then.”
He’s talking as if it’s already agreed that I’ll let him have me now, Christina thought. Can I leap up and run out of here? To where?
No, she thought as her heart pounded and her breath came rapid and shallow, I’m not certain I can even get to my feet, and he or the boy would catch me in any case. There’s nothing I can do, nothing I can do.
She heard steps in the hall, and the bony gray boy darted to the far side of the couch and huddled himself below the arm of it.
“Whoever comes,” said the Lizzie apparition, “make them go, or we will kill them.”
Who is it? thought Christina. Whoever it is is only delaying the inevitable.
And it was Charles Cayley who shambled awkwardly into the room, some book in his hands, his bald head gleaming in the light of the one gas jet over the mirror.
“Oh!” he said, blinking at Christina on the couch and the figure of Lizzie standing on the rug. “I don’t mean to intrude. I was just…”
Christina stared at him, wondering if she dared wait out another of his interminable pauses. After several seconds, she said, “If you’ll excuse us, Charles, we’re having a confidential discussion.”
“Ah!” he said, bobbing his head and waving the book he carried. His face was red. “Certainly, excuse me, I —”
“I’ll say good-bye before we leave,” Christina interjected.
Still bobbing his head and mumbling polite inanities, Cayley turned and shambled out of the room. Christina recalled Gabriel’s judgment of him:
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,
And, she thought, the original obstacle, God help me, probably
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.
CHAPTER EIGHT
