But Byron was shouting, and he had driven away the neffies who had the chalice, and now he was climbing up to untie Crawford’s wrists from the horizontal beam.
The neffies began shuffling back toward the cross, but Byron, hanging on to the upright beam, drew his pistol with his free hand and pointed it at them, and they moved away again.
Crawford had been in this position for hours, and when Byron got the ropes loose he fell forward into his arms. Byron climbed back down, supporting Crawford’s weight, and lowered him gently to the stone floor.
“What the hell are you doing,” Crawford mumbled, “leave me alone, I don’t need rescue.”
“Maybe you don’t,” panted Byron, “but there’s those that do. Is that stuff in these glasses likely to be plain drink? Not blood or piss or something?”
“Brandy, mostly,” Crawford said, hoping that Byron might just have blundered his way in here looking for alcohol. “Grappa, you know.”
Byron got up and snatched a glass off of the table he’d taken the lamp from, and drank half of it in one gulp. Then he crouched and started to tilt the glass toward Crawford’s lips, but stopped. “My God,” Byron said, “you already stink of brandy.”
Crawford shrugged weakly. “Brandy in, blood out. It’s a living.”
Byron spat in disgust. “It’s a dying,” he said, looking around to make sure the neffies kept their distance. “Listen, you can come with me or stay here. Shelley’s body is to be burned the day after tomorrow, and I think I know a way to use his ashes to get free of the nephelim net. I—” “I’m already free of it,” Crawford said. “You go ahead.”
“What about your girl, Julia or Josephine or whatever her name really is? Shelley’s servants have come back to Pisa, and I know you saw her at the Casa Magni, and recognized what was wrong with her.”
“She’s buttered her bread and now she can lie in it,” said Crawford. He reached up and took the cup from Byron and drained it. “She knew what she was doing when she gave in. I stay here.”
Byron nodded. “Fine. I’m not going to … abduct you, just escort you out of here if you decide you want to come. I’m only doing even this much because I
…do remember what happened on the peak of the Wengern six years ago. You and your Josephine saved my life. If you don’t come with me I’ll do what I can to save her myself.”
“Fine.” Crawford struggled to his feet and stood swaying in the fetid breeze, massaging his numb, bleeding wrists. “I hope you do better with her than I did. Do you suppose you could help me back up there, and retie me?”
Byron was angry. “I’ll be happy to, as soon as you know the stakes.”
“Goddamn it, I know the stakes. Josephine’s going to die if she doesn’t shed her vampire. Well guess what, she likes her situation. Everybody who’s in it likes it. I liked it, while I had it. The people in this place would eat poison if they could experience it for half an hour.”
Byron looked at the men hovering nearby, and sneered. “I think you overestimate their courage. They just like to sniff.”
“You haven’t been all that eager to lose it, have you?” Crawford added. “Now that you’re writing so well?”
A bitter smile hollowed Byron’s face. “Josephine isn’t the entirety of the stakes.”
“Your sister and children are your concern. And as for Mary, and Williams’s children, I’ve already—”
“That’s not it either,” Byron said. “Josephine’s pregnant.”
For the first time since finding this place, this job, Crawford felt real panic building up in him. “Not by me, she’s not. I’m sterile.”
“Apparently you’re not. Antonia, Shelley’s old servant, is confident that Josephine shows the symptoms of pregnancy as of last month and this month, and Josephine certainly wasn’t—cohabiting with anyone else in July.”
“Stress,” Crawford said quickly, “can easily make a woman … show the symptoms of pregnancy, as you put it, and that’s probably exactly what’s—”
“Maybe,” interrupted Byron. “But what if it isn’t stress?”
Crawford’s heart was pounding, and he tried to drink out of the glass again, but it was empty. “This is a lie,” he said, in a voice that he made as steady as he could. “You’re just saying this to get me to leave here.”
Byron shook his head decisively. “I’d never stop anyone from killing himself, as long as he truly knew what he was doing. And now you know what you’ll be doing by staying or leaving. I’m leaving here in a moment. I only want to know if I’ll have to carry you along too.”
Crawford blinked around at the catacombs. He was suddenly tired, and he let the weariness wash through him, dulling the momentary alertness Byron’s appearance had provoked.
So what if she is pregnant, he thought blurrily. It was that Navy man that did it. Let him pull her out of the damned burning house, her and his unborn baby. I’ll stay here at the Galatea where I can trade blood for polenta and rice and pasta—and brandy—lots of brandy.
“You go ahead, John,” he said, but when he looked more closely at his companion he saw that it wasn’t Keats. Where had Keats gone? He’d been here a moment ago—they’d been drinking claret and oloroso sherry.
“I’m Byron,” his companion said patiently. “If you tell me to leave, I will.”
Why was the man being so troublesome? Of course Crawford wanted him to leave. Who was this Byron anyway? Crawford seemed to recall having met the man … in the Alps? That hardly seemed possible.
The thought of polenta reminded him that he hadn’t eaten today, and he reached into his pocket for a piece of the fried corn mush he remembered having put there—but his pockets were full of other things.
He felt a crude iron nail, and it was wet with what he knew was his own blood, and for a moment he remembered having pushed the palm of his hand down onto the point of it on the terrace of Byron’s villa in Geneva; and there was a glass vial in his pocket too, but he couldn’t recall whether the liquid in it was the poison von Aargau wanted him to give to Josephine or was the dose of Shelley’s blood, mixed with gall—no, with vinegar; then he found the piece of polenta, but when he took it out of his pocket it was an oatcake with a little raised image on it of two sisters who were physically joined at the hip. Josephine was supposed to have broken it at his wedding to her sister, so that he could have children.
He held it up in front of his eyes. It still wasn’t broken.
And he knew that drunkenness wouldn’t save him, wasn’t strong enough to let him stay here and die. Tears of disappointment were coursing down his lean, bearded cheeks.
The disgruntled neffies had finished the chalice of his blood, and one of them brought the empty vessel back and set it down at the foot of the now vacant cross.
Crawford broke the oatcake into a dozen pieces and scattered it across the stone floor. “You’re the wedding guests,” he called gruffly to the slouched figures who were watching him and Byron. “Pick up these pieces and eat them, you pitiful bastards, and the wedding ceremony will finally be finished.”
Byron was still watching him patiently. “I’m Byron,” he repeated, “and if you tell me to leave you here—”
“I know who you are,” Crawford said. “Let’s go. This is a good place to be out of.”
Crawford was hardly able to walk. Byron had to get in under Crawford’s right arm and then shuffle forward, carrying most of his companion’s weight as Crawford’s feet clopped unhelpfully on the stones. As the lurching pair made their slow way up the sloping floor and got closer to the door, several of the patrons stepped in front of them, one of them mumbling something about it being a shame to permit two such excellent wineskins to leave the place.