Hide Me Among the Graves by Tim Powers Page A

strode behind her, and Christina whispered, “At the Lord Mayor’s Show that time—”
    â€œHush. You’ll upset them both.”
    He should never have told Christina what Lizzie had said then—it had been a little more than nine years ago, in November of ’52, shortly after he and Lizzie had become lovers. They had gone to see the Lord Mayor’s parade in New Oxford Street, and a deformed dwarf beggar had been lurching alongside the parade, pacing the traditional giant wicker figures of Gog and Magog that were being ceremoniously carried down the street, and when the dwarf stumbled and fell near where Lizzie stood, she had run to the little figure and in pity taken it right into her arms—invited it into her bosom!—and even though its face was entirely wrapped in a scarf, the dwarf had somehow managed to bite Lizzie. When Gabriel had pushed the malignant thing away and pulled Lizzie to her feet and said, “Let’s get that bite attended to, Lizzie,” she had shuddered and said to him hoarsely, “Call me Gogmagog.” A moment later she had claimed not to remember having said it—and when he asked her if she knew of the sinister “Goemagot” giant in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regnum Britanniae, who was called Goemagog in Milton’s History of Britain and Gogmagog in Midlands devil legends, she had responded with genuine bafflement—but he had called her Gogmagog for the rest of that day, and the name had soon become the affectionate nickname Guggums.
    And now, for the first time, it occurred to Gabriel that Lizzie might have acquired a second vampiric patron, on that day, in addition to his uncle. Her unspecific infirmities had started around then. Could two of the damnable things be sharing her? Uncle John and this Gogmagog thing?
    Which of the two might it have been who, in his sisters’ repellent speculation, had congress with Lizzie in Gabriel’s form?
    He shuddered and forcefully dismissed the thought and took Christina’s arm to hurry her along.
    When Gabriel and Christina arrived at the bedroom doorway, Lizzie and Maria were huddled in the far corner over the crib Gabriel had bought last year in anticipation of the baby who had been stillborn. Lizzie had never let him get rid of it. Maria had one arm around Lizzie and was murmuring.
    Lizzie was sobbing and shaking her head. “Did you shoot at him, Gabriel?” she whined. “Look, you woke the baby!”
    And for just a flickering split second, Gabriel thought he saw a tiny figure in the crib, a dark little thing with long fingers and enormous eyes; then, even before he could shake his head or blink, it was gone.
    Maria didn’t move, but she had gone quiet; and beside Gabriel, Christina had audibly caught her breath.
    Gabriel swallowed, then managed to say, “The baby’s quiet, now, G—darling. See? Take some more medicine, if you need to, and you should be back in bed.”
    Lizzie’s urgency seemed to have evaporated—she stared at the empty crib and then nodded and let Maria help her back to the bed. She sighed and lay back across it, and Gabriel stepped forward and pulled the sheet up to her shoulders, and she closed her eyes. Her eyelids looked like an old man’s knuckles.
    Gabriel jerked his head toward the hallway, and his sisters followed him back to the studio. Maria was visibly shaking.
    The cloud of black smoke over the river had thinned and drifted west almost out of sight beyond the brick wall of the next house, and several rowboats and a steam launch were arrowing toward the arches of the bridge, no doubt heading for whatever floating debris the river had carried to the east side of it.
    Gabriel crossed to a cabinet and reached down a bottle. He waved it at his sisters—Christina nodded energetically and Maria shook her head.
    As he carried two filled glasses back to where the women had resumed their seats, he handed