music had resumed, and was whirling up around them like bubbles in a glass of champagne. Crawford knew now that they would find none of von Aargau’s men here—clearly the job had been left to other sorts of agents.
When they got to the second-floor landing they could see Keats’s door, for it was open, and the inside of the apartment glowed as bright as noon. Josephine pulled a scarf out of her pocket and tied it around her head slantwise, so that her empty eye socket was covered.
Crawford forced himself to walk forward through the hailstorm of crystalline music, trying to remember what Josephine had said out front, and why it had seemed compelling—and, forlornly, reminding himself that his flask, at least, was inside.
Little long-legged things with big eyes pirouetted out of his way as he shuffled up the hall, and he heard whispering and chittering from a dozen swinging sacks that were attached by some sticky stuff to the ceiling, and creatures like starfish clinging to the walls waved tentacles at him, but none of the lamiae’s unnatural retinue obstructed the two humans, who advanced hand in hand toward the open door.
Crawford was the first to peer around the doorframe, and he was surprised to see that it was the meek Severn who was wringing the demonic music from the piano—it was a radical change from the polite Haydn he’d been playing earlier—but then he noticed that the young man’s eyes were closed, and that a thing like a cat with a woman’s face was crouched on his shoulder and whispering into his ear.
Josephine bumped Crawford from behind, and he stumbled into the room.
The street-side wall was gone, and beyond where it had stood rose a grassy hill, with the dawning sun glittering on dewy flowers; for one stunned moment Crawford wondered if he had somehow lost an hour or two while climbing the stairs—but then he looked at the windows facing the steps, and he saw blackness beyond them, and even, in spite of the sunny glare, the orange spots of a few streetlamps; and, looking back toward the open side of the room, he saw that the foot of the hill met the floor and was flush with it, even though this was an upstairs room, and he noticed too that the sun was rising in the south.
The music was brighter and more adventurous, though still carrying an undertone of dark glamour, and now Crawford saw two young people, a man and a woman, running hand in hand up the sunny hill … and then he recognized the young man as John Keats, looking healthy and tanned.
“I think we’re too late,” he said to Josephine, whose hand he still held.
“No,” she said. He looked at her, and then followed her stare toward the door to the other room.
Keats stood there, the real Keats, leaning against the frame, his eyes blazing from his wasted face as he watched the illusion on the far wall, and Crawford suddenly knew that the woman on the hill with the phantom healthy Keats was an illusory image of the woman he was engaged to marry.
Then the illusion faded, and the copy of Keats’s poems on the table flew up into the air. The book swelled and grew in size as it moved toward the wall where the illusion had been projected, and when it was nearly as tall as Crawford the covers swung open like a pair of doors, presenting the text on two of the pages. The spine of the giant book bumped against the wall, and clung.
The verses printed on the pages seemed to glow darkly against the white paper … and then suddenly it was a different book hanging there, possibly a book of poems Keats had not yet written, and the verses fairly sprang off the rapidly turning pages into Crawford’s mind—and, he could see, into the minds too of Josephine and Keats himself.
The music was unbearably sad now, conjuring images of future sunsets none of them would live to see, evening breezes none of them would live to feel; and it had a Latin tone to it, reminding the hearers that they were in Italy, in Rome, where the grandest accomplishments of mankind were as commonplace as the onion-sellers on the streets … and that the invalid Keats, who would so desperately appreciate it all, would die before seeing any of it.
The Temptation of St. Keats, Crawford thought. He looked around for his flask, and saw it on the table where the book had been, and he wished passionately that he dared to cross the room to it.
The woman Crawford had seen on the illusory hill was in the room now, watching the succession of brilliant poems, and after a moment she turned and held out a hand toward the dying young man standing in the bedroom doorway. Her eyes glittered like crazed glass in the lamplight, and Crawford wondered if she still much resembled Keats’s fiancée … and if it still mattered.
Crawford noticed that when she turned away the magnified pages faded—and when he looked again at his flask it rose up in the air and flew across the room to him; without bothering about how it had happened, he snatched it out of the air and unscrewed the cap and took a deep gulp of the brandy.
The real book was in one of the woman’s hands, and Keats’s reached out toward her other hand, and Crawford drank some more, hoping to drown all concern for the doomed sister of the young poet, all concern for all betrayed sisters, and brothers….
He looked away, toward the wall where the book had been hanging—the book was gone, and he was jolted to see instead the image of Julia, his dead wife, smiling and walking down a country lane, between tall chestnut trees; as she walked, pieces of her were falling off into the dirt—first a hand, then an entire arm, then a foot—though she moved along as smoothly as ever, and her smile didn’t falter. Behind her came a little dark thing that clicked and whirred as it moved, and it was picking up the fallen pieces and fitting them on over its own rusty limbs.
Josephine’s hand tightened convulsively in his, and he looked at her—her single eye was fixed intensely on the illusion.