“Heaven help us,” Mrs. Powell said.
“The Tribune building isn’t far from here,” Abraham said.
Mr. Powell nodded. “I pulled down the sign on our building, but we’re well enough known even without it. I’m afraid it would be very dangerous for you to venture out right now.”
Abraham had to agree, but it filled him with despair. He hoped above all that Eliza was safely within the walls of Mr. Tweed’s house, but he couldn’t be certain of that. If only he knew her whereabouts, he would be content to remain where he was.
“But my daughter—” he began.
“I’m sure she would want you to keep safe,” Mrs. Powell said. “Just as you want her to keep safe.”
That made sense to Abraham’s head but not to his old heart.
“You are free to stay with us,” Mr. Powell said. “Until this evil business is done with.”
“But who can stop it?” Mrs. Powell asked.
“At this point,” Mr. Powell said, “only the army can restore order. This isn’t a riot, it’s a rebellion, and I fear the city could be lost.”
They returned to the library and Mrs. Powell resumed reading, though her voice sounded absent.
Shortly after two o’clock, Mary, the oldest daughter, who still stood at the window, called to her father. “They’re coming!”
Abraham rushed to the window with Mr. Powell and saw she was right. A large group, perhaps twenty or thirty strong, marched down the street, chanting and brandishing their crude weapons. They appeared to be heading directly for the Sailors’ Home.
“Quickly now,” Mr. Powell said, his voice calm, but urgent. “I want you all to go up to the roof and then over onto the neighbors’. Try not to be seen.” He took his youngest daughter, Sarah, from his wife’s arms. “Let’s go now, and be silent.”
Abraham followed the family up the stairs to the third floor, and then up to the next, and the next, until they reached a narrower staircase to the attic, which opened onto the roof through a low door. Abraham saw there was a removable wooden bridge spanning the alley between the Sailors’ Home and the building next door, out of view of the street. Mr. Powell had obviously prepared for this. He shuttled his family across the bridge until they were all on the other side, handing Sarah to his wife, and then he sent Abraham across.
“Pull the bridge away, if you would,” Mr. Powell told him from the opposite roof.
The sounds of the rioters echoed up to them, full of venomous speech and threats such that Abraham had not heard since the plantation, words that set his body trembling against his will.
“You’re not coming with us?” he asked Mr. Powell.
“I will not be driven from my home,” Mr. Powell said. “Now that my family is safe, I will face this mob, should they dare to enter it.”
Mrs. Powell raised her voice to a hiss. “William, please—”
“Mercy,” Mr. Powell said, “I will not surrender to King Mob. I will not yield to their hatred. I cannot. It is not in my nature.”
Again, Abraham found himself admiring this man. “Would you like me to stay with you?” he asked, willing but terrified, knowing he would be nearly useless in a physical confrontation.
“I ask no one to stay with me,” Mr. Powell said. “Now, if you would be so kind as to pull the bridge away.”
Abraham looked down at the wooden gangplank, then bent and took the end with both hands. The Powell boy came to help him, and together they pulled the bridge across the gap onto their own roof. Abraham looked again at Mr. Powell, standing resolute.
“Thank you, son,” he said. “I love you all. Stay here, stay quiet. You will be safe.”
“I love you, William,” Mrs. Powell said, and her children echoed her sentiment.
Mr. Powell turned away and left the roof through the attic door, leaving the rest of them alone and separated from him.
The family then gradually settled, to wait and to hope. Mary had tears in her eyes, as did Mrs. Powell. The boy sat stoically, and Sarah curled in her mother’s arms as if they were her own city and so long as she could stay there, the world was at peace, even as New York burned around her.
The scent of smoke spiced the air, and as Abraham gazed uptown, he saw a procession of black columns rising up into the sky, some near, some far, some large and some small, all of them ominous.
The mob’s screeches and whooping intensified, but so far remained out in the street, not in the house. Perhaps they feared a force of hardened sailors would greet them should they charge through the door. But time passed without any intrusion, and the sky clouded over, which did not break the heat, but stopped the sun from beating Abraham about his shoulders.
“Perhaps they’ll just leave,” Mary said.
“Let us pray they do,” Mrs. Powell said. “Right now, together. Come, children, hold hands.”
Her children gathered around her, and as she began her prayer, Abraham bowed his head. With eyes closed, he imagined he saw Eliza trapped in Mr. Tweed’s house, a mob outside, the house an inferno behind her. She was calling to him, but he couldn’t hear her voice over the flames. He could only see the terror in her face, her mouth open in a silent scream.
Okay, David, said Monroe. Time to get moving to the next intersection.
David stepped away from the group. “You couldn’t have mentioned that before I climbed up onto this roof?”
Sorry. But you need to hurry.
David knew Abraham would feel guilty abandoning Mrs. Powell and her children on the roof. Their prayer ended, he turned back to speak with her, but found her looking at him, smiling, as if she already knew.
“Go,” she said. “Go to your daughter.”
“But—”
“All will be well,” she said. “We have prayed, and I feel certain God has heard us. He will protect us, for it is his work we do here.”
Abraham wished he had her faith, but after the life he had led, he had far too many questions for God, for which a good long conversation with him was needed. But he kept his doubts to himself, and bade farewell to Mrs. Powell and her children.
“When this is over,” she said. “Come back to see us. Our sailors can always benefit from the wisdom of good men.”
“I will come back to see you,” Abraham said.
He found a tree at the back of the building and descended to the street, his muscles already fatigued before he’d touched ground. The tree deposited him in an alley off Water Street. He followed it uptown, away from the mob outside the Sailors’ Home on Dover.
You’re on track, Monroe said. Just keep moving north.
“That’s where I’ll meet Sean and Natalya?”
Monroe paused again. That’s right.
“I’m coming, Eliza,” Abraham whispered to himself.
“I’m coming, Grace,” David said.
Tommy led Adelina west over fences and through the back lawns of the neighborhood. They encountered others along the way, people who’d likewise fled from their homes out the back ways. But Tommy could see in their eyes they didn’t know what to do, or where to go. The mob seemed as though it was everywhere at once.
“Go to the police precinct,” he whispered to each of them as they passed. “You’ll be safe at the police precinct.”
He and Adelina eventually emerged through an alleyway onto Fourth Avenue. They cut up to Twenty-Sixth and then over to Madison Square, thus far avoiding any further mobs.
“Do you smell that?” Adelina said. “It’s smoke.”
Tommy spun around, searching the sky above the buildings that surrounded them, and spotted the column just to the southeast. “I think that’s the State Armory,” he said. “My God, they’ve fired it.”
“Armory?” Adelina said. “Does that mean the mob is now carrying guns?”
“I pray not,” Tommy said. As it was, he had no idea how the police would be able to suppress this uprising. There were perhaps fifteen hundred patrolmen available to the city, if all reported to their precincts, but righ
t then, there were far fewer than that on duty. Against a mob of ten thousand, and still growing. If the rioters were equipped with carbines and rifles, it would be impossible to beat them back.
They crossed Madison Place into the park, passing the bench where they had spent time talking the previous night.
“Oh!” Tommy said. “Oh, damn me for a fool!”
“What is it?” Adelina asked.
“Your gold,” he said. “I left your gold at my brother’s house.”
“Well,” Adelina said, “strictly speaking, that was your gold you left, not mine. And loathe as I am to think of it filling the pockets of thieves and ruffians, I don’t think it’s worth going back for.”
He hadn’t thought to go back for it, but that didn’t stop him from slapping the side of his head.
“Stop that,” Adelina said. “There are far more important things in this world than gold. I’d much rather spend our time worrying about what we’re going to do now. Do you still think my hotel will be unsafe?”
Tommy looked back over his shoulder. The main body of the mob was moving downtown by way of the wide avenues, but smaller groups of rioters had splintered off down the side streets. His instinct told him they would spread their havoc from the East River to the Hudson, every block, every street. They would eventually reach the hotel.
“I don’t think it’s safe,” he said.
“Then where should we go?” she asked. “A police precinct?”
“That mob could easily overrun a precinct, if they determine to. I had to tell those people something.”
“Then where?”
“The Seventy-First Infantry has their arsenal up on Thirty-Fifth and Seventh Avenue. The mob might take on the police, but I doubt they’ll take on the army.”
“I thought you said the army was out of the city.”
“The arsenal will be garrisoned,” Tommy said. That was the only place he could think of within the city that would be safe enough. The only other option would be to get Adelina out of the city, assuming the riots didn’t spread to nearby towns. “Do you have friends or family in Brooklyn? Or New Jersey?”
“I have an aunt in Hoboken,” she said.
“Hoboken, good,” Tommy said. “The Christopher Street Ferry will get you there, if that becomes necessary.”
Tommy knew there was a provost marshal’s office on Broadway at Twenty-Ninth Street, so he led Adelina west along Twenty-Sixth to cut around it, waiting to turn uptown until they’d reached Seventh Avenue. They had almost ten blocks to walk, which would not have been far under normal circumstances. They had only made it three when a roving band of rioters came around the corner. Tommy hurried Adelina down a nearby alleyway, behind a broken wagon missing its rear axle. He had left his locust club behind, afraid it might give him away as a patrolman, so he wasn’t equipped for a brawl.
“Thank you,” Adelina whispered after the mob had passed.
He looked at her. “For what?”
“For all of this. For taking care of me. You don’t really know me. You don’t even know if I deserve this.”
“You deserve it,” he said. “Everyone deserves it.”
She sighed. “You’re a good man, Tommy Greyling. You may be the best man I’ve ever met.”
“Adelina—” She silenced him with a lingering kiss on his cheek, and he felt his skin grow hot where her breath had blessed him and her lips had graced him. He stammered. “That’s not … You don’t …”
“Shh,” she said. “Let’s just keep moving.”
So they left the alleyway and continued up the street. Tommy was still flustered by what had just occurred, but he knew Adelina was not the kind of woman to make much of such things. She had likely kissed many men on the cheeks, so even though such a thing was singular to him, it likely meant little to her.
The roiling current of Tommy’s mind tossed Sean in confusion as well. He knew it was Adelina who had kissed him, yet he also knew Natalya had experienced it, and he wondered what that might mean outside the simulation.
But they continued onward. Smoke plumes marked distant fires, the rioters seemingly bent on destruction. Tommy and Adelina successfully avoided several more mobs, hiding and waiting them out on the journey to the arsenal, which they reached after one o’clock. It was a fortress of a building, three stories of white stone with octagonal towers at three of its corners, and a massive square bell tower at the fourth. Soldiers stood out front, armed with rifles and bayonets.
The sight of their uniforms threatened to drag Tommy back to the battlefield still raging in the distant recesses of his memory. His hands began to sweat, his breathing quickened, and his pace slowed.
“What is it?” Adelina asked him.
“Nothing,” he muttered, but the smoke in the air suddenly looked and smelled of gunpowder, and his leg throbbed.
“Tommy,” Adelina said, taking his arm. “Tommy, what’s wrong?”
He felt her hand on him, but it wasn’t enough to pull him back, and over her voice he heard the echoes of gunfire and horses.
“Tommy, look at me,” Adelina said, shaking him.
He glanced down at her, into her eyes. She reached up and laid her hand aside his cheek, the same cheek she had earlier kissed, and a shudder rippled his back, silencing the roar and soothing the pain in his wound.
“There you are,” Adelina said. “You went so pale.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I—”
“Don’t apologize,” she said. “You have nothing to be ashamed of. Are you well?”
“I think so.”
“Good.” She took his hand and squeezed it. Then she nodded toward the armory. “Is this still our plan?”
“Yes,” he said. He hadn’t had an episode like that in quite some time, and it had caught him unawares. But now he was prepared.
They marched toward the arsenal’s main entrance, but before they’d reached it they were greeted by an older soldier, a gray codger with a jutting chin.
“What can I do for you?” he asked. “You here to volunteer, young fellow?”
“Volunteer?” Adelina asked.
“They put out a call,” the man said. “All able-bodied veterans to report here. We’ve mustered quite a force.”
“That’s not why we’ve come,” Tommy said. “I’m wondering if you would take this woman into the arsenal and keep her safe until the trouble has passed.”
“Wait, you’re not coming with me?” Adelina said.
“I’ll wait until I know you’re safe and settled,” Tommy said.
The old man looked to his compatriots, who shrugged. “Not sure about this, as we’ve not been given orders relative to civilians.”
“So there’s nothing forbidding it,” Tommy said.
“Not strictly speaking, no.” He narrowed his eyes and sucked on a cheek. “This way, then,” he said, and led them through the arsenal’s main door.
They entered into a bare and cavernous foyer, and from there the old veteran took them to an anteroom lined with benches, where he instructed them to have a seat and wait.
“I’ll find out the particulars.”
“Much obliged to you, officer,” Adelina said with a gracious smile.
The man tipped his cap. “Thank you, miss, but I was never an officer.” And he walked away from them, smiling.
After he’d left, Adelina whispered, “I knew he wasn’t an officer,” and gave Tommy a wink.
Then they waited for well over an hour. Soldiers came and went through the room, along with volunteers answering the call of recruitment. It became obvious to Tommy they had mustered a modest force of veterans who had seen battle. If fully armed, they would constitute a considerable foe to the rioters, but seemed in no hurry to go out and meet the mob.
When the old soldier finally returned, he did so shaking his head. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave,” the old man said. “We’ve been ordered to send civilians to the Metropolitan Police precincts.”
“But th
e precincts aren’t safe.” Tommy tried to sound calm and reasonable, even though this smacked of bureaucratic idiocy. “Most are manned by only a handful of patrolmen. They’ll be overrun.”
“I’m sorry,” the man said. “No civilians are to be admitted into the arsenal at this present time, by order of General Sanford.”
As absurd as the situation was, Tommy knew it would do no good to argue further, so he rose from the bench and Adelina did the same. They followed the old man back out into the street, the skyline blackened deeper than when they’d gone in. Tommy turned to the old man.
“Look at that.” He pointed at the smoke rising thickly in the distance. “With the troops you’ve mustered, why aren’t you out there taking on the mob?”
The old man snapped his crooked back straight. “We’re waiting on General Sanford’s orders.”
“That gall you?” Tommy asked, needling him. “It would gall me to be held back.”
The old man swallowed his words and said nothing.
Tommy shook his head and pulled Adelina away some yards, back down Seventh Avenue. “This reeks of politics,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Adelina asked.
“Sanford’s a Democrat, and he reports to Governor Seymour, who is also a Democrat.”
“So?”
“There’s a good chance the Democrats see this riot working in their favor against Lincoln and the war. If they can stop the draft, they have a better chance of forcing Lincoln to make peace.”
“You’re saying they want this?”
“I’m saying Sanford has put down riots in this city before, so why not now? He has no reason to hold his troops back, and yet he’s in there with his volunteers doing nothing.” But now they were back on the street, and he still had to get Adelina to safety. “I think we should proceed to the ferry at Christopher Street,” he said. “That will take you to Hoboken.”
“Very well,” she said. “But I feel you still mean to leave me.”