Crawford was sure the old man was about to volunteer to kill someone in order to perform the procedure Maria’s ghost had described.
Instead, Trelawny stepped forward into the light and glared at him and said, “Cut it out of my throat.”
CHAPTER FIVE
And now without, as if some word
Had called upon them that they heard,
The London sparrows far and nigh
Clamour together suddenly…
CRAWFORD BLINKED, AND his mouth was open for several seconds before he spoke. “Very well,” he said. “Where?”
“Right here in the kitchen. Where did you suppose, out in the street? You’ve got hot water in the boiler, there’s brandy in the cupboard — and I can fetch my sewing kit for you to stitch me up with afterward.”
Crawford pushed his chair back and stood up, wishing that he had got some sleep last night. “You’ll be fine,” he said, with more confidence than he felt. “I’ve cut around dozens of horse arteries without losing the patient.”
“Horse arteries,” echoed Trelawny. “Excuse me while I fetch needle and thread.”
The old man turned and clumped away up the stairs, shaking his head.
“It’s brave of him,” said Johanna.
“At this point,” said McKee, “it would have been cowardice not to do it.”
“Well, that’s what I said. There’s no neutral place.”
Crawford had stepped across to the knife rack, and after looking over the variously sized blades, he just picked up a whetstone and was rubbing his thumb across it.
“Go through the drawers in the pantry too,” he said. “See if you can find a knife with a short blade. These here are all for hacking joints apart.”
“Well, that would do,” said McKee, standing up and walking into the pantry.
Trelawny came downstairs carrying a small leather box. “I’ve got a pocketknife with a short blade,” he said. “I’d just as soon not have you hacking joints.” His voice was light, but Crawford saw the pallor under the old man’s eternal tan. “I’m not afraid,” Trelawny added.
“I’ll go out and find a chemist’s,” said Crawford, “and fetch some ether. I’d rather use that than chloroform.”
“It’s not even half an inch deep!” said Trelawny scornfully. “Just cut, I promise not to flinch.”
“No, cutting so close to the vein, I—”
“And what’s happening to Rose, while we wait for you to find a chemist’s? Just cut; I won’t move.”
Crawford frowned at the defiant old man, then shrugged.
“Would you,” ventured Johanna, “like me to return a favor? I could … baptize you.”
“Me loyal old Lark,” said Trelawny, turning to her with a smile. “No, thank you, my dear, though I—” He shut his mouth, and after taking a deep breath and letting it out, he said, “I appreciate the thought behind the offer, more than I can say.”
Crawford eventually settled on one of the short blades in Trelawny’s bone-handled pocketknife, and when Johanna had lit a candle and brought it to the table, he held the blade in the flame.
“Open your shirt and lie down across the table,” he told Trelawny. His eyes were stinging from not having slept last night, and he squeezed them shut and then opened them wide; he looked at his hands and was reassured to see that they were not trembling.
The old man took his shirt off, exposing a broad chest matted with white hair and shoulders still corded with muscle. He touched a spot on his throat just above his collarbone, on the left side. “Here’s your target, Doctor.”
The lump did appear to be firmly stuck in place, very close to the jugular vein.
Crawford took off his coat and rolled his sleeves up past the elbow. “Pour a lot of brandy over my hands,” he told Johanna, “and then soak a towel in it and—”
“—Scrub where you’re going to cut,” said Johanna.
“That’s it.” He looked up at Trelawny’s drawn face. “I’d really like to get some ether. This is likely to hurt quite a bit.”
“I don’t mind hurt,” said the old man through his teeth. “Me and hurt go way back.”
Crawford shook his head. “As you please. Just, whatever you do, don’t twitch.”
When Crawford had rubbed his hands in the sluicing brandy and Johanna had swabbed the old man’s throat with the soaked towel, Crawford held the lump in Trelawny’s throat with his left hand and reached out with the knife in his right—
— and the blade stopped abruptly, two inches above Trelawny’s skin, and would move no closer.
Peripherally Crawford noticed that Trelawny’s face was slicked with sweat.
The heady smell of brandy was overpowering. Crawford carefully increased the pressure against the invisible barrier, not wanting to spear the old man if it were suddenly to relent — but the blade simply skittered aside; as if, it occurred to him, he had tried to push it through Chichuwee’s invisible pot.
“The blade,” he said in a strained voice, “won’t get close to your throat.”
For a moment the old man just breathed in and out. Then he whispered, “Infirm of purpose, give me the pocketknife,” and took it from Crawford’s hand.
The blade was steady in Trelawny’s hand as he pressed it to the base of his own throat, but again the metal was turned aside.
“What’s this?” snapped the old man, sitting up and jabbing uselessly at his throat several more times. “I shave, sometimes!”
“Not with the intention of cutting the stone from your throat, though,” said McKee. “The stone can evidently tell the difference.”
Trelawny dropped the knife and it clattered on the floor.
“This is Polidori’s protection,” he said furiously. “It seems the Nephilim won’t permit any human to cut the man who is the bridge between the species. But it shouldn’t protect me from me; I’m not just any human.” He glared around at the others. “I wouldn’t have confessed my sins here if I’d thought I wasn’t going to die.”
He picked up his shirt — which had got liberally splashed with the brandy — and tugged it on.
His face was grim as he added, “It seems we must rescue my granddaughter by Maria’s means.”
“And who’ll commit a murder?” asked Crawford.
“Oh, who was ever going to do it?” grated Trelawny. “It will be me. I’ve got so many mortal sins on my soul that one more won’t matter. I really thought—”
He finished buttoning his shirt and tucked it into his trousers. “I really thought, there for a moment, that the universe was offering me a noble death. Expiation.”
He walked to the stairs and was halfway up when he turned. “Come along, my sad crew — I’ve got an errand to run, and you’ve got to go roust Christina out of her nest.”
THEY BORROWED HATS AND two coats from Trelawny before getting into a cab in front of his house, so Johanna had a black bowler hat that made her short brown hair stick out to the sides and McKee wore a straw boater with a flower-pattern ribbon, surely something left behind at Trelawny’s by a guest. Crawford was wearing Trelawny’s Inverness cape and a tall brown beaver hat that had probably been fashionable in 1830.
None of them made jokes about the hats on the ride east past Green Park and up the Mall to Charing Cross Road. Crawford held the bottle with the sea mouse bobbing in it, and he tried to project a mental apology to the ghost but got no sense of acknowledgment.
“We can’t let—” he began finally as the cab started up Gower Street, but McKee and Johanna both interrupted him.