“Each of these spheres is ‘many thousand spheres,'” des Loges went on, “for the central bit is surrounded by tiny pieces of electricity that occupy distinctly divided spheres—and it’s the number of these pieces of electricity in the atom’s outermost sphere that defines which other atoms the atom may combine with. The pieces of electricity are the limbs by which the atom can seize other atoms, and three kinds of atoms are the bases for the three kinds of skeletons. Even the surviving legends of Oedipus describe the four-and-two-and-three as means of support.”
Crawford nodded dubiously. “So what are these kinds of skeletons?”
“Well,” said des Loges, “the nephelim, the Siliconari, so to speak, were the first intelligent race the Earth had, Lilith’s people, the giants that were in the earth in those days, and their skeletons are made of the same stuff their flesh is made of—the stuff that’s the basis of glass and quartz and granite. The atoms of that stuff have four pieces of electricity in their outer sphere. Then the sunlight changed and the nephelim all petrified and sort of receded from the perspective of the picture.
“Humanity was the next form of intelligent life, and our skeletons are made of the same stuff as seashells and chalk and lime. And the basic atom of those things has two pieces of electricity in its outer sphere.
“And the answer to the riddle implies that after the sunlight changes again and the sun goes out, the only intelligent things left will be the mountains themselves, the gods, and you’ve seen the stuff of their skeletons—it’s the lightweight metal my pots and pans were made of, remember? Back in my little boat-house in Carnac? It’s the most abundant metal in the earth, found most commonly in clay and alum, and of course its atoms have three of these electrical bits in the outermost sphere.”
Crawford remembered seeing a silvery metal exposed in the side of the Wengern by an avalanche—a mountain guide had called it argent de l’argile, silver from clay.
Then his attention was distracted by the lights on the road. There were many torches approaching—more than could be carried by the group he’d seen earlier. Byron’s servants would not be able to hold off this crowd.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” he said hastily to Josephine. “Back stairs, and no time to grab anything.” He was suddenly very grateful for Shelley’s twenty pounds.
Josephine’s eyes widened when she looked out the window, and instantly she was moving for the door, with Crawford right behind her.
On the stairs Crawford noticed that des Loges was following them. “Can you distract this gang?” Crawford hissed back at the old man. “They’re your friends.”
“No friends of mine, I assure you,” des Loges panted. “They’d kill me, but not in the way I need. I’m coming with you.”
There was no chance of escaping unseen by the front door, so Crawford led them out the back door and across the darkening field that Byron had trod only the night before, with his dead daughter’s body in his arms. Crawford was glad Byron’s servants hadn’t seen them leave, for it seemed to him that their loyalty was dubious.
The trio moved slowly through the dry grass for fear of making any trackable noise, and eventually found themselves blundering through the churchyard that must have been Byron’s goal. The sky was dimming through deep purple toward black, but Crawford spotted a small mound of fresh-turned earth under an olive tree by the fence. He led them several yards farther before sitting down.
“May as well get comfortable here,” he said quietly. “There’s no use blundering around in the dark with people after us who know every road, and they probably won’t look for us on consecrated soil.”
During the long, furtive walk he had remembered some things—such as Byron’s identification of the song Crawford had been singing in the Alps, the song Crawford had learned from des Loges—and he was now sure he knew what des Loges’s other name was, the one under which he’d said he was remembered. “And so, Monsieur Villon,” Crawford whispered when they had all sat down on the still warm, grassy earth, “is it your intention to travel with us?”
The old man laughed softly in the darkness. “You’re a bright boy. Yes, since you have evidently overcome your reluctance to participate in drownings, I want to enlist in the … the terminal cruise of poets.”
Crawford realized what the man was asking for, and realized too that he himself now knew enough about the situation to be unable to refuse. “Well,” he said slowly, “there’s no way Shelley will permit that English boy Charles Vivian to sail along—he certainly has no need of this kind of baptism. So yes—I see no reason why there shouldn’t be a berth for you aboard.”
CHAPTER 17
… Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
—Percy Shelley, Ozymandias
Processions of priests and religiosi have been for several
days past praying for rain; but the gods are either angry,
or nature is too powerful.
—Edward Williams’s journal,
last entry, 4 July 1822
As dawn scratched away the darkness of the sky between the trees and the old Romanesque buildings of the church, Crawford and Josephine and des Loges stole to the road and began walking north. The air had already shed the mild chill of night, and was poised for the day’s heat.
At first light the three of them caught a ride northward aboard a farmer’s wagon, and before the rising sun had even cleared the bulk of Mount Querciolaia they alighted in a narrow street in the southwestern waterfront section of Livorno. The docks and channels extended inland quite a distance, and were connected with a network of canals, and Crawford could almost believe he was back in the London Decks.
He knew that Shelley would expect to meet them at the Globe Hotel, but he knew too that Edward Williams would be there now, and he dreaded seeing the man again; so he found an albergo to stay at on the banks of one of the canals. The landlord crossed himself when they checked in, but an English ten-pound note for a week’s lodging overcame whatever superstitious misgivings the man may have had.
Crawford and Josephine took rooms on the ground floor, overlooking the canal, but des Loges insisted on a room right up under the roof, in spite of the impediment of the narrow stairway. “Even if I am dying in a week,” he told Crawford, “I’d just as soon keep as much stone as possible between me and the earth.”
Crawford made a show of liking the place, praising the local restaurants and getting to know the neighbors, but to himself he admitted that he was simply hoping to miss Shelley and not have to follow through on the promise he’d made to him … and, years earlier, to des Loges.
So he was dismayed when, early on the morning of Monday the eighth of July, their fourth day in Livorno, des Loges came hobbling to the table in the outdoor trattoria where he and Josephine were having minestrone with beans, and told them, “I feel a twin, a symbiote, approaching by sea, and it’s certainly not old Werner. It’s time—let’s go.”
The Don Juan was in the harbor, and Shelley was at the Globe Hotel, in the sunlit lobby. He was tanned and fit-looking in a double-breasted reefer jacket and white nankeen trousers and black boots, but the face under the disordered gray-blond hair was expressionless. An iron case with a carrying handle stood on the floor by his right foot. Williams and Trelawny were with him—Williams was pale and haggard and Trelawny looked worried.