Page 47 of Beneath the Poet's House

Saoirse’s been in this alcove before. It’s the alcove with the best light, according to Leila Rondin. The alcove in which, two days before their planned Christmas Day wedding, Edgar and Sarah were sitting when Sarah was handed a note telling her that Poe had broken his promise of sobriety.

She thinks of Emmit and his affinity for Poe, his irresistible lopsided smile, the way he listens to every word she says, encourages every thought she has. The way he treats her poetry like it’s some sort of magic. Then, the lopsided smile turns sinister, and she sees him tipping back the silver flask. Handing her the small capsule stuffed with suspicious brown powder. Beckoning to her after smashing the door of the Shunned House in the yellowy light of a waxing gibbous moon.

You’re having your very own Poe-Whitmanian whirlwind romance,Lucretia had said, and Roberto had agreed, claimingthe longing, the passion, the depth of his love for her, practically overnightwas on par with Emmit’s feelings for Saoirse. Everything feels too orchestrated, a little too much like Saoirse is acting out a role in a play. The relationship is too exciting, too full of meaning, too significant. Serendipitous. The past couple of days, her every action feels like it could be an echo of Sarah’s. And Emmit? Were his actions an echo of Edgar’s?

“Does this work?” Roberto asks, interrupting the madness swirling around her head.

Saoirse forces a smile and nods. She slides across from him at the desk and pulls out a notebook. The framed drawing of a pen-and-ink raven above their heads reflects the light from the alcove across the open-air space of the second floor. Saoirse wishes she had a bottle of water, feels a little fuzzy-headed.

It’s because you’re letting Emmit inside your head now, like you once did me,Jonathan whispers.

Saoirse and Roberto settle into a comfortable silence, broken only by the flip of Roberto’s pages. Saoirse stares at her own notebook for several minutes but can’t clear the static from her brain. After ten minutes without writing a word, she pushes her chair back and stands.

“I’m going to take a walk.” She’s thinking of something to add, something about needing to look for inspiration, but Roberto is already nodding.

“Sounds good,” he mumbles, pen flying.

Saoirse wanders around the second floor but sees no glass enclosures or well-lit display cases. It’s almost the end of October; the exhibit Leila Rondin had been curating should be up now. When an authoritative woman walks by with a stack of books cradled in her arms, Saoirse taps her on the elbow. “Excuse me,” she says, “can you tell me where the Poe-Whitman exhibit is located?”

The woman leads her downstairs and to the right of the main entrance, kitty-corner to the children’s wing. Saoirse thanks the woman, and she nods and disappears. The exhibit is small—much smaller than she expected—a mere three glass cabinets of artifacts, the most prominent being a parchment featuring Poe’s signature. There are early newspaper printings and contemporary parodies of “The Raven,” a print of “Le Corbeau” by French modernist painter Édouard Manet, inscribed to Sarah Whitman by poet and critic Stéphane Mallarmé. Saoirse spots several first editions, some memorabilia of Poe’s, and, finally, a portrait of Sarah.

It’s different from any of the portraits she’s seen, a daguerreotype taken—according to the plaque beside it—by Providence photographer Joseph White and depicting his subject in profile, her dark-brown hair peeking past her accustomed headwear: a black veil and ribbon tied in a bow under her chin. The plaque also states that Sarah, “or Helen, as she was known to her friends,” was fifty-three at the time the photograph was taken.

Saoirse stares at the woman before her—the whispers of Jonathan, Aidan, and Emmit that had swirled through her mind since entering the library falling away.

Too long benighted man has had his way. Indignant woman turns and stands at bay.

The lines materialize in her head as if delivered on the wings of a raven. Though, was it possible this was something she’d read before and was merely recalling? More lines arrive just as swiftly:

Old proverbs tell us when the world was new,

And men and women had not much to do,

Adam was wont to delve and Eve to spin;

His work was out of doors and hers within.

But Adam seized the distaff and the spindle,

And Eve beheld her occupation dwindle.

Saoirse steps back from the exhibit, the lines cutting serpentine patterns through her head. She makes her way back to the staircase as if she’s a sleepwalker—new words, new rhymes, spinning themselves around her like smoke.

At the top of the stairs, she turns left past an empty alcove. She’s two stacks away from Roberto, from her empty, waiting notebook. But after another step, she stops, forced to a standstill by the words in her brain, the poem’s final line presenting itself along with a shiver that runs up her spine and cascades along her neck. It’s not the shiver of scuttling spiders or the unpleasant prickle of fly legs. This is a sensation of delight and exhilaration, and the fingers of her right hand twitch, anxious to transfer the odd, alien words from her head to the page.

She moves forward another step. A noise comes from Roberto’s alcove, like he’s sliding his chair back from the desk. Saoirse looks up at the exact moment a figure steps out from the stack on her right, blocking her path. A hand goes to her neck, brushes her collarbone to grip her shoulder, and Saoirse feels herself pushed backward, past the last two stacks she passed, into the farthest corner of the library, feels her shoulder blades press up against cold metal shelving and smellsthe chemical compounds of the glue, the ink, the paper of the hundreds of books that surround her. The arm against her chest is firm and unmoving.

Saoirse’s heartbeat skyrockets. She is back in the graveyard with Aidan Vesper, beneath the weeping willows. All the lovely lines of poetry disappear from her head.

Chapter 27

“Emmit,” she breathes when she sees it’s him and not Aidan who has backed her into the corner. “What the hell are you doing?” She jerks her chin at the stacks. “What the hell are you doing here?”

The crooked smile animates his lips, but the expression seems nervous, his normal mannerisms pressurized, like he’s pure carbonation, about to explode. He brushes a lock of hair away from his forehead, and Saoirse stares at him, full of dismay and incredulity at his actions. She grits her teeth and says in an angry whisper, “Seriously, what are you doing here?”

“I always come to the Athenæum to write on Wednesdays,” he says, and there’s something in his voice she can’t place. “So, imagine my surprise when I looked up from my work and saw ...” One side of his mouth jumps up again, the movement automatic, agitated. His eyes flick to the right, and he turns his head slightly, as if checking to see if anyone is behind them. Saoirse follows his gaze to the alcove she was in earlier, to where she imagines Roberto sits still, pen in hand, working away. “... you with another man,” Emmit finishes.

So that was the note in his voice she didn’t recognize: jealousy. And here she’d insisted to Jonathan that Emmit was above this. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she whispers. “I’m with Roberto.Roberto, one of the three writer friends I told you about. The ones I’ve been spending time with since moving here.” She narrows her eyes. Is this really anotherinstance of her and Emmit ending up in the same place at the same time? Or did he follow her here? And what exactly is he accusing her of?

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