Edgar Allan Poe and the Jewel of Peru

by Karen Lee Street

  “In the first burial alcoves they found earthenware pots, trinkets made from feathers and a woven article he called a quipu.”

  “But surely there was more than that. If the site described in Jeremiah Mathews’s journal is the same as that explored by Fernández and his men, whoever so desperately wants the journal is searching for something other than a few sarcophagi,” Sissy argued. Dupin’s face was the picture of discomposure, for Sissy laughed. “Truly you cannot believe that the murder of three men, a housebreaking and Helena’s abduction were all for the sake of a few mummies and ancient artifacts?”

  “It has happened,” Dupin muttered, but did not elaborate.

  “Do correct me if I am wrong, but most looters are desirous of what might commonly be called treasure: gold, silver, jewels. The Spaniards were renowned, or perhaps notorious, for the riches they plundered,” she continued. “What of the mysterious jewel mentioned in Jeremiah’s letter? And the lost Peruvian treasure Helena’s father talked about?”

  Dupin nodded almost imperceptibly, unable to relinquish the notion that Chachapoyan artifacts were as coveted as jewels or precious metals. He continued his meandering journey around the display cabinets, scrutinizing the birds inside them, while we followed in his wake like anxious ducklings.

  “In truth, Fernández’s book suggests that Sissy is correct,” I said, feeling no small amount of triumph at my wife’s cleverness and Dupin’s discomfiture. “As they moved further into the burial chamber, he claims to have found gold and silver goblets, jewelry and other decorative items left with the mummies. And still deeper inside, where they had to rely upon torches to banish the darkness, they found the most exquisite jewels: emeralds cut into the shape of flowers, fish and birds. There appeared to be a hierarchy to the placement of the mummies, which led Fernández to believe that the greatest riches would be found at the far end of the chamber, where the most venerable were laid to rest. They pocketed a quantity of the precious gems as they made their way to the back of the cave—or what they had presumed was the back. Torchlight revealed a mud brick wall, which they immediately set to knocking down, hoping that it concealed the legendary king’s tomb with all of its treasure. But once through the wall, they were surprised to discover daylight spilling into the gloom, illuminating more of the strange wall paintings, and a cascade of flowering vines that perfumed the air. The light fell through a hole pierced through the roof of the cave, and the vines had crept after it, making their way down to what appeared to be a simple altar constructed of earth and fronted with a large stone. And there, sitting upon that earthen altar, glittering in a splash of sunlight, was a green rock, larger than an ostrich egg—the most rare and precious jewel of all.”

  “An emerald?” Sissy asked.

  “That is what Fernández believed. But as he entered the inner chamber, there was a fluttering in the air and suddenly he and his companions were attacked by a swarm of bees—or so they thought, until they realized it was gravel showering down upon them. There was a terrible rumbling and it seemed that the roof might collapse, so they ran from the tomb, leaving the cache of treasure behind, but for the carved emeralds they had collected. As the men readied the ropes they had brought to help them descend, the earth shook more violently. The huge, damaged sarcophagus teetered on the cliff’s edge until the mummy fell at their feet as if alive, and the sarcophagus tumbled from the precipice. The local men howled at the sight of the mummy and almost threw themselves from the cliff, but Fernández managed to get them all down safely.”

  “But without the enormous emerald,” Sissy added.

  “Indeed. When Fernández spoke of what he had seen, there was a muttering amongst the local men, who claimed that the emerald had caused the small earthquake they had endured.”

  “Most fanciful,” Dupin said.

  “Perhaps. But according to the local native people, the emerald was cursed and whoever touched it would, in turn, be touched by madness.”

  “A common enough tale designed to deter thieves.” Dupin stared at another collection of exotic birds. “‘They seek the Jewel. All is within.’ If a person on the expedition with Jeremiah Mathews was seeking the emerald that Diego Fernández described, he must believe that Jeremiah Mathews or his father knew where it was hidden.”

  “And the clue to the jewel’s location is in the journal, or so his murderer believes,” I added.

  “The journal most certainly contains a message hidden in the pages excised from Andrew Mathews’s journal,” Dupin said. “This bird, for example.” He pointed at a display case, where a luminous green parrot with scarlet brows and stripes above its wings was perched. “Rhynchopsitta pachyrhyncha. Found only in Mexico. And this bird here.” Dupin indicated another bird in the same display case. “Euptilotis neoxenus—commonly known as the eared quetzal. It is indigenous to the pine-oak forests of the Sierra Madre mountain range of Mexico. Occasionally it is found as far north as the southwest United States, but not to the south in Peru.”

  Sissy and I peered down at a striking, dark-green bird with a red breast and white outer tail feathers and iridescent blue feathers at the center. It had delicate hairs about its ears, a small head in comparison with its rather plump body, and was approximately a foot long.

  “Two birds that are found in this area; two from Mexico and a crane that lives in Siberia and China,” my wife said softly.

  “And this bird,” Dupin said, leading us to another display cabinet. “Numida meleagris, the helmeted guinea fowl. A type of partridge indigenous to Senegal.”

  “Certainly not to be found in the Chachapoyas region of Peru,” I said.

  “No.”

  We three stared at the peculiar-looking bird that stood about two feet high and had a body with silvery-black spangled plumage and short wings. Its featherless head had an odd crest of flesh upon it and there were red and blue patches upon its cheeks.

  “And here is the saddle-billed stork—Ephippiorhynchus senegalensis—also from Senegal as the name suggests.”

  It was an enormous and handsome bird, nearly five feet tall, with very long legs and a startling beak of red with a black band and yellow wattle above it that contrasted wonderfully with its black head and yellow eye. The body was white, but with iridescent black wings, back and tail.

  “How beautiful,” Sissy murmured. “Are there other anomalies in his bird drawings?”

  “I do not think so. Andrew Mathews put his intentional errors on pages with the more recognizable Peruvian birds, certainly ones familiar to me from my time in Peru.” Dupin retrieved the journal from his pocket and showed us the loose pages. “For example, here we have a mountain toucan, amazilia and Peruvian sheartail hummingbirds, three different tanagers and a versicolored barbet.” The barbet in particular was beautifully painted in an array of colors. “There may be additional anomalies in Jeremiah Mathews’s journal that I have yet to uncover, but I believe I have located all the avian clues his father recorded.”

  “I am certain you have, Dupin.”

  “It is frustrating not to have Andrew Mathews’s complete journal,” he complained. “A full record of precisely who he was with and where he went and all that he saw and collected would make unraveling what truly happened to him much simpler.” He quickly cast his eyes over each sheet. “If we look at the dates, these are all entries from the twentieth to the twenty-third of November 1841. Mathews’s descriptions of the flora and fauna seem genuine, bar the rogue illustrations, but we have only fragments of what he experienced each day. He expresses admiration for their local guide and remarks on the strength of the porters carrying supplies, but no one on the expedition is mentioned by name in these pages,” Dupin said. “Did Miss Loddiges tell you of anyone who assisted Andrew Mathews when he was in the Chachapoyas?”

  “I have no recollection of her doing so.”

  Dupin shook his head with frustration. “I cannot, at this point, offer any theory as to what these clues might mean. We need to visit St. Augustine’s again. I
am certain there are secrets at the church and the academy connected to the journal, and we must ascertain what those secrets are.”

  “Indeed, but it will be difficult to gain access to the library, I fear, as Father Moriarty made it abundantly clear that we were not welcome there.”

  “We must hope that Father Nolan’s desire to regain Las Costumbres de la Gente de las Nubes without Father Moriarty learning that it is missing will allow us to spend some time in the library,” Dupin said. “We should also speak with the young lockpick again and discover what transpired during his meeting at the tavern. You seemed to know where he might be found, Poe?”

  “The city’s almshouse. In his fear, the boy confirmed that he lives there with his mother.”

  “Then I would advise visiting him this afternoon. The boy was too frightened to disobey our orders last night, and his employers did not appear to be aware of our presence, but we cannot be certain that he will not confess all to them, for certainly he feared those two men we followed to St. Augustine’s.”

  “He was employed by priests?” my wife said with surprise.

  “Maybe. Or they themselves were hired by a priest who resides there. We must learn the truth from our lockpick.”

  “Do you think Billy is in danger?” my wife asked.

  “It is possible,” Dupin said. “If we consider the fate of Father Keane.”

  She nodded, twisting her hands anxiously, then she drew herself up into a determined stance that I knew too well. “We must go there now,” she announced. “I would not forgive myself if harm came to Billy Sweeney as well.”

  I glanced at my pocket watch. “We will take you back home, and Dupin and I will make our way there immediately. Young Billy is likely to be at some task assigned by the almshouse until supper time, after which it may be more difficult to locate him.”

  “I am coming with you,” my wife said.

  Dupin pretended to be engrossed in an array of colorful finches pinned to a board, paper tags with their names dangling like ornaments from their stiffened legs, but I knew that he was listening acutely.

  “It is a terrible place,” I began. “I would rather that you were safe at home.”

  “I hardly think the almshouse is dangerous. Its inhabitants are impoverished, not murderous criminals.”

  “Most,” I agreed, hoping to plant seeds of doubt.

  “And I believe my presence will make it easier for us to speak with Billy. Perhaps we might pose as distant relatives visiting Philadelphia who wish to see the boy with a view to taking him in.”

  My face must have betrayed some of the alarm I felt, because Dupin cleared his throat to disguise a low chuckle.

  “Dearest, we cannot be so persuasive that anyone presumes we might cover his family’s debts or, indeed, that we might take the boy in, for we cannot do either,” I said firmly.

  “We will have to pay him something to act on our behalf,” Dupin said. “But I will meet his price. As time is of the essence, shall we?” he added, indicating the door.

  My wife preceded us through the doors of the Academy of Natural Sciences, and we followed her down Broad Street, searching for a carriage that would take us to Old Blockley.

  25

  The Schuylkill was crowded with boats of all shapes and sizes, moving across the water in a complex dance, the sight of which was uplifting to the spirits. The cheerful tableau made Sissy long for warmer weather and the chance to perhaps go for a sail along the river. Her enthusiasm for such an interlude was not diminished when I pointed out that a number of those innocent-looking vessels were manned by the Schuylkill rangers: river pirates who demanded taxes from barges on the way to the city or robbed them of their cargo; she declared it unlikely that a pirate would waste his time on a small pleasure craft. We had lived in Philadelphia for seven years, and I had done my best to shield my wife from the less salubrious aspects of the city, but now I felt it necessary to reveal some of its darkness so that she was more fully aware of the dangers we all faced if we were to save Miss Loddiges.

  When our destination came into view, it dampened all our moods. An air of menace emanated from Old Blockley, a disturbing mix of power and the threat of pestilence. Its four stark, mushroom-pale buildings squatted behind a high board fence, the busy river separating the compound from the city of Philadelphia.

  “How will we find the boy?” Dupin wondered. “I had not thought the place would be so vast.”

  “The four buildings have separate uses. One is an asylum for the insane, one an infirmary, the third an almshouse and the last an orphanage and ward for children. From Billy Sweeney’s reactions to my questions, I believe he was admitted with his mother, but I think the practice is to separate debtors from their children until the debts are repaid.”

  Sissy was horrified. “They are punished for their poverty by taking away their children? How terrible. He is still a boy.”

  “This practice is meant to encourage industry and sedulity in debtors, and their children are indentured so they may learn a trade.”

  Sissy pressed her lips tight and lapsed into silence.

  “I presume the intention is to provide the children with a skill to make them less of a burden on society,” Dupin offered. “Is it an effective course of action?”

  “That I cannot tell you.”

  We were admitted to Old Blockley without much interrogation, after Dupin explained that he was writing a scholarly paper on the Philadelphia system for dealing with the impoverished, which was much admired in France. We were directed to a somber-looking fellow, Mr. Cowperthwaite, who did not question our arrival without prior arrangement once he was told Dupin’s fabrication.

  “Father Keane at St. Augustine Church recommended that I interview a boy called Billy Sweeney,” Dupin said. “He believed that Billy’s story would be of interest for my paper.”

  Mr. Cowperthwaite shrugged and shook his head. “A common enough story, in truth. But Billy is a hard worker and a good boy at heart,” he added, turning to address Sissy and me, no doubt hopeful that we might offer the boy an indentureship. “Indeed, he is busy in one of the workshops as we speak.”

  Mr. Cowperthwaite led us on an impromptu tour of the orphanage as he took us to Billy, and it proved to be an austere place, the dormitories crammed full of narrow beds, the few windows without curtains. An unpleasant and indefinable odor pervaded the air.

  “Are all the children who reside here orphans?” Sissy asked. It was clear she did not wish to believe my explanation of how Old Blockley operated.

  “All are orphans in a sense,” Mr. Cowperthwaite said. “They are children left alone when their parents have either died or become unable to care for them adequately. Indeed, those with cruel fathers or mothers have a better chance of survival under our tutelage,” he added.

  This unsettled Sissy further, particularly as it was obvious Mr. Cowperthwaite believed the orphanage provided refuge for its charges, and that they would perish if not taken in there.

  “And they remain with you until adulthood?” Sissy asked hopefully.

  “We do our best to furnish all children with an indentureship,” he said, leading us down a corridor. “Normally between six and ten years old. In return for their labor, the children are given room, board, clothing and some education by those they are indentured to, which is much more than their parents can provide. When they reach the age of eighteen, the indenture-ship ends and they receive freedom dues, about twenty dollars. Then they are free to look for a paid position,” Mr. Cowperthwaite explained, his face full of pride.

  “What an interesting system,” Dupin said carefully. “Has it proved effective? Do those who pass through it become useful citizens?”

  A shadow darkened our guide’s face. “There are times when a child is ill-suited for life with a particular family and is returned to us or, on occasion, they abscond. We try to find a new indentureship for children returned here. There is little we can do for those who abscond, I fear.”

 
I wondered how many times Billy Sweeney had been returned to Old Blockley. Mr. Cowperthwaite led us into a workshop where the young people were seated quietly and working with great industry at repairing shoes. They were dressed in neat but ill-fitting uniforms which added to their maudlin air.

  “Are these children you were unable to find an indentureship for?” Sissy asked in a low voice. “Or children sent back by those you placed them with?” she added.

  “Both, I’m afraid. Despite our best efforts, we cannot find enough good Philadelphians willing to offer these poor wretches such a position. Is this something you might consider doing?” Mr. Cowperthwaite asked hopefully.

  “Quite possibly,” my wife said before I could answer. “That is why my husband and I were so pleased to be able to accompany Monsieur Dupin. Our visit has been most illuminating so far.”

  “Very good,” beamed Mr. Cowperthwaite. “And you, sir?”

  Dupin looked alarmed at Mr. Cowperthwaite’s query. “I live in Paris,” he said quickly. “I am here purely for research purposes.”

  Mr. Cowperthwaite nodded sadly, then made his way further into the room and faced the industrious young people. “We have visitors,” he announced, and the children immediately abandoned their tasks and stood up. He raised his hand as if he were a conductor holding a baton.

  “Good afternoon,” they said in unison.

  I spotted Billy Sweeney at the back of the group, as did Dupin and Sissy. Fear made his face all the more pale and he looked as if he might try to run, but any such plan was scuppered when Mr. Cowperthwaite drew a circle in the air. The children assembled in a line and marched around the room in military precision; Billy Sweeney was by far the tallest and his ginger-colored curls marked him out further. After one circle had been completed, they returned to their desks and stood to attention, facing straight ahead. Mr. Cowperthwaite traced a vertical line in the air and the children sat down in unison.

  “Billy Sweeney,” he said. “Our guests would like to speak with you.” I thought that I perceived a flicker of envy on the faces of the youngest children, but Billy’s dread seemed to increase. “You may speak in the yard.” Mr. Cowperthwaite gestured toward the door and Billy headed in that direction. We three hurried after, fearing the boy might bolt and our mission would be in vain. Billy stopped a good distance into the dusty yard, far enough from the workshop to avoid being overheard.