POE MUST DIE (30 page)

Figg had the knowledge.

She charged, the wood lifted high over her head.

Figg waited, timing his move perfectly.

The technique was called the Boar’s Thrust, one of the most famous moves in combat fencing, the invention of Donald McBane, the great professional swordsman of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. McBane, who taught the finest sword play from his string of establishments combining fencing schools and brothels.

When Black Turtle was almost on him, Figg dropped his right knee and left hand to the ground as though genuflecting in church. But the position had a much more deadly intent. As soon as he touched the ground, he thrust his right hand up and forward, driving the tiny knife deep into Black Turtle’s stomach. On one knee with Mr. Dickens’ little knife, Figg became the deadly boar with a horn that killed.

She staggered backwards, stopped, eyes protruding, hand still gripping the table leg. Then she stumbled towards him, a dark stain growing across her shiny green dress. She said the first and only word Figg had ever heard come from her mouth. “Johnnie … ”

Figg took a step backwards. Black Turtle stopped, her large bosom rising and falling as her breathing became more labored and the pain increased. The table leg slipped from her hands, which went down to the stain and pressed against it. Turning her back to Figg, she staggered towards Baker’s burning body and that’s when Poe felt Figg grab his wrist.

As Figg dragged him towards a small door in the back of the earthen room, Poe looked back to see Black Turtle fall forward across Johnnie Bill Baker’s burning body.

Poe, on his knees, head on his chest, looked up and smiled at nothing and nobody, for the Hotel Astor hallway was empty, to be expected at almost three o’clock in the morning. He was drunk, indeed, and to hell with worrying about it. Two glasses of wine. No more, no less. Never did have much capacity for spirits, did you Eddy. Takes little of that dreaded water to make you sick, drunk, quarrelsome and a wild man. The mere smell of it is enough to set you off, is it not? Well stand up, Eddy, and stagger down the hall to the hotel room you share with Figg.

If he’s asleep, wake him. Perhaps he’ll give you a few coins to take a train back to Fordham. You have just spent your last money on the cheapest wine available and now you are stuck with Figg’s company. Figg’s the man burner. Johnnie Bill Baker has been fricasseed and there is one less paddy to break the law in Gotham.

But do not blame Figg, for Baker and his colored female behemoth would have killed us both. Indeed, indeed.

Poe was on his feet, both hands on the wall and he walked, slowly, most unsteadily and now he was at the door of the room he shared with Figg. An odd one, our Mr. Figg. Skilled in the ways of destruction but a man who has seen important personages. If he has not achieved the culture and breeding of a Socrates, he has at least learned to function in this not so best of all possible worlds.

In front of the door, Poe stopped, frowned, sniffed. He smelled something. Something. Gas. He smelled
gas.
Why was there gas coming from the room? Poe closed his eyes, opened them wide, blinked.
Gas.
He banged on the door.

“Figg, you ninny. Why is there gas in there? I demand to know why, sir.”

Poe leaned backwards, then forward, finally getting his key out of his pocket.
Gas.
And then Poe knew. The alcohol controlled most of him but not all of him. Something was wrong inside, something quite wrong. He dropped the key, bent over and after reaching for it several times, gripped it tightly, then fumbled at the keyhole, finally opening the door.

The gas smell was overpowering. The room was filled with it.

Poe staggered forward, grabbed the washbasin and hurled it through the window. Cold air hit him with force, a most welcomed force. He coughed, his eyes watered and he saw everything in the dark room as though viewing it all through a pinhole. His lungs burned and he yearned for air.
Air.

Poe flopped across Figg’s bed. “Get up, damn you, get up! He tugged at the boxer, pulled his arm. Figg didn’t move.
Violence.
This you’ll understand. Poe slapped Figg’s face and fell to the floor himself. On his knees, he slapped Figg’s face again, again, and lifting his arm to do so was the hardest thing Poe had ever done in his life. His arm seemed to weigh a ton and the hand came down in slow motion, as if this were all a dream.

Figg groaned.

“Damn you, get up!”

Poe pulled at him. Figg moved.

Now they were both on the floor. Figg had fallen out of bed.

Poe sat on the floor, mouth open, his lungs burning, his brain whirling and threatening to disintegrate as he gripped Figg’s upper arm and pulled. The open door was behind him, light from the hallway beckoning them to safety.

He pulled. Figg inched himself forward towards the light, towards the sound of Poe’s voice. To the boxer, the voice seemed to be life itself, warning him away from death, pulling him back from something hideous, something horrible and unknown.

Poe shouted, not knowing what he shouted and he pulled at Figg and he scraped himself towards the door, towards light, towards air, towards life.

Both men collapsed in the hallway, Poe on his back and feeling himself sink into that blackness which always seemed to be reaching out for him. He heard footsteps running towards him and then he could hear no more.

TWENTY-FOUR

J
ONATHAN, DRESSED IN
the white robe and beard of Paracelsus, handed Mrs. Viola Sontag a highly polished piece of steel exactly the size of a saucer.

“The mirror of Solomon,” he said to the horse-faced woman, who wore a black veil to hide skin pitted by smallpox. “With it you can divine the future.”

She took it from him gently, using both hands, inhaling softly and seeing her reflection in it with brown eyes kept fashionably bright by squeezing orange juice into them nightly before going to bed. This beauty custom, long favored by Spanish women, was now popular among certain wealthy and well-travelled New York women. Jonathan found it idiotic, since the juice burned the eyes and stained the pillowcase. But then, so much about the widow Sontag was idiotic.

Caught up in the enthusiasm for spiritualism now sweeping New York, and also to amuse her friends during dinner parties, Mrs. Sontag, forty-nine and as rich as she was thin and ugly, wanted to learn to read the future. Jonathan had agreed to accept her for a series of sittings, all of which had been lucrative for him while filling Mrs. Sontag’s boring life with something of interest. She was his first sitting this morning and as usual, paid in gold, in advance.

Jonathan slowly placed his white-gloved hands down on the black marble table. “You must slice the throat of a white pigeon and with its blood write the names Jehovah, Adonay, Metatron and Eloym at the four corners of the mirror.”

“Yessss.” Mrs. Sontag hissed through loose false teeth, as pleased with the piece of steel as if it had been a new Christmas toy.

“Keep it in a clean white cloth.”

“Oh yessss. Yessss.”

“Daily gaze upon the sky the first hour after sunset and when you see a new moon, repeat the chant I have written out for you. It commands the spirits to obey and aid you in reading the future from the mirror you now hold.”

He could see her large teeth through the veil like marble columns dimly visible in the night. The woman was hideous, insisting upon wearing crinolines everywhere, those corded petticoats lined with horsehair and reinforced with straw. From her servants Jonathan had learned that she also wore several muslin petticoats over that, meaning from the hips down she was several yards wide. Fortunately Jonathan’s home had large doors. During the sitting, Mrs. Sontag sat alone on a couch, covering it with her tentlike skirt and petticoats.

She clutched the steel mirror to her flat chest. “Oh Dr. Paracelsus, I cannot tell you the excitement that I feel! I cannot wait to follow your instructions.”

“Follow them carefully. The prayer, the perfume I have given you—”

“To be sprinkled upon burning coals as I say the prayer, yesss?”

“Yes. Then breathe upon the mirror, uttering that name you are never to reveal but are to speak only as so instructed.”

“Yesssss.”

“Make the sign of the cross upon the mirror for the next forty-five days without missing a single day.”

“Oh yessss. Will Solomon himself appear to me?”

He has not as yet appeared to me, you brainless bitch. Why should he reveal himself to you? Jonathan folded his hands and closed his eyes. “Who can say.”

“May I continue my sittings with you during those forty-five days?”

He nodded.
And keep the gold flowing from your bony hands.

Later, Jonathan spoke to Sarah Clannon. “Five hundred in gold for aiding that ridiculous woman to become even more of a fool than she is. Well, to business. You will not appear to Lorenzo Ballou in a dream tonight. He is to be denied your body, which so far he has lustfully accepted as that of his sluttish dead wife. I want you to become Virginia Poe once more. Dear Eddy needs another jab from the sharp needle of personal agony.”

Sarah Clannon spooned strawberries and champagne into her small, sensuous mouth. She had no questions. If Jonathan felt she should know the reason for the change, he would tell her.

He did. “Rachel Coltman is more drawn to Mr. E. A. Poe than she is willing to admit.”

“Love?”

“Perhaps the dawn of it. Perhaps not. Her feelings for her dead husband reflect as much guilt as affection. Survivors often feel guilty at merely being alive when a loved one has died. Guilt or imagined love, both are enough to create a state of mind in which she sees herself as passionately involved with her dead husband when in truth she is not. It would not take too much prodding from Mr. Poe to get Rachel to place herself more in his camp than mine. Neither of them know this. However I know and I cannot afford to have it happen. Find Mr. Poe and appear to him as darling Sissy. Let it be one more reason for him to believe that the dead do indeed live. Damage his mind a little more so that he aids me in obtaining the Throne of Solomon.”

Sarah Clannon, in black corset, black stockings and lace boots, bit a strawberry in half. “It is enjoyable to disturb the mind of Poe. It is such an easy task.”

Jonathan stood naked in front of a long mirror, shaving with a straight razor but without soap or water. “His life has not been a joy. Father deserted the family when Poe was a babe. Odd man, dear pater. Lawyer turned actor. Bad lawyer, worse actor. Could never accept criticism, much of which was deservedly negative. Always threatening violence to his critics, a trait continued somewhat in dear Eddy.”

Jonathan shaved gently under his nose. “Mother dies when Edgar is two. Then there was brother William Henry, eventually to become an alcoholic and die of it, while sister Rosalie still exists in the prison of insanity, a fear our Poe is never without. When mother dies, he is sent to the household of John Allan, a rather cold and penny-pinching foster father. Eddie and John will not like each other and throughout his life Eddy will avoid using the name Allan, preferring the initial A.”

Jonathan leaned back to admire himself, running a hand over his smooth cheeks. “John Allan, businessman, wanted to be a writer. No talent. Possibly jealous of Edgar who did have talent and intelligence. Takes Edgar to England for five years, where the lad is exposed to culture, history, esthetics of one sort of another. Back in America, dear Eddy with high opinion of himself, attends school in Richmond, Virginia, where he has to defend himself against southern aristocrats who insult him upon learning his natural parents were travelling players.”

Jonathan snapped his razor shut and continued to stare at himself in the mirror. “Death, desertion, snobbery, criticism, a stone-hearted Scotsman for a foster father and a brother and sister who were of questionable mental health. His sadness started early. Allan beat the boy once or twice, never an endearing trait in a parent and I speak from experience.”

He walked across the room, kissed Sarah Clannon, removing a champagne soaked strawberry from her mouth. “Poe was born sad, has lived most sadly. He has appeared on stage himself, you know. Fairly skilled. He has fought a duel, been buried alive, that by mistake and it is a most horrid story which I shall tell you at another time. In college he gambled, lost, and father Allan refused to pay his debts. For that reason, Poe left college and existed in the army as Edgar A. Perry. Made sergeant major. Was good.”

Jonathan picked up a strawberry with his fingers. “He is something of a liar, sad to say. Lied about going to Europe to fight in the Greek revolution. On occasion, he has stolen the work of other men and used it in his own and one can only look with narrowed eyes upon his having married his first cousin Virginia when she was merely twelve and he twenty-six. But for all of that he is a hard working poet, newspaperman, critic and writer of highly imaginative short pieces. He is ever in need of love and sympathy and his drunkenness is easily caused by as little as a half glass of spirits. His reputation as a guzzler is undeserved. I am familiar with him because he is important to me in my quest for the Throne of Solomon. I also find him interesting in a bizarre way.