The Pale Blue Eye: A Novel (27 page)

It was a dry piney night. The river was noisier than usual, and the moon could have cut you just to look at it, and the ground seemed to crackle with each step, so that I walked with great care, as if I were on the brink of offending. I paused by the ruins of the old Artillery Barracks and stood within sniffing distance of the Plain, casting my eyes along the long incline of night-purpled grass.

And then stopped.

Something was moving. Something by Execution Hollow.

I lifted my lamp higher, and as I drew closer, the figure's strangeness, the jangle of its borders, resolved into something clearer. I was looking at a man--a man on all fours.

Which from a distance, seemed a dire, an unhealthy pose for anyone to be in--the prelude to a full collapse. But as I drew still closer, I could see there was a meaning behind this position. For just beneath that first figure lay a second.

The one on top, I recognized straight off. I had seen enough of him in cadet mess to know the flaxen hair, the farm-boy mass of him: Randolph Ballinger, if you please. Astride his opponent, using his heavy legs to pin the fellow's arms to the ground and plying the full weight of his mighty forearm against the other's windpipe.

And who was on the receiving end of that onslaught? It wasn't until I'd circled round and got the necessary vantage--seen the outsized head and the brittle whippet frame and, yes, the cloak with its torn shoulder--that I could be certain.

And now I was running. For I knew in my bones how unequal this contest was: Ballinger was a good half foot taller than Poe, forty pounds heavier, and more than that, he had in his actions a clean line of intent that suffered no reversal. He would not turn back.

"Leave off, Mr. Ballinger!"

I heard my own voice, rock-steady, shrinking the distance between us.

His head jerked up. His eyes--white pools in the lantern light--met mine. And without letting up one bit from Poe's throat, he said, calm as a pond:

"Private business, sir."

It was Leroy Fry who came echoing back in that moment. Calling out merrily to his companion on the landing: Necessary business...

And there was a necessity to this business, to judge by Ballinger's flat, unruffled brow, his air of studious attention. He had seen his course, and he would follow it out. And he would do it without another word of explanation. Indeed, the only sound I could make out now was the gargling in Poe's throat, a wet, mangled frequency--worse than any scream.

"Leave off, Mr. Ballinger!" I cried again.

And still he pressed down with that heavy, heavy arm, squeezing the last drops of air from Poe's lungs. Waiting for the cartilage of Poe's trachea to give way.

I swung my boot and caught Ballinger square on the temple. He grunted, shook the pain from his head... and kept pressing.

The second kick caught him on the chin and sent him sprawling onto his back.

"If you leave now," I said, "you can keep your commission. Stay, and I can guarantee you'll be court-martialed by week's end."

He sat up. Gave his jaw a rub. Looked straight ahead, as if I weren't there.

"Or maybe," I said, "you're not familiar with Colonel Thayer's opinions on attempted homicide."

It came down to this: he was no longer in his element. Like many bullies, he was able to enforce his will within a finite enclosure, but no further. As first assistant to the carver at Table Eight, he could stare down anyone who demanded roast beef before his turn. Outside the orbit of Table Eight, outside of 18 North Barracks, he had no system to gird him up. Which is to say, he left. With as much dignity as he could muster, but knowing still that he'd been stopped, and that knowledge trailed behind him in fumes.

Reaching down, I pulled Poe to his feet. He was breathing more easily now, but his skin was a mottled copper color in the lamplight.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

He winced as he tried a test swallow. "I am quite well," he gasped out. "It will take more than a... craven... underhanded assault to... cow a Poe. I hail from a--a long line of--"

"Frankish chieftains, I know. Maybe you can tell me what happened."

He took a single tottering step forward.

"I can hardly say, Mr. Landor. I'd stolen out of my chambers with the intent of visiting you... having taken all the... all the usual precautions. Careful as ever to... I can't explain it... he was able to surprise me."

"Did he say anything?"

"The same thing. Again and again. Under his breath."

"And what was that?"

" "Little beasts--ought to know their place'."

"And that was all?"

"That was all."

"And how do you interpret that, Mr. Poe?"

He shrugged, and even this tiny motion sent a new line of pain up the column of his throat.

"Arrant jealousy," he said at last. "He is... manifestly distraught... that Lea prefers me to him. He seeks to frighten me away from her." From somewhere inside him came a high, squirrelly laugh. "He can scarcely... gauge ... the depths of my resolve on this matter. I am not to be frightened."

"So you think he wished only to scare you, Mr. Poe?"

"What else?"

"Well, I don't know," I said, gazing once more at Execution Hollow. "From where I was standing, he looked awfully set on killing you."

"Don't be ridiculous. He hasn't the nerve. He hasn't the imagination."

Oh, Reader, I had half a mind to tell him about the killers I'd met in my day. Some of the least imaginative men you'd ever want to meet. Which was what made them so dangerous. "All the same, Mr. Poe, I wish you'd..." I shoved my hands into my pockets, gave the turf a light kick. "You see, the point is, I've come to depend on you in a fashion, and I'd hate to think you might lose your life over a young woman, however pretty she may be."

"I shan't be the one to lose his life, Mr. Landor. You may be certain of that."

"Who, then?"

"Ballinger," he said simply. "Before I let him come between me and my heart's desire, I will kill him. Yes, and it will be the purest pleasure and the most--the most moral act of my career."

I took him by the elbow and walked him gently up the slope toward the hotel. A minute passed before I dared speak again.

"Oh yes," I said, as lightly as I could, "the morality part is easily squared. But as for taking pleasure in it, Mr. Poe, I can't imagine you doing that."

"You don't know me, then, Mr. Landor."

And he was right: I didn't. I didn't know what he was capable of until it was already done.

We stood at last in front of the colonnade. Poe's breathing was coming steady now, and his face had regained something of its usual pallor. Never had that pallor looked so healthy.

"Well," I said. "I'm glad I happened along when I did."

"Oh, I think I should have had an answer for Ballinger in the end. But I'm grateful you were standing by in reserve."

"Do you think Ballinger knew where you were going?"

"I don't see how he could have. The hotel wasn't even in view."

"So you don't believe our little arrangement has been disclosed."

"Nor shall it be, Mr. Landor. Not to anyone, not even..." He paused to let the tide of feeling crest inside him. "Not even to her." Rousing himself then, he declared in a bright voice, "You have failed to ask me why I was coming to visit you in the first place."

"I assume you have some fresh news to deliver."

"Indeed I do."

All hands now, he began to ransack his pockets. It took him a minute to find the thing: a single sheet, which he unfolded as reverently as he might've unpacked a chalice.

I should have guessed. The glint in his eye alone should have told me, but no, I took the paper in all innocence and so was completely unprepared to read:
In the shades of that dream-shadowed weir, I trembled 'neath Night's loathsome stole. "Leonore, tell me how cam'st thou here To this bleak unaccountable shoal To this dank undesirable shoal." "Dare I speak?" cried she, cracking with fear.

"Dare I whisper Hell's terrible toll? "Each new dawn brings the memory drear Of the devils who ravished my soul Of the demons who ravaged my soul."

The words revolved in the lantern light, and I found I could call up no words to answer them. Over and over, I dredged my brain for something, and each time I came up empty, and in the end, all I could find to say was:

"It's nice," I said. "Really, Mr. Poe. Very nice."

I heard his laugh then in my ear--full and sweet and ringing.

"Thank you, Mr. Landor. I shall tell Mother you said so."

Narrative of Gus Landor

21

November 22nd to 25th

Later that night, I heard a knock on my hotel-room door. Not the shy tap that was Poe's trademark, but a more urgent summons that had me leaping from my bed, fully expecting to find--who could say?--Judgment itself.

It was Patsy. Wrapped in double bands of wool, her breath steaming in the cold hallway.

"Let me in," she said.

I waited for her to dissolve. Instead, she stepped into the room--all three dimensions, solid as my hand.

"I was just dropping off some liquor for the boys," she said.

"Anything left for me?"

That was as casual as I could be in the face of such temptation. Indeed, I think it fair to say I sprang on her... and she, angel that she is, suffered me to. Lay there with the most amused look on her face as I undressed her. Of all the stages, this is the one I like best: the peeling away of layers-- stockings, shoes, petticoats--each one more suspenseful than the last. For will she be there at the end of it all? The eternal question. Your hands tremble as you undo the final row of buttons...

And there she lies, shiny and white and prosperous.

"Mmm," she says, dictating to the last. "Yes, indeed. Right there."

It was a longer business than usual--Mr. Cozzens' bed had never made so many squeaks from so many corners--and when we were done, we lay there for a while, her head on my arm. And then, in her usual way, she fell asleep, and after listening for some time to the cataract of her breathing, I gently lifted her head from my chest and slipped out of bed.

Leroy Fry's diary was waiting for me by the window. Lighting the taper, I spread the pages on my lap and placed the notebook on the table and once more set to work, unwinding the long skeins of letters. I'd been working for more than an hour and a half when I felt her hands on my shoulders.

"What's in the book, Gus?"

"Oh." I set down my pen, gave my face a good rub. "Words."

She pressed her knuckles into the knotted ridges above my collarbones. "Good words?"

"Not really. Although I'm learning quite a lot about, oh, firing theory and Congreve rockets and Lord, wouldn't it be grand to be back home in Kentucky where the cold don't--don't scratch at your bones so. Amazing how boring a diary can be."

"Not mine," said Patsy.

"You--" My eyes flared open. "You keep one?"

After a long pause, she shook her head. "But if I did," she said.

Well, why shouldn't she? I thought. Wasn't I already walled round with texts? Poe with his poems and prose, and Professor Pawpaw with his notebook, and Sergeant Locke with his notebook... even Captain Hitchcock was rumored to keep a journal. I thought of the scrap in Leroy Fry's balled-up fist and the engraving of that devils' sabbath and the newspapers on Thayer's breakfast table and the newspapers next to Blind Jasper's elbow--all these texts, do you see? Not gathering into meaning, as you might expect, but erasing one another, until one word was no truer than the next, and down we would all go, down this rabbit hole of words, clanging and shrilling like Pawpaw's birds...

So yes, I thought. By all means, Patsy. Keep a diary.

"Care to come back to bed?" she whispered in my ear.

"Mmm."

I gave it some thought, I will say that for myself. Gave it serious consideration. And fool that I was, chose to stay where I was.

"I'll be there soon," I promised.

Except that I fell asleep in my chair. And when I woke up, it was morning, and she was gone, and in my notebook, the following words had been scrawled: Bundle Up, Gus. It's Cold Outside.

It was cold--all through Tuesday and Tuesday evening.

On Wednesday morning, Cadet First Classman Randolph Ballinger failed to return from his guard posting.
A search was immediately mounted, but the men left off after twenty minutes because an ice storm had begun to sweep through the Highlands. The chill and damp were extreme, the views had shrunk to nothing, and after a time, the horses and mules could make no headway, so it was agreed that the search would be remounted as soon as the weather permitted.

But the weather didn't permit. The ice kept falling through the morning and the afternoon. It tickled the roofs and pattered on the leaded casement windows and made a crazing chatter on the eaves and walls. Down, down it came, never stopping, never changing. I spent the whole morning listening to it scratch like a hungry cur in the gutters, until I realized that if I didn't throw on my coat and stagger outside, I would go mad.

Early afternoon, and the whole land lay prisoner. Ice had formed in thick brittle crusts over Captain Wood's obelisk and the brass eighteen-pounders in the artillery park and the water pump behind South Barracks and the downspouts on the stone buildings of Professors' Row. Ice had lacquered together the gravel on the walkways and ambered over the rock lichens on their rocks and clamped the wide expanses of snow into beds hard as quartz. Ice had dragged down the boughs of the cedar trees into wigwams that shuddered at each kiss of wind. Pure democracy, this ice, falling on blue and gray alike, silencing everything it touched. Except for me. My boots, as they picked their way through, made a sound like clanging armor, and the sound seemed to sing from one end of the Point to the other.

Back I staggered to my room and, for the rest of the afternoon, dozed in and out in the endless twilight. Sometime around five, I woke with a start and ran to the window. The ice had stopped, and there was a peal of quiet now, and through the bolls of mist, I could just make out a single dugout toiling downriver with a bare-armed oarsman. I hurried on my trousers and a shirt and coat and closed the door quietly after me.