Poe must die

asked his help. He owed her his best effort and that meant staying sober, staying healthy, staying sane. But it had been at his feet all the time!

Poe’s trembling hands brought the glass of gin to his lips.

FOUR

A disgusted Pierce James Figg wanted to kick Mr. E. A. Poe in the head and be done with it.

Deep in drunken sleep, Poe lay curled on top of old newspapers in a dark corner of a cold, damp cellar, his slight body just inches from Figg’s feet. The boxer was seeing him for the first time, and the man was nothing but a gin-soaked pile of rags; Figg would not piss on Mr. Poe if each and every rag was in flames. Figg, squinting in the meager candlelight, was angry and disappointed. Travelling across an ocean to talk to, God help us, a lushington with a billy in his hole, a drunkard with a handkerchief in his mouth, his skinny little body wrapped in black clothing that had seen better days.

Hungry and exhausted, on edge because of the man he was stalking, Figg had come directly from the steamer Britannia in New York harbor to the New York Evening Mirror, the newspaper which currently employed Mr. Poe. In Figg’s humble opinion, anyone dumb enough to employ Mr. Poe had a pudding for a brain.

It was dawn, still snowing and in a twenty-five cent cab ride from the docks, Figg had seen and smelled enough of New York to last him a lifetime. A filthy city of wooden houses and muddy streets, with garbage, dead animals and ashes from fireplaces in the streets and rats and pigs feasting on it all. Gaslight threw beautiful long shadows on the snow, but you forgot that when you passed a slaughterhouse and heard cows and sheep crying out for their lives and you smelled their blood and dried guts, a stench which even the winter cold could not hide. Damn New York. Find Jonathan quickly, kill him, then leave this city of dirt and ice.

“What the ‘ell was he mutterin’ about when I come down them stairs?” Figg spoke to Josiah Rusher, an Evening Mirror copyboy and the only other person in the cellar.

“Oh that, sir. ‘Bird and bug, bird and bug’.”

Figg’s soft voice took on a sudden harshness. “I ‘eard it. I just wants to know what the ‘ell he means by it.” He snapped the words at the boy like a whip, wiping the smile from his face.

“He is speaking of his creative works, sir. Bird is ‘The Raven,’ a poem of some magnificence and bug is ‘The Gold Bug,’ a highly unusual work of detection. Public response to both has been most favorable, but I have heard him say that he would rather roast eternally on the devil’s spit than be remembered merely for these two achievements.”

Like to see him stand up, I would. I likes to remember ‘im for that.” Poe was a glock, a half-wit, and that’s all there was to it. Mr. Dickens ought to be more particular about choosing his friends.

“Mr. Poe is a good man, sir.” Josiah Rusher, 17, lean and stoop-shouldered in ink-stained overalls, red flannel shirt and mud spattered boots, held a candle in one long, bony hand, shielding its flame with the other. Figg was frightening, an ominous looking bull of a man with a scarred face and limping right leg and he stood between Josiah and the only staircase leading from the newspaper’s storeroom. Upstairs, only a handful of people were in the paper at this early hour. But Eddy was his friend, the one person on the newspaper who treated him with kindness.

Josiah used the palm of his right hand to rub candle wax from the back of his left hand. “Mr. Poe is courteous, decisive, with much grace and enthusiasm.”

Figg snorted, then spat. In the candlelight, the spit was a silver sliver on Poe’s shoe. “Don’t be readin’ to me over his bloody coffin, mate. When’s his eyes goin’ to open, may I ask yer worship?”

Josiah cleared his throat. “Some-someone put him in a cab and told the driver to bring him here. That was a hour or so ago and I am given to understand that he had been down in Five Points.”

“What is Five Points, if I might make so bold?”

“A terrible slum, sir. Horrible place.” Josiah’s eyes widened. “Filled with Irish and coloreds and almost every soul there involved in the criminal pursuits. A wicked place and not one for a casual stroll.”

“This damn city reeks of Irish.” So does London, for that matter.

“Famine, sir, 1846. Over a million died of hunger in Ireland and others left to come-”

“To come to any bleedin’ place where they could steal for a livin’.” Figg didn’t like the Irish. One had tried to bite Figg’s thumb off in a boxing match and Figg had stopped him by gouging out the Irishman’s left eye.

“Uh, Mr. Figg, if I might say so, he is not well, you know. Eddy is in poor health.”

“Sleeps well enough.”

“The smallest dram of whiskey-”

“I can bloody well see that, mate.”

Josiah gripped the candle with both hands to keep it from shaking. Hot wax oozed down onto his fingers. Fear of Figg sent the boy’s voice higher. “Sir, I mean sir, it is early and perhaps you would be warmed by coffee and brandy. If you come upstairs-”

“I ain’t leavin’ ’im.”

“He is a sick man, sir. Let him sleep and when he wakes, he will be in better condition to be of service to you.”

Figg, standing just beyond the circle of light from Josiah’s candle, looked at the nervous copyboy. Not much older than my Will and still growing. Within spitting distance of manhood, this one, and hair as yellow as the king’s gold. Scared of me and tryin’ hard not to tremble, him and me bein’ alone down here in this flippin’ ice house. Has Will’s eyes, he does, eyes as green as England’s hills. And he did offer me food and drink.

Brandy. Warms a man and that is a fact. Bit of food might help matters along as well, somethin’ simple and not too challengin’ to a man’s stomach. Figg reached down and picked up the carpetbag containing the few things he had brought with him from London.

“Could use somethin’ to eat while I waits. Willin’ to pay, I am.” He forced a quick smile which Josiah couldn’t see in the darkness.

But the copyboy heard the warmth in the boxer’s voice and he considered himself reprieved from the most horrible of unknown fates. His grin was enormous. “Just up those stairs in back of you, sir. I will place this candle on the packing case here so that Eddy shall have light when he awakens. It will be my pleasure to return and look in on him and most assuredly, I shall keep you advised concerning his every move.”

Figg’s mumble could scarcely be heard. “Pin a rose on ‘im.”

“Sir?”

“Just sayin’ goodbye to Mr. Bird and Bug, is all.” Welcome to North America, Pierce James Figg, you frozen, unlucky bugger.

Halfway up the stairs, Figg turned and again looked down at Poe and his mind went back two weeks ago to England where another man lay at Figg’s feet, this one having had his throat cut from ear to ear.

By Figg.

Figg was stomach down in cold, wet grass. He squinted through darkness and falling rain at the three men who had followed him into Regent’s Park.

The long, black frock coat he’d worn to his son’s hanging earlier today now covered his head and much of his body, allowing him to blend into the night, to become another shadow on the ground, to be come an extension of shadows cast by trees near the park zoo. Moonlight gleamed on rain slicked leaves and Figg’s right fist tightened around the small belt dagger. Bless you, Mr. Dickens, sir. This here little sticker ain’t no arsenal, but it is surely some small comfort to me.

A chilled rain drummed on his coat, drenching it, making it heavier. Pierce James Figg, master of the noble science of defense, master of the sword and cudgel, planned to use the rain-soaked coat as a weapon. The cold rain didn’t bother him; he had been cold and wet before and would be again.

Three. Using the dagger point to lift the wet coat up an inch or two, he watched the killers spread out and look around for him. Figg’s smile was deadly. Come for my life, have you? Well, step closer me lovelies and we will start the dance, you and I.

“He’s bloomin’ ’ere. Stop fiddle arsin’ around, you two and find ‘im.” Figg recognized