The Pale Blue Eye

by Louis Bayard

  I let the air out of my lungs. I shook my head.

  “I can’t believe you’re still after that boy’s scalp, Captain.”

  Hitchcock leaned toward me. “Let me enlighten you on one point, Mr. Landor. The only scalp I’m after adheres to the man—or men—who killed two of my cadets. And lest you think I am alone in this, I can assure you that my objective is shared by everyone in the chain of command, right up to and including the commander in chief.”

  Nothing for it now but to put up my hands in mock surrender. “Please, Captain. I’m on your side. Really.”

  Who knew if he was really mollified? But he stayed quiet for a full minute, as I unknotted the muscles in my back.

  “I’ll tell you why I’m holding off,” I said at last. “There’s a piece missing here. And I know, as soon as I find it, everything will tumble into place, and we’ll have everything we need. And until I find it, nothing is going to make sense, and nothing is going to stick, and no one will be satisfied—not you, not me, not Colonel Thayer, not the president.”

  Oh, it took a good deal more back and forth but at last we agreed on this: Hitchcock would assign someone (not a fellow cadet) to track Artemus’ comings and goings, as discreetly as possible. That way he could at least ensure the safety of the cadet corps without compromising my inquiries. He never told me who he had in mind for that mission, and I never asked—didn’t want to know—and once we’d come to our agreement, Hitchcock had no more use for me. Dismissed me, in effect, with the following words:

  “I trust I’ll get the next installment of Mr. Fry’s diary tomorrow morning.”

  I should have just said yes.

  “Actually, Captain, you’ll get it a little later tomorrow. Tonight I’m expected for dinner.”

  “Is that so? May I ask where?”

  “Gouverneur Kemble’s.”

  If he was impressed, he made no show of it. And to do him credit, I don’t think he was.

  “I went there once,” he drawled. “That man talks more than a Methodist.”

  Whereas Poe, if asked to describe Gouverneur Kemble, would draw something from his bag of myths: Vulcan in his smithy, maybe, or Jove with his thunderbolts. Me, I know too little of mythology, and too much of Kemble, who is one of the least mythical people I’ve ever met. He is merely someone who acquired secrets and money in roughly the same proportion and figured out how to sow one to harvest the other.

  He first got the knack in Cadiz, where he learned a thing or two about making cannons. Coming home, he made straight for Cold Spring, and there, on the banks of Margaret Brook, Gouverneur Kemble built himself a foundry. A gnashing steaming screaming thing, with mill wheels and forcing pumps and casting houses. A place of magic. Uncle Sam’s dollars pour in, and out pour cannon and cannonade, grapeshot and round shot, shafts, cranks, pipes, gears. If there’s a piece of iron between Pennsylvania and Canada that Gouverneur Kemble didn’t make, well, that iron is not to be trusted. It’s to be thrown out, that’s what, cast from this blessed vale, if it doesn’t bear the imprimatur of the West Point Foundry.

  The foundry has been here long enough that you no longer notice it so much, or maybe I should say, you notice it the way you notice streaks of feldspath in a boulder. It becomes part of your idea of the place. The roar of that blast furnace, the mighty ring of Gouverneur Kemble’s eight-ton trip hammer—why, these things must have been going on for centuries. And even the forests that get fed, day by day, into Kemble’s charcoal kilns—so many taken, and so quickly, that the hillsides seem to be shaking them off like burrs—surely this has been going on forever, too.

  Well, this same Gouverneur Kemble, being an old bachelor, has a hungering for human company. Once a week, he holds an open house and calls over fellow souls to sample the fruits of his bounty. These are mostly other bachelors, but at some time or other, everyone who counts must make the trip to Marshmoor. Thayer, of course, is a regular guest. Likewise Thayer’s officers and the members of Thayer’s Academic Board and Thayer’s Board of Visitors. And pretty much every passing comet: landscape painters, Knickerbocker authors, thespians, the occasional bureaucrat, the occasional Bonaparte.

  And me. Having many years ago helped Kemble’s brother worm free of a land swindle in Vauxhall Gardens, I’d been invited some half a dozen times since coming to the Highlands and, before this evening, had gone . . . once. Oh, I was happy to be asked, yes, but I don’t hunger so much for company, and the horror of people usually beats out the honor of going to Marshmoor. But that was before I began to molder inside the spanking-clean walls of Mr. Cozzens’ hotel. Before I started spending my days and nights with men in stubbled woolen uniforms. Before visions of Leroy Fry and Randolph Ballinger began to dance in my head. The dread of strangers had begun to ebb before the dread of this place, this Academy, and so it was that when the latest Kemble summons came, I nearly fell over myself in my haste to accept.

  And this explains why I was sliding on my ass down a hill of ice when, by all rights, I should have been poring over Leroy Fry’s diary, and why, upon reaching the landing and hoisting myself to my feet, I found myself scanning the waters and asking the private on duty if the weather might force Kemble to cancel. For the ice was still coming, steady as the mail.

  I needn’t have feared. Twenty yards offshore lay Kemble’s barge, only a few minutes past its appointed time. Six oars on the thing! Kemble is never one to do things in a small way. No choice but to lower my wet bottom onto one of those wet benches and let myself be . . . transported.

  I closed my eyes for a time and pretended someone else was being ferried across. And this brought me closer to the rhythm of the river, which was roiling and breathing sulfur. A choppy, bucking ride I had of it that night. In another two months, I knew, the river would be frozen over, and I would have been ferried across in a horse-drawn carriage. Tonight, I could see nothing but the flickering points of torches through the mist, and I only knew I was getting closer because the water turned calm and the shore curved away and the oarsmen didn’t dig so deep as before. Even so, they kept dragging up platefuls of silt and algae—an old eel pot—the lid from a tobacco box—and the boat, every so often, would shift without warning on the jostling tides.

  From nowhere came the dock, a mere blur in the twilight, no more real than the mist until an outstretched glove made it definite.

  The glove belonged to Kemble’s coachman. Shining like money in his clean vanilla livery, and driving a large-wheeled tilbury headed by two white horses, standing still as marble, fogged round with the steam of their own breath.

  “This way, Mr. Landor.”

  A team of servants had already hacked the ice from the wharf, and the carriage went up without a lurch, rose as if being assumed. Tucked itself under a portico and rocked to a stop. And there, on the top step, stood Gouverneur Kemble.

  Stood, somehow, as though he were on horseback, with his big, stout-whiskered head erect and his legs slouching beneath him. Feet big as pumpkins. Big, jowly, ugly face, red with pleasure. He was cackling from the moment he set eyes upon me, and when he smothered my one hand in his two, I could have believed I was disappearing into him.

  “Landor! You’ve stayed away too long. Now come inside, man, this weather isn’t fit for dogs. Oh, but you’re soaked, aren’t you? And this coat! Why, it’s got holes in it! Never mind, I keep an emergency supply, just for situations like this. They’re not in my size, never fear, the proportions are strictly human, and if you don’t mind my saying, they have a bit more ton. What a silly word that is, ton. But stop, let me get a look at you: too thin, Landor. The Academy gruel must not agree with you, but then it agrees only with rats. Never mind, you shall eat well tonight, my friend. Until you’re bursting the seams of all my coats!”

  Twenty minutes later, I was installed in a sparkly new frock coat and a waistcoat with a delightful roll collar, and I was standing in Kemble’s study, which was about four times the size of Pawpaw’s and paneled with some of the very same trees tha
t Kemble had fed into his charcoal kiln. One servant smacked the fire back to life, a second arrived with a decanter of Madeira, and a third brought the glasses. I took two glasses, to make up for lost time, and drained them at my leisure while Kemble took his one glass to the picture window and gazed down the lawn to the broad gleaming plain of the Hudson. His Hudson, so serene at this remove you might have mistaken it for a lake.

  “Snuff, Landor?”

  There were no pipes to be had in Gouverneur Kemble’s mansion, but there were snuffboxes. None quite as handsome as this one, however: a little gold sarcophagus, with the Fall of Man inlaid around the sides and a golden cannon bisecting the lid.

  Kemble smiled to see me dive in. “Thayer always declines,” he said.

  “Well, it’s his nature. Renouncing.”

  “He’s not renounced you, has he?”

  “He may soon,” I said, “the way this inquiry drags on. Who knows when it will end?”

  “It’s not like you, Landor, taking such a time with things.”

  “Well.” A wan smile. “I’m out of my element, I suppose. Not cut out for military life.”

  “Ah, but here’s the rub. You fail, it’s simply a blow to your professional pride. You need only return to that charming little house of yours and have another glass of Madeira or—or whiskey, is it, Landor?”

  “Yes, whiskey.”

  “Whereas if Thayer falls, people fall with him.” One gigantic thumb wormed into his ear and pulled itself out again with a resounding pop. “It’s a delicate time, Landor. The South Carolina legislature has passed a resolution calling for the Academy’s abolition, did you know that? And don’t think they lack for allies in the Congress. Or the White House.” He raised his Madeira to the light of a coppered lantern. “I believe Jackson’s merriest pastime must be reinstating every cadet Thayer dismisses. He’s waiting for his chance to have Thayer’s head, and I mean to tell you, he’ll get it if we can’t make this business go away. I tremble for the Academy.”

  “And your foundry,” I added.

  Strange, I hadn’t meant to say that out loud. But Kemble didn’t bridle. He stepped away a pace, drew himself up taller, and said, “A strong Academy means a strong nation, Landor.”

  “Of course.”

  “Now, I happen to think that one death, however bizarre the circumstances, doesn’t matter so much in the grand scheme of things. Two, though, is another matter.”

  And what could I say to that? Two was another matter. Three would be another matter still.

  Kemble frowned, took a gargle of Madeira. “Well, I hope, for all our sakes, you’ll find your man and put this whole dreadful business behind— Oh, but look at you, Landor, your hands are shaking. A little closer to the fire, I think, and another Madeira and—ah, do you see? The rest of our guests, unless I mistake! Nosing into the wharf. Do you know, Landor, I’ve been cooped up so long I’ve half a mind to greet them in person. You wouldn’t care to . . . you would ? Are you sure? Very well, if you insist, but wrap up warm. We don’t want you catching pneumonia, your country depends on you, you know. . . .”

  Two carriages were dispatched to meet the boat party. Kemble and I sat in the second one, wrapped in our several folds, a little purple with spirits. Silent. Or, if he was talking, I wasn’t attending. I was considering, as I had never done before, the costs of failure.

  “Ah!” cried Kemble. “Here we are.”

  He set one foot on the ground and went down before anyone could blink. His servants, it seemed, had not been able to clear away every last patch of ice. Oh, it was an epic fall, all two-hundred-odd pounds of him slamming to earth. He became, in that instant, pure topography: his belly a highland, tapering down to a head-hamlet, with two hard-blinking eye-ponds. Four servants rushed to his aid. He waved them off with a smile. Made a show of hoisting himself to his own by-God feet. Then, clapping his stovepipe back on his head and brushing the crystals from his shoulders and elbows, he raised a single shrubby eyebrow and said:

  “I do hate being comedic, Landor.”

  The first one to step off the landing was Lea Marquis. This was a surprise, yes, though the greater surprise was in seeing how well turned out she was. The spinster-maiden of the Marquis family parlor had fixed her hair in an Apollo knot, bound herself into a lilac taffeta dress with the fullest skirt I had ever seen, and powdered herself all over with pulverized starch, most of which had survived the river crossing, none of which could hide the pinking of her cheeks in the sharp night air.

  “My dear Lea!” cried Kemble, beaming and throwing out his arms.

  “Uncle Gouv,” she answered, smiling. She took a single step toward him . . . and then stopped, aware that his eyes had swerved toward the figure standing just behind her in the boat.

  An Army officer, that was the only thing you could say about him from this distance. No clear rank. Face averted. By now, of course, I knew all the West Point officers, and it was a point of pride for me to recognize them before they recognized me, but this one, for some reason, would not reveal himself. It wasn’t until one of the coachmen’s lanterns cast a spray of light his way, catching him just as he was setting foot on the dock, that I knew him.

  Knew him at once. Through all the false clothes and airs and facial adornments. It was Cadet Fourth Classman Poe. Wearing the uniform of the late Joshua Marquis.

  Narrative of Gus Landor

  30

  Well, I’ve got ahead of myself. I didn’t at first have any idea whose uniform it was. Then Poe whipped off his cloak and wrapped it round Lea and stood there in his lagoon of lantern light, and I knew at once what I was looking at. In only one detail had it changed since last I saw it: it now bore on its shoulder a single yellow bar.

  “Mr. Landor!” cried Lea, with widening eyes. “Allow me to present to you a dear friend of our family’s, Lieutenant le Rennet. Henri le Rennet.”

  I scarcely heard the name at first. No, all I could see was that uniform. More to the point, all I could see was how beautifully it fitted Poe. A tailor could have done no better.

  And because I had already spent so much time trying to put a face and a body to that uniform, seeing Poe’s face and Poe’s body in it . . . made me feel as if I were tumbling down a long spiral. The spiral of Poe’s words, all those loving texts on which I had staked so much—how could I know, now, if they were to be trusted? Hitchcock’s suspicions aside, how did I know Poe had been telling me the truth? That he hadn’t crossed paths with Artemus and Lea Marquis months before he said he had? Come to that, why couldn’t it have been Poe crouched on the Plain that night, carving the heart from Leroy Fry’s chest?

  It was madness, I knew that. I tried to argue myself out of it. He’s just wearing a costume, Landor. He doesn’t know it has any special meaning. He’s playing a game, for Christ’s sake. . . .

  And still I found myself staring into that face, trying to reassure myself that nothing could have changed so very much in the space of one minute. He was wearing a uniform, that was all.

  I swallowed. I said, “Very pleased to meet you, Lieutenant.”

  “The pleasure is mine entirely,” returned Poe.

  He had adopted for this occasion a slight accent, a Mediterranean breeze with a faint whisper of M. Bérard. But what struck me most was the change to his face. Lea (or someone else) had patched together a horsehair mustache for him, smeared it with shoeblack and gummed it to the normally hairless region just above his lip. Crude, yes, but there was a kind of genius to it, too, for under its influence, Poe looked easily thirty or thirty-two. Handsomer, as well: the thing actually became him.

  The second boat had brought over a larger crowd, and more were pulling up in carriages. I wish I could recall the names of all the guests, Reader. One of the publishers of the New York Mirror was there. A painter by the name of Cole and a Shaking Quaker woodworker and a woman who composed hymns. Male or female, Kemble treated them all the same. Clapped them on the elbow and worked their hands like one of his forcing pumps
and demanded they take coffee and Madeira or empty his wine cellar if they liked (as if they could!), offered them emergency cloaks and emergency frock coats, and in this way blew on them like a bellows, driving them from his atrium to his parlor.

  I alone held back—always the last to be blown. I stood in the atrium, listening to the stamp of feet on Kemble’s glorious oak floors, the tip-tip-tip of his grandfather clock (quite the largest one I’d ever seen), and the sound of my own feet tapping on the parquet floor. Before a minute passed, my ears began to pick out still another rhythm, this one a light patter, like the dancing of mice. Lifting my head, I found Lea Marquis standing not ten feet away, tapping her feet in counterpoint to mine. Smiling.

  “Miss Marquis, I—”

  “Oh, you won’t denounce us, will you?” she implored. “No one will be harmed by our little masquerade, I assure you.”

  “No one but Mr. Poe,” I said, gravely. “You must know Academy officials dine here on a regular basis.”

  “Oh, yes, we are en garde for that eventuality. In the meantime . . .”