The Stress of Her Regard

by Tim Powers

  “Jesus,” said the first man. “And did you see what he did to the Carmody girl upstairs? Like a mill wheel rolled over her. And then he went back to sleep! The doctor says, judging from her temperature and the way the blood’s dried, that she was killed around midnight. So old Crawford was sleeping there next to that thing for something like seven hours!”

  “I’ll tell you one thing, I’m not searching this damn garden without a pistol in my hand.”

  “That’s a point. Yeah, let’s …”

  The voices drifted away then. Crawford sat down in the grass and held his head in his hands. These people were so wrong, about so many things, that he despaired of ever getting it all straightened out … but the worst of it was that Mr. Carmody apparently believed that old story about Caroline’s death.

  It had been about six years ago—Caroline had left him, but though he had known which house she was living in in London, he hadn’t been able to work up the nerve to go and confront her; it was too much like making a perilous leap from one high rooftop to another—an error would be fatal. He might simply fall, simply ruin any possibility that she would come back to him … for there would be only one chance, she wouldn’t feel that she owed him more than one conversation.

  And so for ten days he had ignored his medical practice to sit all day in a pub across the street from the house she was in, trying to judge the perfect moment to see her and ask her to return.

  And before he did, the place had caught fire. Crawford thought now that the Navy man might have set it intentionally when he’d learned—when he had got the impression—that she was pregnant.

  When smoke had begun gouting out of the upstairs windows, Crawford had dropped his beer and sprinted out of the pub and across the street, and he’d been slamming his shoulder against the front door when the sailor had opened it from inside, to come lurching and coughing out in a cloud of acrid smoke. Crawford had bulled past him, shouting “Caroline!"—but the sailor had caught him by the collar and whirled him back outside.

  “Hopeless,” the man had wheezed at him. “Only be killin’ yourself.”

  But Crawford had heard a scream from inside. “That’s my wife,” he gasped, tearing away from the sailor.

  He had taken only one running step back toward the house when a hard punch to the kidney brought him to his knees; but when the Navy man grabbed him under the arms to haul him out onto the street, Crawford drove an elbow, with as much force as he could muster, back into the man’s crotch.

  The sailor collapsed forward, and Crawford caught his arm and spun him out into the street, where he fell and rolled moaning in the dust. Crawford turned back toward the open door, but at that moment the upper floor gave way and crashed down into the ground floor, exploding out through the doorway such a burst of sparks and heat that Crawford was lifted off his feet and tossed right over the hunched sailor.

  His eyebrows and a lot of his hair were gone, and his clothing would have been aflame in moments if someone had not flung on him the contents of a pail of water that had been brought to douse the wall of one of the surrounding houses.

  The fire was officially declared an accident, but rumors—and even a couple of street ballads—hinted that Crawford had set it in revenge, and then prevented the Navy man from getting inside to rescue Caroline. Crawford thought the sailor himself might have started the rumors, for a couple of the onlookers at the fire had remarked acidly on his hasty solo escape.

  And this thing now was far, far worse. Of course people will take it for granted that I killed Julia, he thought. They won’t listen to me. And already errors have begun to creep into the story—such as the doctor’s statement that she died at around midnight. I know she was still alive at dawn. I remember drowsily making love to her while the curtains were just beginning to lighten; she was straddling me, sitting on top of me, and while I don’t know if I ever did wake up fully, I know I didn’t dream it.

  I can either stay, and be arrested, and almost certainly hang … or I can run, leave the country. Of course, if I run, everybody will conclude that I did kill her, but I don’t think my voluntary submission to arrest and trial would make them think any differently.

  All I can do, he thought, is run.

  He felt better after deciding; at least now he had a clear goal, and something to think about besides Julia’s intolerably sundered body.

  He stood up cautiously—and instantly there was a shout and the stunning bam of a gunshot, and a tree branch beside his head exploded in stinging splinters.

  And then Crawford was running, back through the lanes of the garden, toward the back wall. Another shot boomed behind him and his left hand was whiplashed upward, spraying blood across his eyes, but he leaped, caught the wall with his right hand, and contorted his body up and outward through empty air; a moment later he hit rocky dirt hard on his side, but as soon as he had stopped sliding he made himself roll back up onto his feet and hobble down a slope to a rutted, building-shaded alley.

  Only when he saw the man on the horse at the street end of the alley did he realize that he had picked up a fist-sized stone, and almost without volition his arm drew back to fling it with all his remaining strength.

  But, “Michael!” the man called softly in a familiar voice, and Crawford dropped the stone.

  “My God,” he gasped haltingly, limping forward with wincing haste, “you’ve got to … get me out of here! They think …”

  “I know what they think,” said Apple ton, swinging down out of the saddle. “Can you—” he began, but then he looked at Crawford more closely. “Good heavens, are you shot?”

  “Just my hand.” Crawford now looked at it for the first time, and his pupils contracted with shock. The index and little fingers looked flayed, but his ring finger was gone, along with his wedding ring, leaving only a ragged, glistening stump from which blood was falling rapidly to make bright red spots on the dirt and the toes of his boots.

  “Jesus Christ,” he whispered, suddenly wobbly on his legs. “Jesus, man, look what …”

  His eyes unfocussed, but before he could fall, Appleton stepped forward and slapped him across the face twice, forehand and backhand. “Faint later,” he said harshly. “Right now you’ve got to ride or die. Tourniquet that as soon as you’re beyond pursuit—there’s fifty pounds and a note in the saddlebag, but it seems that what you’ll need soonest is the string I tied around them. Foresightful of me to have used it, eh?”

  Voices could be heard shouting on the far side of the wall, and somewhere hooves were knocking on cobblestones. Appleton gave the ashen Crawford a leg up into the saddle, clearly half expecting him to tumble right back to the ground on the other side of the horse.

  But Crawford took the reins in his right hand, kicked his boots into the stirrups, pushed his heels down to be able to grip the horse, and, when Appleton gave the horse a loud slap across the thigh, he hunched forward as his mount sprang away west down the broad Hastings street in the morning sunlight. He clamped his teeth on the stump of his missing finger and worked very hard at not being violently sick.

  Only the highest chimney-pots still glowed in the reddening sunlight as the stagecoach lurched and lunged its slow way up the crowded length of Borough High Street in London, and when it stopped in front of an inn near the new Marshalsea Prison, Crawford was the first passenger to alight from the carriage.

  In a back corner of a Brighton tavern at midmorning he had tied a clean cloth around his finger-stump and then drenched it in brandy before gingerly pulling on a pair of gloves. Now, after more riding and no rest and finally, after abandoning the exhausted horse, six straight hours jammed between two fat women in the London coach, he was obviously fevered—his hand was throbbing like a blacksmith’s bellows, and his breathing was hotly metallic and echoing in his head.

  He had used some of Appleton’s money to buy clothes and a new leather portmanteau to carry them in, and though it was light luggage compared to what he had left behind in the Hastings hotel room, h
e had to repress a groan when he picked it up from where the coachman had casually set it down.

  As he walked away up High Street he stayed in the shadows under the overhanging second stories of the old half-timbered houses, for he was nervous about all the prisons around him. Ahead of him to the left, on the Thames bank, stood the burned-out ruin of the famous Clink, and behind him, just south of the new prison where the stage had stopped, was the King’s Bench Prison. Why the hell, he thought peevishly, didn’t Appleton think of the alarming nature of this area, and send me somewhere else?

  The Borough’s many sewage ditches always smelled horrible, but after this hot summer day the fumes seemed to hint at some sort of cloacal fermentation, and he worried about compounding his fever in the bad air. At least it was medical students he was going to stay with.

  The street was clogged with homeward-bound costermonger carts, every one of which seemed to have a dog riding on top, but soon he could see, over them, the arch of London Bridge—and remembering the instructions in Appleton’s note, he turned right down the last street before the bridge. He turned right again at the next corner, and found himself, as the note had said, on Dean Street. He walked down to the narrow house that was number eight—it was right across the street from a Baptist chapel, another dubious omen—and obediently rattled the doorknocker. A headache had begun behind his eyes, and he was sweating heavily under his coat.

  As he waited on the cobblestones, he mentally reviewed Appleton’s note. “Pretend to be a Medical Student,” Appleton had written. “You’re a bit old, but there are older. Be frankish about your Navy experience, for you could have been a Dresser to a Naval Surgeon without getting any Credentials, but be vague about questions touching on whose Lectures you are attending. It’s unlikely that you will be recognized, but of course don’t talk about Obstetrics. Henry Stephens will not press you for Answers once he knows that you are a Friend of mine, Nor will he let others do so.”

  The door was pulled open by a sturdy young man who was shorter than Crawford. Crawford thought he looked more like a laborer than a medical student. His reddish-brown hair had obviously been pushed back from his forehead only a moment before.

  “Yes?” the young man said.

  “Is,” said Crawford hoarsely, “uh, Henry Stephens at home?”

  “Not at the moment. Can I be of any help?”

  “Well … a friend of his told me I might be able to get a room here.” Crawford leaned against the doorframe and tried not to pant. “Help pay for the joint sitting room, I think it was.” His voice was hollow and rasping from his screaming this morning.

  “Oh.” The young man stared at him for a moment, then swung the door open. “Uh, do come in. Tyrrell moved out a week ago, I guess you heard, and we could use the help. You’re,” he said dubiously, “another medical student?”

  “That’s right.” Crawford stepped forward into the warmth and lamplight, and sank into a chair and began pulling off his gloves. “My name is—” Belatedly he wondered what name to give. His mind was a blank—all he could remember was that in the note Appleton had said Be frankish. “—Michael Frankish.”

  The young man seemed to find the name plausible. He held out his hand. “I’m John Keats—currently a student at Guy’s Hospital, right around the corner. Are you at Guy’s?”

  “Uh, no, I’m at … St. Thomas’s.” He was pleased with himself for having remembered the name of the hospital across the street from Guy’s.

  Keats noticed the dark bandage on the stump of Crawford’s finger then, and it seemed to upset him. “What—your finger! What happened?”

  A little flustered, Crawford said, “Oh, it—had to be amputated. Gangrene.”

  Keats stared at him anxiously for a moment. “I gather you had a rough trip,” he ventured finally as he closed the door. “Would a glass of wine sit well?”

  “Sit like corn upon the head of Solomon,” said Crawford, too tired to bother with making sense. “Yes,” he added, seeing Keats’s bewildered look. “What area of medicine are you studying?” he went on hastily, speaking more loudly as Keats went into the next room.

  “Surgical and apothecary,” came the answer. A moment later Keats reappeared with a half-full bottle and two glasses. “I’m going to the Apothecaries’ Hall this Thursday to take the examinations, though I won’t be able to practice until the thirty-first of October.”

  Crawford took a filled glass and drank deeply. “What, Hallowe’en? I thought you said surgical, not witchcraftical.”

  Keats laughed uncertainly, the look of anxiety returning to his face. “I become of age then; the thirty-first is my birthday. My—” He paused, for Crawford was staring at several knobby little bluish crystals on a bookshelf.

  “What,” asked Crawford carefully, “are those?”

  A key rattled in the front door lock then, and a tall man opened the door and entered. He didn’t look as young as Keats, and his face was leanly humorous.

  “Henry!” exclaimed the younger man with obvious relief. “This is Michael … Myrrh? …”

  “Michael, uh, Frankish,” Crawford corrected, standing up but not really looking away from the little crystals. Their facets made bright needles of the lamplight, and seemed to increase the fever pressure behind his forehead. “Arthur Appleton … told me to look here for a place to stay. I’m a student at St. Elmo’s.” He shook his head sharply. “Thomas’s, that is.” He coughed.

  Henry Stephens gave him a good-naturedly skeptical smile, but just nodded. “If Arthur vouches for you, that’s good enough for me. You can—what, are you off, John?”

  “I’m afraid so,” said Keats, taking a coat from a rack by the door. “Got to see to Dr. Lucas’s poor charges. Good to have met you, Michael,” he added on the way out the door.

  When the door had closed, Stephens sank into a chair and picked up the wine glass Keats had left. “St. Elmo’s, eh?”

  Though exhausted, Crawford smiled and changed the subject. “Dr. Lucas’s charges?”

  Stephens bowed a fraction of an inch. “Young John is a dresser for the most incompetent surgeon at Guy’s—Lucas’s dressers always have plenty of festering bandages to change.”

  Crawford waved at the odd crystals. “What are those?”

  Stephens may have realized that Crawford’s casual manner was a pose, for he looked sharply at him before answering. “Those are bladder stones,” he said carefully. “Dr. Lucas is given many such cases.”

  “I’ve seen bladder stones,” said Crawford. “That’s not how they look. They look like … spiky limestone. These things look like quartz.”

  Stephens shrugged. “These are what gets cut out of Lucas’s patients. No doubt they’re tired of it—any day now I expect the administrators to summon Lucas and tell him, ‘Doctor, you’re beginning to exhaust our patients!'” Stephens leaned back in his chair and chuckled quietly for several moments. Then he had a sip of wine and went on. “Keats isn’t a brilliant student, you know. The boys assigned to Lucas never are. But nevertheless Keats is … perhaps more observant than the administrators guess.”

  Crawford knew he was missing something. “Well …” he said, trying to keep his eyes focussing, “why has he saved the things?”

  Stephens shook his head in humorous but apparently genuine disappointment. “Damn, for a moment I thought you might know, you were looking at them so intently! I don’t know … but I remember one time he was playing with them, holding them up to the light and all, and he said, mostly to himself, ‘I should throw these away—I know I can have my real career even without using them.'”

  Crawford had another sip of wine and yawned. “So what’s his real career? Jewellery?”

  “Nasty sort of jewellery that’d be, wouldn’t it? No.” He looked at Crawford with raised eyebrows. “No, he wants to be a poet.”

  Crawford was nearly asleep, and he knew that when he slept it would be for a good twelve hours, so he asked Stephens which room would be his, and when he was shown it he threw
his portmanteau onto the floor. He fetched his drink, and stood for a moment in the hall and swirled the inch of wine in the bottom of the glass.

  “So,” he asked Stephens, who had helped him carry blankets from the linen closet, “what’s poetry got to do with bladder stones?”

  “Don’t ask me,” Stephens told him. “I’m not on intimate terms with the Muses.”

  At first he thought the woman in his dream was Julia, for even in the dimness—were the two of them in a cave?—he could see the silver of antimony around her eyes, and Julia had whitened her eyebrows with antimony for the wedding. But when she stood up, naked, and walked across the floor tiles toward him, he saw that this was someone else.

  Moonlight climbed a white thigh as she padded past a window or cleft in the cave wall, and he smelled night-blooming jasmine and the sea; then she was in his arms and he was kissing her passionately, not caring that her smooth skin was as cool as the stone tiles under his bare feet, nor that there was suddenly in his nostrils an alien muskiness.

  Then they were rolling on the tiles, and it was not skin under his sliding fingertips but scales, and he didn’t care about that either … but a moment later the dream shifted, and they were in a forest clearing where the moon made spots of pale light that winked like spinning silver coins as the branches overhead waved in a Mediterranean wind … she slithered out of his embrace and disappeared in the underbrush, and though he crawled after her, calling, unmindful of the thorny branches, the rustling of her passage grew steadily more distant and was soon gone.

  But something seemed to be answering his call—or was he answering a call of its? As in many dreams, identities blurred into one another … and then he was looking at a mountain, and though he’d never been there, he knew it was one of the Alps. It seemed miles high, blocking out a whole corner of the sky even though the thin clouds streaking its breast with sunset shadow let him know that it was many miles distant—and, in spite of its broad-shouldered, strong-jawed look, he knew it was female.