in Ryan's hotel, as it might have looked the afternoon Poe had arrived there. I thought about the unfriendly stares of the Whigs of the Fourth Ward across the street from Ryan's, and sat straight up despite a wave of dizziness.
As a small group of men walked past some candles, I saw they were all colored-indeed, the groggery was populated with black men and a few brightly clothed young women, and I now could see that the windows were in a different arrangement than at Ryan's. The easy intermingling of the sexes called to my mind Paris more than it did Baltimore. Around my shoulders, which had felt as though they were in some sort of immovable straitjacket, was actually a stack of heavy, warm blankets.
"Mr. Clark. You look better."
I turned and saw the black man who had diverted one of the rogues during the chase.
"Who are you?"
"My name is Edwin Hawkins."
My temples throbbed. "Was it one of them who hit me?" I asked, stroking the side of my head.
"No, you weren't hit just now, but it probably felt like you were. As you ran from the carriage warehouse, you keeled right over before you made it more than a few yards. You hit the side of your head on the pavement before I could catch you. I brought you here so they wouldn't find you. The one chasing me had given up after we passed under a streetlamp and he could see he was after the wrong man, but I'd wager he could still be searching."
"Did I kill that man in the warehouse?" I asked, remembering the events with chilling horror.
"He came out looking for you, and he fell down too. He looked cut pretty bad. I sent word for a doctor to treat him-you don't want murder on your head."
I looked around the room guardedly. The grogshop was in the rear of a black grocery. It was the sort of place, in Old Town localities like Liberty Alley, that the press often complained should be prohibited for its evil influences on the poorer classes and its instigation of riotous conduct. Two light-skinned black men were conferring confidentially in the corner, one occasionally throwing a glance in my direction. I looked on my other side. I did not wonder when I saw more suspicious gazes. I was not the only white man here, as there were several whites of the poorer classes sharing tables with black laborers. But it was quite obvious I was in some sort of trouble.
"You are safe, Mr. Clark," Edwin said with remarkable tranquillity. "You need to be out of the rain for a while."
"Why did you put yourself at risk for me? You do not even know me."
"You're right, Mr. Clark. But I did not do this for you. I did it for someone I did know," he replied. "I did this for Edgar Poe."
I looked over the hard angles and handsome features of the face before me. He was perhaps a few years past forty and had enough lines in his face to be older, but there was a younger, or at least more restless, gleam hidden in his eye. "You knew Edgar Poe?"
"Before I was freed, yes."
"You were a slave?"
"I was." He studied me and nodded thoughtfully. "Mr. Poe's slave."
***
More than twenty years earlier, Edwin Hawkins had been a house slave for a relative of Maria Clemm's. Mrs. Clemm, called Muddy, was Edgar Poe's aunt and later, when Poe married her young daughter Sissy, would become his mother-in-law. Upon the death of Edwin's owner, the slave's deed and title had fallen to Muddy, then a resident of Baltimore.
Around the same time, Edgar Poe had recently withdrawn from his position as sergeant major in the army at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, certain now that he would be a poet after having completed an epic lyric, "Al Aaraaf," from his army barracks. The struggle to secure his military discharge had been long and frustrating, as Edgar Poe had needed consent from two equally strict parties: John Allan, his guardian, and his military superiors. Having finally accomplished this, Poe was now residing temporarily with Aunt Muddy and their extended Baltimore family. Eddie, as he was called by most people then, had enlisted in the army as Edgar A. Perry (the young slave had overheard Poe tell Muddy to watch for mail addressed to that name), initially having hoped to end all ties with Mr. Allan, who refused to support Poe's desire to publish his poetry.
Now, though