With his left hand on the top of the gray-haired man’s head, Figg cupped the man’s chin with his right hand and savagely twisted the head as though turning a wheel. Figg snapped Isaac Bard’s neck, killing him. To Poe, what he had just seen had the beauty and grace of dance. He watched with fascination as Figg dropped Bard’s limp body and Poe wondered what it would be like to lay your bare hands on a man and kill him with such arrogant ease.
Poe cringed, recoiling as Sproul, keeping the bowie knife low, inched towards Figg. If the bulldog perishes, then my own life is forfeit.
A horse reared up on its hind legs. Poe’s eyes went to it, to the closed stable door. To get out of the stable he had to pass Hamlet Sproul and the bulldog, who no longer wore his tall black hat. Bulldog’s head, crudely shorn of whatever hair nature had seen fit to bless it with, was visible and of no beauty worth mentioning. His face was enough to scare the whole of purgatory. But he did not back up as Sproul slithered towards him like some stalking lizard. Bulldog had courage. Grant him that before he died.
The stable door slid open and sunlight entered suddenly, forcing Poe to close his eyes. When he opened them, the horses had fled out onto Fifth Avenue where they kicked up snow as they ran. There was a silhouette in the doorway and Poe narrowed his eyes and focused on it.
“Mr. Figg! Mr. Figg, are you safe, sir! I heard a shot and there was an awful noise from the horses throwing themselves against the door.” In the doorway, Titus Bootham shaded his eyes and looked into the stable.
Hamlet Sproul stopped, both hands on the bowie knife, arms extended in front of him. His voice broke with fear. “Jonathan sent you.”
Figg shook his head.
Sproul shrieked, “You lie! You are here to kill me!” He began backing away from Figg. “You will not burn my heart or nothin’ else that is inside of me. You will not burn-”
He turned and ran.
Poe watched him flee through the wide open stable door, not pausing to even glance at the short man who stood there in steel-rimmed spectacles and a black bear fur coat. Jonathan. Why did Sproul, a man feared by the underworld fear Jonathan? Did this hairless and monstrous bulldog, who now bent over to pick up his two pocket pistols and tall black hat, work for Jonathan, this Jonathan whom Sproul claimed had killed Pier and Lowery and burned their hearts and liver.
Poe closed his eyes and his body shook. He was cold with fear, suddenly aware of a massive evil in his life, of being caught in a quicksand of events over which he had no control. All that we see or seem/Is but a dream within a dream.
Jonathan.
Without knowing why, Poe sensed that Jonathan was very much a danger and could destroy him. The darkness that Jonathan carried with him was not that unleashed by Poe on the printed page. It was something real and never too far away and all of this Poe sensed in the seconds he stood in the stable with closed eyes.
When he opened his eyes, the bulldog and his short friend in the bear coat stood before him.
Poe’s eyes met Figg’s. The writer said softly, “Are you from Jonathan?”
Figg said, “I come to kill him.”
Poe nodded. He was not surprised.
He watched Figg slip the two pistols into the outside pockets of his long black coat.
There was no need for Poe to remain here any longer. “I thank you for saving my life. I wish there was something further I could do-”
“There is.”
“I am in your debt, Mr.-”
“Figg. Pierce James Figg. I seek your aid in finding Jonathan. I have here in my possession, a letter of introduction from-”
Poe closed his eyes and shook his head. “I fear you mistake me for someone else.”
“You are Edgar Allan Poe and I have here in my possession, a letter-”
Fear brought on Poe’s anger. “I have some small curiosity, Mr. Figg, as to how you made my acquaintance without my having made yours.”
“We ain’t been introduced if that is where you are placin’ your words.”
Titus Bootham plucked at Figg’s sleeve. “May I suggest we continue this conversation elsewhere, as I am afraid we may soon draw servants seeking an explanation regarding the disappearance of four excellent horses. Oh, Mr. Figg, dare I ask. Are those two men-” he pointed to Isaac Bard and Chopback, “are they-”
Figg kept staring at Poe. “They are. Mr. Poe-”
Poe feared the unseen Jonathan and he wanted nothing to do with this Figg who hunted him. “I have no interest in your letter of introduction even were it signed by Aristotle and witnessed by Shakespeare and the Prophet John. I seek no further involvement in this business-”
He thought of Rachel Coltman. “I seek no further involvement than I have already incurred and this is nothing I care to discuss with you.” Why hadn’t this Figg rushed out into the wintery gusts like the other animals?
Figg took one step towards him and Poe stepped back. Figg made him uneasy.
“You will help me, Mr. Poe. You will.”
“I have refused you, sir.”
“I have just killed two men.”
“Are you threatening me?”
Figg’s voice was that of a man with a dusty throat. Figg’s smile was the size of a sixpenny piece and lasted no longer than a drop of water in the fires of hell. “Threatenin’ you, Mr. Poe. Go on. Now why would I indulge in such practices, me an Englishman and all.”
“You have threatened me, sir. I know it.”
“Then know that I mean to have your help, Mr. Poe, and consider us joined by God until I completes me business or until God puts us asunder.”
“You mean until you kill whom you seek or until he kills us both?”
Figg placed an arm around Poe’s small shoulders, forcing him to walk with him towards the front door of the stable. “I am newly arrived in your country and I am sure you will be of some small assistance to me.”
Poe watched Figg reach inside his long, black coat. “I have here in me possession, a letter of introduction-”
Poe felt Figg’s fingers dig into his shoulder, keeping the two of them joined and in step.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing/Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.
TWELVE
Flgg cleaned his two pistols while speaking.
“Me and Mr. Bootham here, we was followin’ you, Mrs. Coltman, us havin’ come upon you at the American Museum of Master Phineas Taylor Barnum. We comes near yer ‘ouse and we spies Mr. Poe a-strollin’ ’bout his business and we sees three gents leave a carriage and drag him from public view. These gents did not seem to be clergymen. I finds me way into the stable and-”
Figg stopped talking but kept working on the pistols. He sat behind the large oak desk in Rachel Coltman’s library. Mrs. Coltman, Titus Bootham and Poe sat in front of him; Figg could feel the little poet’s hostility towards him, not that it mattered a rat’s ass. Figg was going to squeeze assistance from Edgar Allan if he had to knuckle him a time or two to put him in a warmer frame of mind.
He looked up to see Poe glaring at him. Figg returned to his guns.
Poe’s soft, southern voice dripped malice. He hadn’t forgotten Figg’s implied threat if Poe didn’t help him to find this Jonathan. “Were you busy with cleaning rags when you first made the acquaintance of Charles Dickens?”
Figg didn’t look up. “Mr. Poe, had these pistols failed to perform properly, you would now resemble a gutted hog danglin’ from a slaughterhouse hook. I takes care of me firearms and they takes care of me.”
Poe crossed his legs, then turned his head so that he stared at Figg from the corner of his left eye. “You seem to have a way of convincing people, no matter how reluctant they may be, to do your bidding. Why not converse with the pistols and make them aware of the consequences of disobeying you.”