by Marc Olden
Miles Standish noticed fleeting smirks on the faces of men standing in the snow, smirks directed at Hugh Larney’s way of talking. But the smirks faded quickly.
When Miles had finished speaking of Poe’s danger to the three of them, Volney Gunning closed his eyes and nodded in agreement. Gunning’s voice was surprisingly deep. “The danger does exist. We can only benefit from the absence of E. Poe and it is doubtful if the world will miss him.”
Gunning wore a fawn colored top hat and an ankle length coat of red lynx fur. Standish wondered if Gunning’s pinched cheeks and thin lips were red with the cold or as rumored, red with rouge.
Standish chose his next words carefully. “Jonathan is a most careful man, as you both know. He is grateful for your financial support. He has no wish to see it stop.”
Gunning coughed and bowed his head. “We are pleased that he appreciates our aid.”
And pleased with the peculiar drugs he procures for you from all over the world, thought Standish. And pleased you should be with his taste in beautiful boys, which so coincides with yours.
Standish said, “Jonathan is involved in a most important quest, which we need not go into.”
“Yes, the throne,” hissed Larney, eyes as bright as the beautiful empty goblet in his fingers. “Oh the magic of it, the wonder—”
“Shhh.” Miles cautioned the food-merchant. Standish knew how skillfully Jonathan played upon their weaknesses, giving each the pleasure most wanted, encouraging each to believe that once the Throne of Solomon was made to materialize, all of their wishes and desires would be fulfilled. Standish had reminded Larney and Gunning of this.
He said, “Poe is determined to have his own magazine. He lives with the dream of being his own man and to secure financing he will do anything. Should he reach Mrs. Coltman’s private ear, then her funds would be diverted from Jonathan to Poe’s most needful purse. This, of course, would place a greater financial burden on the rest of us, since we all know how determined Jonathan is.” He paused. “And always in need of money.”
Volney Gunning narrowed his watery, blue eyes. “So we would each be liable for additional funds, should Jonathan request.”
Standish’s smile was as cold as the snow beneath his feet. “A request from Jonathan is never to be taken lightly.”
And in the silence that followed, Standish knew they would agree with him to kill Poe. Whether to continue their pleasures, or to save money Larney and Gunning would help him to murder Poe. And Rachel would belong to Miles Standish.
Gunning said, “You saw Jonathan?”
“Yesterday.”
“And Jonathan wants Poe dead?”
Miles cleared his throat, looked down at the snow. He said nothing.
Larney tapped his small mouth with a gloved finger. “So be it. We must survive, must we not? Why should men as we be shamed and disgraced by the rantings of such as Poe?”
When Volney Gunning nodded his head in agreement his eyes were blinking at the massive Thor, as though sending him a heartfelt invitation,
“Listen!” Hugh Larney smiled, pointing to his carriage where three well-dressed men with cigars and goblets of champagne looked inside the open carriage door while listening to Dearborn Lapham sing.
Larney threw his goblet high into the air. “Dear me, a hymn! One I do so adore, ’There Is Rest for the Weary.’ I paid an ancient and toothless whore to teach it to the child. It is my favorite. Mother and I would often sing it together, my little head on her knee.”
Miles Standish coughed behind his hand, biting his lip to keep from laughing out loud. The drivel one had to tolerate in order to arrange the killing of something as useless as Poe.
The little girl’s reedy voice carried across the snow covered field. Now all the men, wherever they were, stopped to listen.
“There is rest for the weary,
There is rest for you,
On the other side of Jordan,
In the sweet fields of Eden,
Where the Tree of Life is blooming,
There is rest for you.”
As scattered applause echoed in the frozen air, Miles Standish watched a sweating Negro bundled in winter clothing and boots rush up to Hugh Larney and whisper into his ear.
Larney threw his head back. “Ahhh. We commence. Some difficulty securing a horse without a damaged hoof and we had to clear away snow somewhat, though not entirely.”
He placed his hands to his mouth and yelled. “Gentlemen! Gentlemen, please! Make final your wagers! Those who wish to challenge me, I am going with Mr. Brown Boole and will accept all bets to the contrary, even money! Gentlemen, your wagers please!”
Larney, eyes shining with thoughts of the excitement to come, whispered from the corner of his mouth, “Boole’s your man, Miles. Large in the chest and strong teeth.”
“Strong teeth?”
“He has torn off many an ear in a punch-up with those teeth of his. Care to—”
“No thank you.”
“Then watch, my good fellow. Good sport, this. Much good sport. We have a physician on hand and I am sure, we will have need of him. Combat at such close quarters. Oh Miles, dear Miles, does not your heart lift at such a thought?”
It did, which bothered Miles. But it didn’t bother him enough to leave. He watched the two duelists, bare-chested and unsmiling, step into the brown coach. Two Negroes, bodies stocky with heavy clothing, their black faces impassive, entered the coach after the duelists. One Negro held the pair of stilettoes in his hand and sunlight glittered from the keen blades.
Larney said, “When the men are connected, my boys will drive the coach twice around.”
Standish asked, “What is to stop the duelists from killing each other immediately, I mean before the duel officially begins?”
“One of my boys will be on top with the driver. He will have a pistol, two pistols actually, with orders to put a ball into whoever violates the spirit of today’s glorious festivities.
Standish couldn’t take his eyes away from the brown coach. After long minutes, the two Negroes came out of the coach and one immediately climbed up to the driver’s seat, pulled back a small panel and taking a pistol from his belt, poked it into the opening. The other Negro waved his arms in a signal to Hugh Larney.
“Oh my, oh my!” cried Larney. “We are ready. Come Miles, come and watch me give the signal!”
Now all of the spectators, all male, drew closer to one another, grouping near the brown coach, cigars, champagne and food now forgotten. Standish watched Thor lift little Dearborn Lapham from the snow-covered ground up to the driver’s seat of Larney ‘s coach so that she could watch the duel. By God, that little girl was pretty, so very pretty! Standish, who had never been with a child whore, found himself staring at her. Then he shook his head. Child whores. And men about to slash each other with knives for the amusement of others. Today in these surroundings he knew he could easily end up wanting the child whore and he knew for certain that he was not going to leave this place until the duel was over.
Yes it was Hugh Larney who had arranged the duel, but it was Jonathan who had taught Miles Standish to choose excitement over shame.
Larney’s voice was shrill with anticipation. “Amos, are you ready?”
The Negro driver touched the reins to his cap. His companion on top of the coach kept his pistol pointed down inside, never taking his eyes from the duelists.
Larney’s small mouth was open, his eyes wide and bright as he quickly looked at his guests standing in the snow and staring back at him. He shouted, “Hail Caesar! We who are about to die salute thee! Let the games commence!”
Larney, arm outstretched, dropped his white silk handkerchief in the snow.
“Eeeeeah!” Amos yelled at the team of four horses, snapped his whip and the cracking noise of it echoed across the flat and frozen land. Miles Standish shivered with excitement as he watched the brown carriage fight for traction in the snow, slide left then right, roll forward and pick up speed. Again
the whip cracked and now the coach rolled faster, pulling away from the starting point, picking up speed, its iron-rimmed wooden wheels spraying snow to either side of the road.
As the silent men and child whore watched, a man screamed inside the coach.
As if this were a signal, a few spectators ran after the coach, shouting, encouraging one man to kill, the other to die and Miles Standish, so excited that the cold no longer bothered him, imagined that the man screaming was Poe.
When the coach neared a turn in the crude snow-covered racetrack, the screaming suddenly stopped. Then the whip cracked over the horses’ flanks and when the scream started again, Miles’s breathing was almost orgasmic, for in his mind the screaming man in the coach was Poe. Rachel Coltman now belonged to Miles Standish.
SIXTEEN
A TERRIFIED POE couldn’t breathe.
Paralyzed by panic, he stood on the edge of a dark abyss, in a cold wind that whipped his brown hair around his face. He was in a night without end, unable to pull his eyes away from the interminable blackness at his feet, knowing he was doomed to tumble into it, to disappear down into its unending horror. The abyss was deep, bottomless. He was frightened of anything deep-the ocean, a pit, crater, the grave. He desperately wanted to flee this place but his feet were imbedded on the edge. The cold wind howled and shrieked, knifing into his bare flesh and still he couldn’t run, couldn’t leave the edge of the abyss. He had no control over himself; he teetered forward, leaning into the blackness …
And suddenly he was in a coffin, deep within a grave, buried alive beneath damp earth, chest rising and falling as he fought for air. He pounded the inside of the coffin lid, fists wet with his own blood, knuckles pained and smashed, his cries of terror filling his ears. Buried alive! All of his life he’d lived with this fear and now it was real. Buried alive!
Death had been Poe’s obsession, a companion ever since it had claimed his stepmother, wife, those he’d loved above all others. Death, that most awesome of forces, had crept into his mind and lay in wait until called forth in his writings. But Death had warned Poe, warned him that it wanted more than merely his recognition of its existence; Death wanted Poe’s soul and now Death had claimed it, holding him in its clammy grip.
Poe yielded to the terror of the grave; he punched the coffin until all feeling left his bloodied fists. “Air! For God’s sake, air! I beg you, someone help me! I am buried alive! Aliiiiiiiive!”
“Alright, squire, alright. It’s alright now. Come on, wakey, wakey. Mr. Poe! Mr. Poe! It’s me, Figg. Let’s see both yer eyes. Open wide. That’s it, that’s it.”
Poe looked up from his bed to see Figg sitting on the edge, a worried look on his bulldog face. Figg handed him a towel. “You been nightmarin’, squire. Tossin’, turnin’, yellin’ yer fool ‘ead off. ‘Ere, dry yerself. You’re wet, all in a lather like some race horse whats done its best. Woke me up, you did and probably the rest of the bleedin’ unfortunates in this bleedin’ hotel. You always carry on like this when you’re ‘spose to be sleepin’?”
Poe, bare-chested, heart racing much too fast, quickly sat up. Nightmare. He pressed the palms of both hands against the sides of his head. “Need a drink. Rum, whiskey, anything.”
“Nay to that, squire. Alcohol puts you too much sleepy bye from what I can gather and I can’t ‘ave that, no sir. Got some water in the basin over there and I can open the window and bring you a handful of snow. But you ain’t touchin’ spirits whilst you and me is associated.”
Poe hung his head and inhaled deeply. “The thought, sir, of continued association with you is most unpleasant.”
“Awww now, squire, that don’t come from the heart. You and me is on the same quest. Ain’t it me what’s woke you up? You were carryin’ on like a man possessed.”
“I am indeed a man possessed. I need drink, sir. I need stimulants. I also have need for stimulating and intoxicating conversation and again you offer me abstinence, forced abstinence, since you, sir, are an exceedingly unphilosophical man.”
Poe, tensed face shiny with perspiration, let his eyes get used to the dim gaslight. A look at the curtained window told him it was still dark outside and that he was still in a room at the Hotel Astor with Pierce James Figg. He took a deep breath, held it, then exhaled. He was calmer now, but he didn’t want to go back to sleep. Not just yet.
There were always nights like this, nights when his fears mounted a deadly attack on his sanity. Poe feared everything: a hostile world that had rejected and impoverished him; the insanity that had already laid deadly hands on members of his family and could well reach out for him. He feared the demons lurking in his tortured mind, that spewed forth the incredible imaginings no American writer had ever produced. He feared loneliness, he feared dying without ever having been recognized for being an original talent. He feared being buried alive.
But he did not fear Figg. Not anymore. Figg was beneath poe, a brute masquerading as man, something barely animate that smelled of sweat and cheap food, a thing that lacked intelligence and culture and whose thick skull contained a barren void posing as a mind.
He glared at the boxer. “I need relief sir, from myself, from you.”
Figg grinned. “Now that’s all of us what’s in the room, ain’t it. Mr. Poe is displeased by what he sees in God’s universe and would the rest of us in the world kindly leave and allow Mr. Poe to carry on by his lonesome.”
Figg stood up, yawned, stretching his arms towards the ceiling. “Dear me, ain’t life hard. Mind what I said; your lady friend, Mrs. Coltman can stand a bit of lookin’ after, ‘cause if Dr. Parrididdle—”
“Paracelsus.”
“Yeah him. If him and Jonathan is one and the same, well your lady is close enough to this particular fire to get more than her pretty little fingers burned. I know you ain’t happy with a common man like me tellin’ a scholarly gent like yerself what he should be doin’ and all, but you just give some thought to Jonathan carvin’ on the widow Coltman. Heart cut out, liver cut out, oh me, oh my!”
Poe snorted. “Aut Caesar, aut nihil.”
“Beg pardon?”
“Latin. Uttered by Cesare Borgia. ‘Either Caesar or nothing.’ To modernize it, “follow Figg or travel not at all.’”
“Yes sir, I can see where you would say that. I ain’t askin’ you to grieve for my dead. All I wants is for you to help me somewhat and I will be puttin’ things right meself. But you, Mr. Poe’s You be a most proud man, now that’s a fact. Ain’t nobody goin’ to tell you what to do or order you about, no sir. Been that way all yer life, I bet.”
“You seem to disapprove, not that I give a damn about your opinion.”
“Tell you a little story. Back in the days when I was likely to shake a loose leg, meanin’ I did a bit of travellin’. I was with this fair that went up north of England. Small towns we played, puttin’ on a good show for the folks. Tumblers, acrobats, fat ladies, horse racin’ and gypsies what could tell yer future for a bit of silver.”
Figg nodded, remembering. Poe watched the boxer’s right hand go to his bare chest, the back of his hand stroking three six-inch scars on the right side of his rib cage, scars that were now a faded white. In the flickering gaslight, Poe found the scars on Figg’s face, chest and arms repugnant as well as fascinating. For brief seconds he empathized with the pain the man had obviously endured in his miserable existence. But he forced that small bit of compassion from his mind and resumed listening indifferently to what Figg was telling him.
“Now this here fair I was with was nothin’ like the elaborate establishment of Master Phineas Taylor Barnum, which we visited tonight. Master Barnum has done himself most splendid, but let me tell me own tale—”
“I am all agog.”
“Now I had me a little booth, see, just like me father and his father and his father before him. Nothing different. I charge a few pennies to teach a man the use of knife, cudgel, broadsword and towards the end, see, I puts up a pound or two as prize money and I says that
any man in the crowd what feels he is able, let him come forward and challenge me in boxin’. Two rounds, no more. Usually there is some local boy what thinks he is good with his fists and his friends encourage him to try his luck. But the lad don’t last long ‘cause it ain’t just what you do with your body, see.” Figg tapped his forehead with a thick finger. “Man got to use his mind in the ring.”
Poe said, “For the present, I shall take your word that anyone stepping into a prize ring is possessed of a mind. Do continue. I find this account of your past life most entertaining.”
I crave drink, thought Poe, and instead I get a pugilist reeking of sentiment. So desperately did he crave alcohol, that Poe would gladly have downed a cup of New Jersey Champagne, that putrid concoction of turnip juice, brandy and sugar. A disgusting blend enjoyed by those with puny purses and little pride in what they swallowed.
Still sitting up in the bed, Poe clenched both fists under the sheet and wondered what harm he had ever done to Charles Dickens to deserve such a fate as Pierce James Figg.
“Now, Mr. Poe, I am comin’ to the point of this story. There was a very important man in England, or so he believed himself to be. This important man owned a huge circus and ofttimes our small little fair would be in competition with him. It was always a race to see who would get to a town first, him or us. Whoever got there first, naturally got the customers’ money first.”
“I am impressed by your logic. Do go on.”
“Well, one day we gets to a town up north near Manchester and we makes our pitch, we sets up camp. We got a good spot but it is a spot that this important man wants for his very own circus. So what does he do? He sends his wagons speedin’ down a hill and crashin’ into ours, damagin’ our goods, our property not to mention our very lives.”
“Not to mention.”
“So what do we do to this most important man what has got a lot of pride?”
“Ah, now I see. The story of a proud man brought to heel.”