I rub at my throat, still feeling the grip of Pa’s fingers. “I’m here because of Pa, not the bishop.”
“Oh?” Eb sets his book next to the lamp burning on the table beside his bed. “And what did King John of Moldavia do this time?”
Instead of replying, I make a beeline to Eb’s wardrobe, home of a glorious stash of pilfered liquor.
“Oh, Christ, was it ‘getting splashed’ bad?” he asks.
I dig around in his piles of pantaloons and nightshirts. “If I can only survive until this weekend . . .” My fingertips bump against the curves of a smooth piece of glass. With a smile, I pull out a beautiful black bottle of sherry by its neck. “Oh, God, if I can make it to the university, Eb, I’ll be free. I’m so damn close to escaping.”
Behind me, the window rattles.
I wheel around, the sherry sloshing in my hands, and I gape at a dervish of tree branches flailing about in the darkness. The window shakes harder, as though it might shatter, and the air in Eb’s bedroom crackles with static that raises the hairs on my neck. A palpable force barrels toward me.
Eb jumps up from his bed. “What the devil is that?”
“Keep the window closed.”
“What?”
“Keep the window closed!” I toss him the sherry, lunge for the window, and hold the sash down. The windowpane buzzes against my right ear, and then—oh, hell!—I feel the force of a firm set of hands fighting to raise the sash.
“She’s trying to open the window!”
“Who is?” asks Eb.
I push down with more strength and close my eyes—unable to bear the sight of her again. I know it’s her. It must be her, for Ebenezer’s room just turned shadowy and cold, and I’m clammy and panicky, as though trapped in a coffin, buried alive. I can’t breathe!
“What the devil is happening, Edgar?” asks Eb.
“I’m not letting anything confine me here in Richmond!” I yell, gasping for air. “Go away, Lenore! Go away! Pa will see you! He’ll trap me in Ellis & Allan!”
My shouting is futile—my strength inadequate.
The window flies open, and the smell of smoke rushes in.
CHAPTER TEN
Lenore
My poet fought to keep me out in the snow.
He FOUGHT to KEEP me OUT in the SNOW!
I force the sash open, hard enough to knock him backward to the floor in a room I do not recognize, papered in a sickly shade of yellow.
I slide through the window and land on my feet.
Edgar crawls crab-style away from me, and the owner of the room—a pimple-marked scarecrow with bulging brown eyes—gawks at me while clutching a black bottle.
“W-w-what is she, Edgar?” asks the fellow, the liquid sloshing in the bottle, and he leaps onto the bed. “What is she?”
“I told you to stay hidden, Lenore,” says Eddy, rising to his feet. “I told you—”
“You call me to you, Eddy.” I shove my right index finger against my chest and march toward him. “You’re the one who summons me.”
“N-n-no.” His back smacks against a wardrobe with its doors hanging open. “No, I wouldn’t call you to me when Pa’s threatening to—”
“Stop it!” I grab him by his cravat and yank him toward me, hard enough to jerk his head backward on the hinge of his neck. “Stop saying how much you fear that Pa will see me. Stop shouting for me to go away because of him. You summon me because of Pa. He’s already seen me, in fact. You wanted him to view me, because you know precisely how powerful I am.”
Eddy’s face blanches. “He’s seen you?”
“He thinks I’m his muse. He promised to bring me poetry, but he lied, and I’m starving!”
“Edgar, is she your damn muse?” asks the other boy from up on his bed, his voice rising to a squeak. “Your—your muse is something you can see, and it looks like that?”
Eddy purses his lips and fidgets beneath my grip, but he does not respond to the boy.
“Are you ashamed of me?” I ask, and my eyeballs prickle, as though someone’s sticking them with needles.
My poet lowers his eyes beneath his dark lashes, his breath choppy, his posture wilting.
“Are you?” I ask again, strengthening my hold on the knot of silk tied around his neck.
He gulps, and with a nod, he answers, “Yes.”
The walls of my throat thicken and tighten.
I let go of the unfaithful wretch. “If I could nourish myself I would! If I could pen my own poems—”
A temptation catches my eyes from across the room: a speckled quill, resting on a table below a map of the world.
If I could pen my own poems—make my own music—dine on my own delectable art, I would. Oh, I most certainly would.
I pounce at the table and gaze down at the quill, eager to feel the brush of the plume against my skin, to dip the nib into the depths of a fragrant pot of ink and write down my own words.
What would happen if I touch it? I wonder, for the quill hums and sizzles, as though sparks might snap from the veins of the feather. Would it hurt? Would I die for questioning my station?
The flame of a tallow candle bends toward me with a hiss, and for a moment I fancy that a rival muse inhabits the light—a muse jealous of my ability to put pen to paper. I blow out the flame and grab the quill.
The plume burns!
My God!
I scream and let the thing drop to the floor, my right palm scorched and throbbing, a streak of red emblazed across my skin. Blisters bubble across this fiendishly fragile new flesh of mine, and I cry out in pain, dropping to my knees, mourning my fate, forever bound to a poet who rejects me.
With a wail of rage, I push over the desk’s chair.
“What was that?” calls a woman’s voice downstairs. “What are you doing up there, Ebenezer?”
“Get her out of here, Edgar!” shouts the other boy—this Ebenezer—and he jumps off the bed and calls outside his room’s door, “Edgar is here, Ma. We’re reciting Julius Caesar.”
“Well, stop all that hullabaloo within the next five minutes,” calls the woman, “so I may go to bed.”
“Yes, Ma.” Ebenezer slams the door shut.
I scream again and grab a leather-bound book from a shelf next to the desk—a book that I promptly hurl at my poet, who’s still frozen by the wardrobe.
“I will not be useless!” I fetch a second text to throw. “I will not be ignored and secreted away like something shameful.”
Edgar deflects each book with his left shoulder and calls to Ebenezer, “Give me the bottle!”
“Are you going to hit her over the head with it?”
“Uncork it and give it to me, Eb! Now!”
I tear the map off the wall and stomp the world beneath my feet. Something pops behind me, but I ignore the distraction, yank Robinson Crusoe off the shelf, and pitch the book at Edgar’s head.
He catches it in his left hand, takes the bottle in his right one, and then he tips back his head with a tousle of his curls and gulps down a long swig.
Oh, no!
Oh, no, no, no!
Something’s suddenly not right.
A rush of fumes stings my throat and blurs my vision, and my head floods with the sensation of drowning in a stupefying liquid. A heaviness, a fogginess, bears down on my brain, and I wobble on my feet, my arms swaying like pendulums I can’t seem to control.