Good morning, ladies and gentlemen! I imagine myself saying from the pulpit in the pink sanctuary of our church. My name is Edgar Poe, and today, for reasons I don’t fully comprehend, I’m obsessed with the seventy-two bodies buried beneath us.
Don’t ever forget, my dear friends, I continue with this grim fancy, that a grisly collection of bones, and teeth, and soot sits below your very feet, even as you try not to think of such horrors. Even when your heart is giddy with evangelical glee this fine February morning, the victims of our infamous Richmond Theater fire still dwell among us down there—or at least what’s left of the poor souls—piled together in a moldering mass grave.
And then I envision myself tipping my silk hat with the coyest of grins and saying, A happy Sunday to you all!
Down below the floorboards creaking beneath my knees, deep in the belly of Monumental Church, stands a crypt built of bricks that, indeed, holds the remains of all seventy-two victims of the great Richmond Theater fire of 1811. I kneel beside my foster mother in the Allan family pew, my lips moving in prayer, my hands clasped beneath my chin, but my mind slips down between the cracks of the floor and steals into the depths of that underground tomb that still smells faintly of ashes.
The doomed Richmond Theater stood on this very site. The victims of the fire once breathed the same air I’m inhaling right now. I might have burned along with them if my mother, an actress, hadn’t died of illness eighteen days before the blaze—if, as a child not yet three, two strangers, the Allans, hadn’t taken me into their home and carried me off to the countryside for Christmas.
The back of my neck tingles with a prickling of dread. My eyes remain shut, but I feel someone watching from the shadows of the church’s salmon pink walls. Yes, she’s watching me—a raven-haired maiden in a gown spun from threads made of cinders and soot—a girl my own age, a mere seventeen—one of the dozens of young women whom the fire trapped in the narrow passageways, whom men crushed beneath their feet in the mad exodus from the box seats. The smell of smoke stings my nostrils, and accompanying it, the stench of the maiden’s hair burning.
There! There it is again! Singed hair . . . and smoke! Dear God! Black, blistering smoke that chokes, and strangles, and suffocates—
“Edgar!” snaps Ma in a whispered shout.
I give a start and discover that Ma and the rest of the congregation have returned to their seats. I’m panting, I realize. Every muscle in my body has clenched.
Ma pats the hard slab of the bench and whispers, “The prayer is over. Remove yourself from the floor, please.”
I push myself off my knees, the soles of my shoes squeaking with such a fuss that Judge Brockenbrough in front of me turns and frowns like an angry old trout. I slide back onto the bench just as the Right Reverend Bishop Moore embarks upon his sermon, preached from high in a pulpit shaped like a wineglass—a shape, I might add, that likely explains the bountiful quaffing of wine among his parishioners after church every Sunday.
“Renounce ‘the pomps and vanities of the wicked world,’” the bishop calls down to us, and his snowy white hair swings against his shoulders. “Silence your muses who linger in firelight and shadows, whispering words of secular inspiration, muddling minds with lewd and idle aspirations that detract from lives of charity, piety, and modesty.”
Ma gulps, and one of my former classmates, Nat Howard, a rival poet, turns his face my way from across the aisle with a lift of his eyebrows that seems to ask, Is he really giving this same damn sermon again?
I squeeze my hands together in my lap and gnash my teeth, bracing for yet another tirade against the arts.
“In the dawns of our childhoods”—the bishop’s voice softens; the broad expanse of his bald pate sparkles with sweat—“in the midst of nursery games and fairy stories, the sweet voices of muses coaxed every single one of us into joining them on fantastic flights of fancy. As naïve babes, we knew not to ignore them. Yet the strongest among us swiftly learned that to walk the path of righteousness, we must turn away from foolish temptations and imaginary realms before our passions grow unruly and wild—before the world views our extravagance. Silence your muses!”
I flinch, as does Ma.
“To live without sin,” continues the bishop, “we must reject the theater and other vulgar forms of entertainment—card playing, waltzing, bawdy music, lascivious literature penned by hell-dwelling hedonists such as the late Lord Byron . . .”
Dear God, this is too much! Not only do I consider insulting the memory of Byron a despicable sacrilege, but Pa yelled at me about stifling my poetic muse just last night. His fists, as a matter of fact, shook like they longed to beat the poetry out of me before I leave for college next week, and he pummeled me with insults.
“Pursuing the life of an artist,” says the bishop, “inevitably leads to promiscuous intercourse between the sexes, drunkenness, and other forms of debauchery. Fourteen years ago this past December, God witnessed the debauchery among us. He saw the gambling, the prostitution, the theatrical exhibitions, and the blasphemy among the theater players whom this city welcomed with open arms. Upon this very plot of land, in front of a house packed with adults and children of every stratum of Richmond society—rich and poor, black and white, Christian and Jew—the Placide & Green Company performed a pantomime entitled . . .” The bishop pats his brow with a handkerchief and winces before uttering the name of the show the actors performed when flames engulfed the theater: “The Bleeding Nun.”
Ma shakes her head in shame over that unfortunate title, as though she were the playwright who concocted it. Judge Brockenbrough’s large frame shudders in front of me. Bishop Moore casts a frown in my direction, and I fight against squirming, for I’m the grown, orphaned son of two Placide & Green theater players—as everyone here knows.
“The Lord punished this town’s depravity with fire and suffering,” he says, tears shining in his eyes. “He called for us to rise from the ashes and build this house of worship on the very site of the inferno, lest we forget the errors of our ways that wrought that terrible night of tragedy. If we stray from holiness once more, he will smite us down again. He. Will. Smite. Us. Down. Again.” The bishop rises to his full height and clutches the sides of his pulpit, as though steering a schooner across the Atlantic. He even looks a mite seasick, his lips pale and puckered, yet he musters the strength to bellow once more, “Silence your muses!”
Ma grabs my left hand, and a horrifying hush trembles across the congregation. Sniffles circulate among the parishioners, who dab liquid eyes with handkerchiefs fetched from coats and purses—the usual aftermath of a Bishop Moore sermon, even when he’s not preaching about the fire that killed so many loved ones in Richmond.
And yet, despite the window-rattling force of the bishop’s warnings, despite genuine fear for my own soul, despite Pa’s commands for me to cease writing my poetry, my mind drifts back down into that basement crypt, to the soot and the bones, and I ponder how many words I can rhyme with “gore.”
After the service, when the fine Episcopalians of Richmond gather their hats and coats, Ma steps away to speak with friends about a charity project, and I wander out to the aisle on my own.
“Eddy,” calls a familiar female voice to my left.
The weight of the sermon lifts from my lungs when I see, weaving toward me through the other churchgoers, my darling Sarah Elmira Royster—normally a Presbyterian—dressed in a blue satin dress that matches her eyes. She wears her hair pulled back from the sides of her face in smooth sheets of brown tresses, finer than silk, without the clusters of ringlets that tend to dangle in front of the other girls’ ears.
I push my own curls back from my face and smile. “What are you doing here, Elmira?”
“I came with Margaret Wilson and her family. I wanted to see you.”
I can’t speak, I’m so overcome with gratitude that she’s here for me. I take her left hand and pull her close, losing my wits to the heady lilac of her perfume.
“Not too close, Eddy.” She peeks over her right shoulder. “My father told Mrs. Wilson to watch over me. Will you meet with me in private sometime before . . .” She fusses with the gold chain of her necklace, and her eyes brim with tears. “Before you leave for Charlottesville next week?”
“Of course.” I caress the back of her gloved hand with my thumb. “I already intended to call on you later today. I have a gift for you.”
“My parents will be home today. I want to spend some time alone with you.”
“We can arrange a later meeting in the garden, but may I visit today as well? Pa and I had a fight last night that robbed me of all sleep and sanity. The bishop’s sermon only added to my wretchedness . . .”
“Please don’t silence your muse,” she says. “I don’t believe there’s anything sinful about writing poems of love.”
“I’m desperate to leave Richmond and end this suffocation, but it tortures me to know I’m leaving you, too.”
Elmira lowers her face. “I’ll going to miss you terribly.”
“My heart will bleed the moment we part.”
She smiles a wan smile and brushes tears from her cheeks. “I do believe your romantic muse is speaking through you this very moment.”
“Shh.” I peer around. “Don’t let anyone hear that I’m poeticizing in church.”
We both snicker.
“Do you see Mrs. Wilson?” she asks. “Is everyone watching us?”
I scan the crowd of my fellow parishioners—the established old families of Richmond, Virginia—fair-skinned, bejeweled, and gossipy aristocrats with blood as exquisite as a fine Bordeaux wine—blood far superior to the rot running through my body, or so I’ve come to believe.
“No, I don’t see her,” I say, and our eyes meet.
She gazes at me as though she doesn’t see the low-born filth and the ugliness that writhes inside me.
“I’m going to miss seeing those beautiful eyes of yours that can’t decide if they want to be gray, or blue, or violet,” she says, her voice husky with emotion. “And your smile. You have the loveliest smile when you’re not lost in sadness.”
I gulp down a lump clogging up my throat and lean my lips next to her right ear. “I want to marry you, Elmira. Will you marry me?”
She stiffens, so I stay in that tipped-forward position, frozen mid-proposal, terrified of witnessing the expression on her face. I close my eyes, brush my cheek against hers, and lose myself in reveries of a future world for us—a cottage by the sea, every room stocked with books, the air rich with the scents of ink and watercolor paints; balmy evenings spent tinkling out tunes on a piano; the soft warmth of Elmira’s hand cradling mine as we drift off to sleep, side-by-side.
“My father would never allow an engagement,” she says at length.
“I know he doesn’t think I’m good enough . . .”
“It’s not that. We’re both so young. I’m not yet sixteen, Eddy. You’re barely seventeen.”
I clench my jaw and lift my face. “Your father will change his mind when he sees all that I accomplish.”
“I should go before Mrs. Wilson spies me over here.” Elmira slips her fingers out of mine. “I’m sorry . . .”
“May I still call on you this afternoon?”
“Yes, before our Sunday dinner, but please, don’t mention marriage. I’ll never be permitted to write to you at the university if you do.”
She scurries away to the Wilsons. I’m still tipped slightly forward, fighting to catch my breath, my fingers sweating against the silk of my vest. Her father may as well have just struck a blow to the pit of my stomach.
A clutch of my friends—Rob Mayo, Robert Cabell, Jack Mackenzie—catch my eye from across the nave and wave me over, but I mouth to them, “I can’t. Not feeling well.”
Ebenezer Burling, who doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the fellows either, lingers toward the back of the pews with his widowed mother. He offers a small wave, and I give one in return.
I then sidle past a couple of gray-haired old lawyers who glower at me with buzzard eyes, undoubtedly questioning my familiarity with Miss Sarah Elmira Royster. Richmond crawls with dozens of pompous asses just like them. Lawyers. Judges. Congressmen. Senators. Constitutional delegates. Rich immigrant merchants like Mr. John Allan, my Scot-blooded bastard of a foster father.
Yet poets, actors, painters, and other dreamers are growing endangered, it seems.
I fuss with the knot of my cravat—the damn thing’s strangling me—and join Ma at the rear of the church. The bishop’s sermon gnaws at my gut, and Elmira’s warnings about her father’s disapproval slices an ax blade of a headache through my brain.
Ma fits her gray bonnet over her auburn hair. “Are you all right, dear?”
I squint from the sunlight boring through the windows in the cupola of the domed ceiling and nod with my lips pressed together.
“Are you certain?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say with a rasp, but the ugliness inside me writhes with more vigor, squeezing down on my stomach, knotting around my lungs like a thick cord of rope before rising to the surface of my flesh, where my wretchedness burns and yearns to shed from my body like a rattlesnake’s skin.