The Stress of Her Regard

by Tim Powers

  “Who are you?” asked Josephine. “How do you know all this?”

  The very old man smiled, and his face had such a look of detestable wisdom that Crawford had to force himself not to look away. “My real name is François des Loges, though I’m remembered under another. I was born in the year Joan of Arc was burned to death, and I was a student at the University of Paris when I fell in love.”

  He chuckled softly. “Near the University,” he went on, “in front of the house of a certain Mademoiselle des Bruyeres, there was a large stone—you saw it, sir, when you took advantage of my hospitality. The students must have perceived something of its … strangeness, for among them it was known as Le Pet-au-Diable, the Devil’s Fart. I never called it that—I had seen the woman it became by night, and I worshipped her. You have both experienced this.”

  He smiled reminiscently. “When I was thirty-two I left Paris and the attentions of men, and for many, many years I wandered with her, a happy pet of hers. I was in the bosom of my new family, and I met other in-laws like myself—including Werner himself, the man who had reintroduced the two species to each other. The fours and the twos, under the gaze of the eternal threes.”

  Crawford frowned and looked away from the window. “That’s the riddle, isn’t it? The one the sphinx asked us on the peak of the Wengern. What does it mean?”

  “You don’t know?” Des Loges shook his head in wonder. “What did you do, just guess the right answer? You can’t have used the answer that legend claims was given by Oedipus—legend has it close, but not nearly close enough.”

  Crawford tried to remember the wording of the riddle. What was it that walked on four limbs when the sunlight had not yet changed, and now is supported by two, but will, when the sunlight is changed again and the light is gone, be supported by three? “I thought the riddle might be a … a ritualistic demand for diplomatic recognition. A citing of something the two species had in common. So, instead of ‘man,’ I gave an answer broad enough to include the nephelim too—I said, ‘sentient life on Earth.'”

  The old man nodded sombrely. “That was a lucky guess. You were lucky, too, to have got by the phantom that guards the threshold, the one Goethe refers to in Faust—'She looks to every one like his first love,’ Mephistopheles tells Faust. Actually, the phantom looks to every intruder like the person the intruder loved and has most grossly betrayed.”

  Josephine had reddened, but was smiling slightly too. “So what does it refer to?” she asked. “The riddle, I mean.”

  “Skeletons,” des Loges told her. “Your friend Shelley knows about it. Read his Prometheus Unbound: ‘A sphere, which is as many thousand spheres …'” Des Loges’s English was even worse than his French, to which he now mercifully returned. “Matter, every bit of stuff that comprises the world and ourselves, is made up of what the old Greeks called atoms—they’re tiny spheres, animated by the same force that makes lightning jump from the sky to the ground, or makes St. Elmo’s Fire flicker on the spars of ships.”

  Corbie’s Aunt, thought Crawford, animating the hulks.

  “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.

  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.