The Pale Blue Eye: A Novel (44 page)

For a moment, I stood over it, wondering if I could safely ignore it. And decided, with some sadness, I couldn't.

Landor:

I owe you no earthly obligation, but as you once--or so I believed!-- took a wholesome interest in my affairs, I supposed that you might be curious to learn of the new course upon which I have resolved. Not five minutes ago, Lea and I plighted our troth. In short order, I shall resign my Academy commission and take my wife--as soon she shall be--far, far from this wilderness.

I desire from you neither congratulation nor commiseration. I desire nothing from you. I wish you only surcease from the hatred and recrimination that have so disfigured your soul. Farewell, Landor. I go to my beloved.

Yrs,

E.A.P.

So! I thought. Lea has wasted no time.

And indeed, it was the very suddenness of the news that began to unnerve me. Why was it happening so quickly? So soon after Lea's brush with death? Poe, of course, would be ready to act at the first sign from his beloved, but what would Lea gain from eloping? Why would she abandon her brother and family in the hour of their greatest need?

Unless this had nothing to do with matrimony. Unless some greater urgency was screwing everything to a higher pitch.

And then my eyes came to rest on those words--Farewell, Landor--and they jumped at me like grapeshot and sent me spinning down the hallway, leaping down the stairs.

Poe was in danger. I knew that as I've never known anything. And to save him, I'd have to find the one man who could--or, under the right pressure, would--answer my questions.

It was a half hour before midnight by the time I reached the Marquis house. I pounded on the door like a drunken husband back from the tavern, and when Eugenie, bleary-eyed in her nightgown, planted herself in the doorway and opened her mouth to chide me, something in my face made the words lock in her throat. She invited me in without a sound and, when I asked where her master was, pointed with vague alarm to the library.

A single taper was burning. Dr. Marquis was seated in a large velvet armchair, a monograph spread open on his lap. His eyes were shut, and he was lightly snoring, but his arm remained just where he had left it: fully extended, with the fingers curled round a glass of brandy, the brandy itself level as a pond. (Poe used to fall asleep the same way.)
I didn't have to say a word. He shook his eyes open and set down his glass and winced into the dark.

"Mr. Landor! This is a pleasant surprise." He started to rise. "Do you know, I've been reading the most fascinating treatise on the puerperal fever. I was thinking you, in particular, might appreciate the--the discussion of sovereign specifics... oh, but where is it?" He studied the chair he had just left, whirled round in a heavy daze, then found the treatise, still in his lap. "Ah, here we are!"

He looked up expectantly, but I was already moving to the looking-glass. Examining my whiskers, brushing lint from my chin... making sure I was ready.

"Where's the rest of your family, Doctor?"

"Oh, the hour is too advanced for the ladies, I'm afraid. They've retired."

"Ah, yes. And your son?"

He blinked at me. "Why, he's in barracks, of course."

"Of course."

I crossed the room in slow segments, brushing him softly each time I passed (for the room was exceedingly narrow) and feeling his eyes tracking me every step of the way.

"Can I offer you anything, Mr. Landor? Brandy?"

"No."

"Some whiskey, perhaps. I know you like your--"

"No, thank you," I said, stopping just a couple of feet away and grinning at his face in the candlelight. "You know, Doctor, I'm a little put out with you."

"Oh?"

"You never told me what an illustrious ancestor you had."

From the crater of his mouth a half grin came flickering up. "Why, I don't think... you know, I'm not sure who you--"

"Father Henri le Clerc," I said.

He dropped like a winged partridge, straight into his chair.

"Oh, I grant you, Doctor, it's not a name that would stir up a lot of notice now. But in his day, I'm told, he was the finest of witch hunters. Until he became one of the hunted. May I borrow your light?"

He made no answer. I took the taper and carried it toward the bookcases, toward the niche that housed the antique oil portrait. The portrait to which I'd paid no more than passing notice the first time I saw it. A near-perfect likeness of the engraving in Pawpaw's book. "This is le Clerc, is it not, Doctor? Oh, he's a fine-looking gentleman, your ancestor. I would have wanted him on my side, too."

I brought the taper lower and watched as the cameo of the young Mrs. Marquis flared into view. Setting the cameo to one side, I rested my hand on the coarsely matted surface that lay beneath, the musty gray cover I had once mistaken for a pillow.

"And this is his book, is it not? I'm ashamed to say I didn't even know it was a book. Has such an unusual texture, doesn't it? Wolf skin, if I recall correctly."

After a moment's hesitation, I pried my fingers underneath and lifted. What a weight it had! As though every page had been lined with lead and embossed with gold.

"Discours du Diable," I said, opening it to the front leaf. "You know, Doctor, there are people in this world who'd pay a considerable sum for this volume. You could be a rich man before another sun had set."

Closing the cover, I returned it with great care to its place on the shelf and set the portrait of Mrs. Marquis back on top.

"Your family has been quite a puzzle to me, Doctor, I don't mind saying. I could never get a fix on who was--who was in command, I suppose, who was setting the cadence. At one time or other, I suspected each of you. It never occurred to me it might be someone else altogether. Someone who wasn't even alive."

I stood in front of him.

"Your daughter suffers from the falling sickness," I said. "No, please don't deny it, I've seen it for myself. In the course of her spells, she imagines herself to be in contact with someone. Someone who tells her things, sends her instructions, maybe." I pointed to the painting on the wall. "It's him, isn't it?"

In the end, Dr. Marquis was a poor dissembler. Not from a lack of skill but from a lack of bent. Some people, I think, can build up secrets like layers of shale--pile them higher and higher, I mean, and let nothing crack. Others need only the lightest tap to bring their whole edifice down. And for these folks, you don't even need a face like Father le Clerc's. You just need to be on hand when it happens.

So it was with Dr. Marquis. He was ready to talk, and talk he did, as the taper sputtered down, as the night wore into morning. And whenever the flow of words abated, I would pour him another brandy, and he would look at me as if I were an angel of mercy, and the words would once again flow.

He told me the story of a beautiful girl-child, marked for all the brilliant things a girl can be marked for: marriage, status, children. Marked, in the same stroke, by illness. Ghastly illness, seizing her when no one was looking, stopping her brain and shaking her like a gourd.

Her father tried every medical regimen he could think of--nothing worked. He even brought in faith healers, but they, too, failed to stop the terror. And gradually, this terror took over the whole family and changed every one of them. So that they abandoned the comforts of New York in favor of the isolation of West Point. They swore off friendships and kept largely to themselves. The father gave up his ambitions, the mother grew bitter and eccentric, and the children, left to their own devices, developed bonds of unnatural closeness. They were all, in their own way, in thrall to this disease.

"For God's sake," I said, "why didn't you tell anyone? Thayer would have understood."

"We didn't dare. We didn't want to be shunned. You have to understand, Mr. Landor, it was a terrible time for us. When Lea turned twelve, her spells got much worse. On more than one occasion, we despaired of her life. And then one day, it was--it was an afternoon in July, she came to herself, and she said..."

He stopped.

"She said what?"

"She said she'd met someone. A gentleman."

"And this was Father le Clerc?"

"Yes."

"Her great-great-great-grandfather, or whoever he was."

"Yes."

"And she spoke with him?"

"Yes."

"In French?" I asked, rolling my eyes.

"She was fluent, yes."

There was a touch of defiance in his tone, unusual for him.

"Tell me, Doctor. How did she know who this mystery man was? Did he bother with introductions?"

"She'd seen his picture. I kept it in the attic in those days, but she and Artemus, they'd stumbled across it somehow."

"In the attic? Please don't tell me you were ashamed of your forebear."

"No. No." His hands fluttered. "It's not like that. Pere le Clerc wasn't... he was never the man he was reputed to be. He wasn't evil at all, he was a healer."

"Misunderstood."

"Precisely, yes." "And so this poor misunderstood healer, this creature of your daughter's imagination, begins to instruct her. She, in turn, instructs Artemus. And at some point your own wife, Doctor, becomes a student, too."

It was just a guess, honestly. There was no piece of paper pointing to Mrs. Marquis, only the proof of my own senses--the way sound carried in this closely built house--nothing could be done in private for very long. A hunch, yes, but from the way the doctor's face fell, the way it kept falling, I could see I'd hit the mark.

"Well, it must have made for an interesting curriculum, Doctor. The main subject, as far as I can see, was sacrifice. Animal sacrifice--until they reached the point where animals would no longer do."

His head was moving from side to side like a pendulum.

"What would your precious Galen have said, Doctor? What would Hippocrates have said about sacrificing young men?"

"No," he said. "No. They swore to me Mr. Fry was already dead. They swore they would never take a human life. Never."

"And you believed them, of course. But then, you also believed a man could rise from the dead and chat up your daughter."

"What choice did I--"

"What choice?" I shouted, as my fist found the back of his chair. "You of all people! A physician, a man of science. How could you place your faith in such madness?"

"Because I..."

His hands closed over his face. A high girlish moan came trailing through.

"I can't hear you, Doctor," I said.

He raised his head and cried in his own voice:

"Because I couldn't save her myself !"

He smeared the damp from his eyes. Coughed up one final sob and held out his hands in a mute entreaty.

"My own art was useless, Mr. Landor. How could I object to her seeking a cure elsewhere?"

"A cure?"

"That's what he promised her. If she did what he asked her. And she did, and she got better, Mr. Landor. No one can deny it. The spells didn't come nearly as often, and when they did, they weren't nearly as severe. She got better!"

I leaned against the bookcase. Tired, suddenly. Tired beyond all measure. "So if her health was on the mend," I said, "what did she want with a human heart?"

"Oh, she wanted none of it. But he told her it was the only way she could be free. Once and for all."

"Free from what?"

"Her curse. Her gift. She was through with it, don't you see? She wanted to be whole again, she wanted to live as other women do. She wanted to love."

"And all she had to do was offer up... somebody's organs?"

"I don't know! I told Lea and Artemus they weren't to tell me anything of what they are doing. It was the only way I could--I could keep silent."

He wrapped his arms round himself and let his head droop. Oh, it's a hard thing, sometimes, witnessing human weakness. Which is, in my experience, what most venality comes down to. Weakness. Hiding itself as strength.

"Well, Doctor, the problem for you is your children keep roping other people into their little devils' academy."

"They swore they weren't responsible for--"

"I'm not talking about Fry," I said. "I'm not talking about Ballinger or Stoddard. I'm talking about someone who's still with us. Or maybe you aren't aware your daughter is engaged to be married to Mr. Poe?"

"Mr. Poe?" he cried.

His astonishment was too piecemeal to be feigned. He couldn't make sense of it, and so he tried to absorb it in stages, and each new stage worked on him like a hiccough, shaking his whole system.

"But Mr. Poe was here," he sputtered. "This evening. No one said a word about an engagement."

"Poe was here?"

"Yes! We had a nice chat, and then he and Artemus went to the parlor to have a little nip of something. Oh, I know it's against the rules," he said, flashing his mighty teeth, "but a drab now and then never hurt anyone, I believe."

"Artemus was here, too?" I asked.

"Yes, it was quite a--quite a party..."

"And when did Poe leave?"

"Well, I don't know. He couldn't have stayed long, he had to get back to his quarters, just as

Artemus did."
I often wonder if things would have turned out differently if I'd been on my game from the start. If, say, I'd thought to ask about that family portrait the first time I saw it. Or if I'd understood the importance of Lea Marquis' condition when it was first described to me.

Or if I'd recognized right off what I saw when I entered the Marquis house that night.

No, it took me more than half an hour to realize what it was, and as soon as I did, I leaned into Dr. Marquis and hissed the words right into his face--the reproach that should have been mine alone.

"Tell me, Doctor. If Poe left your house, why is his cloak still in your front hall?"

It was the only article still left on the coat rack. A bundle of black wool, standard government issue, except for the...

"Except for the tear," I said, holding the cloak. "Do you see, Doctor? Nearly the full length of the shoulder. Probably came from sneaking through the woodyard so many times."

The doctor stared back at me. His lips bubbled and went slack.