Poe blinked.
Standish whispered, “She was twelve years old, a fact concealed from authorities at the time. And you, you were twenty-six and her own mother consented to this bizarre arrangement. Bizarre, I say, for it is known that the two of you never lay together as man and wife should. You are not a man to lay with any woman so do not talk to me of love.”
Poe, rigid with rage, gripped the arms of the dark brown leather chair he sat in. “From this day, you have made of me a most unforgiving enemy.”
Miles Standish smiled and bowed from the waist. “An honor I am prepared to accept.”
Poe said, “And are you still involved with prostitution?”
Standish quickly straightened up.
Poe, dangerously angry at what Standish had said about his relationship with Sissy, showed no mercy.
“You seem to know an extraordinary amount about me. Can I do less for you? You, sir, are paying church deacons to purchase property which is then turned over to you. Using your legalistic abilities, you make sure that the property remains in the name of clergymen but the real owners are whoremongers, flesh peddlers, men and women engaged in the most loathsome trade of prostitution. Thanks to men such as yourself, this diabolical business does not lack a roof over its head.”
Standish shrieked, “Leave! Leave my home immediately!”
Poe’s gray eyes were bright with triumph. “And what shall I tell Rachel concerning my abrupt dismissal from your presence this morning?”
Standish, hands over his ears, looked up at the ceiling and blinked tears from his eyes. He wanted to kill Poe. It was true, all of it was true.
Quickly running to his desk, the lawyer opened a drawer and removed a bottle of brandy. Uncorking it, he drank from the bottle, gripping it with trembling hands. Poe dug his nails into the leather arms of the chair. I shall never forgive nor forget what he said about Sissy and me. He desecrates her name with his foul mouth, and he stands before me to support freedom for black flesh and slavery for white. I condemn him for his pitiful judgment and lack of mercy.
Standish wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “We were to discuss my client’s difficulty.”
“She wants the ransom paid and I will not oppose that. It is her belief, as you know, that this Dr. Paracelsus can be of some aid and comfort to her. She desires the body of her husband to be returned and I shall do all possible to see that it is. She claims that the dead can live-” Poe thought of last night and Virginia. Had he seen his wife? Had he dreamed it?
Poe continued, “She claims the dead can be made to live but I do not subscribe to this and you may inform Dr. Paracelsus of my conclusion. The dead cannot be reached in this life. They exist in an uncharted world which as yet can only be imagined and this sir, is how I feel on the matter. I do not believe.”
Miles Standish, still shocked by what Poe knew of his business dealings, turned his back to the writer. Damn him, damn him to hell. He knew. But how? Did he truly have mystical powers or was he merely a snoop who knew too much about too many things? Why had he been brought into this matter of Rachel’s husband? Because Rachel trusted him, because like so many other women she was drawn by the image of self-destructive poet. Standish had never hated anyone in his life as much as he hated Poe.
The lawyer spoke with his back to Poe. His voice was hoarse and that of a beaten man. “You will be made to believe. You will be forced to believe.”
Poe, remembering last night, shivered. His dead wife had appeared and called to him. But hadn’t that been a dream?
He stood up. “What did you say?”
Standish turned quickly to face him. “I, I said one is forced to grieve. I meant that life and circumstances leave one no choice but to grieve when death strikes. Uh, Rachel and her husband, her sadness at his death. I, I must leave you. Please excuse me, I shall return shortly.”
Poe watched Miles Standish, still clutching the bottle of brandy, hurry across the carpet. When the door to the billiard room slammed behind the lawyer, Poe was alone and still wondering if he had heard Standish correctly. Believe. Grieve. As the eternal fear of insanity came down on him once more, he went suddenly cold. He would never stop fearing it. Insanity. Where one laughed but smiled no more.
He walked to the red papered wall in front of him, to stand before three paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, a sixteenth-century Dutch artist in oils. Bruegel was vigorous, earthy, with strong, bold colors and figures. You could smell his peasants and barnyard animals, you could touch their clothing and skin. There was power in Bruegel, a vulgarity that was overwhelming and stunning.
The first painting showed peasants shearing sheep in front of a thatched cottage. The second showed three men in colored doublets and thigh boots, hands tied behind their backs and hanging from a gibbet. Their heads hung at an angle possible only in dead men. The third painting was the most striking. It was of a Renaissance carnival blended with a nightmare. There were dwarfs holding snakes and death heads, whores soliciting customers, a juggler, sword swallower, knife thrower and off to the side horned demons lay in wait for anyone foolish enought to enter the carnival. The painting was a powerful portrayal of a sinister world and time. It was alive with an intimidating energy.
Poe blinked his eyes several times. He was dizzy, sweating and it was hard to draw breath. Warm, too warm in the room and he heard noises, laughter, but he was alone, wasn’t he? He opened his eyes wide, closed them again and tried not to be sick to his stomach. What was happening to him?
He staggered backwards, coughing, his hands pressed against his throat and his eyes were closed. He smelled incense and he heard a harp. There was a harpist in the carnival painting.
Poe opened his eyes and saw two dwarfs standing in front of him. Living dwarfs. Both were dressed exactly as the dwarfs in the painting and each held a death’s head, a grinning skull. One shrieked, hurling his skull at Poe, who backed into the billiard table. The skull bounced off his knee.
Both dwarfs rushed him and as an unseen harpist played, Poe screamed and kicked at the dwarfs, driving them back. He turned to his right to see a woman dressed as one of the whores in the painting walk slowly towards him, snakes entwined around her neck and both wrists. She was wet lipped and open mouthed.
The painting had come to life!
A dizzy Poe edged away from the whore, one hand behind him and on the billiard table. He was in hell. At last his mind had betrayed him.
“Noooooo!” Poe’s scream filled the room.
A sound made him turn in time to see the knife thrower, two hands around the handle of his knife, bring it down towards Poe’s face. Poe’s left hand went up quickly and the knife slashed him across the palm. He screamed, falling to one knee, hands clinging to the billiard table, his blood smearing the polished wooden edge. The pain was real. The blood was real.
“Nooooo! I am not insane! I am not mad!”
Driven by a frenzy to survive, Poe grabbed a cue stick from the billiard table and swung with all his strength, breaking the cue stick against the knife thrower’s face. The man, thin, bearded with a flat nose, staggered backwards and fell. A crazed Poe, no longer sure of real and unreal, used the remaining part of the cue stick as a short spear and jabbed down at the dwarfs pulling on his legs. He was not mad, he was not mad.
A dwarf squealed, both hands going to an eye and the other dwarf spun around, hands covering a slash running from his ear and down the side of his neck. Poe was living a nightmare and could do nothing but lash out at the world. His head was light and his heart threatened to tear itself loose from its strings. The harpist sent gentle notes of music into the room and Poe fought to breathe. He heard the whore laugh and when he turned to face her, she threw snakes at him and laughed louder.