Jupiter placed Molly on the bed. Poe set his trunk down by the window and opened it immediately. A wave of whiskey vapors filled the cramped space. Poe paid no heed and, removing the shattered neck of a bottle, tossed it into the corner near the stove. Glass broke and skittered across the floor. Poe removed his treasured intact potables, and no sooner than he had set them on the desk, opened one and began drinking straight from the mouth of the decanter.
I went to Molly. By some miracle, she seemed no worse for the sudden flight. Nor did she seem improved. Her small pistol had slipped loose from her belt and lay on the mattress next to her. Without thinking, I picked it up and put it in my pocket. I found that the water pitcher on the vanity held some stained water. Taking my kerchief, I dipped it into the basin to moisten, and I began cleaning Molly’s lips of dried blood.
Jupiter slumped down on one of the old chairs, and it creaked in protest. “I will find her.” His large hands rubbed his face and he repeated, “I will find her.”
“You must tend to Molly,” said Poe.
“I will not.”
“Please,” I begged him. “Damn Fox! He killed poor Molly’s sister, and now she will die without her revenge. Would you deny her, Jupiter? Help her.”
“You don’t know the variety of aid I would bring.” Jupiter’s words were muffled by his palms, pressed against his mouth.
“What life would she have, dear Jupiter? Would you fail because of misplaced mercy? It is so unlike you.” Poe laughed and took another long drink.
“I will…”
“You are no god, then? I am released?”
At that, Jupiter stood up. I thought Poe might indeed be released if Jupiter’s growing rage were loosed. “What of this cipher, Poe?”
“Help her,” I begged again.
“She knows where the Odalisk is. Where Maria is.” Poe bowed to Jupiter – an exaggerated courtly bow. “You could give her something for the pain.”
“Pain can’t be avoided,” Jupiter said sadly.
“You have the relief, Jupiter.”
“I have done enough evil in you, Poe.”
“I am what I am.”
“What are you?” Jupiter spun on Poe, and shouted again, “What are you, Poe?”
“The Imp. I am the Imp of the Perverse.” Poe laughed and drank, and with his mouth filling with absinthe, he choked out, “I am your creature, my Lord.”
“Help her.”
Molly moaned again. Her brow was wet with beads of perspiration. I had slowly removed the rag at her throat. Carefully soaking it so to loosen the caked blood, I could at last see her wound. The front of her throat had been torn away, and a jagged hole started to spray out tiny mites of red mist as her breath now issued from its depths. She coughed, and a clot lodged in the opening. I turned her on her side and instinctively worried it free with my finger. Her breath became easier, and she settled into almost a sleep there on the bed. The dingy white pillow under her head began to turn pinkish as the air from her lungs escaped and brought more minuscule droplets with each exhalation.
“Well, my Lord, if you shall not ease her, I shall.” Poe picked up a small cup and poured something from a brown vial into the stained porcelain.
Jupiter sighed. “But…” He began to speak, but thinking better of it, said nothing. The Negro hesitated, but after a moment, stepped out of Poe’s way as he took the cup to Molly and touched it to her trembling lips. She swallowed as a reflex. Some of the golden liquid leaked out of the hole in her neck.
“For her pain,” Poe told me. “For her pain.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“You must find him, Poe.” Jupiter grabbed Poe’s shoulder as he returned to the desk. The black grip spun the poet around. “You must find him.”
“You have no threats that will frighten me.”
“Would you have your Virginia live on in his harem?”
Poe drank the last of the decanter. He sighed, though the sigh had an ominous threat about it. “I will find him. I will find them.”
I was sitting on the bed, stroking Molly’s disheveled hair. “And my Caroline? My wife?”
“Of course, Griswold. I will save her as well.”
“But how?”
Jupiter laughed, and snatching the empty decanter out of Poe’s hands, threw it against the iron stove. The crystal shattered into shards and powder. “”You have done it!”
“What?” I was confused.
Jupiter turned to me. “He has solved it!” He turned back to Poe. “The cipher, you know the code?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Then we will go where…”
“Ah, yes, Jupiter. I solved the cipher the very first night. Even as we escaped the oyster cellar, I had the solution.”
“But…”
“I had the solution, but not the understanding. The answer was obvious. However, it’s not an answer.”
“I don’t follow you,” Jupiter.
Poe took up another bottle, opened it, and took a sip. “Tell me, Jupiter. When is an answer not an answer?”
“Out with it, Poe.”
“My, we have lost our sense of the hero’s quest, haven’t we?”
“Poe!”
“An answer is not an answer when it’s a riddle.”
“God help me.” Jupiter slumped back on the chair.
Molly coughed again. I cleared the wound as best I could, and her breathing took on an easier tempo once again.
“Griswold,” Poe called to me.
“Yes.”
“What did he shout?”
Distracted as I was, it took me a moment to understand the reference. “Fox? Oh, yes. He shouted something about the little ape and his mule and looking for inspiration. I don’t remember the exact words. Was it a warning?” Again, I was perplexed by Poe’s direction.
“Ape, mule, and muses.” Poe enunciated each of the words with exaggerated pronunciation. “Ape. Mule. Muses.”
“Get to the point, Poe.” Jupiter leaned forward on the creaking chair. Another train whistle blew. Black smoke drifted past the window. The Bradshaw itself rumbled as a train began moving out of the nearby station.
“Please, I am not Poe.” He laughed that curious, dry laugh of his.
“Please…”
“I am, after all, registered in this fine hotel as Mr. Dupin.”
I remembered the name from Poe’s story of the Rue Morgue. Detective Dupin – had Poe gone mad? Had we all? Surely, we should have been considered insane. We were being pursued, but for the moment we imagined our seclusion was perfect. No one had discovered our new lodgings, and we existed within ourselves, alone for some hours as Poe, or should I say Dupin, explained the mystery and pointed us in a new direction.
“De nier ce qui est, et d’expliquer ce qui n’est pas,” Poe began. “I will tell you what is and explain what is not.”
We listened to him a good part of that afternoon. I was drawn deeper into the dangerous depths of his delusion, and I began to truly believe, at last, that my soul deserved the damnation to come. We listened to him.
And my hands became red with Molly’s blood.
Chapter 25
September 30, 1849 3:30 p.m. - The Words Of Solomon Don Dunce -
There are few persons, even among the most rational, who have not been shaken from their calm sense of reality by some sudden, amazing coincidence or improbable occurrence of an inexplicable variety. Yet even when confronted with such a nearly supernatural revelation, their intellects still flee from the implications of the evidence and take refuge in the comfort that all was but a product of probability – even the most unusual will be commonplace given time and chance. Thus, we apply science to the spiritual and deny ourselves true understanding.
“It’s an enigma,” said Poe.
“Please just explain, Poe.” I was very tired.
“The poem, my poem is an enigma.” Poe began pacing, as had become his habit. As he reached the wall of the small room, he would spin on h
is heel, his coat flaring open, revealing two bullet holes neatly punched in the threadbare black fabric. The slaver had missed Poe and hit Molly. “Specifically, the poem is ‘An Enigma.’ I wrote it as a trifle some years ago.”
I searched my memory. I am, after all, an expert in such matters. I remembered the little verse vaguely. “Yes, I recall. There was a trivial little trick to it.”
“Trivial? Perhaps.”
“Yes, I remember, a bit of flirtation.”
“Yes, if you will.”
I recalled the embarrassing little verse. I had ridiculed it on its publication for the bald ingratiating nature of the trifle. “A simple code. First line – first letter. Second line – second letter and so on.”
“Yes, that’s it.” Poe showed no sense of shame.
“And when you spelled it out, it was a name.”
“Precisely.”
“What has this to do with our mystery?” asked Jupiter.
“I shall recite the poem as an illustration,” said Poe, who drew himself up into a pose as if he were delivering a lecture in a Lyceum hall. His voice, though soft, had a majesty to its tenor, and he presented his piece with his fluttering eyes slightly closed.
I shall set down the poem as Poe gave it that day. In consideration of the reader I shall highlight the pertinent vowels and consonants.
Poe spoke the stanza:
“Seldom we find,” says Solomon Don Dunce,
“Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet.
Through all the flimsy things we see at once
As easily as through a Naples bonnet
Trash of all trash! – how can a lady don it?
Yet heAvier far than your Petrachan stuff –
Owl-downey nonsense that the faintest puff
Twills into trunk-paper the while you con it.
And, veritably, Sol is right enough.
The generaL tuckermanities are arrant
Bubbles – ephemeral and so transparent –
But this is, now – you may depend upon it –
Stable, opaque, immortal – all by dint
Of the dear names that he concealed within’t.”
“Names concealed in it?” Jupiter’s interest was now aroused.
My memory refreshed by Poe, I proceeded to repeat the solution. “The first letter of the first line is ‘S.’ Second and second, ‘A.’ Do you see?” I continued until Jupiter had lost patience.
“I’m no idiot. I see. Sarah Anna Lewis.”
“A poet of little note. Though, even you included her in your anthology, Griswold.”
“And you, ever the melancholy rake.” I shook my head. “Sarah Anna Lewis had all the intelligence of a…”
“Now, be kind, Griswold.” Poe sniggered. He had continued to work at the quickly shrinking supply of absinthe. He had even poured me a glass of whiskey, and I had not refused. “Was she less intelligent than Fanny Osgood?”
I should have been angry at the mention of dear Fanny’s name. But I was becoming drunk again, and perhaps my emotions were dulled. “Dear Fanny was my love, Poe.”
“Another poetic tragedy that, eh?” he quipped. “And the baby. The poor illegitimate child.”
“Your child, Poe. You seduced her when she was separated from her husband, and God punished the sin with the child’s sad death.”
“And you never touched her, Griswold?”
“Stop the prattle.” Jupiter broke into our quarrel. “There’s no time for that now.”
“Yes, of course,” said Poe.
For my part, I returned to my attempts to comfort poor Molly. She was breathing regularly and without effort. The bleeding at her throat was stopped. I let my anger go at Poe’s hideous disrespect of Mrs. Osgood and concentrated on the wounded girl. I could not help but feel rage against an insidious fate that would rob the world of such beauty – and that her twin had been torn from this ugly world as well – it all seemed such incomprehensible waste. There seemed to be only cruelty and random death at every turn. My companions were not so similarly struck by the tragedy I perceived.
“So that’s the cipher in the note?” asked Jupiter.
“Not quite so simple.”
“And in which poem? You’ve lost me.” I returned to the conversation.
Poe sat down in the other chair across the desk from Jupiter. He reached down into his trunk, and after a moment of shuffling through some papers, selected one sheet and handed it to Jupiter.
The Negro could read. I had not given that possibility any thought. He examined the page for a moment and then looked up at Poe. “Well, this makes no sense. If I take the first letter, then the second and third and so on… it’s nonsense.”
“Yes, it is.”
At that point, my curiosity was piqued. “What poem are you considering?” I asked.
“Why, the note makes it clear. It begins – ‘Greetings from Annabel Lee’ – that’s the poem relating to the cipher.”
“Yes, the numbers below are the key, of course.” Jupiter held out his hand, and Poe gave him the small piece of foolscap. “Let me see.” The Negro knitted his brow and looked first at the cipher in one hand, and then at the poem in the other.
“Jupiter,” I began.
“You think me stupid, Griswold. Quiet.”
Back and forth went his eyes. Then with disgust, he tossed the papers to the floor. “It makes no sense, Poe. It’s still nothing.”
“Let me,” I said, getting off the bed and examining the pages. “Four – Three – One – Nine – Five – Seven.” I read off the numbers of the code. “And the corresponding letters in the poem are: ‘S’ – ‘A’ – ‘T’ – ‘E’ – ‘H’ – ‘L’… It’s not making sense. He’s right.”
“You’ve missed the commas,” Poe observed.
I looked and noticed the marks for the first time. At seemingly random points, commas were inserted in the series of numbers. “They mean something?”
“Nothing without reason, Griswold.” Poe sipped now at his liquor. “Took me a moment myself to see their significance.”
“Which is?”
“A comma indicates that the next number is a two-digit entry. The series reads, Four – Three – Nineteen – Five – Seven – Ten, and so on.”
“I see.” I was just about to read off the indicated letters when Jupiter stood up and grabbed the poem and foolscap from my hands with a snap.
He began to read the solution. “So it goes, ‘S’ – ‘A’ – ‘V’ – ‘E’ – ‘M’ – ‘E’… I see it now.” Then to himself he continued until his brow knitted again. But the zeros. What about the zeros? There are too many lines.”
“Ignore the zeros except when they are part of a two-digit number. They fill space. Every stanza has to start on the left margin.”
“Why?”
“She designed it that way.”
“Your wife? Virginia?”
“No, Griswold. Jupiter knows. The note is signed ‘M.’ That’s Marie.”
“The Black Pearl,” I muttered to myself. “The Odalisk.”
“My wife.” Jupiter’s voice was distant. He took Poe’s new guidance and continued scanning the pages. His eyes darted right and left. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”
“He’s coming to it,” smiled Poe.
“Yes. And…” Jupiter stopped and looked up, confused. “I don’t understand.”
“As I said, Jupiter. When is an answer not an answer – when it’s a riddle. The solution to the cipher leaves us in ignorance.”
“What is the riddle?” I asked.
“The cipher, once decoded, gives us this message. ‘SAVE ME. CANNOT SEE END. I’M IN HELL. ODALESE. TEN NAMES.’ Or so I break the sentences.”
“As you say, a riddle.”
“Ten names? What can it mean?”
“Yes, most is clear and unsurprising. She wants to be saved. She is giving up hope. Again the Odalisk appears, garbled but clear in intent. I would say Marie made up the square of numbers first. She recognized sometime
during the Richmond stay that we were in pursuit. So she builds the cipher, just numbers. If Fox had seen it, he would have given it no notice – just random jots. Then, on the boat, she scribbles the key, ‘Annabel Lee,’ and marks her ‘M’ completing the message. She then places it on or near my crumpled form after my hasty attempt at rescue on the steamer.”
“But what are the ten names?” Jupiter asked.
I had a flash of an idea. “The ten names of God in the Pentateuch.”
“Spoken like a Baptist,” taunted Poe. “And those names would lead us exactly where?”
I realized I had merely suggested another dead end.
“Ten Names,” grumbled Jupiter.
Poe traced and retraced his steps. “The Turba Philosphorum.”
“Alchemy?”
“Yes, it gives gold ten names. Including ‘Gold of the Beak.’ But…” He paced faster if that were possible. “Ten names of the Enlightened Buddha. No more help than our Holy Book. Then there’s the Mahabarratta, sacred text of the Hindi, with the ten names of Krishna. And we’re back to Elohim in the testament. I’m at a loss.”
“Ten names.” I could add no more.
“And here we sit.” Jupiter reached for a whiskey bottle and, for the first time in my witness, took a long drink. “Here we sit.”
Molly trembled in the bed. I went back to her and stroked her hair. “So what can we do now? I’m afraid the mystery of the cipher has been replaced by the riddle of the Ten Names.”
“There is another little puzzle. But no challenge, save to recognize that it exists at all.”
“Now you are speaking in riddles, Poe.” Jupiter looked at the bottle in his hand. After just a moment’s hesitation, he placed it back on the desk.
Imp: Being the Lost Notebooks of Rufus Wilmot Griswold in the Matter of the Death of Edgar Allan Poe Page 18