Cannonbridge (14 page)

“Up here,” says the woman, leading the way. Toby follows, realising only now, for the very first time, that he may have made a mistake in throwing himself upon her mercy, in trusting to the kindness of this beguiling stranger. There is a single light on in the building, a dull illumination glimpsed through a first-floor window.

“Looks like my flatmates are home,” Gabriela says, perhaps, thinks Toby, in order to make clear that the place is occupied, that he is outnumbered.

They reach the front door and Gabriela reaches for a key. She unlocks the door and pushes it open and they walk through into a spindly corridor, carpeted in stained and faded red. An ancient bicycle lolls against the wall, so greedy in its use of space that Toby and Gabriela have to squeeze by. The place smells of old takeaways, damp washing, incense, Dove deodorant and pot.

The woman urges him on. “This way.”

Together, they walk into the lounge. Messy and unkempt, of course, but warm and comfortable. On the far side, a kitchen can be glimpsed. Toby’s attention, however, is taken up by two women, both a few years younger than Gabriela, who sit together on an elderly sofa. Both are smoking what Toby knows to be weed. The TV is on before them, the sound down low, a companionable murmur. The air is thick and soporific. Toby’s throat tickles and he steels himself not to cough.

“Guys?” This is Gabriela to her friends. “This is Toby. I thought he could crash on the sofa tonight.” Neither of the women stir. “Toby? This is Kara and this is Sam.”

“Hi there,” Toby says, wondering again quite how he’s found himself in this particular, unlikely situation. “I’m very grateful. I really don’t want to intrude. I’ll be out of your hair first thing tomorrow.”

The women turn around now, their movements slightly sullen and dazed. Toby, his head full, as is often the case, of Victoriana, finds himself thinking of opium dens.

The first woman—Kara—is plump and dark-haired, her make-up a day old and too thickly applied. The second—Sam—is blonde and close to skinny. Her face is pitted, her skin flaky-looking and raw. They gape at him not, as he had half-expected, with a kind of sceptical ribaldry, but rather in palpable shock and even—it would not, he thinks, be going too far to say, in horror.

“Everything all right?” asks Gabriela. “He won’t be any trouble. Come on. It’s not like you two haven’t had guys back before.”

Toby clears his throat and finds himself sucking in a lungful of marijuana smoke. “P’raps you recognise me? From YouTube, I suppose.” His tone is equal parts humility, embarrassment, defiance and, oddly, inappropriate pride.

Sam shakes her head. “No,” she says and then again, more firmly: “
no.”

Toby and Gabriela exchange glances.

“Not from the internet. From... from the TV.” She nods towards the screen and all eyes turn towards the object of her indication.

It’s BBC News, the 24-hour channel. Rolling coverage. About the only thing on at this time. The sound is too low to hear, just a mild susurration which Toby finds almost sinister. Even without the audio element, the chief points of the story are clear. The newsreader looks calm and severe, her expression filled with implicit judgement. Behind her, three faces appear. The first two, now deeply familiar to Toby, may not be known to the others: the strange, wild-eyed theorist, Russell Spicer, and the doomed policeman, Isaac Angeyo. And now another, evidently aligned with the preceding pair, in a manner that is coded as suspicious at best and nefarious at worst—an old, grainy, passport-style shot of Dr Toby Judd.

It is at this point when Toby realises that all three women are looking at him, Kara and Sam with suspicion and fear, Gabriela with pensive doubt.

“I know this is a cliché,” Toby begins, “but I can explain...”

And it is only as he does so, only as he begins to share his worst suspicions and the sickening connections that he has already forged, that he begins to understand the awful speed and dreadful dexterity with which the net that has been cast around him is being drawn tight.

1849

THE ODD FELLOWS HALL

BALTIMORE

I
T IS RAINING
in Baltimore tonight, without respite or mercy.

There has evidently been some manner of convocation at the Odd Fellows Hall—a low yet capacious building in a part of town which stands between the respectability of the quietest regions and an area which, if not exactly disreputable, is nonetheless suggestive of long-term misfortune—for a good deal of men and women are at present leaving the structure, their attitudes implying that they have enjoyed a largely happy or at least a diverting evening. Despite the rain, there is a good deal of laughter, chatter and exchanging of opinion. The impression is of an excellent dinner party, much appreciated by all who have attended.

Were we to be waiting at the front of the building and at the exit which leads out onto the street we would no doubt be able to see the cause of the celebration and the reason for the gathering itself, for beside the building stands a solid wooden notice board upon which has been pinned a large sheet of paper that sports the following printed words:

THE ENGLISH WRITER, MR MATTHEW CANNONBRIDGE

SPEAKING FROM MEMORY UPON THE TOPIC OF ‘FAIRNESS AND JUSTICE’ AND READING FROM SEVERAL OF HIS MOST CELEBRATED WORKS (THE ENGLISH GOLEM, PLENITUDE, EZEKIEL FRYE &c)

7 o’clock. Monday 1st October.

The words have been damaged by the downpour and are already beginning to run. They are becoming elongated, obscure and indistinct.

Yet we are not to linger on the street outside with that content, if rapidly dampening crowd, as they hurry away from the night’s entertainment, back to their warm hearths and warmer beds. No, we are for the rear of the building, for its discreet alternative entrance, for the shadows and for the gathering dark.

Here a man is waiting—a slender fellow, perhaps a little taller than we were expecting, a shade under six foot. He is dressed shabbily, entirely in black and has lately grown a rather forlorn moustache. He is scarcely forty, yet he looks as broken-down and defeated as a man decades his senior. Nonetheless, an odd sort of energy seems to animate him and he paces up and down, bedraggled but seemingly oblivious to the driving rain, at once agitated, watchful and excited. He is known to some as ‘the raven’ and he has rarely resembled so closely that cognomen as he does tonight, strutting anxiously in the rain, his movements nervily avian, his demeanour battered though not yet quite overwhelmed by the storm.

At length, after the crowd have dispersed and the lights in the hall have come to be extinguished, the door at the back of the building, by which our dishevelled bird has been waiting, opens and a familiar figure steps carefully out.

Mr Matthew Cannonbridge looks largely as we remember him from our last meeting, an ocean away, although he seems now more affluent in his bearing and manner, prouder and colder than before. He clothes are more expensive, though still sober rather than flamboyant, and, as he emerges into the sodden night, he dons a broad-brimmed hat in deference to the deluge.

He closes the door behind him and seems about to step out into the city when he catches sight of the man who is waiting. Cannonbridge seems not in the least surprised to find the stranger standing there. Neither person speaks. For a while there is only the sound of falling rain.

In the end, it is the raven who speaks first. “Mr Cannonbridge?”

Apparently confident of his fame, the Englishman gives no indication that he accepts the identification.

The raven moves a few, waterlogged steps nearer. “I hope you’ll forgive me for my ambush, Mr Cannonbridge. I have burned to meet you for so long.”

Cannonbridge inclines his head, very slightly, in acknowledgement of the accolade. The wide brim of his hat causes his face to fall into shadow. Still he does not speak.

“I am a literary man myself, friend. My name may be familiar to you.”

The brim of the hat moves still further down in defence against the rain. The face falls still further into shadow. And still no words come.

“I am Edgar Allan Poe, Mr Cannonbridge. I am The Raven.”

The hat moves up, the face is exposed and Mr Poe sees now that there is upon it a smile of a cruel and oddly feline hue.

Cats eat birds,
he thinks suddenly, uncertain quite where the thought has come from.
Cats eat birds.

Then Cannonbridge speaks. He sounds not as he did in Geneva or in Boston or in Norwich, but only as he did in the parlour at Haworth, whilst Emily stood bleeding beside him and the parsonage shook almost unto its own destruction. “What year is this?”

Poe has often felt in his short and predominantly miserable life that he has miscalculated or misjudged a person or opportunity or situation. For all his bravado in public and amongst friends he has often considered his existence to represent a series of disasters of his own making. Never, however, before tonight, has he ever felt so suddenly certain that he has erred in a decision as that which has brought him to Baltimore, to this hall, to the saturnine Englishman with the dreadful smile. “You joke with me, I think, Mr Cannonbridge?” he says, taking, unconsciously, a step or two back.

“Not at all. Even now, my personal chronology seems a little hazy. So I ask again, sir: what year is this?”

“’49, sir.”

“Edgar Allan Poe in 1849?”

“Yes. That is correct.”

The smile of Matthew Cannonbridge grows wider. Are his incisors sharper than before? Surely not. Surely that is merely a trick of shadow and light? “Then this is timely indeed. I’m so glad.”

“I’m not entirely certain what you mean by that, friend.”

“Then let me explain, my poor little raven. Over a drink?”

Poe holds up a hand in polite refusal though it might, had anyone chanced to observe the scene, have seemed more like an attempt to keep the other man at bay. “The offer is a kind one, sir. But perhaps I ought not to accept. Liquor is a weakness of mine. My aunt has often warned me of it. My late wife, bless her sweet soul, did her best to save me from it. I am inclined, you see, to...
sprees
.”

The smile darkens. “I know of your failings, little raven. And of your vulnerability also. Yet you will be quite safe with me. I am a temperate man and I shall permit no harm to come to you.”

Poe finds himself unable to reply. Soaked and aching, he longs for the comfort of a tavern and for the accompanying delight to be found in a julep.

Cannonbridge seems amused by the uncertainty in the other man’s face. “Come, Mr Poe. All will be well.”

“I’ve made a real exhibition of myself in the past, under the influence of strong drink. I have embarrassed—no, rather I have
humiliated
—myself, time and again. Oh, sir, but I have kicked up a bobbery.”

“There shall be no embarrassment tonight, Mr Poe. No humiliation either. Merely a couple of literary men speaking together of books and of poetry in the most congenial of circumstances. One drink, Mr Poe. You have my word. One drink only!”

Poe shivers in the cold and the wet. He pines for alcohol.

“Well, I can tarry in this foul weather no longer. Come with me if you wish, Mr Poe. But I am for the ale house!”

Cannonbridge turns and strolls, with a maddening nonchalance, towards the street beyond. Poe, of course, poor, doomed Edgar follows shortly afterwards, hurrying to keep up.

T
HE NIGHT IS
a long one and it provides considerably more than a single drink for either participant. The two men move from inn to inn, increasingly dismissive of the rain, the Englishman plying the American with drink after drink. Those who see them together will later remark that Cannonbridge appeared amused by the slow but thorough diminishment of his companion, his smile growing sharper all the while, as the night deepens and Poe falls further into sin. They speak of many things these two men, although it is Poe, at Cannonbridge’s subtle urging, who provides most of the conversation—speaking of his life and works, of his orphaning, his unorthodox loves, his hoaxes and poetry and terrors, of his detective, Monsieur Dupin. Cannonbridge offers little in return and when the other writer asks him about his own works—of the eponymous monster of
The English Golem
, say, or about the scene of seduction in
Ezekiel Frye
which attracted such very excitable notices in the international press—the Englishman is polite but evasive, coolly returning the topic of discussion to some area more closely associated with Poe. Cannonbridge is seen to drink too, but not to excess, and certainly not at the pace of his companion. One is control and perception; the other ungovernability and ruinous self-indulgence.

It is late now, at the night’s darkest point, and the two writers have pitched up at the lowest of the evening’s hostelries. It is barred to newcomers but, after a few minutes’ conversation with the publican, Cannonbridge has secured their entrance. Poe takes up residence in a snug, as far as possible from the bawdy carousing of the other inebriates. The Englishman returns with a glass for each of them and installs himself beside his drunken associate.

Poe takes a sip—half grateful, half anguished—and, leaning close to the other man, finds that he has the courage at last to speak, not of himself, but of the true reason that he has sought out the company of Matthew Cannonbridge.

“I have observed your career with great interest,” he begins, slurring his words hardly at all so accustomed is he to excess. “You were mentioned, were you not, by Byron, by the Shelleys, by Dr Polidori?”

Cannonbridge, wholly unconvincingly, feigns modesty. “I believe that I was.” He raises his glass to his lips and drinks, although Poe notices when the vessel is returned to the tabletop that the volume of its contents seems to have been reduced not a jot. “Of course,” the Englishman adds, “I was a different man back then.”

“And I have read your books, Mr Cannonbridge, your stories and your poems. I have watched your fame—some might call it notoriety now—flourish. You must be older than me yet you do not look it. There is an agelessness about you.”