“Neither have I,” he replied. “At least one that’s not in captivity.”
“Institutionalized, in a library,” I explained to Maisie.
He carefully turned it over, and on the rear cover, framed by a border of repeated triangular ornaments, like stylized burnt conifers or ink-black sunrises, similar to that on the front, was an advertisement for “Book & Job Printing” by that same “Calvin Thomas of No. 70, Washington-Street, Boston, Corner of State Street.” There was no indication on either front or back of who the author of this dreary-looking little chapbook, titled Tamerlane and Other Poems, was, aside from his or her being a Bostonian.
“Tamerlane,” Will said, a tone of uncommon impatience cascading from high to low with those three syllables. “No chimes ringing, Meg? No eureka?”
The title did sound familiar, I had to admit. I remembered that Christopher Marlowe had written a play called Tamburlaine the Great, and knew that George Frideric Handel had composed an opera Tamerlano in the early eighteenth century. The British fantasy writer Angela Carter wrote an elliptical short story—“The Kiss,” I believe it was titled—in which the Turkic conqueror was a character. But Marlowe and Handel were plainly no Bostonians, and Carter, a Brit, hadn’t started publishing until almost a century and a half after this Tamerlane saw the light of day. Nonplussed, I had to admit I was drawing a blank.
“Well,” he said. “Logic and reason dictate that this is an exceptionally high-quality forgery, the finest facsimile known to bibliophilic man, and not a genuine copy of the so-called Black Tulip of American literary rarities—”
So that was what the beautifully drawn flowers flanking Will’s name on the letter envelope were meant to represent.
“—Edgar Allan Poe’s first book. But if it’s really and truly authentic, as he claims it is and it looks to be, though I have every reason not to trust him or myself, for that matter, this would join the ranks of only a dozen copies known to have survived.”
“So you’ve seen one before, you’re saying?”
“Seen, but never touched,” he answered with unabashed and unwonted excitement. “I remember my father taking me to Philadelphia back when I was eleven, on a father-son field trip around Halloween to go to an exhibit at the Free Library. They were showing a copy of Tamerlane they’d just acquired through a bequest from a collector named Richard Gimbel. Our train trip and the nice hotel on Rittenhouse Square, where we had a fancy enough dinner that I was required to wear a jacket and tie, are a bit of a blur in retrospect. But one thing I remember clearly is my father pointing at the Poe displayed behind glass and telling me, ‘Now there’s a book I’ll never possess, Will. That is a true unicorn. Never forget you saw this.’”
“Can I touch?” Maisie asked, and before Will or I could say no, she’d reached out and gingerly laid her fingertips on the cover, as if it were a sacred relic. Which, in some ways, I suppose it possibly was.
“Let’s have a look, but then best put it back in the safe until I’ve had a chance to do some research,” Will said, delicately lifting it and leafing through the first few pages of poetry.
“May I ask what Slader wrote you? It is Slader, right?”
“I don’t see who else it would be, Meg,” turning to the end to see there was no colophon, then paging through the twenty leaves—forty pages—of text. It was clear Will took this book seriously, unicorn or no. “Like I said last night, his Poe calligraphy is stunningly good, impeccable, and I don’t think he was trying that hard.”
“How’s that?”
He set the pamphlet down again on the table. “The paper, unlike what I’m seeing here with this Tamerlane, isn’t as period as it should have been. And the purplish color of the ink is entirely wrong. More Virginia Woolf than Edgar Poe. He knew I would know. If he’d wanted to, he could’ve fabricated a far more credible letter in dark brown or black ink and on period paper, but there was no point in bothering. That’s what he’s telegraphing me.”
Maisie looked at Will as if he were speaking in a foreign language that needed to be translated. But he stared out the window and continued, for all intents and purposes talking to himself.
“You know, with Slader potentially active again, I’m going to have to be careful at work. Poe manuscript materials don’t come on the market that often, but when they do, they go for big money. There was a previously unknown letter that came up at Christie’s around five years ago, about ‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’ and it went off for a hundred and a half.”
“That’s a hundred and fifty thousand, Maze,” I explained, and she raised her eyebrows.
“A holograph manuscript of one of his poems, ‘The Conqueror Worm,’ fetched twice that at a much smaller auction house up in New England.”
“You haven’t answered my question,” I said.
“If I’m not mistaken, the record was set at auction for a two-page manuscript of a love poem he wrote right before he died. Hammered down at eight hundred thousand or so, and it was only the first half of the poem. That wasn’t quite a decade ago. Imagine what it would bring today—”
“Will?” I asked, with an impatient frown.
Startled, he looked over at me, suddenly cognizant that Maisie and I were staring at him, and said, “I’m sorry, yes?”
“What does all this mean?”
“Like I said, he wants to meet. No doubt to discuss this book—this, whatever it is.”
“When?”
“Friday.”
Sometimes my husband exasperated me. I loved him, as the toady phrase has it, warts and all. Yet there were times, like now, when he could be unnerving, if not confounding. I had a hundred different arguments against his going along with such lunacy, not the least of which was that he would be leaving me and Maisie alone in the house. Divide and conquer, wasn’t that the oldest trick in the book?
“And where is this meeting supposed to take place?”
Will scratched his temple, hesitated. “He seems to prefer meeting in nice old hotels. The Beekman Arms, at three.”
“If you don’t go, then what?”
“He’ll persist. He’s the definition of persistence, as you of all people know.”
“You absolutely shouldn’t do this,” I insisted, aware he’d made up his mind.
He considered my words before countering, “I shouldn’t, it’s true. But I’m not left with a choice. Slader’s not only persistent, he’s clever. This Tamerlane? If it is authentic, it’s either stolen or the rare book find of the twenty-first century. The twelfth known copy turned up in a New Hampshire antiques barn three decades ago.”