Poe must die

But Figg had slumped down in his seat, top hat covering his face.

“Gots to gets me beauty nap when I can squire, when I can. Long night in front. From the Irishman it’s back to them Renaissance travellin’ players. Wake me when we gets where we’re goin’.”

Poe wanted to talk about Byron and Figg wanted to sleep. The poet sighed. The ape sleeps in ignorance of the greatness around him. He absorbs it not. Surely God is a buffoon to have created so many buffoons in his image.

Poe, shivering in his greatcoat, licked his lips and thought of the taste of gin. And rum. And wine. He hadn’t had a drink in almost two days. Forty-eight hours. His mouth tasted of ashes yet his head felt clear and he was functioning. But he was writing little and giving no thought to his job at the Evening Mirror, or the fifty cents a page he earned there for scribbling anything that came to mind. He smiled. No money, no liquor which was not unusual. Rachel. The thought of her was enough. He smiled again.

The cabdriver flicked the whip and both horses strained against their harnesses. Poe breathed in the cool night air and thought of Jonathan, demons and Dearborn Lapham. And the very dead, still immersed in ice somewhere on this stinking island, Justin Coltman.

TWENTY-ONE

HAMLET SPROUL SAT on the floor, Ida Sairs’ cold hand pressed against his cheek. He had never known such terrible sorrow in all his life. He wept, moaned, rocked back and forth and he vowed revenge.

Jonathan. Mr. Poe. Yes, even the Englishman with the ugly bulldog face, who had climbed down the ladder to kill Chopback and Isaac Bard. Him, too. They would all die for what had happened here this night. Hamlet Sproul would have his revenge for the killing of his boys and Ida. Dear little Ida, who had hurt no man and who had been hurt by all men. Ida, who had brought a welcomed sweetness into the hard life of Hamlet Sproul.

He screamed at the top of his voice, a wordless cry torn deep from his pained soul.

What kind of beast would carve the heart and liver from small boys and a gentle woman? And burn them.

Jonathan. With help from that bastard Poe. This was his vengeance for trying to kill him in the stable. To do this to a woman-

Woman. Poe had a woman. Yes, that was it! Let him feel this same unholy agony that was tearing apart Hamlet Sproul. Let Poe weep and shriek for his dead woman. Oh yes, Poe would die and so would Mr. Ugly Bulldog. And Jonathan. That would not be easy, but anything could be done if a man put his whole self on it and Hamlet Sproul had every reason in the world to put his whole self on killing Jonathan.

He squeezed Ida Sairs’ cold hand again, kissing it and tasting the salt of his own tears. On her dead head and that of his two sons, he vowed to kill Rachel Coltman as soon as possible. And her death would be most unpleasant.

TWENTY-TWO

Five points.

Figg doubted that the devil himself would have the nerve to show his horned head in this bit of hell. The cabdriver, strong on self-preservation, had stopped on the edge of the slum, refusing to go further. So it was step down into mud shoe-top high and with Poe as guide, trek through narrow streets and alleys lacking all gaslight. There was light, if you could call it that. A stub of a candle flickering in a window lacking all glass. A lantern in the hands of passing, hard-faced strangers. A burning end of a cigar in the mouth of a filthy whore calling from a doorway. Small bonfires of trash in the streets where adults and children in rags warmed their hands, their dirty faces blank with despair. The cold night couldn’t hide the stink; nothing but foul air everywhere. Figg walked past rotting tenements worse than anything to be found in London’s Seven Dials slum or even The Holy Land. He and Poe brushed past men, women and children wrapped in dirt-encrusted rags, most of them drunk and surly, cursing each other and anyone unfortunate enough to be near them. Children fought each other over the last few drops in a whiskey bottle. There was less hope here than in the breast of a man standing on a scaffold with a rope around his neck.

And Figg knew what a man’s life wasn’t worth a farthing in Five Points. Keep your eyes open and your powder dry. Figg’s hands were in his pockets around the butts of his two pocket flintlocks. Lord bless and keep the gunsmith.

He and Poe reached the Louvre.

Inside the smell of oil from lamps attached to wagon wheels hanging from the ceiling was heavy in the air. Figg smelled whiskey and sweat from the crowd of people packed on the dance floor and sitting on long wooden benches against the wall. The dance hall resembled a dark tunnel filled with men and women clutching each other and dancing crude polkas and waltzes, the men bearded and chewing tobacco, the women with pinched, somber faces and bad teeth.

Harp, drum and trumpet furnished the music. A tiny woman with a sad face gently plucked the harp strings, her eyes closed as though imagining herself to be somewhere else. The trumpet player was a lad who Figg guessed to be no older than fourteen. From the sounds of him, he hadn’t had the instrument to his lips more than a few times in his life. The drummer was old, small, bald and had only one arm. Pounds that bleedin’ drum like he was shoeing a horse, thought Figg, hands still in his pockets.

He and Poe found a seat on the bench, the wall to their backs which Figg preferred. He turned to Poe. “Ain’t no tables ‘ere.”

“One comes here to dance rather than converse.”

“And drink, from the looks of it.”

“The waiter girls will indulge your every whim, be it alcoholic or more intimate.”

“Figured more than rum was for sale down ‘ere.” Figg looked at the waiter girls. Young ones, some of them. Babies. Maybe fourteen, fifteen years old and the oldest not much over twenty. Short black dresses, black net stockings and red knee boots with tassels and bells. Waiter girls. Whores for a few coins.

Johnnie Bill Baker of the crossed eyes was not a man to spend much on inside light. Figg could see that and damn little else in the darkness around him. Whale oil lamps hanging from the ceiling, some tallow candles on the wall and behind the long plank-on-barrels bar, but other than that, a man needed good eyes and good luck in order to see his hand in front of his face.

Cheap dresses on the women. No crinoline, no puffy skirts with ten petticoats underneath. Just faded cloth with unwashed flesh underneath. Dark clothes and shirts without collars and cuffs for the men. Worn boots on a dance floor sanded to give boots a better grip. The usual tobacco spitting going on, with more juice hitting the floor than the inside of a spittoon. And on air that reeked of people who didn’t bathe and didn’t care one way or another about it.

Poe stood up to stop a waiter girl, whispered in her ear then sat down. “She will bring Johnnie Bill Baker to us.”

“You knows the gent, you say?”

“I have encountered him during my travels in the lower depths of our republic.”

“What kind of man is he, besides what you been tellin’ me?”

“Shrewd. A killer. Concerned with himself and all that concerns him. If you are not already aware of it, this place does not welcome strangers and the people who populate it are quick to prey on the unwary.”

Figg unbuttoned one button on his black frock coat. “I will bear that in mind, Mr. Poe.”

The young waiter girl returned. She was bone thin, looked younger than her fourteen years and had eyes that were much older. She spoke with a slight lisp. “Mr. Baker annountheth that he ain’t in the habit of talkin’ to people what geth drunk and patheth out in the rat pit on his premitheth.”

Figg looked at Poe, who mumbled. “There is a rat pit in back and I did-” He stopped, then raised his voice. “Please announce to Mr. Baker that our business with him is urgent and-”

“Little girl,” said Figg behind an unfriendly grin as he grabbed her wrist. “Announce to Mr. Baker for me that it would be best for the peace of ‘is premises if ‘e were to come ‘ere and talk with us. Otherwise I shall get up from