Poe must die

ELEVEN

Carefully placing his booted foot at the base of Poe’s spine, Hamlet Sproul savagely pushed the writer, sending him rushing forward, arms flailing the air for balance.

At the same time, Chopback, who carried an axe behind his neck and across both shoulders-the axe to be used on Mr. E. A. Poe-stuck his foot out, tripping Poe. The writer dove into the air, landing painfully on his left side, then slowly rolling over until he was face down, right arm outstretched, fingers digging into the stable’s straw covered dirt floor. Last night, the vision of his dead wife. This morning, a sixteenth-century painting had come to life and attacked him. And now this.

Sproul, Isaac Bard and Chopback had dragged Poe off the street and into a nearby Fifth Avenue stable to make the little poet pay for his treachery. Pay with his rum-soaked life. Hamlet Sproul unbuttoned his long green overcoat, then jerked on the leather thong around his neck until the bowie knife that hung down between his shoulder blades was in front of him. He was going to draw blood from Mr. E. A. Poe which should surely make a good Christian of this sorry excuse for a man and when Sproul finished, Chopback could use his axe to end the little poet’s days of betrayal.

Mr. Poe, author of numerous unsuccessful mystical works, would die this afternoon, die among horses standing quietly in stalls, among broken carriage wheels, bales of hay, dusty horse collars and yards of reins and bridles hanging from nails in the wall.

Poe, on his knees, pressed both hands against his aching spine.

“I would like to know-”

Hamlet Sproul grabbed a handful of Poe’s hair, snapped the writer’s head back on his shoulders and twisted the hair so that Mr. Poe felt pain. Sproul leaned over until he was nose to nose with this man he hated so much.

“You wants to know and so you shall, my poetic friend. And so you shall, you snivelin’ little Judas! Yes, Judas! Know this: As the bible proclaims, ‘man’s days are short and full of woe’ and I say unto you, Mr. Poe, your days are down to one. Today is your last on God’s green earth.”

They intend to kill me. Poe, living still another nightmare, knew immediately that this one was real. He had been only a half block from Rachel Coltman’s Fifth Avenue mansion, on his way to talk to her about his meeting with Miles Standish when Hamlet Sproul and two sinister friends had leaped from a parked carriage to roughly drag him across the street and into this stable.

Poe’s spine ached and his neck would be out of line if he lived, for Sproul’s grip on his hair was vicious. The cut on the palm of his hand from this morning’s attack by the painting was forgotten. Poe managed to croak one word.

“Why?”

Sproul’s answer was to spit tobacco juice into his eyes, blinding him, and even as Poe dug his fingertips into the corners of his eyes to stop the burning, he felt pain explode in his left temple from Sproul’s fist. Poe fell to his right, hands still over his eyes but he was staring into the red eye of the sun. His brain was on fire.

Sproul’s voice came to him from far away. “We agreed, you and I, that there would be no treachery on your part. I dealt with you, sir, as one Christian gentleman to another and you repay me with death.”

Poe stared up at Sproul. “Death?”

“Sylvester Pier is dead. Tom Lowery is dead. Someone hired you to deal with us for the corpus of Justin Coltman, but you had no intention of being honorable. Not you Mr. Poe. You were the stalking horse, the pathfinder, the lighthouse that lit the way. He used you to find us and when he found us, he slaughtered my treasured companions.”

“Who hired me? I do not understand.”

“I could pull out your lyin’ tongue and eat it meself.”

“Who?”

“Very well, then. I shall play your little game for a while longer. Not that much longer, poet. Jonathan hired you to find us. He followed you and when he learned our whereabouts he struck.”

Sproul frowned, tongue nervously licking his lips. Jonathan was no human agency, no normal man. But Sproul would triumph over both him and his snot of a servant, E. A. Poe.

Poe said, “I know of no Jonathan.”

“You lie. And do not leave your knees. Stay exactly as you now are. Any attempts at gettin’ to your feet will bring punishment down on you all the sooner. Master Chopback, that gentleman with the axe, he is here to assist and would welcome the chance to apply that instrument in removin’ most of your spine. His name comes from lovingly usin’ his axe on the backs of his enemies. Include yourself as an enemy, Mr. Poe. Chopback and Sylvester Pier were cousins of a sort. Both were lads in County Cork, chasin’ virgins and anxious to avoid dyin’ of starvation, so they come here and now Sylvester no longer has to concern hisself with virgins or a full belly, thanks to you. Chopback is anxious to get his own back, Mr. Poe and that means you are a man facin’ difficulty.”

Hamlet Sproul’s eyes were as hard as buttons, and as empty of feeling. The lunacy in the bearded grave robber was about to manifest itself and the result would be poe’s death. Poe did not want to die.

He said, “I tell you I know of no Jonathan.”

“Your story smells rather tall.” Sproul’s fingers stroked the sheathed bowie knife.

“Tell me why I am to die.”

“You expect me to believe you don’t know. Yes, it is written all over your bloodless face. Very well, poet. We talk, then I shall have your life and laugh about it as a hyena laughs over a dead nigger. Sylvester Pier was topped. Hung until he died but that was not all. His heart was cut out and so was his liver and they was both set fire to. Made a neat little pile of ashes and burned flesh beside his bleedin’ body. Your card was found in the room.”

“My card?”

“None other. The same happened to Tom Lowery, with a difference or two. Poisoned whiskey helped it along, but his heart and liver was removed and burned as well. Throat cut ear to ear and your card was found in his pocket. Your card!”

Sproul’s shout filled the stable. “There never was any hope of us collectin’ ransom, was there? You and Jonathan weaved your little web and you lets us stroll into it. He follows you to us and we die. Well, poet, today you die. We shall pay your respects to your lady friend, that one you was on your way to see.”

Poe pleaded. “I swear to you I had no hand in the death of your two friends. I am not capable of such deeds.”

“I leave it to you” Sproul said, “to make your apologies when you join them in the next world. Yours may not have been the hand on the knife what done ‘em, but yours was the callin’ card found near their mortal remains. And let it be noted that Sylvester Pier and Tom Lowery was breathin’ ’til comin’ upon you. I allow that the actual blood lettin’ is Jonathan’s handiwork for I know only too well that he had his little ways about him.

Sproul pointed a forefinger at Poe who was still on his knees. “But I charge you with leadin’ Jonathan to the killin’ ground and now our talk is done.” He drew the bowie knife from its worn, leather sheath and stepped towards Poe.

Poe leaned back, eyes on the foot long blade. And the fever called living is conquered at last. But he didn’t want to die. He had found Rachel again and he didn’t want to die. To love a beautiful woman was to be alive and Poe loved this beautiful woman.

He saw everything around him in precise detail: the tarnished buttons on Sproul’s coat, a glint of sunlight on the bowie knife’s blade, a pitchfork leaning against a horse’s stall, a saddle resting on a bale of hay and he thought that eternity, which he had so often both longed for and dreaded, should not be as ugly as it now appeared to him. Death should not be this ugly.

Sproul, eyes wide, began to feel sick from fear of Jonathan and somewhere in his mind he wished that he had not attempted to cheat him by stealing Justin Coltman’s body, but the die had been cast, the arrow shot and there was no turning back. Kill Poe. Then run to ground again and pray that Jonathan would not find him as he had found the others.

“Stand! Everybody as you are, if you please! First man what moves a bleedin’ hair gets a ball for his trouble!”

Figg crouched at the top of a ladder leading from the hayloft down to the ground floor, two pocket pistols pointed at Sproul, Chopback and the third man, Isaac Bard.

Poe’s eyes quickly went to his deliverer. He saw a small mountain of a man in black top hat, long black coat and boots, with the face of a monstrous and surly bulldog. The face belonged to someone who ate raw meat with the run still in it. But this specimen of prehistoric man had just pulled Poe back from that greatest of unknowns and Poe accepted his deliverance from death gladly.

He stood up and watched Figg start down the ladder, moving carefully, eyes on the men below him. Figg had never seen a knife like Sproul’s before; the blade was large enough to be melted down for cannon if a man had a mind to. The one called Chopback had his axe and the third man showed no weapon, which was not a reason for Figg to play him cheap. The boxer knew that staying alive in the world meant treating all men as capable of removing you from it.

Poe used the sleeve of his greatcoat to wipe the remainder of the tobacco juice from his face. He’d never seen Bulldog Face before and insofar as he could remember had never done him a good turn. So why was he racing to Poe’s rescue?

Sproul continued to chew his tobacco, never taking his eyes from Figg as the boxer slowly made his way down the ladder. “You ain’t the stable boy, I’m thinkin’.”

“Ain’t your Aunt Nelly neither. You would be doin’ yourself a favor if you were to drop that cuttin’ tool you are holdin’. Must be a most heavy burden for such a slight fella as yourself.”

“Does what I tell it.”

“Tell it to lie on the ground. I will not be askin’ you agin.”

Sproul opened his fingers, dropping the huge knife to the ground.

Stopping his descent, Figg said, “Mr. Poe, there is a stable door in front of you direct. Use it, if you please. Outside you will find a worried lookin’ gentleman in a carriage pulled by a rather sad lookin’ bay horse. Introduce yourself and be tellin’ him I sent you.”

Poe bent over to pick up his hat and stick. Removing himself from this society of homicidal imbeciles would be his pleasure; let them all devour one another. Let them bathe in each other’s blood.

Chopback made his move. No one was going to cheat him out of what he’d come here for. He was a small, black-bearded man with the widely spaced, pop eyes of a frog and using his axe on those he hated made him feel as tall as anyone walking the earth. Chopback, who had swung the blade of his axe into the backs of a tidy number of men, thought of his dead cousin Sylvester Pier and the ugly death that had been his thanks to Mr. Poe and Chopback lifted his short-handled axe high over his head.

Figg extended one arm and fired.

Smoke appeared from beneath the hammer and from the barrel of his six-inch pocket pistol and two seconds later, there was a neat, round hole over Chopback’s left eyebrow. Dead on his feet, the frog-eyed little man dropped the axe behind him, falling backwards and on top of it.

That same shot almost killed Pierce James Figg.

The four horses in the stable-like all horses of that time-were not trained to accept gunfire. These horses whinnied, shied, kicked against the stalls and one pulled his bridle free and backed out in a panic; his movements increased the fear and uncertainty among the other three and all crashed against their stall. It was the first one, a black with a shiny coat and white, thunder-boltlike streak running from eyes to nose, who backed out of his stall and into the ladder Figg stood on, sending the boxer flying, causing him to drop both pistols.

Poe’s heart sank as Figg hit the ground, but the boxer leaped to his feet-empty handed-and sidestepped the frightened horse.

All of the horses now backed out of their stalls and milled around the center of the stable where Poe, his would-be killers and would-be rescuer were. To avoid being trampled to death, Poe ducked into an empty stall. There was no back door to the stable and between Poe and the front door were three dangerous men and four terrified horses. It was necessary to absent himself from this precarious ground but how? On his knees, he peeked out of a stall and saw Hamlet Sproul snatch up his bowie knife, then leap backwards to avoid a galloping horse. He saw Isaac Bard pull the axe from under the dead Chopback and he saw the two of them direct their full attentions to Poe’s deliverer, the man with the bulldog’s face.

Isaac Bard was a gray, squat fifty-year-old who was trying to hang on in the dangerous underworld of Five Points and the Bowery, an underworld controlled by the tough, young Irish. Bard was a member of “The Dead Rabbits,” the most vicious Irish gang in Five Points, a gang that wore a red stripe down the side of their pants and carried a dead rabbit into battle stuck on a pike. Isaac Bard hired himself out as often as he could; for a dollar he had agreed to be Hamlet Sproul’s man for as long as it took to deal with Master E. A. Poe. Bard could neither read nor write, so the fact that Master Poe was a man of letters was lost on him. The scribbler was only a day’s work; that work meant taking his life.

Poe’s throat was tight with fear. His rescuer was trapped between a panicked, whinnying horse and two armed men, each holding cold steel. The bulldog had only empty hands, not enough to keep both him and Poe alive.

Poe saw the bulldog quickly crouch, pick up the ladder he’d just fallen from and, gripping it tightly in both hands, charge Sproul and Bard, hitting both men simultaneously, driving them back, back. Both men went down and Figg dropped the ladder on top of them.

Poe watched the violence with total concentration, fascinated by it, attaching himself to it completely and losing himself in it so that he became one with all three men. Violence had always lured him and now he succumbed to it, on his feet so that he could better view the life and death drama being played solely for him. For him.

He watched Isaac Bard die.

Bard, flat on his back, kept his grip on the axe but he was slower than Figg, whose life had been a study of combat. Isaac Bard rolled to his left side, one hand gripping the axe, the other against the ground to push himself to his feet.

His head was waist high when Figg, standing in front of him, placed both hands behind Bard’s head and pulled it down hard into his raised knee. Poe heard Bard sigh as though drifting into sleep. Bard, his nose crushed, panicked at the horrible hurt exploding in his face; he panicked because he could no longer breathe. Poe saw the axe fall, but he also saw that Figg didn’t let go of Bard’s head.

With his left hand on the top of the gray-haired man’s head, Figg cupped the man’s chin with his right hand and savagely twisted the head as though turning a wheel. Figg snapped Isaac Bard’s neck, killing him. To Poe, what he had just seen had the beauty and grace of dance. He watched with fascination as Figg dropped Bard’s limp body and Poe wondered what it would be like to lay your bare hands on a man and kill him with such arrogant ease.

Poe cringed, recoiling as Sproul, keeping the bowie knife low, inched towards Figg. If the bulldog perishes, then my own life is forfeit.

A horse reared up on its hind legs. Poe’s eyes went to it, to the closed stable door. To get out of the stable he had to pass Hamlet Sproul and the bulldog, who no longer wore his tall black hat. Bulldog’s head, crudely shorn of whatever hair nature had seen fit to bless it with, was visible and of no beauty worth mentioning. His face was enough to scare the whole of purgatory. But he did not back up as Sproul slithered towards him like some stalking lizard. Bulldog had courage. Grant him that before he died.

The stable door slid open and sunlight entered suddenly, forcing Poe to close his eyes. When he opened them, the horses had fled out onto Fifth Avenue where they kicked up snow as they ran. There was a silhouette in the doorway and Poe narrowed his eyes and focused on it.

“Mr. Figg! Mr. Figg, are you safe, sir! I heard a shot and there was an awful noise from the horses throwing themselves against the door.” In the doorway, Titus Bootham shaded his eyes and looked into the stable.

Hamlet Sproul stopped, both hands on the bowie knife, arms extended in front of him. His voice broke with fear. “Jonathan sent you.”

Figg shook his head.

Sproul shrieked, “You lie! You are here to kill me!” He began backing away from Figg. “You will not burn my heart or nothin’ else that is inside of me. You will not burn-”

He turned and ran.

Poe watched him flee through the wide open stable door, not pausing to even glance at the short man who stood there in steel-rimmed spectacles and a black bear fur coat. Jonathan. Why did Sproul, a man feared by the underworld fear Jonathan? Did this hairless and monstrous bulldog, who now bent over to pick up his two pocket pistols and tall black hat, work for Jonathan, this Jonathan whom Sproul claimed had killed Pier and Lowery and burned their hearts and liver.

Poe closed his eyes and his body shook. He was cold with fear, suddenly aware of a massive evil in his life, of being caught in a quicksand of events over which he had no control. All that we see or seem/Is but a dream within a dream.

Jonathan.

Without knowing why, Poe sensed that Jonathan was very much a danger and could destroy him. The darkness that Jonathan carried with him was not that unleashed by Poe on the printed page. It was something real and never too far away and all of this Poe sensed in the seconds he stood in the stable with closed eyes.

When he opened his eyes, the bulldog and his short friend in the bear coat stood before him.

Poe’s eyes met Figg’s. The writer said softly, “Are you from Jonathan?”

Figg said, “I come to kill him.”

Poe nodded. He was not surprised.

He watched Figg slip the two pistols into the outside pockets of his long black coat.

There was no need for Poe to remain here any longer. “I thank you for saving my life. I wish there was something further I could do-”

“There is.”

“I am in your debt, Mr.-”

“Figg. Pierce James Figg. I seek your aid in finding Jonathan. I have here in my possession, a letter of introduction from-”

Poe closed his eyes and shook his head. “I fear you mistake me for someone else.”

“You are Edgar Allan Poe and I have here in my possession, a letter-”

Fear brought on Poe’s anger. “I have some small curiosity, Mr. Figg, as to how you made my acquaintance without my having made yours.”

“We ain’t been introduced if that is where you are placin’ your words.”

Titus Bootham plucked at Figg’s sleeve. “May I suggest we continue this conversation elsewhere, as I am afraid we may soon draw servants seeking an explanation regarding the disappearance of four excellent horses. Oh, Mr. Figg, dare I ask. Are those two men-” he pointed to Isaac Bard and Chopback, “are they-”

Figg kept staring at Poe. “They are. Mr. Poe-”

Poe feared the unseen Jonathan and he wanted nothing to do with this Figg who hunted him. “I have no interest in your letter of introduction even were it signed by Aristotle and witnessed by Shakespeare and the Prophet John. I seek no further involvement in this business-”

He thought of Rachel Coltman. “I seek no further involvement than I have already incurred and this is nothing I care to discuss with you.” Why hadn’t this Figg rushed out into the wintery gusts like the other animals?

Figg took one step towards him and Poe stepped back. Figg made him uneasy.

“You will help me, Mr. Poe. You will.”

“I have refused you, sir.”

“I have just killed two men.”

“Are you threatening me?”

Figg’s voice was that of a man with a dusty throat. Figg’s smile was the size of a sixpenny piece and lasted no longer than a drop of water in the fires of hell. “Threatenin’ you, Mr. Poe. Go on. Now why would I indulge in such practices, me an Englishman and all.”

“You have threatened me, sir. I know it.”

“Then know that I mean to have your help, Mr. Poe, and consider us joined by God until I completes me business or until God puts us asunder.”

“You mean until you kill whom you seek or until he kills us both?”

Figg placed an arm around Poe’s small shoulders, forcing him to walk with him towards the front door of the stable. “I am newly arrived in your country and I am sure you will be of some small assistance to me.”

Poe watched Figg reach inside his long, black coat. “I have here in me possession, a letter of introduction-”

Poe felt Figg’s fingers dig into his shoulder, keeping the two of them joined and in step.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing/Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.