"Of that I could endite well, Severn. Had I but had time and sense I could have writ a great long poem on the sweetness of the breasts of the enchantresses of history, from Helen to Alma Venus here in Rome who has had her right breast modelled in marble by Maestro Canova or some such rogue. And of the aching sweetness of the soft swell outwards from the waist to the buttocks, and the faint sweet down on the skin. Away with your bloodless Jesus, I say.

"Well, no, not so truly, since he had blood enough in him and fire enough and his whipping arm was strong. It is that the enemy of the world has filched and perverted him, the enemy that rules now, Severn, and you would wish to know who he is and behold I will tell thee. He is all against life, meaning the thud of the heart in venery, the savour of claret, the clamorous morsels of spring in the nest you by chance uncover, hawthorn and goldenrod, good witty lechery in the company of men, the green waving tree, tough-boled, of the body. It is not enough for him to suck blood only at once to spew it forth, he must also poison the very wells of blood. His name may be Wells for all we know, or Flibbertigibbet or Cacasona, it matters not. He is cacodemon of decay, and it is not the decay of the grass-dropped apple in autumn. For the apple dies in sweetness but I do not.

"I do not, Severn, I do not not not. Nor do I proceed to the consummation with speed enow. You see, I do not curse the brevity of this my allotment, for your three score and ten superstition puts silly value on the straight line of the geometers, which has length but not thickness. I have had thickness enough, God knows, and now I am hawking up the thickness – blood less and less, a rank porridge more and more. I regret only that I was denied the one sweetness Lord Byron would have crushed carelessly between his fine teeth, like a horse grinding a sugar lump. He would have taken her if he could and then confounded the memory of her caresses with a myriad others, not even remembering her name – Fanny something, but there have been so many Fanny somethings. So my craving was not inordinate, Severn, and it was denied.

"I reserve a special curse for Society, which has as ultimate head of its Executive the Life Hater. Ah, how Society feels itself threatened by the human senses! Even the chomp and honey drip of language, made of sense and bound to sense as it is, must be squeezed dry by Society. And yet I, disregarded small poet, am one of the sustainers of Society and, in a sense, must die for it. When will it be, Severn, the end? I curse you again and I curse Clark for withholding the drowsy quietus. Curse you and your fucking nasty perverted gentle Jesus whining about the sanctity of life. Curse every follicle, each footsole's grimy whorl, each inbreath and eke each outbreath, muddy Severn, torturer. I will haunt your grey age, enemy."

Severn heard none of this.

Severn heard Dr Clark's words with buzzing ears, squinting at him with aching eyes in the cool sunlit afternoon at the foot of the Spanish Steps. It was almost Christmas and Abruzzese bagpipes droned and wailed on the light wind.

"You look near dead, man." Clark spoke English with a Scotch tune. "You cannot put up much longer with this waking and watching. You'll be screaming soon, screaming at a screamer. I must bring a nurse in."

"We have not the money."

"Never mind about the money. You can, I'm sure, get more money from the men who brought out his poems. Did not those poems just lately go into another edition?"

"That was John's joke, God help him. He said for me to write to Taylor there would be a second printing. In cold sheets were his words. It is his grave humour you must call it. I see no prospect of money. Dying is as expensive as living."

The physician Clark had summoned for a second opinion was further up the Steps, talking to Don Benedetto of the church up there. He was a Roman believed by some to have the evil eye and named only by his initials, M.P.

"What are they talking of?" Severn said fretfully. "I don't like this hand-waving and shrugging and pointing back at the house. John raves and screams, true, but he cannot help it. I suppose they will have it there's a devil in him." He muttered: "So there is, God forgive me for saying it."

"Passing the time of day, no more," Clark soothed. "You must take small notice of these Roman gestures." And then: "He's a good doctor, so good that they think there's witchcraft in him, some. He confirmed my diagnosis and prognosis. And the treatment too. So you're not to worry any more about that."

"The starvation is to go on? And the blood letting?"

"It's only the way, laddie. It's the coughing up of the blood that kills him with the weakness. He must take no more blood in. The diet of steamed fish is the right one. And not too much of that either."

"He's ceased giving out blood, you know that."

"There you are, then."

"He casts up some thick grey substance. Keats's porridge he terms it. More of his murky humour."

"He's a noble animal, God help him."

"Is there no more you can do than bleeding and starving?"

"Ask the man up there if there's more. He's seen consumption enough in his time. Half the town has it."

"So we bring our English consumptives to a town where half have it. I see."

"Come now, Rome's climate often has a fine effect on northern sufferers. John Keats's life will go on longer than it would have in Hampstead. I wager we'll prolong it to the spring."

"For what purpose? For what purpose do you prolong it?"

"Come now, Severn, you must not ask that question. That's the atheistical question that our poor friend asks. Don't let him infect you."

"I'm close to him all day and all night too," Severn said in a high strained voice. "It's hard to avoid that risk."

"Pull yourself together, man. I'll get that nurse tomorrow."

"Oh, I've help enough. Ewing comes and the Spaniard Llanos. The English chaplain too, but John will not have him. He persists in cursing the Christian faith." Severn began to snivel.

"Aye, well, you must keep yourself strong for that duty. You must not let him go out an atheist with his blather about the creative imagination and the rest of the poetic godlessness. God forgive me for saying that. He's a better man than most of the Christians I know. But our view of him isn't necessarily the Almighty's."

Severn went back in to a quieted emaciated John with eyes like lamps. The voice was not the voice Severn had known even a month back. It was higher and sharper, like an old man's, the Cockney vowels more pronounced, the tones too often those of malignity. "So, Severn, they've confirmed that I'm dying in my stomach, yes? The lungs are pink and spongy and bursting with healthful air. And I'm to go on being starved, yes? Listen, Severn, I ask you no more to buy me laudanum, but I do ask that you bring me in a beefsteak, cold maybe but well-cooked. See, my mouth oozes for a beefsteak."

"You know I cannot, you know it will only bring the blood. I must obey the -"

"Always obey, Severn, and you will get on in the world. Obey the dictates of Society and Medicine and the Edinburgh Arbiters of Art and you will be a baronet some day. Very well, read me something."

"Jeremy Taylor? Holy Living and Holy Dying?"

"I like it for the wrong reasons, you know that, Severn."

"How do you know it is for the wrong reasons? I think perhaps you like to convince yourself that the spirit is not at last working on you. But I see differently."

"Bugger the spirit, Severn. Read."

Severn read: "There is no state, no accident, no circumstance of our life, but it hath been soured by some sad instance of a dying friend: a friendly meeting often ends in some sad mischance, and makes an eternal parting: and when the poet Aeschylus was sitting under the walls of his house, an eagle hovering over his bald head mistook it for a stone, and let fall his oyster, hoping there to break the shell, but pierced the poor man's skull.' "