Crawford limped up to them.
“The Vivian boy and I,” Shelley was saying quietly, “can work the Don Juan by ourselves. And we will.” Very slowly, as if saying it for the hundredth time, he added, “I simply want to do the trip in as much solitude as possible.”
“I don’t like it,” said Trelawny. “And I’m going to pace you in the Bolivar and you can’t prevent me. If you get into trouble, at least I’ll be able to fish the two of you out of the water.”
Shelley’s face regained its animation when he saw Crawford. “There you are,” Shelley said, picking up the iron case and crossing to him and taking his arm. “I’ve got to talk to you.” He led Crawford across the tile floor to a far corner.
Crawford tried to get in the first word, but Shelley overrode him.
“Listen,” Shelley said, shoving the iron case into Crawford’s hand, “you’ve got to leave now. I want to be setting sail this afternoon, but you’ve got to be in La Spezia, and all prepared, when I do. Also, this weather will become very bad—I’ve waited for it—and I don’t want you to run into trouble.” His smile was both frightened and bitter. “This coming storm is all for me.”
“And the Vivian boy too, I gather,” said Crawford angrily, setting the case down. “Doesn’t he count? I won’t permit you—”
“Oh, shut up, please, of course he’s not going. I’ve already paid him off and told him to get out of Livorno. No, I’m going alone—I can work the Don Juan solo, at least well enough to get myself killed—but if Trelawny knew it, I think he would physically prevent me. As it is he’s insisting on escorting me, but I’ve hidden his port clearance papers, so he’ll spend the night here, like it or not.”
Then Shelley reached into his jacket and pulled out a little vial of bright red blood. “I drew this only an hour ago,” he said, “and I put a little vinegar in it, as I’ve seen cooks do, to keep it from clotting. It’ll be a powerful proxy for me. Now remember, in addition to being my proxy, it’s also to let me know when you’re ready—so do remember not to dump all of it out for the lure.”
Trying not to gag, Crawford put the vial into his coat pocket; somehow, of all the things he would have to do today, the use of Shelley’s blood was the thing he was dreading most. He picked up the case again.
“I’ve got you a passenger,” he said, a little wildly. “Someone who wants to accompany you on your … cruise.” He waved to des Loges, who had been standing by the front door and now came hobbling toward them, a repulsive grin curdling his ancient face.
Shelley gaped at the old man and then turned to Crawford furiously. “Haven’t you understood anything? I can’t be taking passengers! What does this derelict imagine—”
Crawford overrode him: “Percy Shelley, I’d like you to meet François Villon.”
Shelley’s voice trailed off, and for several seconds Crawford could see the effort it cost him to think—then finally Shelley smiled, with something of his old alertness. “Really? It’s really Villon, the poet, he’s an in-law? And wants to … go … with me?”
Crawford nodded. “It is,” he said flatly, “and he does.”
Des Loges had by now hobbled up to them, and Shelley slowly reached out and shook his hand. “It will be,” he said slowly in modern French, “an honor to have you aboard.”
Des Loges bobbed his head. “It is an honor,” he said softly in his barbaric accent, “to sail with Perseus.”
Shelley blinked at the old man, then pointed at him excitedly. “You … you were in Venice, weren’t you? When I was there with Byron in ‘18. You called me Perseus then, too.”
“Because you had come to have dealings with the Graiae,” des Loges said. “And today, still true to your name, you mean to slay a Medusa!” He looked out the window at the hot sky. “It looks like a good day for doomed men to go sailing.”
Crawford waved for silence, for Edward Williams had stepped away from Trelawny and was approaching them.
Williams stopped beside Shelley. It was obviously painful for him to be up and around in the daylight, but he forced a smile as he took Shelley’s arm.
“I-I’m sailing w-with you, Percy,” he stammered. “Don’t try to talk me out of it. She’s d-dead, really dead, Allegra is … and I really … think … I can hold this resolve … until nightfall, and not try to find another lover. If I keep thinking about Jane, and our children, I think I can.” His smile was desperate but oddly youthful too, and for a moment he looked the way Keats had looked in London in 1816.
“Ed,” said Shelley, “I can’t take you. Go with Trelawny on the Bolivar, and—”
Williams smiled bleakly. “That wouldn’t … do me any good, would it?” he said quietly. “The Bolivar’s not going to sink.”
For several moments Shelley stared at his friend’s wasted face, and then his answering smile was sad and gentle. “Well,” he said, “now that I consider it, I can’t think of a pilot I’d rather have on this trip.” He turned to Crawford and extended his hand. “Go,” he said. “Now, while you can still do this for all of us.”
As Crawford took Shelley’s hand he was thinking about the first time he’d seen him, unconscious in a street in Geneva six years earlier. Aware of the losses Shelley had suffered since then, and of the gray hair and limp and scars he himself had acquired, and of Josephine’s lost eye and twisted hand—and of all the deaths and suffering—Crawford was choked, at a loss for an adequate parting statement.
“I wish,” he managed to say, “we’d got to know each other better.”
Shelley smiled, and when Crawford released his hand he further disarranged his hair. “There’s hardly anyone left here to get to know anymore—so go.” He reached across and tapped the lump in Crawford’s coat that was the vial of blood. “Tell Mary I send my … love.”
Crawford used some more of Shelley’s money to hire the fastest-looking boat he could find in the harbor, and when he and Josephine were aboard, and the single-masted sloop was coursing northward across the clear blue water, he limped through the spray and wind to the bow and stood staring ahead, toward what, one way or the other, would be the culmination of these last six years of his life.
He was still far from sure that he would be able to do what he had promised: the procedure that would save Josephine—and, incidentally, save Mary Shelley and her young son—but which would also bar him forever from the sort of longevity that des Loges and Werner von Aargau had been enjoying for the last several centuries. He could probably become a mere victim again, if he searched long enough for a nephelim predator to destructively love him, but he would certainly never again have the chance to actually marry into the family.
It was all very well for everybody to expect this of him. Des Loges had had centuries of the easy life already; Shelley had seen nearly all of his children die, and still had one to save; and Josephine had never had membership in the family even offered to her.
He took the vial of Shelley’s blood out of his pocket and thought about how easy it would be to simply drop it over the side, into the ocean.
He glanced back at Josephine, who was sitting against the mast with her eyes closed, mumbling—certainly the good old multiplication tables again. Sweat gleamed on her forehead. He tried to see her as an annoyance, as an odious responsibility he’d somehow accidentally been burdened with, and something in the empty sky seemed to help him think it—all at once Josephine seemed too physically hot and organic, and perishable like some kind of stuff for sale in the open air markets, where one had to wave away the buzzing clouds of flies to see what the merchandise looked like, be it vegetable or meat.