He stepped between Figg and Poe, an arm around each man’s shoulders. “Gents, tonight you will be drink-in’ the finest and it is on Johnnie Bill Baker, none other. Now sit you down and a waiter gal will bring you a small libation-”
“None for me,” said Figg. He hesitated, then, “And Mr. Poe is on temperance.”
Baker’s eyebrows crawled up his forehead in mock shock. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Well, Mr. Poe, I do hope the distilleries of Manhattan refuse to panic at this sudden news. And all this time I thought the most wondrous sight of all would be that of a camel sashayin’ through the eye of a needle. I offer me finest spirits and I am refused. Well, no matter. Take a pew the both of you, and I will have Mr. Sproul summoned and your business with him can be concluded. Johnnie Bill Baker knows how to treat a guest. Yes sir, that he does.”
From where they had originally been sitting, Figg and Poe watched Baker, Black Turtle and two men talk out of earshot several feet away. A dancing couple came between both groups, then moved on.
Figg, both hands still in his pockets, wished the lad with the trumpet would lay it down and go milk cows. The lad was a sorry mess and had no more music in him than a pig could fly. The lady harpist knew what she was doing and the one armed drummer appeared to have gotten drunk and passed out. As Figg shifted his eyes to Baker’s group, a hideous looking old woman, tiny and dry as a dead sparrow, crossed the dance floor, miraculously managing to avoid dancing couples. Her hair was sparse and white and she barely had a handful of teeth in her tiny head. She’d been somewhere in the darkness behind Baker.
Standing in front of Figg and Poe, the old woman began speaking softly in French.
Figg whispered from the corner of his mouth. “A nutter, she is. Balmy and around the bend. You takin’ charge of ‘er life, too?”
Poe answered her in French. Ain’t that nice, thought Figg. The two of ‘em carrying on like they was in Paree. French ain’t no language for a grown man. All them foreign words in it and you speak it from your nose.
The little old woman swayed, smiled at Figg, then continued speaking in French to Poe. Looney, moonstruck old biddy. They only come to the little poet when they are crippled in some manner. Cripples. They’re drawn to him like flies to rotting meat.
Poe’s southern drawl was respectful. “Mr. Figg, have you a coin to spare?”
“For this one? Give me a good reason why I should.”
“She has just warned us. Baker plans to betray you and me. No, do not stand, do not move. Stay as you are and listen.”
Poe sighed. “This dear woman is called Montaigne, though it is not her real name. It is the name of a sixteenth-century French philosopher. Her own name? A mystery to us, perhaps even to her, for her mind has been ravaged by alcohol and drugs. The sorrow that brought this on was great. She is French and once she was tutor to the children of the King of France. How she came to fall this low is another tale for another time. Life has treated her with contempt and disdain and to most, she is only a pile of rags in a doorway or under a bar, something to be ignored and discounted. Which is what happened tonight. Baker and others ignored her and she heard him plan our destruction. Baker knows where Sproul is, but will not lead us to him.”
“Did she learn why Baker is against us?”
“Does it matter?”
“No it don’t.”
Figg took a hand from his pocket and stuck it inside his coat. When he brought the hand out, it held a gold sovereign.
Poe said, “A suggestion, Mr. Figg. If you give her the gold coin, there is the chance that someone in here will see it and cut her throat for it. In Five Points, children are stabbed for their pennies. I suggest you buy her two or three bottles of liquor. She would be most appreciative, I am certain.”
“Ask her.”
“She understands English, Mr. Figg.”
“Yeah, I guess she does.” Figg tipped his hat to her. “You will ‘ave it, miss. And I am thankin’ yew muchly.”
She smiled. Her eyes were too bright, Figg thought. She’s addled, but thank dear Jesus, she ain’t too addled. “Mr. Poe, please find us a waiter gal for Missus Montaigne.”
The old woman spoke in French to Figg.
Poe said, “ ‘Sit we upon the world’s highest throne, sit we upon our own asses. ’It is from her namesake, her way of telling us that we have no right to look down upon her, for all of us are mortal and ordinary and none too elevated, despite our vanity.”
Figg nodded to her. She nodded back.
Poe leaned closer to the boxer. “We could leave now, Mr. Figg. Flee before plans are finalized for our destruction.”
“If we do not find Mr. Sproul, your lady friend is that much longer in the clutches of Jonathan.”
Poe sighed. “Too true. Then what are you suggesting we do, sir?”
“Continue sittin’ on this ‘ere bench and listenin’ to that sorry lad with the horn in his mouth.”
“We shall die if we remain, sir!” Poe leaned away from Figg.
“Mr. Poe, get one of them waiter gals so’s we can get Missus Montaigne her just desserts. If we flee, we learn nothin’. And about dyin’, well, I got me own thoughts on that. Yes, squire, indeed I do.”
TWENTY-THREE
Ten minutes past midnight. For the second time tonight, Poe watched fire bring death to someone.
An hour ago in Five Points, he’d been near enough to feel the heat from flames that had killed Johnnie Bill Baker. He’d been sick to his stomach at watching the Irishman die. But there was that part of him always drawn by violence and the dark side of life, so he’d fought hard against admitting to himself the fascination he’d felt witnessing Baker shriek as fire crawled all over him. Fascination, then guilt.
Now Poe and Figg stood with the crowd looking at the Ann Street boarding house go up in flames Witnesses said that some of the Renaissance Players had gotten out alive. Some hadn’t. The three who’d survived were not those Figg had been searching for.
The disappointed boxer’s whisper came from the corner of his mouth. “Convenient little business, this. Now it appears there will be nobody to converse with.”
“You wanted them dead. Circumstance appears to have spared you the labor involved.”
“’Nother road leadin’ nowhere, squire. If I coulda got me ‘ands round the neck of one of them players, it wouldna been long before me ‘ands were around Jonathan’s neck as well.”
Damn them, thought Poe of the chattering crowd around him. They conduct themselves as if this were a sporting event. Mothers hold babes up to see the terrible beauty that is fire and men share their bottles with strangers, a sudden harmony engendered by gazing upon the misery of others. Colored stableboys point at the disaster, then jabber to each other as though they still swung from trees by their tails. Children crawl from warm beds for such an event as this, for it is a promise of more momentous occasions to come, a false promise I could tell them, for too soon misery will be theirs to embrace and others will stare at them and point.
“You are silent, Mr. Poe.”
“Tonight, sir, I have seen too much of such things as this.” He desperately craved alcohol. The guilt was now mingled with disgust.
“No sense dwellin’ on Mr. Baker. It was ‘im or us. Don’t the bible say that ‘im what digs a hole for others gets to fall in it ‘imself?”
Two small boys ran out of the night and at Figg, throwing themselves to the ground just in front of him, then turning to watch the fire.
Figg gave the boys a half smile. “When I was their age, would ‘ave given a king’s ransom for such a fire as this. I-”
He looked around.
Poe was gone.
Damn his eyes! Figg angrily pushed through the crowd, looking left, right. That sneaky little bastard. What the bleedin’ hell was upsetting his tender soul-seeing Johnny the Gent turn into a cozy fireplace in front of his eyes? Seeing the boarding house get toasted to a crisp? That was it. Too much burnin’ for the little man.