Tim Powers - Hide Me Among the Graves

“Mr. Crawford,” said McKee, “is the father of Johanna. He knows my entire history.”

“Ah,” said Carpace, giving Crawford a reassessing look, “but nothing’s to be gained by stirring up our histories at this point, is there?” She lowered her voice and leaned forward. “What could be more dull, really, than an old whore and an old bawd and an old cad reminiscing?” She sipped from her glass. “You have family, friends, business acquaintances, I’m sure, Mr. Crawford. My name is Carpaccio, hmm?”

“Carpaccio,” said Crawford, sweating with embarrassment. “Fair enough.”

“And you’ve brought us some verse, I trust!”

Crawford remembered the lines from Southey in his pocket. “I hope not.”

McKee touched her lips to the wine in her glass. “We need to know where the baby was buried.”

“Well now, I’ll tell you,” Carpace said. “Miss Thistle, I must hear the newest canto!” she added more loudly to a woman who had bustled up to the table. “But excuse me a moment while I recommend a good book on grammar to these neophytes.”

The poetess gave Carpace an amused, pitying glance and retreated into the dimly red-lit crowd.

Carpace drained her glass and put it down, then waved the decanter toward McKee. “Drink up, my dear, I know you love the stuff.”

“I’ve given it up. Where is she buried?”

Carpace frowned, rippling her whitened forehead. “Given it up? Oh dear. Not even just one, for old time’s sake? No? I see. Well, I can’t really give you adequate directions in the midst of this affair, now can I? You can see that. Let’s meet tomorrow, if you choose. Then I can even draw a map.”

McKee was frowning too. “Very well, that will have to do. Where shall we—”

But the glasses and decanters on the table rattled as Carpace suddenly leaned her hips back against it, and she dropped her wine glass to claw furrows in the powder on her pendulous cheek.

“You,” she whispered, “no, you were—” She turned clumsily toward Crawford. “ You switched the glasses!”

Crawford just stared at her helplessly as McKee looked down at the dropped glass and then up at him with surprised comprehension.

Carpace’s hips slid off the table edge and she sat down heavily on the floor. The bass-drum thud was followed by alarmed cries and hurrying footsteps, but McKee, and then Crawford, knelt on the carpet beside the panting old woman. Crawford’s face was cold with sweat.

“Fetch an ave!” gasped Carpace. “Save me from Hell!”

“They don’t do that,” said McKee impatiently. “Where is Johanna buried?”

Carpace’s eyes were wide. “Fetch the woman who’s with Trelawny!”

“Tell me first.”

“Ach, too late, too late, the damned stuff works fast.” Her words were slurring. She bared her yellow teeth and squinted at McKee. “I’ll leave the world with truth on my lips. Johanna is alive.” She was barely able to articulate syllables now. “She — dith — did not — die.”

Carpace sneezed, inhaled deeply, and expelled her breath in a sigh that seemed to go on far too long, and then toppled sideways against Crawford’s quickly extended arm. Her head lolled loosely on his elbow, and her feathered headdress fell off her artificially darkened curls.

Crawford looked up in horrified bewilderment at the people who were now crowded around, and the first pair of eyes he met were those of the tall woman who had been with Trelawny — and he instinctively recoiled back from her, letting Carpace’s head fall to the floor. As a boy he had once awakened to see a leggy black wasp on his pillow, and this reflex now brought that icy moment forcefully to mind.

Now the woman had glided closer, or else had got bigger. The chattering of the crowd seemed to slow and fall in pitch until it was isolated clicks in total silence.

The woman was taller now, with a stark red light on the vast marble planes of her face like sunset on the highest of the Alps, and the intelligence in her glittering eyes was alien and old, older than organic life. The mouth opened like a rift in clouds, and suddenly he was profoundly cold. The whole world seemed to tilt toward her.

When he had moved — when he had still been able to move — there had been the faintest tug against his cheek and forehead, as if he had blundered into a cobweb, and now his nostrils stung with the acid scent of freshly broken stone…

But it was immediately subsumed in a sulfury reek of garlic; and the rapid exclamations and questions all around crashed back in his ears, and the dimensions of the room and the people in it seemed to fall back to their normal proportions. Warm air tingled on his cheeks and forehead. Able to move again, Crawford glanced at McKee and saw that she had unstoppered a vial and spilled the mushy yellow contents into her hand and on the carpet.

Crawford’s hand darted to the little bottle in his waistcoat, but the robed woman, once again just a tall woman, had flinched back, and her place at the front of the crowd was taken by ordinary people with anxious faces, and he decided to save it.

But the tall, gray-bearded figure of Trelawny pushed through the press of people then and knelt beside Crawford and McKee to peer at Carpace’s limp body where it lay in dimness half under the tablecloth hem.

“You two glow,” he growled. His lips were distorted by old scars into a snarl. “Did you come here to do this? You must be mad to come here, even with garlic.”

“I needed to find out something from her,” said McKee. Her lips were firm, but tears glittered in her eyes.

“Did you learn it?”

McKee shook her head.

Trelawny glanced sharply at her purse, though in the babel of querulous questions and shrill advice any noise her linnet made would surely have been drowned out. “You know Chichuwee?” asked Trelawny. “The Hail Mary man?”

“Of him,” said McKee.

“See him.” Trelawny glanced over his shoulder — Crawford followed his look, but didn’t see the tall, robed woman in the jabbering crowd.

“Get out of here,” said Trelawny. “Separately.” Looking up, he said, loudly, “Apoplectic fit. Fetch a physician.”

The crowd broke up then, some people hurrying away and some rushing forward to elbow Crawford and McKee out of the way, though no one jostled Trelawny.

McKee grabbed Crawford’s lapel and pulled his head to hers. “Your house,” she whispered, and then she had released him and disappeared in the dim light among the dozens of agitated poets.

Crawford stood up, and a woman caught his wrist — he jumped in alarm, but it was his client, the woman who had got him the invitation.

“Mr. Crawford, can you do something? You’re a medical man!”

Crawford had the impression that Trelawny looked up at that remark, but he said to the woman, “I’m afraid she’s gone. I believe it was her heart.”

“Oh! How horrible!” She shook her head and stepped back, then went on distractedly, “Old Mr. Figgins is well, by the way.”

Crawford had no idea who she was talking about. “Good, good,” he said automatically, wondering where McKee might be, “tell him we must get together for dinner sometime soon. I’m sorry, you’ll have to excuse me.”

Before starting away he threw one more glance down at Trelawny. The old man met his eye and held up his hands, palms out, and then spread them and raised his eyebrows impatiently.

Baffled, Crawford held up his own hands in the same way.

Trelawny nodded with evident satisfaction and jerked his head toward the door before returning his attention to Carpace’s inert body.

CRAWFORD DIDN’T SEE MCKEE on the street, though admittedly she’d have had to be very close for him to see her in the yellow-stained fog, and he flagged down a hansom cab on Bloomsbury Street.