“No deceivin’ this time, squire. Whoever the lady is, she’s got a ball in her. Come, let us see if we can find a trace of her.”
Figg looked up at the sky. “Moon’s full. We ‘ave the light.” He limped forward in a crouch, eyes on the snow, the cloak over his shoulder. The empty flintlock was jammed down into his belt. The other was in his hand and if he had to use it on the woman again, so be it. She was Jonathan’s wench and Figg would kill her as easily as he sipped ale.
In the cold, moonlit night, he and Poe kept their eyes down and looked for blood in the soft, beautiful snow.
TWENTY-SEVEN
“Hugh Larney,do not turn around. Stay as you are.”
The soft voice was Jonathan’s and it came from behind Larney. The food merchant’s blood turned cold; he held his breath. Jonathan had managed to enter Larney’s home unseen and was now upstairs in the special room, the room with the silver-handled coffin and the books on black magic and witchcraft. A servant had reported the door to the room slightly ajar and a fire burning in the fireplace. An enraged Larney had rushed upstairs, a poker in his hand.
Jonathan.
Larney’s hands shook; he dropped the poker.
“Listen and listen well. I said do not turn around. The sight of your stupid face might force me to kill you here. Last night, you and Miles attempted to murder Poe against my orders. Why?”
“M-Miles said you wanted him dead.”
“Miles lied. And you believed him.”
“He said, said, you wanted Poe dead and yes, yes I believed him.”
“Miles does not think, he reacts. And I shall kill him for it.”
Larney thought he heard a cat meow. Or, in his fear, had he imagined it? A cat?
“Jonathan, I would not-”
“But you have. You, Miles and Volney Gunning. What shall I do with the three of you, Hugh? Tell me. I have already told you what I intend to do with Miles.”
A cat meowed again. Larney wanted to turn around; he wanted to run. But he wanted to live and so he did nothing. “Jonathan, I have, have to tell you something.”
“You, Miles and Volney have mounted one more attack on the life of Poe.”
“Ye-yes.”
“Your intelligence is transparent. Do you wish to die?”
“N-no. Oh please, oh-”
“You can buy your life.”
“I will give you anything, anything.”
“You cannot buy it with money. You can buy it with blood, both you and Volney must purchase your lives in blood.”
“We shall, we will.”
“You both are to kill Miles Standish. First let me say that if your second attack on Poe’s life succeeds, all three of you will die by my hand and most painfully. Should Poe survive this attack, leave him alone until I tell you differently.”
“Yes. I understand.”
“I knew you would. Again, you and Volney Gunning are to kill Miles Standish.”
“W-when?”
“As soon as it can be arranged, and Larney-”
“Yes, Jonathan?”
“Succeed in this task.”
“I shall, Jonathan. I shall. You have my word-”
Larney heard the cat meow again, heard the movement of Jonathan’s arm as he brought the small piece of metal down against the back of Larney’s head.
The blow was painful, but not hard. It wasn’t meant to be. Larney dropped to the floor on his knees and hands. Blackness squeezed his brain, then released it and he shook his head to clear it, forcing his eyes open, forcing them to focus.
The shrieking came from the fireplace and it was horrible, shredding Larney’s nerves, shocking him into full awakeness. Jonathan had tossed a sack of live cats into the fireplace and now the sack jerked, twisted and took on a terrified life of its own as the burning cats struggled to get out.
The cats howled and their cries pierced Larney’s brain like shards of cold steel. Still on his knees, he closed his eyes, hands over his ears to drown out the sound of the burning cats. Now the smell of the tortured animals reached his nose and Larney screamed.
Servants pounded on the locked door and still Larney screamed.
Later, when he had left the room, he asked the servants if they had seen anyone in the house who didn’t belong there. A frightened Larney was not surprised when they told him
With Jonathan’s threat very much on his mind and the sound and smell of the burning cats still with him, Hugh Larney quickly left his home to seek out Volney Gunning. Miles Standish would die before the setting of the sun.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Figg pushed the last of his custard and hard-boiled egg into his mouth, chewing while staring through the window of the speeding train at the snow-covered ground and trees. The train was carrying him and Poe from Fordham back to New York. “This ‘ere thing moves right along. Ain’t no trains in England what speeds like this one.”
Poe, seated across from him, nibbled on a slice of ham. “A speeding train, such as this one, is a dangerous business, sir.”
“It’s
“An American train, Mr. Figg, is as poorly constructed as the track upon which it rolls. Curves are sharp, grades steep and the consideration given to passenger safety can best be described as fleeting. America is being speedily erected. It rises overnight from a wilderness, and under such circumstances, there is little time to waste upon being precise. Our republic worships the obsolete; it builds nothing that will last and it seems the citizenry, in its blissful ignorance, prefers this state of affairs. American trains undergo accidents at an astounding rate, a brutal truth we accept as we do political promises and heavy-handed dentists. Un-pleasantries to be endured and survived, the process to be repeated much too frequently.”
Figg grunted. “Nothin’ built to last, you say.”
Poe nodded.
“Then why build a bloody thing at all? I mean in your New York you have people buildin’ one thing or another everywhere you turn. A man cannot stroll about your fair city without he gets the dust of cement and plaster in ‘is nostrils.”
Poe fingered the woman’s cloak found last night near his cottage. It lay across his knees warming him. “We call that the spirit of ‘go-ahead,’ Mr. Figg. The ‘go-aheads’ tear down the beautiful old Dutch housing and churches of this city, to replace them with the ugly, cramped wooden tenements needed to house a growing immigrant population, that welcomed source of cheap labor for a growing nation. New York feeds on progress, Mr. Figg and
