My muse holds me up during my journey back home, and I clutch her to my side to keep her safe from harm. She’s too stubborn to wear my coat, so the garment warms me instead, but she at least agreed to fit my hat over her shorn and shaven crown.
Up ahead, I hear the echoes of hoof steps and the jostling of a carriage. I grab Lenore by the hand and hurry her around the next corner, where we press ourselves against the shadowed bricks of a wall and hold our breath. We both shiver from the river, and I struggle not to cough.
Once the carriage drives off, and the danger of discovery passes, we round another bend, and I walk us northward on Fifth—a route that will avoid the sight of the dancing silhouettes in the upper windows of the Royster mansion. The music of the soiree slithers through the streets and leaves a putrescent taste on my tongue.
I tighten my grip on Lenore’s hand. “I’ll take you to Judith’s cabin.”
“No, don’t.”
“Why not?”
“I refuse to risk Judith’s safety again,” she says. “If John Allan discovers me in her quarters—”
“There’s nowhere else for me to hide you.”
We both jump at the sudden splash of bathwater dumping from an upstairs window across the street.
I avert my face and lead Lenore onward.
“Hey!” calls a gruff male voice from the window. “I just saw the unholy shine of your eyes down there. What in heaven’s name are you?”
We let go of each other’s hands and hasten into a run.
“I’ll stay in the rafters of the carriage house,” says Lenore.
“There’ll be no fire to keep you warm in there.”
“Allow me to orchestrate a grand feat of inspiration at midnight, and then we’ll see if I’m able to escape into realms fit for a god.”
A dog barks from a yard up ahead.
Lenore breaks free of me and bolts toward the outbuildings of Moldavia.
No one witnesses my slinking and waterlogged entrance into the house, thank God. I squeak upstairs in my dry shoes and drenched socks and change into fresh pairs of shirtsleeves and pantaloons, not yet ready to crawl into my nightshirt and resign to the night. I lie in my bed beneath the glow of the lamps, and the whale oil continues to assault my nostrils, which, apparently, grew accustomed to the tallow candles of my dormitory. My discarded clothing hangs over a chair, smelling of the river, yes, but also of Elmira’s house, as though the water couldn’t rinse the humiliation from the beautiful new fabrics.
The lamps burn well into the eleven o’clock hour. I lie against my pillow, buried in blankets to calm the shivers, and I massage my forehead while gazing up at the shelf of books that once allowed me to escape my sorrows.
In my mind’s eye I see Elmira, dressed in blue satin and lace, standing at the altar of her wedding ceremony. Alexander Shelton bends his face toward hers to kiss her lips, but Elmira catches sight of me watching her from the back of the church.
She blushes. Oh, how she blushes!
And in that blush, I know she remembers what we shared.
She’ll regret this decision until her dying day.
And in that blush—
A clock down the hall strikes midnight, yanking me out of that train of thought.
With a groan, I roll out of bed, doubtful that inspiration is what I require to heal. I totter toward the door that leads from my bedroom to the upper level of the portico, not drunk, merely unstable.
After heaving a sigh, I yank the curtains aside with both hands.
Light blinds my eyes.
I wince from the glare.
Outside, the world shines as though I’m experiencing noontide in June instead of midnight in December. I throw open the door, stumble out to the portico, and brace myself against one of the wooden columns, careful not to fall over the low rail. Below me, a vision of the interior of a church without a roof has replaced our terraced gardens, and the gentry of Richmond fill the pews.
In front of the pulpit stand a bride and a groom, their hands clasped together, their backs facing me. Reverend Rice from the local Presbyterian church presides over the nuptials, and his voice chugs through the church as a charmless chant.
“ . . . for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part . . .”
The longer I stare, the more the silk of the bride’s pale blue dress warms to the lascivious pink of a blush.
“. . . with this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship . . .”
On the left-hand side of the aisle, amid the crowd of guests, sits a woman in a black bonnet who now, quite curiously, pats her lap in an iambic, eight-meter beat.
pat-PAT-pat-PAT-pat-PAT-pat-PAT
(pause-pause-pause-pause-pause-pause-pause-pause)
pat-PAT-pat-PAT-pat-PAT-pat-PAT
(pause-pause-pause-pause-pause-pause-pause-pause)
The rest of the wedding guests join her in this bizarre rhythmical patting, as though encouraging the creation of a poem or a song set to the beat. The meters of my poems often drum inside my head as I write them, but this is an amplified version of such a rhythm.
pat-PAT-pat-PAT-pat-PAT-pat-PAT
(pause-pause-pause-pause-pause-pause-pause-pause)
pat-PAT-pat-PAT-pat-PAT-pat-PAT
(pause-pause-pause-pause-pause-pause-pause-pause)
When the next round commences, the woman in the bonnet shifts toward me in her seat and says to the beat, “‘I saw thee on the bridal day . . .’”
She turns away just as my brain absorbs the fact that Lenore’s unmistakable nose and cadaverous complexion peeked out from beneath that ruffled bonnet.
The groom—no other than fish-lipped, locust-eyed Alexander Shelton—reels toward the commotion of the guests, but, despite his hisses and glares, the drumming continues.
pat-PAT-pat-PAT-pat-PAT-pat-PAT
(pause-pause-pause-pause-pause-pause-pause-pause)
pat-PAT-pat-PAT-pat-PAT-pat-PAT
(pause-pause-pause-pause-pause-pause-pause-pause)
The bride—Elmira—oh, God! Elmira—peers over her right shoulder, and her eyes swell at the sight of me watching from up in the portico.
Lenore turns toward me again from the pews. “‘When a burning blush came o’er thee . . .’”
“‘I saw thee on the bridal day!’” I call down to Elmira, hugging the column with my right arm, leaning over the railing. “‘When a burning blush came o’er thee/Tho’ Happiness around thee lay/The world all love before thee.’”
Lenore jumps to her feet and jerks a hand at Elmira. “‘I saw thee on the wedding day!’”
“‘When a burning blush came o’er thee . . .’” I leap back into my bedroom and scramble to locate a fresh sheet of paper on my table.
The guests pat-PAT-pat-PAT-pat-PAT-pat-PAT.
“‘I saw thee on the bridal day,’” I say in a whisper, dunking my quill into my inkstand.
“‘Tho’ Happiness around thee lay . . .’” shouts Lenore down in the church, and the rest of the wedding guests echo: “‘Tho’ Happiness around thee lay . . .’”
“‘The world all love before thee.’”
“‘The world all love before thee.’”
I sit down and pen the stanza, tapping my right heel to the beat so my poem doesn’t stray from its metrical feet:
I saw thee on the bridal day;
When a burning blush came o’er thee,
Tho’ Happiness around thee lay,
The world all love before thee.
“‘I saw thee on the bridal day . . .’” chants the crowd outside.
I dash back out to the railing. “‘And, in thine eye, the kindling light . . .’”
“‘And, in thine eye, the kindling light . . . ,’” say the guests, and they cease patting for a change in the meter.
“‘Of young passion free . . . ,’” I say.
“‘Of young passion free . . .’”
Elmira buries her face in her hands, so clearly remembering our passion she’s tossed aside for the dandy standing next to her.
I yank at the roots of my hair. “‘Was all on earth, my chained sight . . .’”
“‘Was all on earth, my chained sight . . .’”
“‘Of Loveliness might see.’”
“‘Of Loveliness might see.’”
The drumming commences against skirts and trousers.
I write down the lines in my bedroom, again tapping out the beat with my feet to make certain every word, every syllable, fits into place.
And, in thine eye, the kindling light
Of young passion free
Was all on earth, my chained sight
Of Loveliness might see.
“‘I saw thee on the bridal day!’” calls Lenore, sounding as though she now stands on the roof above the portico. “‘When a burning blush came o’er thee . . .’”
I burst through my door. “‘That blush, I ween, was maiden shame . . .’”
“‘That blush, I ween, was maiden shame . . . ,’” says the crowd with their pat-pat-patting.
“‘As such it well may pass . . . ,’” Lenore and I cry out in unison.
Elmira raises the hem of her pink skirts and staggers down the aisle toward me. Her blush of shame tells me she still loves me. She wants me, and I want her, but I’m not good enough. I’ll never be good enough!
pat-PAT-pat-PAT-pat-PAT-pat-PAT
“‘Tho’ its glow hath raised a fiercer flame,’” I call down to her, “‘In the breast of him, alas!’”
“‘Who saw thee on that bridal day . . . ,’” says Lenore, and her shadow from the roof claps to the meter.
The wedding guests stand and clap along with her.
“‘It’s glow hath raised a fiercer flame,’” I say, pounding the beat against the sides of my head, “‘in the breast of him—alas!—who saw thee on that bridal day . . .’”
The audience claps and chants, “‘In the breast of him, alas!/Who saw thee on that bridal day.’”
“‘When that deep blush would come o’er thee,’” say both Lenore and I while watching Alexander escort Elmira back to the pulpit.
I shuffle backward toward my door. “‘Tho’ Happiness around thee lay. . .’”
“‘Tho’ Happiness around thee lay . . .’”
“‘The world all love before thee.’”
“‘The world all love before thee.’”
And everyone together, myself and Lenore included, clap and shout, “‘I saw thee on the bridal day!’”
I scrawl the last lines of the poem in the lamplight of my room, and the world grows intolerably silent.