Mrs. Poe (38 page)

Reverend Griswold smiled smoothly. “Surely this is all a misunderstanding.”

So this was how our affair was to be discovered, by a letter I had never written. Mrs. Poe must have concocted it to damn me to a well-known tattler and her husband’s enemy. A curious calm, cold and heavy as a blanket of snow, fell over me. There would be no more hiding now. There would be no more affair. Only a mournful and never-ending remembrance of a rare and precious love.

“Well!” cried Mrs. Ellet when I smiled. “I don’t see anything that is the slightest bit humorous about all this. I don’t know about you, but
I
want my letters back.” She marched up the steps and rapped on the door.

I watched in numb fascination for it to open.

No one came.

She pounded on the door. “I saw the curtain move!” she called. When no one responded after another rapping, she shouted, “Mr. Poe! I know you’re in there! Come out here this minute and give me my poems!”

The snow consumed her cries.

She turned sharply. “Are you just going to stand there, Rufus? Do something!”

He drew up his shoulders in a shrug. “If Mr. Poe is not home—”

“He’s home,” snapped Mrs. Ellet. She raised her voice to the door. “Coward, hiding behind your women! I’ll be back!” She latched on to Reverend Griswold’s arm. “Let’s go.”

I reeled away from them and strode, slipping, for home. The children spilled onto the street just as I reached the Bartletts’. I opened the gate, shaken now of its cap of snow, and started up the stone steps.

I felt a blow on my neck.

I turned and found Ellen, covering her mouth with her mittens. “Sorry, Mamma. It was an accident.”

Pieces of ice slithered inside my collar and down my back. I hardly felt them.

•  •  •

The day turned colder around two o’clock, driving the children inside. A horse-drawn plow had come down Amity but there were still
few travelers upon the street. I sat at the front parlor window, with a pen poised idly in my hand. I was too agitated to write a word but used it as an excuse not to sit downstairs in the family room with Eliza and the children until I could sort out what I’d seen.

What could Mary be doing in town? She had been seen off to Ireland months ago. But there was no mistaking her wide blue eyes and dimples, nor the mole so prettily punctuating her cheek. It was her and something was wrong with her. She’d been unwell for much of the time since Mr. Bartlett had brought her home, smudged and coughing, the day of the Great Fire, but she had never looked so strange. To think that she had been in charge of the children—had she been hiding a grave illness?

But why was she not in Ireland? Why was she at the Poes’? And yet, I was hesitant to tell Eliza that I’d seen her. For all of Eliza’s claims that she would welcome Mary back, I had the uncomfortable sense that Eliza would not relish this news. A fresh wave of nausea swept over me.

Outside, squinting up at the house, was a small boy wrapped in layers and layers until he resembled a child’s rag ball. He pushed open the squealing gate and began to trudge up the steps. I met him at the door, letting in a freezing blast.

From within the muffler swathed around his head, he piped, “A message for Mrs. Good-good, ma’am.”

I smiled. “I think you mean me.” I took the folded paper. On it was written “Mrs. Osgood” in Edgar’s orderly hand. I opened it quickly.

I’m at Trinity Church. You must come now. Your life depends upon it. Hurry, my love.

Edgar

Alarm shot through my veins. Mr. Poe had never been so bold as to send a message before. What crisis had prompted this?

The boy peered up at me from a gap in his muffler.

“Come in.” I shut the door. “Wait.”

I ran upstairs to fetch my reticule, and while I was at it, my hat, muff, and coat.

Why Trinity Church?
Trinity was a good mile to the south. But
it was only a few blocks from Mr. Poe’s office for the
Journal,
and a church was one of the few buildings open to the public at all hours, although would Trinity be today? The rebuilding had not yet been finished.

Muff under my arm, I rushed back downstairs, tying on my hat. I paused to give the boy a half dime. Catherine came up from the basement, then pulled back in surprise.

“Who’s this?”

“He brought me a message from a friend. Let him warm himself before the fire. Do we have an extra bun for him?”

“I don’t know—”

“Tell Mrs. Bartlett that a friend needs me,” I said, going to the door. “I’ll be right back.”

Outside, the air had turned bitter. I hunched into myself, trembling more from anxiety than from the cold as I minced and slid toward Broadway. There, on the busiest street of town, few had braved the elements. A sleigh jingled by, then a beer wagon on runners, pulled by sturdy shaggy horses straining against their halters. I passed only a handful of citizens, so huddled into their clothes that their faces were hidden.

What mad scheme of Virginia’s had Edgar uncovered? I could not live with myself if my children or the Bartletts were endangered.

I forced my way through the alien landscape. At Broadway and Prince, the doors of Mr. Astor’s mansion flew open. Oblivious to my shock, four Chinese servants ran down the steps, carrying a burden between them. They spread out on the sidewalk, each taking a corner of what turned out to be a blanket, from the center of which scowled the ancient Mr. Astor, in a nightgown and fur cap. Using the blanket as a sort of trampoline, they proceeded to vigorously toss him in the air. The pompom on his cap flying, his fur-slippered feet kicking, and his ropey octogenarian jaw grimly clenching, the richest man in New York endured each hearty bounce. Then, as if given a signal, the Chinamen ran together and folded him in, then trotted back up the steps.

“Good for blood,” said the Chinese doorman, seeing my astonishment. “Live long time.” Then he banged the door closed, leaving me standing in the wintery wasteland.

Disconcerted, I journeyed on. I passed the Astor House, where a single doorman shivered into his blue livery at the top of the steps. I shuffled past Saint Paul’s Chapel, past Mr. Brady’s closed studio, past the City Hotel and some venerable mansions whose original inhabitants had long since departed. On frozen feet I came to the grounds of the Trinity Church graveyard. I tipped back my head. Severe, haughty, built in defiance of nature, the spire of the bell tower of Trinity, the tallest structure in the city, pierced the stark white sky.

Something felt horribly wrong.

I let myself in the churchyard gate, its hinges shrieking from the cold. The monuments, the names of those they commemorated obliterated by shrouds of snow, watched in mute disapproval as I crunched my way through the skeletal trees. With a jarring caw, a crow landed above me, sending down a dusting of snow.

I peered around anxiously for Edgar, my movements watched by the curious crow, who hopped heavily from branch to branch as if to get a better view. Compelled to be out of its sight, I ducked into the stone side porch of the church, then pushed open the heavy door and spilled into the sanctuary. I inhaled cold, stale air.

The hushed cavernous vault was empty of pews. Bloodred light oozed through an apostle’s stained-glass cloak. Many of the other windows were still yawning holes in the wall, hastily nailed over with wood. In place of the altar, in what would be the holiest part of the church, stood workbenches and sawhorses. No one would be worshipping here today or any day soon.

I noticed a red ribbon upon a nearby sawhorse. Drawing closer, I saw that a paper had been tied to the sawhorse’s spine.

Mrs. Osgood

Again it was in Edgar’s handwriting. I plucked off the paper and opened it.

Please come upstairs. Quickly!

I looked around. There were no stairs. How did one go up? It was strange enough that Edgar had called me to an unfinished church on such a winter’s day,
stranger still that he should insist that we meet upstairs. I felt a rush of angry fear. Why could he not meet me right here?

I heard a muffled thud. I held my breath, listening.

The building moaned with the wind. I told myself that what I had heard overhead were green timbers, contracting in the blast, even as my throat constricted with foreboding.

Something scurried above.

“Edgar? Is that you?”

Outside, the wind keened. It forced its whistling way through the boarded-up windows. The building groaned as if in sympathy, then fell silent.

My breathing echoed in the vast chamber as I inched forward. I saw that the main door to the sanctuary had been propped open with a piece of lumber, and beyond that, in the vestibule, one of the carved wooden Gothic panels of the wall hung loose. A secret door?

The vestibule, as dark and close as a cave, was achingly cold. In a cloud of my own breath, I pulled open the heavy panel. A tightly spiraling stone staircase, like that in a medieval tower, wound up into darkness.

Drawing a jittery breath, I clung to the stone block walls and began to climb.

Up I spiraled, around and around, until at last, breathless, I came to a door. I pushed it open then stood upon the threshold of a space not yet visible for lack of light.

Thump!

The sound came from above.

“Edgar?”

Why wouldn’t he answer?

I smelled sawdust and new-cut wood as my eyes struggled to adapt to the light seeping through rosette windows. There were three of them, as wide as a carriage, high up on three of the four sides of the walls. A long ladder had been propped up under one. In the dim, I could just make out what looked to be bales of cotton heaped in the center of the chamber. Otherwise, the frigid cavern was vacant.

I felt a gentle stirring in the air above me. I looked up. In the
darkness I could feel more than see a massive log of a pendulum, as large as a stately tree, swinging sedately to and fro.

Where was he?

My gaze caught on a faint scrap of red across the way: a ribbon, binding a rolled-up piece of paper, affixed to the ladder under the window.

A rush of wings dashed at my head. I batted wildly, then shrank back.

“Edgar!”

A pigeon sailed past the gently swinging pendulum, then beat the walls with splayed feathers.

Holding my throat, I saw that one of the bushel-size petals of the rosette window had not been covered with glass as the others had been; the ladder was directly beneath it, perhaps put there for its repair. The poor creature must have flown through the opening but couldn’t find its way back out.

The paper beckoned silently. I hesitated upon the rough plank floor, then went to it, grasped it, and plucked it free.

I opened it and held it to the light.

Wait for me.

I gazed up the ladder to the open window high above. I didn’t like this game. I didn’t like it at all. This was no way to treat a woman—one carrying his child, I thought with a pained gulp, although he didn’t know that yet. If Mr. Poe cared for me, he wouldn’t tease me like this.

Mrs. Ellet had said that if you really wanted to know what Mr. Poe was up to, read his work. He had not denied it. As an author, did I not know firsthand how very much of me was in each piece of my fiction, whether I meant for it to be there or not?

His gruesome stories in which innocent women were killed flashed through my mind: “The Murder of Marie Roget.” “The Black Cat.” “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Even in “The Oval Portrait,” the woman had to die when the artist reached his success.

Madness spreads like a drop of ink in water. Soon one does not know who is mad and who is not.

Mr. Bartlett had warned of Mr. Poe’s capacity for violence under pressure, coupled with his moral confusion. Want and sorrow and Virginia’s madness had pushed him to the brink, and then, when he reached out in desperation, when he needed me the most, I had kept him at arm’s length. Had his mind crumbled under the strain? If he could not have me in life, did he mean to possess me by death?

From above came the soft thud of the pigeon beating itself against the wall. The massive pendulum stirred the air as delicately as breathing.

My gaze went to the cotton bales. Someone had positioned them below the pendulum as if it were in danger of falling. I was looking up, up, up into the blackness to where the pendulum was fastened to a rope as thick as a sailor’s arm, when I heard shouting in the distance. It wafted into my tomblike room like a call from another realm.

“Frances! Wait!”

My heart smashed against my chest. It was Mr. Poe. He meant for me to stay so that the pendulum could crush me. Had he not written such a tale? It was me he wanted to kill. Me.

I scanned the room frantically. There was no way out but the stairs up which I’d climbed. He could be upon them before I could get out. My only hope was to reach the window and scream for help.

I began to scramble up the ladder.

I could hear Edgar’s footsteps at the bottom of the staircase. “Frances! No! Stop!”

My foot slipped on a rung. I banged my chin and bit my tongue.

“Frances!”

Tasting blood, I righted myself and skittered upward. Just short of the window, the ladder stopped. I would have to jump for the ledge. Clinging to the wall, I pulled my shaking self onto the top rung.

“Frances, no!
Please!
”

My heart leaped from my chest as I lunged onto the circular sill. I wriggled out the opening, sweat pouring down my body in spite of the deep cold.

Icy granules pelted my face, my head, my neck. I saw Battery Park in the distance; the dome of Castle Garden; ships moored in the harbor, with sails furled tight against the snow.

Far below me, a lone sleigh inched its way down Broadway.

I opened my mouth. My scream would not come, though I strained until my head grew weightless. I could feel my soul split from my body. It looked down upon the pitiful figure on the ladder, so desperate and scared.

A bubble of speech burst from my lungs.