Even in his pain and exhaustion Crawford vividly remembered her brief stint as a nurse in St. Thomas’s Hospital four years ago, and he wondered if she had discovered this necessity then. “So what’s … haruspication?”
“Divination by the examination of entrails,” she said, clearly reciting a phrase she’d been told. “I get a lot of jobs because most nurses don’t like to work surgery; I need to, though, I—need to look in there.”
Crawford knew he’d be having trouble following this even if he’d been alert and uninjured. “To … what, see the future?”
Her torn lips actually curved into a smile. “Maybe to see my own future, in a way. I hope. No, to … see what’s inside people. Inside people. It gives us … it gives me … dreams, and the dreams are pulling me out of …” She paused, then shook her head in despair of expressing whatever her thought was.
“What kind of dreams?”
“Of performing surgery on myself—always in the dreams I’m on the table, sitting up a little, and I’ve knifed open my whole torso, and I’m digging around in my own entrails and pulling things out to throw away. If I can just get rid of all of them …”
Crawford stared at her, the expression on his haggard face a mix of concern and horror. “Things? What things?”
She shuddered, and swayed against him as if she were about to faint. “Gearwheels,” she said; “springs, bolts, chains, wires …” She let the sentence drift off.
Crawford put his arm around her and wordlessly held her.
Crawford led her southwest to Navona Square, and then, peering from around the corner of a shop, he watched the square and the window of his apartment for several long minutes. When at last he was fairly sure that no Austrians had traced him here yet, he told Josephine to wait, and hobbled across the square and into his building, re-emerging a few minutes later with a valise and a walking stick. It had been a risky action, but he had felt that he and Josephine would have no chance at all without some money and his medical kit, and if they were to make any progress at all he needed to be able to take some of the weight off of his shot leg.
A greengrocer had stopped his cart near the alley where Josephine was waiting, and the man was now setting out baskets of leeks and potatoes on the cobblestones, and from the open door of a bakery across the street Crawford could smell hot rolls and coffee; he was considering going over there and spending some of his money, but then he heard the greengrocer call across to the baker, asking if he knew why there were so many soldiers riding up and down every street and alley a few blocks north.
Crawford gave Josephine the valise, then took her elbow again and began hitching himself along southward. The stick didn’t seem to help much, but despite his throbbing, stiffening leg he was unwilling to hire a carriage, both because the drivers had probably been told to watch for them and because he didn’t want to use the little money he had on anything less than food and shelter.
Eventually he realized that the stick was supposed to be held in the hand away from the bad leg, and after that discovery the walking became a good deal less painful. The sweat began to cool on his face, and he was able to relax a little.
It occurred to him that Josephine had not answered his question. “So how did you wind up with Keats?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Dr. Clark gets a lot of his nurses from the St. Paul’s Home, and when it’s for an English tourist he prefers an English-speaking nurse.”
“Then why did you stay on with him? He didn’t need surgery.”
“No,” she said, seeming to recover energy as they walked, “and when I was assigned to him I almost didn’t stay, I almost quit. But he … had a look, that I
used to have; and he was trying to get away from it too … and he was trying to save his sister … I don’t know, I suppose I decided I could learn more about what’s inside people by working for him.”
She looked squarely at Crawford for the first time in quite a while, her one eye red but alert below the slanted scarf, and when he saw the cuts on her lips he found himself remembering the glass-splintery kiss they’d shared in the street, and he touched his own lacerated mouth.
“It can’t have been easy,” he said, his voice quiet, “to get a glassblower to make a glass eye filled with chopped garlic.”
“Actually he did it for nothing. He said he understood why I wanted it, why I wanted to have an emergency source of garlic ready to hand at all times; he said he admired me for it.”
Crawford thought about the flask he had been keeping for roughly the same purpose, and he wondered if the man he’d bought it from had admired him for it; he certainly hadn’t seemed to.
The thought of the flask made him take it out and uncap it, though, and he tilted it up to his mouth; the alcohol stung in the cuts on his lips and tongue, but the rich pungency did so much to restore his energy and alertness that he made Josephine take a mouthful too.
Three times they saw parties of soldiers on horseback in the streets north of them, and twice they heard children demanding to be allowed to go see the dozens of boats that were landing and disgorging soldiers along the Tiber’s banks, so Crawford and Josephine walked southeast, making their way through twisting alleys and lanes and avoiding the wider streets, and finally, when they followed the narrow Via di Marforio to its end and then descended a set of steps, they found that they were at the eastern end of the shallow valley that was the Roman Forum, and had left the noise and activity of modern Rome behind.
It was a long, uneven field, cross-hatched with ancient pavements that still mostly held back the rank grass; weathered pillars stood up here and there across the field in just discernible patterns, hinting at the grand temples and basilicas that were long gone. Ahead of the two fugitives and a little to their right loomed a massive square edifice of stone encompassing three arches, and Crawford took Josephine’s hand and started toward the high, broad central arch.
The rising sun beyond it made a dark silhouette of the huge structure, and Crawford was unable to make out any of the bas-reliefs or Latin inscriptions cut into the stone.
“The Arch of Septimius Severus,” said Josephine abruptly. “He was one of the cruelest emperors of Rome, but at least there was nearly no literature produced during his reign.”
Crawford blinked at her. “Is that right? Well, that’s—”
“Somewhere in the vicinity of this arch would be a good place to deal with our injuries.”
“I’m not sure I follow—” he began; but then he thought of the producers of literature he’d met since leaving England four years ago, and he nodded slowly. “You think the old boy might still cast a … sphere of influence, eh? Well, what the hell—we certainly can’t afford to scorn any good luck charms.”
Ahead on the left, three low walls of pink brick made a shadowed little enclosure, and Crawford led her to it. When they were crouched down, out of the sight of any early-morning strollers, he opened his medical kit, unfolded a clean white cloth and spread it across the ancient pavement, and then, hoping that she hadn’t exaggerated her nursing experience, he began laying out instruments.