Hide Me Among the Graves

Hide Me Among the Graves Page 44

The hideous gray skull face of the boy - Gabriel's undead son - poked up from behind the arm of the couch.

"Soonly," he said again in his flat voice.

"You love me still," said the Lizzie thing, clearly smiling now, and for a few moments the figure was once more John Polidori, as darkly handsome as he had been in 1845, when she had been fourteen.

"That," quavered Christina, "doesn't settle the issue." She made the sign of the cross, and the figure reverted to the appearance of Lizzie Siddal, who glanced at the gray boy for a moment before returning its attention to Christina.

"You sinned with me once," it said. "God will not forgive that - give yourself to me, and never die, evade His judgment."

"I think," whispered Christina, though she was far from sure of it, "He will."

"But I'm dying, your mirrors have broken me - will you condemn me to everlasting Hell, when you could heal me?" For a moment the face was Polidori's again, and the eyes glittered with tears.

No, John, she thought, never!

But she found that she simply could not say it; instead, though it felt like a treacherous lie and it turned her stomach to say it, she answered, "He will forgive you too, whatever you are."

"I can simply take you," came its voice, sounding more crystalline than organic now.

The boy behind the couch shifted his feet, staring at her with his wide eyes.

"Possibly you can," Christina whispered.

The figure of Lizzie glided toward the couch as Christina stared breathlessly up into its alien eyes - she seemed to be tilting forward, falling -

And then she grimaced involuntarily at a sudden, powerful reek of crushed garlic.

The face of Lizzie Siddal was just an array of curved planes and two glittering spots as it turned to Christina's left.

Christina looked in that direction and saw Charles Cayley standing again in the doorway; his hands were trembling, but were now gleaming wet and bristling with yellow shreds.

The gray boy scampered to the river-side window - Cayley jumped in huge astonishment at his sudden appearance but held his ground - and the long gray fingers unlatched it, and when the boy had pushed it open, he and the Lizzie figure broke up into pieces like images viewed through a rotating kaleidoscope, and the pieces turned black and spun churning out through the open window.

Christina exhaled and found that she was sobbing silently.

Cayley stepped to the window and with shaking hands pulled it closed and latched it again.

"Charles," Christina was able to say gaspingly, "I believe - you just saved my soul. I - should be grateful." She took a deep breath, and then said, "How did you know to get garlic?"

Cayley blinked at her in evident bewilderment. "Well, she's dead, isn't she? I was at her funeral, you recall." He smiled hesitantly, though his face was even paler than usual. "I couldn't see you in peril and not try to save you."

She almost said, I should have married you, Charles. But with her uncle John up again, she didn't dare love anyone.

And, she thought, the original obstacle, God help me, probably still applies.

Gabriel's harsh voice broke the moment: "What was Algy doing in the hall?" he asked, then frowned at Cayley's hands. "What on earth - " He sniffed. "Is that garlic?" He glanced quickly at the closed window, and then at his sister. "What's been going on here?"

"Lizzie," she answered weakly, rubbing her eyes. "And that boy. Charles knew how to chase them away."

"Really!" Gabriel looked at Cayley more closely. "That was good, Charles. I - that was good, thank you."

Cayley began stammering out some reply, and Christina interrupted, "I think you could wash your hands now, Charles."

Cayley nodded and hurried out of the room.

"Algy was in the hall?" said Christina. "I didn't know." She stretched and thought she could stand up now.

"Eavesdropping. William and Maria are ready to go home." Gabriel seemed distracted. "Was anything important said here?"

Christina laughed weakly. "Oh, you know, just social pleasantries! Yes, some things were said. He wants - "

"Who, that boy?"

"No, it was Uncle John, in Lizzie's form."

She told him what Polidori had said about rubbing on his little statue the blood of one of Boadicea's victims. "He didn't know that you plan - we plan - to do exactly what he wants - at least to the extent of digging up the statue."

Gabriel shuddered visibly. "We won't do what he wants - no blood at all must get on the thing. Did Swinburne hear any of this? But you didn't know he was there."

He was snapping his fingers nervously. "It's tomorrow night that Lizzie is to be exhumed. Charles Howell has arranged it with the Blackfriars Funeral Company. I'm supposed to wait at Howell's house in Fulham while the exhumation goes on - Howell is to retrieve the poetry notebook and bring it to me there. But I've arranged with the funeral company to attend as a third gravedigger, hanging back as if to mind the carriage, and after Charles has left with the poetry notebook, I'll bribe the other two to step away while I attend to Papa's coffin. I'll have a hammer and chisel - it shouldn't take long."

"And a knife," said Christina. For Papa's throat, she thought.

"Er, yes. And then - I think we ought to destroy the statue as soon as possible...?"

Christina stood up, staring at the window. "I suppose so." Then she shook herself and caught Gabriel's arm. "Yes," she said, "the moment you've got hold of it."

CHAPTER EIGHT

It is that then we have her with us here,

As when she wrung her hair out in my dream

To-night, till all the darkness reeked of it.

Her hair is always wet, for she has kept

Its tresses wrapped about her side for years...

- Dante Gabriel Rossetti, "A Last Confession"

I USED TO HATE sunlight," remarked Johanna as she and Crawford and McKee hurried across Tottenham Court Road at the junction of Oxford Street on Thursday, dodging the horses pulling cabs and carriages. Now she had taken off her bonnet and shaken back her hair to let the afternoon sun shine on her face. "Now it's like strong beer."

Crawford gave McKee a worried glance. Johanna had had a glass of Mieux stout with her steak-and-ale pie, and he was hoping she wasn't fated to be a drunkard - especially since they had decided to flee to France. Crawford had the idea that the French drank wine all day long.

Yesterday he had approached another London veterinary surgeon to negotiate selling his practice to the man, and they had agreed on a deal that involved the man taking over Crawford's office and caring for the cats, and this morning Crawford had gone to Barclay's Bank to arrange for a draft of all his savings and operating capital to be transferable to a bank in Paris.

Last night the three of them had slept in the basement, in shifts, with mirrors, silver, garlic, and iron knives ready to hand, and he was anxious to get to Newhaven, where British tourists commonly took a boat across the English Channel to Dieppe.

But this errand was important.

"A church, around here?" he asked now as they stepped up the curb in front of a long five-story building that narrowed Tottenham Court Road. He wasn't aware of any church very close by here - the only vaguely communal institution he knew of locally was the Oxford Music Hall under the big clock that projected out over the pavement traffic ahead.

But McKee turned to the right before they got that far, into the narrow lane that was Bozier's Court, known as Boozer's Alley because of the public house on the corner.

"Yes," McKee said, sounding defensive, "a church. Both of you behave yourselves now, we need a big favor from the priest."

Crawford and Johanna exchanged a mystified look but followed McKee. In the narrow court the rattle and clop of the traffic behind them was muted, and their own footsteps echoed back at them from the close brick walls.

McKee led them to a pair of tall wooden doors under a pointed arch in the tall street-side building, and before pulling one of them open, she dug a couple of lacy handkerchiefs out of her handbag and tied one over her head and gave the other to Johanna.

"And you take off your hat," she told Crawford.

When they had stepped into the cool dimness and pulled the door closed behind them, Crawford could at first see only the high mottled-gray disk of a stained-glass window in the far wall of the narrow, high-ceilinged room; then after a few moments he saw ranks of glass-dimmed candle flames, and finally he was able to make out rows of pews and an altar at the far end. The cool air carried the scents of old wood and incense. A few huddled figures sat in the pews, and a tall man in a robe was striding down the side aisle on the right.

"Confessions?" the man said in a quiet but carrying voice. "Thursdays aren't generally - why it's Adelaide!" The priest was close enough now for Crawford to see the man's thin, deeply lined face. "I'm sorry - you just looked like a particularly sinful trio."

Johanna nodded solemnly. "Are we here for Confession?" she asked McKee.

"No," said McKee. "We need a pretty substantial favor." She pointed at Crawford and herself. "He and I want to get married. Uh, Father Cyprian, this is John Crawford, and this is our daughter, Johanna."

The priest nodded sympathetically. "One does tend to keep putting these things off, doesn't one? But that's not so substantial - we do weddings with some frequency here."

"But we want to be married soon - tomorrow or Saturday. There's no time for banns to be posted."

Father Cyprian raised his eyebrows. "Why the haste?" He glanced at Johanna, as if to note that the child was already, long since, born out of wedlock.

Then he crouched beside her. "Who's been pounding on you, child? Not one of these two, I hope?"

"It happened in a dream," Johanna told him.

"Oh?" The priest stood up and turned to McKee. "Why the haste?" he asked again.

"We may," McKee began, then paused and looked up at the beams in the ceiling. "We may all three of us be dead soon, or worse, and - "

"And we love each other," said Crawford sturdily, "and we want our daughter to have my name."

The priest nodded. "Let's start with 'or worse,'" he said. "What's worse?"

"Do you remember," McKee asked him, "why I originally came to this church, after I got out of the Magdalen Penitentiary?"

Father Cyprian frowned. "Sister Christina sent you, as I recall, yes. Yes." He squinted at the old tiles of the floor. "There's apparently been some turbulence among the local devils just in this last week - one up, the other down. Your troubles have something to do with that?"

"The newly up one has particular designs on Johanna here," said McKee.

Johanna nodded and touched her throat. "I used to be one of his. Not all the way to death and resurrection, but ... his."

"And he wants her back," said McKee. "Her more than the others, it seems. We plan to cross the Channel to France in the next couple of days, and travel and lodging and financial arrangements will apparently be easier if we can show that we're legally married."

"It'd be nice to have the lines," said Johanna, using the coster term for a marriage certificate.

Father Cyprian nodded thoughtfully, then looked up at McKee. "John here says he loves you. Do you love him?"

"I - wouldn't marry just for expediency."

"But," said the priest, "travel plans and legal protocols are what you advanced as your reasons."

Johanna and Crawford were both looking at McKee.

"Yes, I love him," she said, exhaling. "I have for seven years."

"For seven years?" said the priest. "Unfair to that spoons man, in that case, even on a common-law basis ... with no 'lines.' Terry?"

"Tom. Yes, I suppose it was." McKee leaned against one of the pews and rubbed her forehead. "I should apologize to him, before we go."

"I wouldn't," said Father Cyprian. "He's been in here once or twice, looking for you." This visibly surprised and dismayed McKee. The priest went on, "I would let sleeping mad dogs lie. And I trust," he added, looking Crawford up and down, "that you've chosen a different sort of man this time."

"She has, she has," said Johanna.

Crawford didn't look at her but squeezed her hand.

The priest turned toward the pews that filed away toward the altar. "Christabel!" he called softly.

An old woman halfway up the aisle looked around, then laboriously got to her feet when the priest beckoned and began shuffling toward the back of the church.

"Tomorrow," said the priest quietly to McKee.

When old Christabel had made her way back to where they stood, Father Cyprian asked her, "Christabel, did you hear it these last three Sundays when I announced the banns for John Crawford and Adelaide McKee?"

"Of course I did," the old woman wheezed. "I hear everything you say."

"Do you recall the names?"

"A Crawford, it was, and our dear Adelaide." She touched McKee's shoulder. "Haven't seen you here this past week or two, my dear. You've not been ill, I trust?"

"No," said McKee, smiling. "Just ... distracted."

"And is this Mr. Crawford?" Getting a nod, the old woman said to him, "Be good to our girl, Mr. Crawford. It's time somebody did."

"I will," said Crawford hoarsely.