Oh, Lord—how my hunger worsens! How I crave a tale of horror that will appease my groaning soul. Dream again, poet, of your other lost lady—the one you call “Helen,” who lies in a grave up on Shockoe Hill.
I slither through the shadows, my skirts swishing, sliding, scented with cinders. I don’t quite know for certain whether I truly am a girl, but that’s how my poet tends to think of me, and so I lengthen, and stretch, and wiggle curves into my hips. I thrust out my torso and plump up my breasts, reshaping myself into the silhouette of a young woman who hides in the warmth of the wood, and the nails, and the pale pink plaster. I creak and crawl in the wall on hands and knees, unseen, unheard by most, and set Edgar Poe’s imagination ablaze by conjuring images that astound and horrify him. I inspire him, and in turn, he offers me stories that strike sparks in the flint of my fluttery fragment of a heart.
The Right Reverend Bishop Moore opens his eyes mid-prayer and gapes in my direction.
He senses me, too—ha! ha!
Perhaps my strengthening heartbeat has loudened.
Perhaps my cravings rumble with thunderous wails through the church and shake the floor beneath the bishop’s leather soles.
Perhaps everyone hears the songs I’ve summoned from the dead in the crypt down below.
Edgar cracks a small smile at that last supposition.
“Silence your muses!” the bishop shouts to the congregation minutes later, and I crouch down in the dust of the floorboards and breathe the tang of anguish and terror trapped inside this haunted temple.
“The strongest among us,” says the bishop, “swiftly learned that to walk the path of righteousness, we must turn away from foolish temptations and imaginary realms before our passions grow unruly and wild—before the world views our extravagance.”
Unruly.
Wild.
Before the world views our extravagance.
My soul—so cramped, so sore and weary of entrapment in shadows—longs for unruliness, wildness.
I want the world to notice my poet. To notice me.
Wait until they see what’s coming. Oh, just wait and see . . .
The service ceases, and the congregation rises. With some tantalizing little nudges from me, my poet woos his beautiful, beloved Elmira, and then he tugs at the cream-colored cravat strangling him and plods toward the back of the church, his footfalls hammering out a steady cadence—a bold and beauteous trochaic octameter that empowers me to stretch even taller. His violet-gray eyes flit in my direction for the briefest of moments—long enough for me to join him.
CHAPTER THREE
Edgar
Ma and I ride back home in a carriage that rocks us through ruts in a road ravaged by years of trade merchants rolling into Richmond in four- and six-horse wagons. Several inches of snow on the ground worsen the lurching and swaying, and despite our driver Dabney’s skilled guidance of the mares, Ma and I cling to the brass straps near our heads to avoid flying off the seat.
“As of this morning,” I say through my teeth amid the tumult, “I’ve learned that my artistic aspirations might not simply stop Pa from sending me to the university next week, but they might also impede me from both marriage and heaven.”
“You already knew the bishop’s opinion about secular entertainment, Edgar.” Ma withdraws an embroidered handkerchief from her purse. “He’s been preaching such sermons since the earliest years of Monumental Church. I’m sorry if his mentioning the Placide & Green Company upset you. We both know your late mother was a sweet, lovely soul.”
“I see beauty and godliness in poetry.” I tighten my grip on the arm-strap. “God gave me this brain that longs to create art.”
“I know, my dear.” Ma unfolds the handkerchief in her lap. “I don’t believe Bishop Moore specifically spoke of your aspirations. You write of the stars in the heavens and the purity of love. Isn’t there a holy friar in the first line of your poem ‘Tamerlane’?”
I gaze out the carriage window at a drunkard staggering out of the Swan Tavern.
“Yes,” I say, “there’s a friar, but I don’t believe Bishop Moore would like ‘Tamerlane.’”
Ma emits a sudden cough that makes me jump. I watch her face redden as she draws a horrifying gasp that sounds like she’s inhaling all the oxygen in the carriage, and then she bends forward at the waist and hacks into her handkerchief, her shoulders lurching, shuddering.
“Ma?” I place a hand on her back and endure the convulsions of her spine beneath my palm. “Do you want a doctor?”
She gasps again and forces herself upright by pushing one hand against the seat and using the other to grab the brass strap. “No, darling.” Her eyes water and spill over. “I’m fine.” She wipes her cheeks with the cloth. A troubling purple hue darkens her lips.
I dare a glance at her handkerchief, fearing the sight of blood—the telltale sign of tuberculosis—the disease that killed my mother.
The cloth looks clean. Thank God!
I hook an arm through hers and sicken with fear that she’ll die while I’m away at the university. She pats my hand and bellows a low wheeze that fills my eyes with tears.
Ma and I enter the front doorway of our brick beast of a house.
Our mansion, to be precise.
Pa purchased this hilltop Camelot—named “Moldavia” by the original owners—just the summer before, after inheriting an obscene amount of money from his uncle William, who seized up and died one morning in the middle of tea and pancakes. We moved here from a smaller Richmond residence shortly after the purchase.
“Go wish a good morning to Pa,” says Ma in the grand hall that amplifies the post-coughing croaks of her voice.
My throat tightens at her suggestion, and again I fuss with my cravat. My Adam’s apple lodges above the knot, and for a moment I’m caught in a mad struggle to breathe.
“What are you doing, Edgar?” She pushes my hands away and reties the bow as though I’m still a child. Years of illness—as well as over two decades of marriage to an ass—have darkened the skin beneath her brown eyes and deepened the furrows of her forehead, and yet she’s remained a handsome woman, despite all. Her mouth and nose are so petite, they make her husband’s face look like an ogre’s in comparison whenever his head hovers beside hers.
“I heard you two fighting again last night,” she says.
I peer straight ahead without blinking. My arms hang by my sides, my shoulders stiff, the blades aching. I smell Pa’s tobacco in every particle of air inside the house.
“Go wish him a good morning, Eddy.” She fluffs the bow at my throat. “Set things right.”
I swallow. “He accused me again of ‘eating the bread of idleness.’”
“He’s just urging you to fulfill your potential.”
“That doesn’t explain all the countless times he threatens to stop me from attending the university. I’m so close to leaving. So damn—”
“Edgar! The Sabbath.”
“So maddeningly close.”
Ma wraps her hands around my shoulders and leans toward me. “It’s difficult for him to imagine you receiving the type of education his parents were never able to afford for him. He’s giving you opportunities he only dreamed of for himself.”