Last Descendants
On nights like this, when it seemed to Abraham that nothing had changed, and nothing ever would, no matter how many presidents came along with their proclamations, and no matter what those proclamations proclaimed, on nights like this he missed both his wives, and he let himself drift downstream to remind himself of where he’d been, the choice he’d made, and to make that choice again.
Someone shouted.
Abraham opened his eyes to the sight of a passing mob. Not yet dawn, and they were already swarming uptown, ferocious-looking savages. The sight of them worried him, and he wondered how Mr. Tweed could be so certain he and Eliza would be safe in his house. A mob had a mind of its own, and it did not take orders, even from Tammany Hall.
Nowhere in the city would be safe. Abraham knew it, and decided then he had to get Eliza out, at first light, before the riot. That meant there were preparations to be made, and he had to get inside, even at the risk of looking like a burglar.
He labored to his feet and walked around the house, over the hedges and lawn, to the cellar door, his best option for an entry. Margaret often left the delivery men to load down their goods, and then forgot to lock up afterward, and fortunately, she had apparently done so again today.
Abraham was able to enter into the house through the ground. He came up into the kitchen, and then hurried out into the main hall.
“Eliza?” he called.
No response. But she wasn’t that heavy of a sleeper.
He checked every room on the first floor, and then the upstairs rooms, and then the attic rooms, and concluded that she wasn’t there.
David shared Abraham’s panic at the thought of Eliza out in the streets. Abraham had no idea why Eliza might have left the house, but he rushed into the library and wrote a hasty note to his daughter.
My Eliza,
When you read this, I want you to sit down and wait for me inside the house like I asked you to. If we have not reunited by six o’clock this evening, I want you to meet me at the Christopher Street Ferry. The city is not safe, and I must get you out of it. If I do not come at the appointed time, I want you to take the ferry without me. I will join up with you as I am able.
Your loving father, Abraham
Abraham left the note on the table in the front hall where Eliza would be sure to see it, should she return to the house. For now, he believed she had likely tried to follow him, having overheard Mr. Tweed’s instructions. That meant she would be heading down toward the Fourth Ward, the thought of which drove Abraham’s brittle bones into a run once his feet reached the sidewalk.
David worried, too. He knew the Animus was only a simulation, but if Eliza went through what Abraham feared she might if she got caught in the riot, Grace would have to experience all of it.
Within a few blocks, Abraham had slowed down. The omnibuses and railway on Sixth Avenue weren’t running yet, so he had to walk the length of it. Along the way, he passed several mobs going the opposite direction, uptown, and each time he feared they would seize him.
By the time he reached Fourteenth Street and turned east, his legs had begun to scream at him, threatening to give out entirely, and he sat down under the statue of Washington to rest. The sun hadn’t roused itself yet, its head still buried under the blanket of the horizon, but it was stirring.
David didn’t know if the old man would make it another block, let alone all the way back to the Hole-in-the-Wall. He stopped listening to Abraham’s mind, and started doing the talking. And the walking. He got up and took a step down the street, but as he did so the simulation buckled.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, Monroe said. What’s going on, David?
“Sorry,” David said. “I wasn’t thinking.” He forced himself to return to the statue and sit down, his whole body tense. The simulation smoothed itself out in response.
There you go, that’s better, Monroe said. Everything okay?
“I’m just worried about Grace,” David said.
She’s fine, Monroe said. Her simulation is still running strong. Nothing to worry about.
David nodded, feeling a bit relieved for her, and until Abraham decided to get up and move, David could sit here and think his own thoughts for a while. “You still there, Monroe?”
Yup.
“This is hard.”
How so?
“I can’t change what they went through. It happened. It happened already.”
It did.
“But now I feel like it’s my life, too, so I’m just … so angry.”
This is new?
“I don’t know. I guess my dad and Grace have always kind of shielded me.”
And now your shield is gone. Is that it?
“Maybe.”
Then maybe it’s time you shield yourself.
“Maybe,” David said, but then Abraham started talking again, demanding to be heard.
He rose from his rest under the statue and resumed his trek downtown, determined to wear his bones to dust finding Eliza. The pain in Abraham’s knees was excruciating, and David knew it, but from a distance, the way his own pain was hard to really remember after the fact, even though it might have been severe.
Abraham limped and hobbled down three blocks of Fourth Avenue, and then managed to board a blessed horsebus going south. It was nearly full, and Abraham took enemy stares from all sides, but managed to keep his head down and safely ride the length of Bowery. He got off at Pearl Street, and as the vehicle pulled away down the road, one of the other passengers, a scrawny boy no more than twelve or thirteen years old, stared right into Abraham’s eyes and drew his finger across his neck.
The sight of it shocked Abraham, rooting him to the sidewalk and freezing his blood until long after the horsebus had passed out of view.
Were children to riot, too? What hope was there in a city such as that?
The darkness of the swampland called to him, so Abraham turned toward the pure light of his daughter and pressed ahead, forcing his way down to Dover Street, shoulders first.
The Hole-in-the-Wall was nearly empty inside, but still open. The giantess who managed its crowds had taken Cudgel’s place behind the bar, and as Abraham entered, she scowled, the flame of her red hair raging atop her head.
“You again?” She set her fists on the counter and leaned on them. The counter groaned.
“Yes.” Abraham walked up to the bar, though this time he carried no letter from Mr. Tweed to protect him. “I beg your pardon, ma’am, but—”
“As you can see, I got no more bartenders for you to take,” she said.
“I’m not here about that.”
“No more Boss’s orders, then?”
“Not directly,” Abraham said. “Though I am here about one of his household servants. My daughter, Eliza.”
“Oh, her.”
“You’ve seen her?”
“She were in a while ago, wanting to know where you had gone.” The woman laughed with the sound of a stone rolling downhill. “Now, ain’t that ironical?”
“Please, ma’am,” Abraham said, not seeing the humor at all. “What did you tell her?”
“No cause to lie to her, so I told her what I knew. You gave Cudgel a message, and then Cudgel took you with him.”
“And what did she say to that?”
“Uh, I do believe she thanked me. Then I told her she’d better get herself back to Mr. Tweed’s house, same as you oughta do.”
Abraham hoped Eliza had done just that. But it was also possible that she’d left the saloon in search of Cudgel, to thus find Abraham, but he had no idea where Cudgel had gone after putting him on Skinny Joe’s wagon.
“Do you know where Cudgel is?”
“Surely don’t.”
“I see,” Abraham said. “Thank you. You have been very helpful.”
“Helpful, am I?” she said, laughing again. “Not often I hear that, unless I’m helping someone to a drink, or helping them to a pounding.”
Abraham noted the jar of ears on the shelf behind the bar. “No do
ubt helping them see the error of their ways.”
“Exactly that,” she said. “I’m a preacher, is what I am.” She patted the bludgeon hanging from her belt. “And this here is my sermon.”
“I’m sure you are very eloquent,” Abraham said. “Good night, ma’am.”
“Good night,” she said. “And God help you tomorrow.”
You’re sure there’s going to be a riot?” Adelina asked, and Natalya thought about how she had not at all liked the look of those men who’d just marched up the street.
“Those coves may have been carrying protest signs,” Tommy said, “but they were every one of them thugs and ruffians. Mostly Roach Guards, by the look of them. Trust me, whatever this pretends to be, it will turn into a riot.”
“Will I be safe in the hotel?” Adelina asked.
Tommy rubbed his jaw. “I worry it might be a target if things go badly.”
“So what would you suggest?”
Tommy turned and looked across the square, in the opposite direction of the hotel. “My brother’s house, for now. When we know more, we can take you somewhere else.”
“Very well.” Adelina was quite accustomed to visiting strangers’ houses in her touring, and she trusted Tommy. If he said this was the best option, she believed him. “Let’s go there, for now.”
“But I should let you know ahead of time,” Tommy said, looking at her earnestly. “My brother and his wife are in Boston.”
“I see. But you have a key to let us in?”
“Yes, but …”
“But what?”
“We would be alone in the house.”
Adelina smiled, finding his integrity quite endearing.
“If that troubles you—” he said.
“It doesn’t trouble me,” she said.
He nodded. “Then … shall we go?”
She nodded back, and they crossed the rest of the way through the park to Fourth Avenue, and then along Twenty-Fourth Street, until they crossed Lexington.
“It’s just up here,” Tommy said, and ushered her toward a four-story brownstone, with gray stone casings around the windows, and a short flight of steps to the front door. He fumbled a bit with the key in his large hands, clearly nervous.
He was so unlike the men she typically encountered in her travels. To start with, many of the men she knew would not have given her notice if she were to be alone with them. To the contrary, such circumstances had more than once been deliberately orchestrated, since men assumed certain things about actresses and singers. Neither was Tommy wealthy, nor did the self-assurance he carried on the street in his dealings with thugs follow him in his dealings with the opposite sex.
She placed a hand on his arm, hoping to steady him.
A moment later, with a grunt, he got the key to work, and they entered the foyer.
The house was as lovely on the inside as on the outside. At the center of the entry hall, a wooden parquet floor surrounded a tile mosaic, upon which stood a round table graced with a beautiful Chinese vase. Through that hall, they entered into another with a staircase climbing to the second floor. The only light came in through the windows from the streetlamps, the sun not yet high enough to offer anything of value.
“This way,” Tommy said, gesturing for her to take the stairs upward. “It’s mostly just the kitchen on this floor.”
A thick carpet coated the wooden steps so that her climb made no sound at all, except for the rustle of her dress. When they reached the landing, she spied a parlor to the right and a dining room to the left. Without an invitation, she turned toward the parlor and entered through its open, double-glass doors.
Even in the dim light, Adelina could see it was very well appointed. The Turkish carpet beneath their feet was of a luxurious weave and dizzying pattern. Matching sofas eyed each other from opposite sides of the room, while an armchair sat at each of their ends. A Gothic sideboard glowered in a corner, while an enormous painting of a ship tossed by a violent sea hung on the wall above an upright piano. A mirror in a gilt frame graced the opposite wall; above the fireplace, a large marble bust of a woman on the mantel.
“Yes, I think we could pass some time here,” Adelina said, moving to recline on one of the sofas. “Don’t you agree?”
“If you would like,” he said, but rather than sit, he stalked over to one of the windows that looked down on Twenty-Fourth Street and peered between the curtains.
“Will you not sit with me?” she asked.
He turned to look at her, and a moment later he left the window and took one of the armchairs on the opposite side of the room from her, sitting down uneasily, with a stiff back, keeping his arms tucked in.
“Are you still worried for us here?” she asked.
“No, I believe we’re safe, for now.”
“Then are you not comfortable in this room?” she asked.
“Why do you ask?”
“You occupy that chair as if you’re afraid you might soil it.”
He looked around. “It’s a pleasant-enough parlor.”
“Then if not the room, what is it that makes you so uncomfortable? This house?”
The pause that followed told Adelina she had struck a vein, one she could follow deep into the bedrock of his being if she chose.
“It is my brother’s house,” he said. “It is not my house.”
“Does he make you feel unwelcome?”
“No, he is very kind. As is Christine, his wife.”
“Then what is it?”
The chair creaked as he shifted. “I suppose feeling welcome and feeling that I belong are different.”
“You don’t belong?”
He looked around the room again. “Not here, no.” Then he looked back at her. “But you do.”
She felt in his pronouncement a subtle accusation, even though she didn’t believe it had been intended that way. But she wasn’t going to apologize to him for who she was and how she chose to make her way in the world. She had nothing to be ashamed of. “I have learned to belong anywhere, Tommy Greyling,” she said.
“That would be a splendid skill to have, I think,” he said.
“I am fortunate that it comes easily to me.” Adelina had certainly felt that she belonged at the reception that followed her performance the previous night. But that did not assuage the loneliness she had felt there. “If not this, what kind of house would you have?” she asked him.
“I actually think I might like to leave the city one day,” he said. “I’ve lived here all my life. When I went away to fight the Rebels, I marched through beautiful country. Farms and fields. Many times I thought to myself I might like to live that way, one day.”
“On … a farm?”
He nodded. “You seem disappointed.”
Adelina hadn’t meant to come across that way. It wasn’t disappointment she felt, but something more akin to fear. “No, it’s just that you’re made of better stuff than I am. That sounds both noble and pure.”
“But it takes more money than I have or am likely to ever see.”
“Perhaps your brother would help you?” Adelina could guess at the cost of the room they now sat in, and, by extension, the rest of the house, and Tommy’s brother was clearly wealthy.
“He might.” Tommy shook his head. “But I wouldn’t ask him.”
“Why not?”
“I know where his money comes from. It’s another reason I feel uncomfortable in this house.”
Somehow, the deeper she mined, the purer his ore seemed, his integrity not just a veneer, but arising from his depths. His mere presence, sitting across from her, huge and stretching the seams of his policeman’s uniform, seemed to challenge her. She wanted to know if he truly was as good as he seemed, and she thought for a single, brief moment of asking him where his bedroom was. But she had no intention of taking him there, and such a tease would only serve to make him more uncomfortable. Besides which, she didn’t actually want to compromise him, but instead wanted it proven that he couldn’t be
compromised.
She rose from the sofa. “Shall I sing for you?”
“I, um, that—”
But she gave him no time to find the words he was seeking, crossed to the piano and sat down before it. She had never been a particularly strong musician, but she was competent, and she chose the song she had performed for President Lincoln and his wife. She understood it was then quite popular with the soldiers out in the field, and its lyrics seemed to suit everything she and Tommy had been talking about.
In some ways, Natalya was as terrified of performing in the intimacy of this setting as she had been on that stage before thousands. But she did her best to relax and let Adelina do what she did best. Her fingers stumbled a little in the dim light of the room, but her voice never faltered a note.
Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home;
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,
Which seek through the world, is ne’er met with elsewhere.
Home! Home! Sweet, sweet home!
There’s no place like home,
There’s no place like home.
An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain,
Oh, give me my lovely thatched cottage again;
The birds singing gaily that come at my call,
Give me them, with peace of mind, dearer than all.
Home! Home! Sweet, sweet home!
There’s no place like home,
There’s no place like home.
To thee, I’ll return, overburdened with care,
The heart’s dearest solace will smile on me there.
No more from that cottage again will I roam,
Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.
She played the last notes on the piano, and looked up. Tommy sat in his chair, his head bowed low enough she couldn’t see his face. He remained in that position long enough she began to wonder if she’d put him to sleep. But a moment later, he looked up and thumbed a tear away from his eye.
“You earn every penny,” he said, his voice soft.
“Nonsense. I am highly overpaid.” She rose from the piano. “But if you repeat that to anyone, I’ll deny that I said it.”