Smeared in blood and reeking of smoke, I stumble through the dark streets of Richmond until I find Ebenezer’s house, where I talk my old friend into joining me for a drink at the Courthouse Tavern. Never one to turn down a chance to imbibe from a bottle, Eb readily agrees.
He tosses me clean clothing, free of blood, through which I somehow string my arms and legs. Before long, we’re gathered together at a table in a back corner of the tavern, surrounded by the fumes of ale and the stink of Richmond’s dissolute wanderers of the night—the prostitutes and thieves, the eaters of opium, the unloved and abandoned.
“I plan to sail to Boston,” I say to Eb, rubbing my jaws to enable my mouth to keep functioning, despite the whiskey coursing through my veins.
Eb sips from a glass bubbling with a beauteous topaz liquid. “You’re certain you’re not returning home?”
“John Allan believes I’ve left in a passion and will come crawling through the door on hands and knees, but, no—I am gone. I’ll need to send for a trunk of my clothing and books . . . and money.”
Eb chokes on his drink. “You don’t have any money?”
“Not a cent. Why do you think I’m not buying any booze?”
“I thought it was because you’re already drunk. Wait here, my friend.” Eb scoots out of his chair. “I’ll buy you a glass.”
Eb’s good to his word and fetches me a brandy, and we spend the next hour concocting wild plans born from the delirium of the devil’s finest libations.
“Sail with me to Boston, Eb,” I ask of him while resting my left cheek upon the table, my nose pressed against the leftover smell of a dirty rag that must have scrubbed the surface earlier that night. “Or maybe to England. My old friend Robert Sully—the nephew of that famous portrait painter—” I snap my fingers and try to conjure up the name of Rob Sully’s renowned uncle. “Charles . . . or Samuel . . . or maybe—yes—Thomas Sully! Thomas Sully’s nephew, my old friend Rob—”
“I know who Robert Sully is, Edgar. Get on with your story.”
“Rob studies at an art academy in London. Now there’s a fellow who’s nurturing his muse! Or maybe we should embark upon a voyage to Russia. St. Petersburg! My brother is a sailor these days. I want to be just like him—Mr. William Henry Leonard Poe.”
Eb braces a hand against my left arm. “I’ll sail with you wherever you want, Edgar. Wherever you want to go”—he thumps his right palm against his chest—“I’ll be there for you, because I love you as dearly as though you were my brother.”
“Do you? Will you?”
He pats my elbow. “I will.”
“I can’t even fathom . . .” I fall asleep for a moment, but jerk awake and somehow remember what I’d just been trying to say: “I can’t fathom waking up tomorrow and penning a single word of poetry. He killed my muse in cold blood.”
“I should go,” says Eb. “It’s four o’clock in the morning. My mother will worry.”
“‘My mother will worry,’” I echo him—not in mockery, but in reverence of his mother’s love for him, despite his faults and iniquities.
Eb wobbles up to his feet and pets my head as though I’m a spaniel. “I’ll see if I can scrape up a few coins for you when I’m home. Get you some food and a bed.”
“God bless you, Ebenezer Burling,” I say, and I offer him a salute, my head still lying sideways on that disgusting, rag-scented table.
My next cognizant moment involves a man twice my size steering me out to the back alley by my left arm. “Go home,” he says, “unless you can pay for a room.”
“I have no home. Or money,” I say, and I laugh at my own words, even though the truth wedges like a knife beneath my ribs.
The man wanders back into the tavern, and I slide to a heap on the ground.
“Wake up,” says a woman with a shake of my left arm.
The sour smells of alleyway beer and urine shock my nose and shake me further awake.
I peer up above me and nearly burst into tears, for I find Judith’s brown eyes, awash with concern, gazing down at me from beneath the ruffles of a calico bonnet.
“The missus is fretting and stewing over your whereabouts,” she says. “Why are you out here, sleeping on the street? It’s about to pour rain. She said you left in a rage early this morning.”
“John Allan shot my muse.”
Judith draws back. “Oh, Lord. Did he kill her?”
“Not yet. At least”—I lift my head from the ground—“I don’t think so. I left her at the surgeon’s.”
“You left her?”
I roll over onto my stomach and push myself up to my hands and knees. Dirt snows to the ground from my hair. With a belch, the taste of hours-old brandy reminds me of the drinks I shared with Eb the night before. Or perhaps it was in the early-morning hours when we caroused and made plans. I’ve lost all track of time.
“Go to her,” says Judith.
I remain stuck on hands and knees. “I need to write to my father before I do anything else. I don’t have my clothing—or money. I can’t pay the surgeon.”
Judith places a hand on my back. “Are you leaving home for good?”
“I am. I’m sailing to Boston as soon as I’m able to afford my passage. I’m not residing under that man’s roof one more second of my life.”
“Take your muse with you.”
I sink back on my heels. “She’s dying, Judith.”
Judith kneels by my side. “Do you want to prove to your father that he’s wrong about you?”
I swallow. “Of course, I do.”
“Then you must promise me that you’ll succeed as a writer.”
I laugh with exasperation. “How can I possibly promise that?”
“Work hard. Earn money. And keep your muse alive, no matter what happens. Find a way to pay for a room in this tavern until your ship leaves. Bring her here. Keep her safe.”
“Pa owes me the passage north. I plan to write to him this morning and list all my grievances against him . . .”
“No! Don’t list your grievances if you’re asking for money.”
I rise to my feet and rub at a crick in my neck. “He should have turned me out to the streets when he started hating me three years ago. He’s been short with me ever since Mrs. Stanard died, when I was miserable with grief, and he yelled at me for sulking. He should have allowed me to die back then.”
“Don’t speak of dying.” Judith wraps her arms around me and holds me close, despite the ungodly stink I’m most certainly emanating.
I plant my forehead against her shoulder and endure disorienting revolutions of my brain.
“Did you say you’re sailing to Boston?” she asks.
I nod, which makes me all the dizzier. “I was born there. And it’s a literary haven.”
“Take your muse with you.” Judith lets me go but braces a hand on my shoulder. “Please, always keep the light of your imagination burning.”
Even though such a promise seems impossible, I swallow and say, “I’ll try.”
The surgeon sewed Lenore up, wrapped her chest in bandages, and left her to die on a cot in the hallway outside his operating room, covered in nothing more than a blanket as thin as the wings of a butterfly. I walk over to the cot, tripping on an uneven board as I go, and bend down on one knee beside her.
Her breathing has grown faint. Her pale lips resemble marble.
“Lenore,” I say in a whisper. “I’m sorry I didn’t better protect you. I should have left Moldavia sooner. I’m taking you to a room in a tavern. Eb’s just leant me some coins. And then we’ll set sail for Boston.”
The surgeon plods into view and unrolls the cuffs of his shirtsleeves. “To whom should I send my bill?”
“John Allan, Esquire, care of Ellis & Allan.”
“Very good.”
I take Lenore’s left wrist in my hand. “She’s still breathing, isn’t she? I’m not simply imagining her chest rising and falling?”
“I’m sorry, son, but if she lives another hour, I’d consider it a miracle. Make her comfortable. Arrange for the burial. There’s nothing more I can do.”
In the room I’ve acquired for Lenore and myself in the Courthouse Tavern, I continue to wage my war with Pa through written correspondence, penned on stationery that Eb kindly lent me, in addition to the money he somehow managed to procure for my lodging. Freezing rain pours by the bucketful outside the window in front of me, a filthy pane of glass greased in fingerprints.
My muse breathes through pallid lips on the bed behind me.
I address Pa as “Sir,” air my charges against him, despite Judith’s advice, for it makes me feel a little better, and I request that he send my trunk full of books and clothing to the tavern. I also ask for money for my passage, as well as enough funds to support me for a month until I can place myself in a position that will allow me to support myself.
I hear no reply, so I write again the following morning—for Lenore still lives, even if just barely, which affords me some hope. I explain to Pa that I’m starving and wandering the streets of Richmond. I ask for twelve dollars for passage and a little more to help me get settled.
By the following day, I receive my second letter back from him, without any money attached, and on the verso, I discover that Pa penned two words:
Pretty Letter.
“Pretty Letter”!
The man who raised me from infancy mocks my suffering.
The suffering he himself instigated.
Ma must have taken pity on me, for Dabney—dear Dabney—appears at the tavern the following morn and hands me my trunk, which includes all my manuscripts and an envelope containing twelve dollars for my passage.
“Thank you, Dab,” I say, and I clasp him in a hug.
“You take care,” he says. “Please take good care of yourself. We’re all worried about you.”
“Give my love to Ma. Tell her not to fret. I don’t want her health to worsen because of me.”
On Saturday, I board a vessel bound for Boston, accompanied by Ebenezer—who seems a bit soused but, hopefully, comprehends what he’s doing. And in my arms, I carry the near-corpse of my muse, wrapped in the gray coat Pa sent me at the university. Eb stole a white cap from his mother to cover the fuzz of hair that remains where fantastic feathers once bloomed on Lenore’s scalp.
Lenore’s head sways above the planks during my walk across the ship’s deck, and I breathe the smell of smoke that lingers on her skin. Beneath the surface of her face there flickers a strange light—the weak glow of embers dying in a grate.
If the burden of carrying her with me to the North grows too heavy to bear, I fear what I may do. I may toss her into the waters, let her sink down to the bottom of the lonely sea, and free myself from aspiring to greatness so I may live a normal life.