The Dante Club

Patrolman Rey had been shown into a severe sitting room earlier that day, left to stare out at groves of weather-beaten elms shading the Yard.

A congregation of hoary men began to file into the hall, their knee-length black dress-coats and tall hats as uniform as monasterial habits.

Rey entered the Corporation Room, from which the men were departing. When Rey introduced himself to President Reverend Thomas Hill, the president was in mid-conversation with a lingering member of the College government. This other man stopped cold at Rey’s mention of police.

“Does this concern one of our students, sir?” Dr. Ma

“I have a few questions for President Hill. Regarding Professor James Russell Lowell, actually.”

Ma

“I wonder how much you know about the project Mr. Lowell has been at work on, President Hill,” Rey began.

“Mr. Lowell? He’s one of the finest poets and satirists in all New England, of course,” Hill replied with a lightening laugh. “ ‘The Biglow Papers.’ ‘The Vision of Sir Launfal.’ A Fable for the Critics’—my favorite, I confess. Besides his North American Review duties. You know he was the first editor of the Atlantic? Why, I’m sure our troubadour is at work on any number of undertakings.”

Nicholas Rey removed a slip of notepaper from his waistcoat pocket and rolled it between his fingers. “I am referring in particular to a poem I believe he has been helping to translate from a foreign language.”

Ma

Dinanzi. Rey studied Ma

Ma

“What I mean to ask…” Ma

President Hill pinched the padding of his chin, wishing Ma

What did it mean? If Longfellow and his poets had recognized the words, why would they go to lengths to keep it from him?

“Nonsense, Reverend President,” Ma

“The motto used to be ‘veritas,’ though,” President Hill said quietly. “Truth.”

Ma

Patrolman Rey hesitated another moment, then returned the notepaper to his pocket. “I expressed some interest in the poetry Mr. Lowell has been translating. He thought you gentlemen might be able to direct me to a proper place for its study.”

Dr. Ma

Rey passed through Harvard Yard, where cold winds were whistling around the old brick buildings. He felt foggy and confused about his purpose. Then a fire bell began to ring, ringing, it seemed, from every corner of the universe. And Rey ran.

XI

Oliver Wendell Holmes, poet and doctor, lit his slides of the insects with a candle positioned near one of his microscopes.

He bent down and peered through the lens at a blowfly, adjusting the position of the subject. The insect was jumping and squirming as though filled with great anger at his watcher.

No. It was not the insect.

The microscope slide itself was trembling. Horse hooves thundered outside, exploding in an urgent stop. Holmes rushed to the window and pushed the drapes open. Amelia came in from the hall. With frightening gravity, Holmes ordered her to remain in place, but she followed him to the front door. The dark-blue figure of a burly policeman stood out against the sky as he pulled with all his strength to idle the stormy gray-flecked mares harnessed to a carriage.

“Dr. Holmes?” he called from the driver’s box. “You are to come with me at once.”

Amelia stepped forward. “Wendell? What’s this about?”

Holmes was wheezing already.” ‘Melia, send a note to Craigie House. Tell them something has arisen, and to meet me at the Corner in an hour. I’m sorry to leave like this—can’t be helped.”

Before she could protest, Holmes climbed into the police carriage and the horses broke into a stormy gallop, leaving a gust of dead leaves and dust. Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior peered down through the curtains of the third-floor sitting room and wondered what new nonsense his father was at now.

A gray chill seized the air. The skies were opening. A second carriage galloped to a stop right at the spot the other had just relinquished. It was Fields’s brougham. James Russell Lowell flung open the door and asked Mrs. Holmes in an eruption of words to retrieve Dr. Holmes. She leaned forward just enough to make out the profiles of Henry Longfellow and J. T. Fields. “I don’t know where he has gone, I am sure, Mr. Lowell. But he was taken by the police. He directed me to send a note to Craigie House for you to meet at the Corner. James Lowell, I wish to know what business this is about!”

Lowell looked around the carriage helplessly. On the corner of Charles Street, two boys were passing out handbills, crying out, “Missing! Missing! Take a flyer please. Sir. Ma’am.”

Lowell thrust his hand into his sack-coat pocket, a hollow dread drying out his throat. His hand emerged with the crumpled handbill that had been stuffed into his pocket at the marketplace in Cambridge after he had seen the phantom with Edward Sheldon. He smoothed it against his sleeve. “Oh good Lord.” Lowell’s mouth quivered.

“We’ve had patrolmen and sentinels all across the city since Reverend Talbot’s murder. But nothing was seen at all!” Sergeant Stoneweather cried out from the driver’s box as the twin flea-bitten horses careened away from Charles Street, muscles dancing. Every few minutes, he would hold out his rattle and twirl it.

Holmes’s mind was swimming upstream under the sounds of the solid trot and crashing gravel under their wheels. The only comprehensible fact the driver had told him, or at least the only one that the frightened passenger had digested, was that Patrolman Rey had sent him to retrieve Holmes. At the harbor, the carriage halted abruptly. From there a police boat took Holmes out to one of the sleepy harbor islands, where stood unused, in blocky Quincy granite, a windowless castle now ruled by rats; there were empty ramparts and prone guns alongside drooping Stars and Stripes. Into Fort Warren they went, the doctor trailing the officer past a row of ghost-white policemen already on the scene: through a maze of rooms; down into a cold, pitch-dark stone tu