I considered again the matter of my confinement. The strap which held me was in the nature of a surcingle—a single length of heavy material passed round and round me, many times. One slash through it—anywhere—by the destroying crescent and my entire wrapping would be loosened. A person capable of precision observation from a position such as mine—as well as a good head for calculation—might come up with an approximation of where its closest slash would fall before actual contact and whether to inhale or exhale. But I knew there was a human up there somewhere who delighted in inflicting pain. He was going to make this part last as long as he could.
It was no accident a surcingle held me either, I suddenly realized. Unless I did myself in by gasping at the wrong moment, the pendulum would sever my bond after the operator had had his fun. There would be time enough to roll from the rack to the floor. Such a roll could carry me right into the pit unless I were very careful. Somehow, I felt, what they really wanted was for me to choose the pit, to plunge into it of my own volition and perish below. All the rest was cake decoration.
So I kept my breathing slow and even and I waited.
Eight more passes of the pendulum and it was within inches of my breast. The next time by it had descended slightly. Four more, and it grazed my body as it went by. Now would come the toying with me, I guessed. It would remain at the same height or be raised slightly.
So I drew in a deep breath, gritted my teeth, and closed my eyes. There came a stinging sensation in my chest, and I flexed my arms, kicked with my legs, and rolled to the right. I was off of the rack then, falling... .
Dark bodies scurried, fleeing in all directions. The hissing sound ceased. I turned my head just in time to behold that damnable machine being drawn back upward into the ceiling. I massaged my aching limbs, attempting to remain alert to any new dangers.
It was only then that I realized the source of the hellish light which pervaded the place. It was leaking into the cell along the bottoms of the two metal walls—these being the one to my right (across the pit)
and the one to my left. I could not make anything out through those slits, but even as I tried a suffocating odor entered my cell. It was in the nature of heated iron, and with it the ghastly pictures took on a certain fresh and wild character before their colors, in places, began to run. The walls jolted inward, taking on a richer hue of red than that simple depiction of flame and blood. They began—faintly, at first—to glow.
They moved again, they brightened again. I smelled smoke and heard clanging and clashing sounds from without. I rose to my feet, kicking off the remainder of the surcingle. I retreated a pace from the advancing wall of heat. It would seem their greatest aim was still to force me to choose the pit.
The walls moved again. I retreated yet another step. I moved along the pit's edge until I came to a stone wall—the one which held the door. It seemed the most logical place of retreat in the room.
And then, slowly, I turned. The pit bad been calling to me, steadily, ever since I had discovered it. Now I felt compelled at least to gaze into it, to discover what it was that offered me such terror, such spiritual destruction. I cast my vision downward. The glare from the advancing walls shed further illumination now, and I forced myself to stare at the figures in the terrible tableau beneath my feet.
The short sidewhiskered man stood beside an open coffin. He wore formal evening attire and also had on black gloves and held in his hand a small whip of the sort I had seen used in animal acts. Somehow, I knew this man to be Rufus Griswold. Before him—head hanging, hands tied—stood Poe. Griswold gestured with the whip, indicating that Poe should enter the coffin. Poe straightened and raised his head, and then he became but an outline, a blackness through which stars shone and comets blazed; the wondrous majesty of the Milky Way scaling the heights of infinity stood now before the casket, and Griswold looked away and gnashed his teeth.
Then the whip cracked and the figure was Poe once again, and the walls advanced upon me but the greater part of horror lay below, where Griswold wished to destroy imagination, wonder, and the dark unknowns of the human spirit, placing them in a box, burying them in this pit forever.
The walls moved again. I was dripping with perspiration in the near-unbearable heat. The clanging continued, the smell of smoke was overpowering. I felt that I was about to pass out, and I pressed back against the stone wall.
"No!" I cried. "Don't do it, Poe! Damn you, Griswold!"
But neither seemed to hear me. I tottered upon the brink. From somewhere I heard voices. There came a crashing at the door beside me. A hairy hand seized hold of my shoulder. I fell swooning.
Any horror but this, I remember thinking.
When I awoke I lay in a cell. There was no pit in its center and its door stood ajar. Ligeia and Emerson were with me. Peters stood at the door.
"General Lasalle has taken the city?" I said, repeating what I thought I had just heard.
"That is correct," she answered.
"The bond you established... . It worked?"
She nodded.
"But everything that happened to me here—there's a dreamlike, drugged quality to it."
"Griswold has finally succeeded in using your Annie as a weapon against you," she told me. "He wanted her to destroy you, but she resisted Templeton's orders at the end."
"So our paths did cross here, in a way. In a place of illusions. What of Von Kempelen?"
"It was a ruse. Now that Annie is out of the picture, Valdemar can see again. Von Kempelen actually fled to the Duchy of Aragon."
"So we must backtrack."
"So it would seem."
I accompanied them out into the fallen city, heading north to where our coach would be waiting, drinking water as I went.
Thus do I refute Berkeley.
She was the single artificer of the world in which she sang. Builded of no mortal sand, and sea the salt of her words, she passed through her kingdom, itself become the self of her song. At his cave she called forth the poet, unbound his hands, embraced him.
"They would have me pluck my dark bird," she said, "of the midnight flights."
Poe looked past her, at the turbulent sea. A cloud covered the sun.
"Untrammeled be, and know I would not harm you," she told him.
"Unreal," he said, and he turned away from her.
The space before him shattered like a wall of glass.
"Don't go," she said softly.
"Unreal."
He stepped through the crack in the kingdom, into darkness.
VII
After the pneumonia had had its way with Elizabeth Poe and her head lay still upon the soiled pillow, long black hair framing her childish face, great, gray eyes finally closed, the tiny actress was dressed in her tawdry finery, the best of her paste jewels hung upon her.
They laid her to state in the milliner's attic, where the other members of Mr. Placide's company, along with Mrs. Phillips, Mrs. Allan, Mrs. Mackenzie, and their husbands—who had taken upon themselves the arrangements for the funeral—might come by and pay their respects.
Her resting place was to be close to the wall in St. John's Churchyard. There had been some protest from members of the vestry that an actress should be buried in consecrated ground, but Mr. Allan and Mr.
Mackenzie, both members of the congregation, had prevailed. As it was, her grave was to remain unmarked for over a century.
And the gray-eyed boy who had been a pet of the company wondered... . How often had he seen his mother die and lie there like this, till it was time to come forward and take her bows? It was taking longer than usual this time. When would she come back to hold him?