The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers

Author:Tim Powers
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Vampires, Science Fiction, Horror, Mystery & Detective, Fiction, Fantasy, Historical, General, Alternative History
ISBN: 9781892391711
Publisher: Tachyon Publications
Published: 2008-08-22T04:00:00+00:00

Severn nodded when Crawford delivered Keats’s message and, though there were tears in his eyes and he started forward at once, he waved toward the couch. “Sit down,” he called softly over his shoulder. “I’ll have Dr. Clark right over to look at you two.”

But when Severn had gone into Keats’s room and closed the door, Crawford took Josephine’s elbow and started toward the door. “We can’t stay,” he whispered clearly to her, hoping she was capable of understanding him. “Anywhere else would be safer—men will be coming here who’ll kill both of us.”

To his relief, she nodded.

He led her down the hall toward the stairs—several people were staring fearfully out past doors open only a crack, and crossed themselves as the two wet, battered figures limped past—and then down the stairwell to the street and the still saintless steps that fretted the Pincian Hill.

He didn’t pause when they left the building, but propelled Josephine quickly out across the square, past the boat-shaped Bernini fountain, to an alley on the far side. He relaxed a little then, but nevertheless made Josephine hurry south along the alley; for when the Austrian forces found that Crawford and she had already got out of the building, they’d certainly search the nearby area.

Luminous gray had begun to infuse the sky to the east, and the long clouds were like wet bandages slowly absorbing blood as the first rays of dawn touched the steeples and towers overhead. Crawford had found a rolling, half-up-on-the-toes gait that eased some of the pain in his left thigh, though he still found himself putting a lot of his weight on the uncomplaining Josephine. Both of them suffered occasional violent fits of shivering, sometimes so bad that they had to stop.

At the Church of San Silvestro he paused to rest and, as he leaned against the stone wall and let his hot lungs slow down, he read a plaque on the wall claiming that the head of John the Baptist was kept somewhere on the premises. It reminded him of Keats’s poem Isabella, and he wondered feverishly what the priests watered the head with, and what they hoped would grow.

“The convent here,” began Josephine suddenly, startling him, “is the post office now. I went there for Keats and Severn yesterday, to see if any of Keats’s friends in England had sent him money. Nobody had.”

“It would have been too late anyway,” Crawford observed. He stared at her. She seemed to be lucid, and he wondered who she thought she was. “How did you wind up here? It wasn’t because of me, was it?”

“No,” she said. “Originally it was for haruspication.” She leaned against the wall next to him and stared into the brightening sky. The white of her eye was blotted with bright red. “A doctor told me that word, when he figured out why I was a nurse. He made me leave. That was in … I don’t know, Fabriano, Firenze…. I’m a nurse everywhere I go now. I need to be.

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