Cannonbridge Read Online Free PDF

hush.
    Passing by the closed and shuttered ranks of the market, only a few hours from its daily renewal, from its earthy clamour and brand of good-natured villainy, they turn right towards the heart of the city, towards the Close and the vigilant spire of the Cathedral.
    As they walk, they speak of many things.
    “I suppose you must want to know,” Polidori finds himself saying, “exactly why it was those men had so fierce a disdain for me.”
    “I had assumed that to be your own affair. But, if you wish it, then, please, tell me.”
    Polidori shrugs. “Gambling debts.”
    “I had deduced something of the sort.”
    “It’s my little weakness. One. One of my little weaknesses.”
    Cannonbridge lowers his head in such a manner as to suggest that he is not the kind of man who would ever judge another for some minor—even for some major— flaw of character. “How have you come to be in this city, doctor? So far from Geneva.”
    “I thought to practise here. To be frank with you, it’s not been a terrific success. I’ll be moving on soon enough.”
    “And your lord?”
    “Oh, we’ve long since parted company. He tires of his friends, you see. The rich man’s prerogative. No one lasts for long.” Polidori winces, either at the memory of Byron or at the ache of a recent wound, the two things being, perhaps, not so very different. “And you? What brings you to this place?”
    Cannonbridge hesitates. “I am not entirely certain.”
    “Indeed?”
    “That is, I cannot at present recall. There are... intermissions in my memory. There are ellipses. Sometimes I seem to appear at places with no real recollection of how I have come to be there.”
    Other men might have been more surprised than Polidori at such an admission. But veteran as he is of Byron’s household, he is better acquainted than most with missing hours, with lost time, with the warping of personal chronology. “I think I understand, sir.”
    Cannonbridge, suddenly confessional, announces: “I am on a journey, my friend. To find out who I am. My origins. My nature. My purpose. I want... You must see that I dearly want to be a good man. Yet there is something within me which suggests some different, some less noble path...”
    “A kind of mission, then?”
    “Yes.”
    “Like the hero,” Polidori murmurs, “of your romance.”
    “My...?” Cannonbridge tails off as though he’s forgotten the success that he enjoyed but two summers before.
    “ The English Golem .”
    “You read it?”
    “Several times. The first, concluded late at night, made sleep quite impossible. It represented the fruits, I take it, of our tale-telling contest?”
    “In its essential conception, yes. As was Mary’s remarkable work. And your own full-blooded Vampyre .”
    The physician waves the compliment aside. “A trifle. Merely a bauble.” He coughs, a dank, unhealthy sound. “But how well I remember it all! So vivid and remarkable a time. You inspired us all that night, you know. Even...”
    The doctor tails off, winces.
    “Yes?” Cannonbridge urges on the other man.
    “It... it might not be proper. Or fair. Not after what you’ve done for me.”
    “Pray, doctor, continue. I am most interested to hear.”
    “You spoke of your uncertainty... of your origins and nature.”
    “You know something of this? Or perhaps you have suspicions?”
    “Not I, sir, but my lord Byron. Not long after that night of tale-telling he dreamed about you. And he wrote down the dream in verse.”
    “Did he indeed? That... Yes, that does interest me greatly.”
    The slumbering streets go by. The cathedral town seems to enfold them, safe from the rookeries, behind the ramparts of money and taste.
    “Let me see. I used to know it well.” Polidori closes his eyes and begins to recite from memory:
    “I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
    The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars
    Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
    Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
    Swung