Another knock. She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief and smoothed her dress. “Surely another creditor come here to vex me.”

As she passed into the hall, the group leaned toward one another with furious whispers.

Lowell said, “He’s been gone a few hours, did you hear! And he’s not at the Corner, we know that—there’s no doubt what he’ll do if we don’t find him!”

“He could be anywhere in the city, though, Jamey!” Holmes replied. “And we still must return to the Corner to wait for Rey. What can we do on our own?”

“Something! Longfellow?” Lowell said.

“We haven’t even a horse to travel with now…” Fields complained.

Lowell’s attention snapped as he heard something from the front hall.

Longfellow studied him, “Lowell?”

“Lowell, are you listening?” Fields asked.

A barrage of words escaped from the front door.

“That voice,” Lowell said, stunned. “That voice! Listen!”

“Teal?” Fields demanded. “She may be warning him to run, Lowell! We’ll never find him!”

Lowell sprang into motion. He charged through the hall to the doorway, where a man’s weary bloodshot glare awaited. The poet lunged forward with a cry of capture.

XVIII

Lowell enfolded the man in his arms and dragged him into the house. “I have him!” Lowell cried. “I have him!”

“What are you doing?” Pietro Bachi screamed.

“Bachi! What are you doing here?” Longfellow said.

“How did you find me here? Tell your dog to take his hands from me, Signor Longfellow, or I shall see what manner of man he is!” Bachi snarled, jabbing his elbows futilely into his sturdy captor.

“Lowell,” Longfellow said. “Let us speak with Signor Bachi privately.” They ushered him into another room, where Lowell demanded that Bachi tell them his business.

“It is not with you,” Bachi said. “I am going back to speak with the woman.”

“Please, Signor Bachi,” Longfellow said, shaking his head. “Dr. Holmes and Mr. Fields presently are asking her some questions.”

Lowell continued, “What kind of plan have you concocted with Teal? Where is he? Don’t play the deuce with me. You come back like a bad shilling whenever there’s trouble.”

Bachi pulled a sour face. “Who is Teal? I am the one who is owed answers for this sort of handling!”

“If he does not satisfy me at once, I shall carry him directly to the police and tell them everything!” Lowell said. “Haven’t I known he was pulling the wool over our eyes all along, Longfellow?”

“Ha! Bring the police, do!” said Bachi. “They can help me collect! You wish to know my business? I’ve come for payment from that deadbeat rag in there.” His thick Adam’s apple rolled with the shame of his purpose. “Aye, you might guess I’m growing not a little tired of this tutoring line.”

“Tutoring. You gave her lessons? In Italian?” Lowell asked.

“The husband,” answered Bachi. “Only three sessions, some weeks ago—gratis, as far as he seems to think.”

“But you returned to Italy!” Lowell said.

Bachi laughed wistfully. “If only, signore! The closest I have come was to see off my brother, Giuseppe. I am afraid I have, shall we say, adversarial parties that make my own return impossible, for many moons at least.”

“You saw your brother off! What cheek!” Lowell exclaimed. “You were in a mad rush on a boat and were going to meet the steamer! And you were armed with a satchel full of bogus money—we saw it!”

“Now, see here!” Bachi said indignantly. “How could you know where I was that day?”

“Answer me!”

Bachi pointed accusingly at Lowell but then realized by the imprecision of his extended finger that he was queasy and rather drunk.

He felt a wave of nausea travel up his throat. He caught it and choked it back inside, then covered his mouth and belched. When he was able to speak again, his breath was noxious, but he was tamer. “I met the steamer, yes. But not with any money—queer or otherwise. I wish to Jove I had a bag of gold dropped on my head, Professore. I was there that day to give my manuscript to my brother, Giuseppe Bachi, who had agreed to escort it to Italy.”

“Your manuscript?” asked Longfellow.

“A translation into English. Of Dante’s Inferno, if you must know. I heard about your labor, Signor Longfellow, and of your precious Dante Club, and at that I must laugh! In this Yankee Athens, you men speak of creating a national voice for yourselves. You plead with your countrymen to revolt against the British command of libraries. But did you ever think I, Pietro Bachi, might well have something to contribute to your work? That as a son of Italy, as one who has been born of its history, its dissensions, its struggles against the heavy thumb of the Church, there might be something inimitable in my love for the liberty sought by Dante?” Bachi paused. “No, no. You never asked me to Craigie House. Was it the malicious talk of my being a drunkard? Was it my disgrace from the College? What freedom here in America? You happily send us away to your factories, your wars, to waste into oblivion. You watch our culture trampled, our languages squelched, your dress become ours. Then with smiling faces you rob our literature from our shelves. Pirates. Damned literary pirates, every one of you.”

“We’ve seen more of Dante’s heart than you can imagine,” Lowell replied. “It is your people, your country that orphaned him, might I remind you!”

Longfellow motioned for Lowell to hold back, then said, “Signor Bachi, we observed you down at the harbor. Pray explain. Why were you sending this translation to Italy?”

“I had heard that Florence was planning to honor your version of Inferno in the year’s final Dante Festival but that you had not yet finished your work and were in danger of missing the deadline. I had been translating Dante off and on for many years in my study, sometimes with the aid of old friends like Signor Lonza, when he was well enough. We thought, I suppose, that if we can show ourselves that Dante could be as alive in English as in Italian, we too could thrive in America. I had never considered seeing it published. But when poor Lonza died in the care of strangers, I knew nothing else but that our work must live. On the condition that I found a way to print it myself, my brother agreed to deliver my translation to a binder he knew in Rome and then take it to the Committee personally and plead our case. Well, I found a printer of gambling pamphlets and the like here in Boston to take the translation to press a week or so before Giuseppe was to leave—and for cheap. Wouldn’t you know the idiot printer did not finish till the last minute, and probably wouldn’t have finished at all had he not been in need of even my paltry coin. The rogue was in some sort of trouble for counterfeiting money for the use of local gamblers, and from what I understand, he was obliged to lock his doors in a hurry and lope.”

“By the time I got to the piers, I had to beg some shady Charon at the wharf to row me out in a small boat to the Anonimo. After I dropped the manuscript aboard the steamer, I returned directly to shore. The whole matter amounted to nothing, you shall be happy to hear. The Committee was not at this time interested in further submissions to our festival.’ “ Bachi smirked at his own defeat.

“That’s why the Committee chair sent you Dante’s ashes!” Lowell turned to Longfellow. “To assure you that your translation’s place in the festivities as the American representative would be secure!”

Longfellow thought for a moment and said, “The difficulties of Dante’s text are so great that two or three independent renderings of it will be most acceptable to interested readers, my dear signore.”

Bachi’s hard face cracked. “Do understand. I have always held dear the trust that you showed by hiring me at the College, and I do not question the value of your poetry. If I have done anything to shame myself because of my situation—” He stopped suddenly. After a pause, he continued: “Exile leaves none but the dampest hope. I thought perhaps—only perhaps—there was an opening for me to make Dante alive in a New World with my translation. Then how differently they would think of me in Italy!”