Tim Powers - Hide Me Among the Graves

“Christina aims to do something consequential, here, today,” McKee said. “You ever have any dealings with pickpockets?”

Crawford shook his head, looking around at the brick tower and the gates and the lawns beyond, which had become disappointingly familiar sights to him over the past week.

“Well,” said McKee, “if your attention is being called to one place, you’re often well advised to look in all other directions instead.”

Gabriel and five other men were carrying the coffin in through the gates, and Crawford took McKee’s arm and started forward across the crowded yard. Under the overcast sky, nobody cast any shadows.

THE CEMETERY CHAPEL WAS drafty, and the gray daylight muted the colors of the tall stained-glass windows. The men among the mourners had removed their hats, but everyone kept their coats. The walls were dark stone, and the ceiling was lost in the shadows of massive crossbeams.

The coffin, draped in a white cloth now, rested on a platform at the front of the central aisle, and Crawford could see the backs of Gabriel’s and Christina’s heads up in the front pew, along with others who were probably relatives.

The priest standing in front of the shadowed altar had been speaking for several minutes without Crawford being able to make out his words, but now he said more loudly, “‘I am the resurrection and the life,’ saith the Lord, ‘he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.’”

“Bad news for that Lizzie girl,” whispered McKee.

“He means ‘believeth in God,’” Crawford whispered back, “not — their uncle.”

“I hope she caught that distinction.”

Crawford nudged her to be quiet, for the priest had stepped down from the railed-off altar and around the coffin and begun walking slowly toward the doors, and Gabriel and the five other pallbearers — one of whom, Crawford noticed, was the fellow with coppery red hair sticking out in all directions — had stood up and taken hold of the coffin handles and begun shuffling down the aisle behind him.

The family members in the front pew stepped out one by one and filed along after it, their footsteps on the stone floor echoing in the arches of the high ceiling, but Christina Rossetti stepped out of the line and into the pew where Crawford and McKee stood.

She had bumped Crawford so that he would make room for her in the pew, and now gave him an awkward smile. He noticed that in spite of the chilly draft, her forehead was misted with perspiration.

“Distract me,” she whispered.

An old woman who might have been Christina’s mother gave her a wondering frown, but kept moving after the coffin toward the doors.

Crawford nodded. “Uh, puree of veal is the best remedy for general cat malaise,” he told Christina quietly. “Chicken or beef, though the cats might relish them, are of no avail.”

McKee had heard Christina’s whisper and reached into her bag and lifted out three of the little paper-wrapped funeral cakes and began juggling them — to the evident surprised irritation of the few mourners who were still filing past the pew.

Crawford, his face reddening, grabbed her arm to stop her making a spectacle of herself, and though McKee managed to catch one of the cakes and Crawford snatched uselessly at another, two fell down under the padded kneeler at their feet.

Crawford and McKee both bent to retrieve them and knocked their heads together; McKee’s bonnet fell down over her face and she sat down, whispering curses as she shoved it back into place.

Crawford sat down too. He had managed to pick up one of the cakes, and he scowled at it while he rubbed his forehead. The wax seal had cracked, and the imprinted skull was split — the smaller piece came off in his palm.

“Here’s Death’s jawbone,” he told Christina, and the ringing in his ears made him speak more loudly than he meant to.

Someone lagging behind the tail end of the mourners’ procession was suddenly leaning over him.

“To whom are you referring, sir?” came a harsh whisper.

Crawford blinked up at the speaker and was not very surprised to recognize Trelawny. The old man had hung back from the rest of the crowd and seemed to be more observer than mourner.

Crawford mutely held out the fragment of black wax. “This,” he croaked.

“Ah!” said Trelawny scornfully. “You clowns again! Diamonds, you do yourself no service associating with these idiots.”

Christina’s lips were pressed together, and she nodded solemnly. “But, Samson, can you juggle?” she asked him, crouching to retrieve the third cake and taking the others from McKee and Crawford and holding them all out toward Trelawny.

The old man looked past Christina’s shoulder, and apparently saw that the funeral party had all exited the chapel; and then he tossed one of the cakes in the air and followed it with the other two, and in a moment he had all three whirling in a crisscross pattern in front of his face.

When he had done it for enough seconds to demonstrate that he could, he let one hand drop to his side, caught all three cakes in the other, and handed them back to Christina.

“Anybody can do three,” he said. “I can do five.”

Christina stepped past him into the aisle. “Will you all be so kind as to accompany me to the committal?” She was smiling, but her face was pale. “You are all wonderfully diverting.”

Trelawny scowled and rocked on his heels for a moment, then shrugged and took her arm and started for the rear of the chapel. He sniffed the air. “It’s you he’s paying such intense attention to, isn’t it?”

Crawford and McKee shuffled along behind them, listening.

“Yes,” said Christina in a strained voice. “It was this way at my father’s funeral too — I should have known it would happen again, when I’m — once more within a stone’s throw of where the statue which is his core is buried.”

“A stone’s throw,” said Trelawny hollowly, shaking his white-maned head. “And you know where it’s buried? I’ve been here several times, during this past week.” He jerked a thumb back at McKee and Crawford. “Saw Rahab and Medicus here once, though I made sure they didn’t see me.”

“But I can ignore his … wordless song,” Christina went on, “while I have you three to tell me things like … what cures cat malaise.”

“Veal,” said Trelawny firmly.

“Just as I said,” put in Crawford.

The gray daylight outside seemed bright after the dimness of the chapel, but the air was colder, and Crawford shivered and squinted after the funeral procession. The line of mourners had crossed a gravel-paved yard and was mounting a short stone stairway between high walls with tall green cypress trees beyond.

Christina hurried after them, her boots crunching in the windy silence, and Trelawny and Crawford and McKee lengthened their strides to catch up.

At the top of the steps the funeral party was shuffling and bobbing down a lane between trees and patchy lawns to the left, and Christina stepped after them — but McKee halted and caught Crawford’s upper arm in a tight grip.

He glanced at her and noticed her wide-eyed stare — she was looking to the right, away from the funeral procession, and he nervously followed her gaze.

There was a small figure standing in deep shadow between a vine-draped oak and a marble monument with a stone dog on it.

It appeared to be a thin little girl standing there, and Crawford felt his scalp tighten and the backs of his hands tingle before he consciously realized who it might be.

McKee had released Crawford’s arm and was hurrying across the gravel path toward the shadowy figure; Crawford looked back — Trelawny had paused, and met Crawford’s eye and waved him on impatiently before turning away and following Christina.