Tim Powers - Hide Me Among the Graves

THE FELT-PADDED BASE of the ivory bishop thumped faintly on the marble chessboard.

“Check,” said the girl.

The face of the old man across the table from her was in shadow — the curtains were drawn across the street-side windows, and the chandelier overhead hung crookedly because of the gas-saving mantle screwed onto it — and all she could see under the visor of his black cap was the gleam of his thick spectacles as he peered at the chess pieces.

Both of them hated to lose.

“And mate in … two,” he said. He sat back, blinking owlishly at the girl.

She sighed and spread her hands. “I believe so, Papa.”

The old man thoughtfully lifted the ebony king from the board and looked toward the fireplace, as if considering throwing the piece onto the coals. Instead he put it into the pocket of his robe, and when his hand reemerged it was holding instead a thumb-sized black stone statue.

Christina raised her eyebrows.

Old Gabriele’s answering smile was wry. “I carry it around with me now,” he said, “very close. Not that it does me any good anymore. Nothing does.”

He put it down onto the square where his king had stood, and it clicked against the marble.

Wanting to head off yet another melodramatic elaboration along the lines of his Nothing does, Christina quickly asked, “What sort of good did it once do? You’ve said it’s buona fortuna .”

She and her sister and two brothers had seen the little statue on a high shelf in their parents’ bedroom ever since they could remember, and they had even taken it down and incorporated the stumpy little stone man into their games when they were alone, but this was the first time in her fourteen years that she had ever seen it downstairs.

“It led me to your mother,” he said softly, “all the way from Italy to England, and I thought it might keep us healthy and prosperous, not — not destitute and losing my sight—‘And that one talent which is death to hide, lodged with me useless…’”

Christina could see him blinking behind the thick lenses, and saw the glint of the tears that were always embarrassingly ready these days, especially when he quoted Milton’s sonnet about going blind. She wished she had let him win the chess game.

Adopting a manner that reminded her of someone, Christina lightly quoted a later line from the same sonnet as she stood up and began to pick the chess pieces from the board: “‘Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?’” And she smiled at him and went on, “‘I fondly ask.’”

“Yes, you foolishly ask,” he snapped. “Where is your mother, tell me that! Embroidering in the drawing room, could it be? Corpo di Bacho, where is the drawing room?”

It occurred to Christina who it was that her own indulgently dismissive manner reminded her of — her mother, comforting Christina or one of her siblings when they used to wake up from nightmares.

And she remembered that when they had been troubled by nightmares, her father had always dropped the little stone statue into a glass of salted water. She couldn’t recall now whether it had ever helped.

Her mother at the moment was out at work as a day governess, and this rented house on Charlotte Street had no drawing room.

Christina had laid all the chessmen except the black king into the wooden box, and now, leaving the statue alone on the board, she knelt by her father’s blanketed knees and took his cold, dry, wrinkled hand.

“How did it lead you to Mother?”

He was frowning. “‘Light denied,’” he said. “I should destroy the damned thing. This is my last summer. Italy never again.”

She blew a strand of hair back from her forehead. “I won’t listen to you when you talk like that.” Again she reminded herself of her mother, as if she were the parent now, and her father had become a petulant child.

“Is it a compass?” she asked.

After a moment his scowl relaxed into a grudging smile. “You were always a contrary little beast. Tantrums. Cut yourself with scissors once when your mother corrected you! I should never have told you about it.”

“Tell me about it.”

He sighed. “No, child, it’s not a compass. Am I being selfish? It gives you dreams … that are not really dreams.”

“Like second sight?”

“Yes. I knew about … statues, from my days as curator of ancient statuary at the Museum of Napoli — some of them are not entirely lifeless. And I belonged to the Carbonari there, who also know more than a little about such things.”

Christina nodded, noting the black spot on his palm — he had often told the children that it was the mark of Carbonari membership.

“And then King Ferdinand outlawed the Carbonari, and I fled to Malta — but in ’22, when I was thirty-five, there was an earthquake, and I,” he said, scratching his palm, “sensed this little stone, north of me. A summoning compass, if you like! I sailed east of Sicily, past the Gulf of Taranto and Apuleia, many perils, all the way up the east coast of Italy to Venice, following the, the dream-song that led me to find him ”—he nodded toward the tiny lone figure on the chessboard—“in the possession of an ignorant Austrian soldier.”

“… Led you to find him .” Not it, she thought.

He freed his hand to ruffle her brown hair. “Understand, child, I had at that point nothing to lose. The Pope had already excommunicated the Carbonari.”

Christina was momentarily glad that her sister, Maria, was living with another family as a governess, for Maria was virtuous and devout; and that her brother William was at work at the government tax office in Old Broad Street, for at the age of fifteen William was already a mocking skeptic.

Her brother Gabriel, though, who was off at Sass’s art academy in Bedford Square, would be intrigued. Christina wished he were here.

She nodded. “I understand.”

Hesitantly she reached her hand across toward the statue, giving her father time to tell her not to; but he made no objection, and her fingers closed around the cold thing.

Into her mind sprang the last line of the Milton sonnet: I also serve who only stand and wait. But that wasn’t right — it was supposed to be They, not I.

“You shouldn’t touch it,” he said, now that she already had.