“I do not stand at the harbor peeping into the windows of ships, Monsieur Clark! Do you know the police will look for you for this…this outrageous trespassing.” He frowned, remembering they would already be looking for me for a far worse offense. “You seem very different from when we met, monsieur.”
I stood above him and looked over him coolly. “I believe you know where men like them would hide, and who would shelter them. You know all the important French citizens who reside in the region of Baltimore. Perhaps some dangerous characters like these rogues would even find you.”
“Monsieur Clark, I work directly for Louis-Napoleon since he has become president. If there were French outlaws here, and they wished to hide from your authorities and ours, they would not come to me. You see that, don’t you? Think of it.” He noticed that I listened seriously to this point, and now tried to switch topics to gain my sympathies. “Didn’t I help you research Auguste Duponte, the real Monsieur Dupin? Yes, what of that? Did you find him in Paris?”
“This has nothing to do with Auguste Duponte,” I said. I made no threatening motion, no sudden gesture toward him. Yet he cowered; that he believed me wild and violent made me almost inclined to prove him right.
It wasn’t even necessary to demand that he tell me whatever he knew. “Bonapartes!” he suddenly babbled.
“What do you mean?” I asked, annoyed.
“In Baltimore,” he continued. “Monsieur Jérôme Bonaparte.”
“You introduced me to some Bonapartes at that dress ball you took me to before I left for Paris. Jérôme Bonaparte and his mother. But why would someone like Jérôme Bonaparte know more about such rogues? They are relatives of Napoleon’s, aren’t they?”
“No. Yes. Not ones that Napoleon acknowledged, I mean. You see, when the brother of Napoleon—the true Napoleon, Emperor Napoleon, I mean—when this brother was traveling through America as a soldier at nineteen, he courted and married a wealthy American girl, Elizabeth Patterson. You met her at the ball—the ‘queen.’ They had a son, named Jérôme after his father, and that is who you met with her, the man dressed as the Turkish guard. When he was no more than a baby, Emperor Napoleon ordered his brother to abandon the poor bride, and after a brief struggle the brother at length obeyed. Elizabeth Patterson, now abandoned, returned with her son to Baltimore, and this family would never again be recognized by the emperor. They have been separated from their proud family line ever since.”
“I understand,” I said. “Continue please, Monsieur Montor.”
“Outlaws would not seek to find me, an official government minister, as I say, with Louis-Napoleon as the current head of government. But such criminals might seek out those who are estranged from the name of Napoleon. Yes.” His mouth loosened and he became excited, as though understanding this was now his mission too. “They might, monsieur!”
“Do you have the city directories for Baltimore?” I asked.
He pointed to a shelf in the corridor. His eyes traveled away from me shiftily, toward the window and door. He’d been caught up momentarily in my questions, but I could see he was now preparing in his mind an indignant report to the police.
It did not matter. I stopped my finger at the right page and tore it out. I could still reach the train depot before Montor’s reports reached the ears of the Washington police.
And indeed, the conductor of the train did not seem at all concerned with me upon my boarding. As a precaution, I sat in the last passenger car, and to observe more I opened the window at my seat, provoking malevolent stares when pockets of cold air rushed inside. One fellow spit his tobacco pointedly close to my boots, but I only shifted my legs farther from him.
I looked for any signs of something unusual, having to will my eyes not to close for longer than a few seconds. At one point, as the train made a turn, I saw a young boy running along the front of the train boldly grab hold of the cowcatcher—this was the device in front that forced away animals like sheep, cows, and hogs that strayed onto the track—and, gripping onto this, he managed to swing into the first car. I was startled, but told myself this was just a stowaway. I soon forgot the sight of the boy dangling in front of the train through a short spell of sleep.
I was jolted awake as the train shook with a violent shudder and soon began to nudge into a slower speed as it approached a bridge over a ravine. I jumped to my feet and was about to ask what had happened when I overheard another man as he questioned the conductor and engineer. The conductor had a harum-scarum look about him, as though he were frightened even of himself.
“The train went over a chaise and horse,” the engineer said coolly. “Two ladies were thrown out, and pretty well smashed, too. The chaise broken to pieces.”
The conductor passed by this engineer and scurried to the next car.
“Good God, mister!” cried the other passenger, looking back to me for the same reaction. I took a few steps backward and checked the door to the freight car that was attached to the end of the train. It was locked.
My eyes were fixed on the engineer’s face. I tried to think whether I had heard a crash at all, and cursed myself for having fallen asleep. The engineer seemed unnaturally calm for just having been part of a terrible accident, possibly killing two women.
“Chaise was broken to pieces,” the engineer said, then looked flustered as he realized he had already said this.
I interjected casually, “I didn’t hear a crash.” Of course, I had been asleep, but I felt it was a test worth trying. Could they be lying? Were they slowing down for the police to come aboard?
“Funny, mister,” murmured the fussy passenger in front of me. “I didn’t hear any crash either, and doesn’t everyone say I have the finest hearing in Washington!”
This decided it. I swung myself to the door as the train continued to cut the speed of its engine.
“You there! Stop! What do you think you are doing?” The engineer shouted this at me as he grabbed hold of my arm, but I shook him away hard and he stumbled over a piece of luggage. The passenger who had been speaking, from an overload of confusion, motioned to try to restrain me but stopped cold when he saw from my face that I would not be deterred.
Forcing the door open, I leapt onto the bank of grass alongside the tracks and rolled myself down the side of the steep arched ravine below.
31
LATER, I WOULD learn more about the Bonapartes and their quiet residence over the decades in Baltimore. Now, I wished only to find them. I could remember faintly my parents speaking of the scandal, so many years earlier—long before I was born—that ensued when the brother of Napoleon Bonaparte married Baltimore’s richest young beauty, Elizabeth Patterson. That brother had long returned to luxury in Europe. It was the American descendants of Napoleon’s lighthearted brother that I had to confront—the Jérôme Bonaparte I had met in costume and his family and allies—to see if they knew those rogues whose presence would prove my innocence.
But I had no particular concern for the Bonaparte family’s history or ambitions at the moment. Today the question of my survival was too real.
These American Bonapartes and their offspring had multiplied and spread themselves around the city, and had maintained many homes across Baltimore through their great wealth from the Patterson family and the stipend the jilted wife received from Napoleon. The first address I visited no longer belonged to them at all—but the domestic who answered, a plump Irishwoman, received enough mistaken callers to know where to direct me. Still, it was several jaunts into different quarters, meeting various affiliated persons, before I found the most promising residence: one of the homes of Napoleon’s brother’s grandsons, estranged great-nephew to the legendary Napoleon himself and cousin, by my rough calculations, to the current French president.
Following the incident on the train, I felt confident I’d eluded any police agents from Washington, but I still proceeded slowly and methodically, which was maddening for such an urgent affair. It was not safe to be out in the light of
day. After my escape from the train, I had waited until night in a frigid ditch and then found safe passage back to Baltimore in a covered mail-sleigh, lodging myself in the straw at the bottom of the cart with a few servants and a sleeping Hungarian peddler who, in the apparent throes of a dream, repeatedly kicked me in the stomach with a hobnailed boot. The driver rode through the night over rough stones and paths at a dashing rate as quick as any train.
Out of caution, I waited another day before going to the next Bonaparte address. The house was empty—or, rather, there were no servants and nobody responded to my knocking at the door. But I noticed the carriage house door was open and, as I stood outside, I could see shapes through the windows of the house. Propping myself on a ledge, I pressed against a window and thought I could hear men speaking in French.
When the door opened, I could see two of the figures inside more clearly. I knew one as the rogue who had almost killed me in the carriage factory, and the second to be his partner. The first wore a large bandage fastened around his arm where he had been crushed by the carriage after I had stabbed him.
A different man, the one closer to the street door, was handing over money to the two rogues, who were nodding and soon departed into the carriage house. This third man had the demeanor of being their leader. I waited until they had driven away and then rang.
The man returned to the door. He was grander than the two rogues. Not bigger, exactly, but better fashioned to provoke respect rather than mere fear, with perfectly squared shoulders. For a moment I stood paralyzed as he waited for some word from me. He looked back at me as I stared at him with a vague air of recognition.
“Mr. Bonaparte,” I said finally, choking back a gasp. “You are Monsieur Bonaparte?”
He shook his head. “My name is Rollin. Young Monsieur Bonaparte is away, at West Point. You would like to leave word?” He instructed more than asked this, but I declined. There was something in his tone….
I promised to return another day and hastily began backing away, terrified that one of the rogues would have occasion to return and see me at the door. But even more I feared that third one, the man calling himself Rollin. He lifted his hat, slowly, to bid me good evening, and before he returned it to its place I knew exactly where I had first seen him. It had been so brief, and long before, halfway across the world.
Remembering that first vision of him, I comprehended, gradually, as I walked through the street, how it had all happened, how it had all been connected from Paris until now. How the Bonapartes had come to be involved. How in one attempted assassination in Baltimore indeed lay the future of France….
As these thoughts gathered themselves together, I walked rapidly, but somewhat carelessly, toward another boardinghouse Edwin had arranged for me upon my return from Washington. Suddenly, I felt a stinging pain travel across my back. I fell forward, then rolled onto my back. Above me, I saw flashes of a white horse, rearing upward to the sky, and a tall and powerful man on top. He unrolled his whip and this time caught my arm.
“Mr. Clark, attorney, isn’t it? What a thing to see such a finely bred man wanted for murder.” It was Slatter, the slave-trader, riding a perfect specimen of the largest Pennsylvania horse. I attempted to stand, but he kicked the side of my head with his boot. I writhed in pain on the ground and coughed up blood.
Slatter jumped down from the horse and, while holding me down with his dark mahogany cane, placed my wrists and ankles in shackles.
“Your sands are nearly run down, my friend! I’ve cleared two thousand dollars in the last month but will enjoy this even more.”
“I did not shoot anyone! And I have no business with you!” I cried.
“But you had business with me the other week, didn’t you? With that woolly-head young friend of yours? No, your business is not with me. It is with the city. It is always a pleasure for me to serve the police of Baltimore.” The leading slave-traders often received the rolls of men and women wanted for arrest, since many of those were escaped slaves. “Perhaps you’d like to spend a night in my pen with the stock that are about to be shipped off, before you go to the police. I’m sure they will be anxious to see you again—we know you’re such an avowed lover of their kind. Perhaps you even speak their nigger-tongue.”
The shackles were immovable, and I had no choice but to walk along toward his slave pen as he pulled me by a long chain from his horse. Slatter seemed to relish the slow pace we took, as though he were parading me to thousands of onlookers, though, in fact, the flooded and dark streets were empty, and he bent his neck around often in order to take delight at the sight of me.
I was looking down in despair when I heard a sound of footsteps. I glanced up, and I suppose he must have seen my eyes widen with surprise. Turning around swiftly, he saw what I’d seen—a man springing from the ground with a yell to knock him over. Slatter’s head hit the ground hard. He lifted his neck briefly, and then his eyes closed with a moan. Edwin Hawkins stood over him and searched Slatter’s coat for the keys to my shackles.
“For goodness’ sake!” I cried out. “I am desperate glad to see you, Edwin!”
Retrieving the keys, he freed me from my restraints. “Mr. Clark,” he said, interrupting my exclamations of gratitude, “I must make tracks.” He looked back at Slatter.
“Do not worry. He is unconscious,” I said. “He won’t be awake for a while yet.”
“I have to leave Baltimore. Now, Mr. Clark. He knew me in my youth.”
Then I realized. If Slatter had seen Edwin, and recognized the attacker as a man whom he had sold years before, or had just looked long enough to remember his face…Edwin would not only be convicted, he would be entered back into slavery. “Did he see you?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Clark. But I can’t risk finding out. I am sorry I won’t be able to help you any longer. I know you will find the evidence you need.”
“Edwin.” I took his arm. “If only I had not shown surprise! He would not have turned at all, and you would never have been at risk of him seeing you. You have done this for Poe!”
“No. This I have done for you.” He took my hand with a warm smile. “You will prove your name, and that will be reward for this. For me, you must go ahead. With heaven speed.”
I nodded. “Leave here quickly, my friend,” I whispered, “and be silent on your way.” He disappeared into the streets.
I shackled Slatter’s hands but left his feet and legs free so he could find help when he awoke. He did not look as tall as he had on the horse; in fact, he was a decrepit old man lying there, with a blank and sloppy expression. I could hardly move from this spot. With Edwin gone, I felt inconsolably alone, and I remembered longingly the comforts of Hattie’s visits in prison, and Bonjour’s appearance there, and the burst of strength I’d received from them.
A sudden thought forced me to my feet. “Bonjour,” I gasped to myself. I heard Slatter coming to life in a series of groans, but I did not stop to look back at him. I raised myself onto the side of his horse and rode back in the direction I had come from.
“My horse!” Slatter cried. “You! Bring back my horse!”
My fears were realized when I saw that the door to the Bonaparte house I had just left was wide open. I tied the slave-trader’s horse to a post outside and walked circumspectly through the front hall. It was quiet except for the sounds of audible, pained breathing. If there had been any other noises it’s unlikely I would have heard them. They would have folded into the background of my mind, along with the furnishings. I was transfixed.
In the parlor, there had clearly been a struggle only minutes, maybe seconds, before I arrived. Chairs, lamps, curtains, and papers were scattered over the floor. The chandelier still shook with the violence. The victor was clear. Bonjour stood over the large figure of Rollin, who was perspiring pitifully. From the disarray at a nearby window, it was clear he had tried to jump out of it. Bonjour, though perhaps half his size, was holding him down and had a blade touching his throat.
His
eyes met mine and I wondered: did he know me now too?
I had been leaving Paris with Auguste Duponte to begin our investigation of Poe’s death. Climbing aboard the ship, Duponte announced there was a stowaway. You remember.
“Do request,” he said to me, “Monsieur Clark, that the steward inform our ship’s captain there is a stowaway on board.”
“You shall want to know what I know!” cried this stowaway, Rollin, when he was revealed and accused of trying to steal the steamer’s mail shipment. There was something in his tone that may have rekindled the memory in me when the same man asked, in a voice far too aggressive, “You would like to leave word?” at the door of the Bonaparte mansion. But more than that, it was the lift of his hat—revealing the square baldness that had been unwillingly shown that day at sea when he was flung from the rails. It was that sight that made me remember where I had seen him that time.
By the time I had discovered Bonjour there, the implications of this man’s presence on the Humboldt had settled into my imagination. But to answer my previous question for myself: no, I do not think he knew me now. He had been watching for someone else that earlier day at sea.
Now he was staring right at me. Rollin’s eyes burned with ghastly interest, his legs wet with water and spotted with flower petals that had spilled on the rug from a shattered vase.
Bonjour peered around. She smiled slightly, almost apologetically, at me. I could almost feel all the passion and regret of her kiss again while I looked upon her face.
“I am sorry, Monsieur Clark.” She said this as though I were the one prostrate and pleading for my life.