“Did you say were?” Houghton said to Greene in surprise. “Fields, has this something to do with Dr. Manning? But what of the celebration in Florence waiting for a special printing of the first volume? I must know if the publication dates have been pushed back. I shan’t be kept dark!”

“Of course not, Houghton,” Fields said. “We have just slackened the reins a bit.”

“And what is a man accustomed to the pleasures of that weekly bit of paradise to do with himself in their stead, I ask?” lamented Greene dramatically.

“I know not,” Houghton replied. “I worry, though, with the inflated prices printing a book such as this… I must ask, can your Dante overcome whatever Manning and Harvard plan to put in his way?”

Greene’s hands shook as he raised them in the air. “If it were possible to convey an accurate idea of Dante in a single word, Mr. Houghton, that word would be power. That landscape of his world ever after takes its place in your memory by the side of your real world. Even the sounds which he has described linger in the ear as the types of harshness, or loudness, or sweetness, instantly coming back to you whenever you listen to the roaring of the sea or the howling of the wind, or the carol of the birds.”

Bachi exited the store, and they could now see him perusing the contents of his satchel with an air of great excitement.

Greene stopped himself. “Fields? Why, whatever is the matter? You seem to be waiting for something to happen across the way.”

Longfellow signaled Fields with a flick of a wrist to occupy their interlocutor. As partners in a crisis in some way manage to communicate complex strategy with the slightest gesture, Fields enacted a diversion for their old friend, draping his arm loosely around his shoulders. “You see, Greene, there are several developments in the field of publishing since the end of the war…”

Longfellow pulled Houghton aside and spoke under his breath. “I’m afraid we shall have to postpone our dinner for another time. A horsecar should be leaving for Back Bay in ten minutes. I beg you to walk Mr. Greene there. Put him aboard, and don’t leave till the car starts. Watch that he doesn’t get off,” Longfellow said with a slight lifting of the eyebrows that adequately conveyed his urgency.

Houghton returned a soldierly nod without appeal for further explanation. Had Henry Longfellow ever asked a personal favor from him, or from anyone that he knew? The Riverside Press owner slipped his arm through Greene’s. “Mr. Greene, shall I accompany you to the horsecars? I believe the next one is leaving shortly, and one should not be standing so long in this November chill.”

With hasty farewells, Longfellow and Fields waited as two massive omnibuses rumbled down the street, ringing their bells as warning. The two poets started across the street only to notice in unison that the Italian instructor was no longer on the corner. They looked one block ahead and one block behind, but he was nowhere in sight.

“Where in the devil… ?” Fields asked.

Longfellow pointed and Fields looked in time to see Bachi seated comfortably in the backseat of that very carriage that had been blocking their surveillance. The cab’s horses clopped away, not seeming to share the impatience of their passenger.

“And not a cab in sight to be hired!” Longfellow said.

“We may be able to catch him,” said Fields. “Pike the cabman’s livery is a few blocks from here. The rascal asks a quarter for a seat in his carriage, a half-dollar when he feels particularly extortionate. Nobody on the block can suffer him but Holmes, and he suffers no one else but the doctor.”

Fields and Longfellow, walking briskly, found Pike not at his livery but stationed stubbornly in front of the brick mansion at 21 Charles Street. The duo made a plea for Pike’s services. Fields held up handfuls of cash.

“I cannot help you gents for all the money in the Commonwealth,” Pike said gruffly. “I’m engaged to drive Dr. Holmes.”

“Listen to us carefully, Pike.” Fields exaggerated the natural command of his voice. “We are very close associates of Dr. Holmes. He would tell you himself to take us.”

“You’re friends of the doctor’s?” Pike asked.

“Yes!” Fields cried with relief.

“Then as friends you ain’t likely to take his cab away. I’m engaged to Dr. Holmes,” Pike repeated blandly, and sat back to whittle the remains of an ivory toothpick with his teeth.

“Well!” Oliver Wendell Holmes beamed, strutting out onto his front step holding a handbag and dressed in a dark worsted suit with a white silk neck cloth done up nicely in a cravat, finished with a beautiful white rose in his buttonhole. “Fields. Longfellow. So you’ve come to hear about allopathy after all!”

Pike’s horses whirled down Charles Street into the knotted streets of downtown, grazing lampposts and cutting ahead of irate horsecar drivers. Pike’s was a dilapidated rockaway carriage, with a berth wide enough for four passengers to sit without smashing their knees together. Dr. Holmes had instructed the driver to arrive promptly at a quarter to one in order to drive to the Odeon, but now the destination had been changed, seemingly against the doctor’s will from the perspective of the driver, and the number of passengers had tripled. Pike had a good mind to drive them to the Odeon anyway.

“What of my lecture?” Holmes asked Fields in the back of the carriage. “It’s sold-out, you know!”

“Pike can have you there in no time as soon as we find Bachi and ask him a question or two,” Fields said. “And I’ll make certain the papers don’t report that you were late. If only I had not sent my carriage away for Annie, we would not have fallen behind!”

“But whatever do you imagine you’ll accomplish if we do find him?” Holmes asked.

Longfellow explained. “Clearly, Bachi is anxious today. If we speak to him away from his home—and his drink—he may be less resistant. If Greene had not happened upon us, we likely would have caught Ser Bachi without such haste. I half wish we could simply tell poor Greene all that has happened, but the truth would be a shock to such a weak constitution. He has had all calamities and believes the world is against him. Nothing remains for him but to be struck by lightning.”

“There it is!” Fields cried. He pointed to a carriage some fifty rods ahead of them. “Longfellow, isn’t that it?”

Longfellow extended his neck out the side, feeling the wind catch his beard, and signaled his assent.

“Cabby, steer right on!” Fields called out.

Pike snapped the reins, careening down the street at a pace far beyond the speed limit—which the Boston Board of Safety had recently set at a “moderate trot.”

“We’re going quite far east!” Pike shouted over the cobbled hoof-falls. “Quite a ways from the Odeon, you know, Dr. Holmes!”

Fields asked Longfellow, “Why did we have to hide Bachi from Greene? I didn’t think they’d be acquainted.”

“Long ago.” Longfellow nodded. “Mr. Greene met Bachi in Rome, before the worst of his maladies showed themselves. I was afraid that if we had approached Bachi with Greene present, Greene would have spoken too much of our Dante project—as he is wont to do with any who will suffer it!—and that would interfere with Bachi’s willingness to talk, making him feel only more wretched in his position.”

Pike lost sight of their object several times, but through quick turns, remarkably timed gallops, and patient slowdowns, he regained an advantage. The other cabdriver seemed in a hurry, too, but fully oblivious of the chase. Near the narrowing roads of the harbor area, their prey slipped away again. Then it reappeared, causing Pike to curse God’s name, then apologize for it, then stop short, sending Holmes flying across the carriage onto Longfellow’s lap.

“There she goes!” Pike called out as his counterpart drove his coach toward them, away from the harbor. But its passenger seat had been vacated.