Last Descendants

  Some of the conversations, both direct and overheard, interested Natalya far more than they did Adelina, but Natalya could do nothing to engage with them. All she could do was listen and pay attention as she lived out Adelina’s memory of the evening.

  “Damn these Copperheads to hell,” said a man with white hair and a thick white mustache that curled wide across his cheeks. “And they can take Tweed and Tammany with them.”

  “Be careful, Cornelius,” said one of the men with him.

  “Why? Lee’s tucked tail and run back to Virginia. Grant’s victory at Vicksburg will turn the tide of this war, I’m certain of it. I don’t have any fear of these Democrat Southern sympathizers.”

  “You’re too bold, Cornelius,” another man said. “The outcome of the war is far from decided. And regardless of the victor, you’ll still have business to conduct. Best not make enemies if a bit more prudence can avoid it.”

  “Bah!” Cornelius said.

  Adelina walked on and joined a conversation with a few ladies wearing lavish gowns and lace and jewelry that likely cost even more than hers. After a cordial greeting and a round of compliments on Adelina’s performance, the conversation turned back to the roots put down before Adelina’s arrival.

  “They’re still going forward with the draft?” a red-haired woman asked.

  “They are,” said a silvered dame.

  “I fear that’s a mistake.”

  “Draft?” Adelina asked.

  “Oh, that’s right,” the first woman said. “You live in England. President Lincoln is conscripting able-bodied men to fight the Rebels, you see. The city is quite up in arms over it. I thought perhaps it would be called off.”

  “It would be if Governor Seymour and the mayor had their way,” the older woman said. “But Major General Wool is determined to carry it out.”

  “Do you have sons?” Adelina asked. “Are you worried they’ll be called up?”

  “Not at all,” the woman said, her diamonds flashing. “The Conscription Act allows men to pay a three-hundred-dollar commutation fee to exempt them from service. Even if my sons are drafted, they won’t be fighting.”

  “It really is a small sum to ask,” the red-haired woman said.

  Even though she was a wealthy woman, Adelina thought the word small probably meant something very different to those working in the factories and streets, the laborers living in the squalor of the Five Points and the Bowery, to whom three hundred dollars likely meant a year’s wages or more. They couldn’t use their wealth to escape the carnage of the battlefield. But Adelina kept this observation to herself.

  From there the conversation turned easily to the mundane, and both Adelina and Natalya grew bored. It was quite late when the gathering finally broke apart, and William nervously ushered Adelina into a carriage with the case bearing her fee.

  “I really wish you would let me escort you,” William said. “Or send someone with you if you find me objectionable.”

  “It isn’t that,” Adelina said. William’s earlier effrontery regarding her fee no longer irritated her in the least. “I’m simply capable of making my own way.”

  “I have no doubt of that. But I do wish your manager were with you.”

  “I do not, and neither should you, unless it is your desire to become quite ill.”

  William smiled and his nod appeared reluctant. “Very well.”

  “Good night,” Adelina said. “You do have a beautiful theater, and I hope to sing here again soon.”

  “As do I,” William said, and then ordered the driver to take Adelina up to the Fifth Avenue Hotel where she was staying.

  The heat of the July night had not yet broken, but at least the New York City air smelled cleaner than the soot-choked miasma that smothered Adelina’s home in London. She looked forward to her tour in the refreshing German watering places Mannheim and Frankfurt at the end of the month.

  The carriage drove her up Broadway, which still bustled with curious activity despite it being well past midnight. Adelina didn’t like the cast of the men still about. They looked like ruffians and experts in mayhem, members of the street gangs that ruled Five Points and the Bowery farther downtown. They rushed to and fro, up and down the street, with purpose and determination, though Adelina didn’t know what that purpose might be.

  But Natalya knew. The riots were imminent. The gang leaders were probably coordinating and plotting even now. And Adelina had taken a carriage at two in the morning, by herself, carrying four thousand dollars in gold and another thousand in cash. Natalya’s first time in the Animus hadn’t been dangerous at all. She had experienced her grandmother’s arrival in America, the fear and the excitement and the joy of it. But this situation was very different.

  She wished she could somehow warn Adelina, but after they had gone perhaps a dozen blocks, and passed Union Square, the carriage came to a halt. Natalya wanted to scream for Adelina to run, but—

  “Driver?” Adelina called. “Why have we stopped?”

  But the driver didn’t answer. Instead, a man’s face peered through the carriage window.

  “Evening, miss,” he said.

  “Driver!” Adelina said, but then she realized the cab had stopped here on purpose.

  She reached for the door’s handle to prevent it turning, but the man wrenched it out of her hands and yanked the door open. His eyes flicked around the carriage’s interior and landed on the case. He dove for it, but Adelina grabbed its straps at the same time, and they tugged the case back and forth between them, growling and cursing. The man braced a boot against the outer door frame, but so did Adelina from inside. Natalya couldn’t believe her strength.

  “Easy now!” the man said. “I just want the bag!”

  “Help me!” Adelina cried. “Somebody help me!”

  The man leaned in through the doorway to get a better grip, and when he did, Adelina managed to roll a little on the carriage’s seat and then kicked him in the face with her free boot. His head snapped back with a grunt, and when he righted it, blood poured from his nostrils down his upper lip and chin. He let go of the straps, and Adelina could see his rage. She braced for his attack as he snarled at her and dove inside the carriage.

  Natalya wanted out of the simulation. She hadn’t agreed to this. She didn’t want to experience this.

  “Let me out!” Natalya and Adelina both screamed.

  Grace stood against the wall of a dining room, four men seated at a table before her, a sideboard laden with food to her right. David stood at the other end of the sideboard, looking at her through the ridiculous eyes of an old white-haired man. Ridiculous because to think of him as her father almost made her laugh. He was so trusting and naive, so sincere, but she loved that about him and didn’t want to see the world beat or burn it out of him. So she was usually the one who took care of him.

  “Eliza, is everything all right?” one of the men at the table asked.

  He was very large, perhaps two hundred and fifty or even three hundred pounds, and while it looked as if some of that weight might have once been muscle in his youth, most of it wasn’t now. He and the other men at the table were staring at her. They all wore three-piece suits, with delicate, draping pocket watch chains, and jewels that flashed at their cuffs and lapels.

  “I’m fine,” Grace said.

  The men all scowled, and one of them scoffed at her. Grace felt the simulation rejecting her, like getting pushed out of a subway train as the world moves on in a blur. She looked over at David. His wide eyes implored her to do something, say something, but it had to be the right thing.

  Grace hated this part of the Animus. She hated giving up control of her mind, which had always been the one thing no one else could touch. Her mind was her palace, her temple, and her garden, all at once. But now there was someone else trying to get in, a squatter-mind attempting to scale the walls and take up residence.

  “Eliza, what is the matter with you?” the big man asked.

  “Nothing,” Gra
ce said. She was his servant, and she hated that thought. She was probably expected to call him sir and curtsy or whatever.

  “It must be the heat, Mr. Tweed,” David said, but Grace could tell he wasn’t David anymore. The look in his eyes seemed older, with a different kind of worry. “If she needs to lie down, I can finish serving, sir.”

  The simulation went even blurrier, and Grace could feel its doors shutting in her face, about to leave her behind.

  The big man turned his attention back to Grace. “Is that so? Do you need to lie down?”

  The invading mind felt desperate, scrambling to get in. If Grace didn’t open the gate and allow it through, right now, she’d be out of the simulation, and that would leave David in there alone. Grace couldn’t let that happen, so she grit her teeth, hating this and resenting Monroe for making her do it, and she opened the barricades of her mind.

  Eliza rushed in, a soft-spoken girl who had lost her mother at the age of eight, whose father had loved her and cared for her as best he could on his own these last nine years in service to Mr. Tweed, and whom she couldn’t ever let down.

  “I’m so sorry, Mr. Tweed,” she said, and curtsied. “I sort of lost myself for a moment. It must be the heat. I’m sorry, sir.”

  “That’s quite all right,” Mr. Tweed said, big hands flat at his girth. “Are you well now?”

  “Quite well,” Eliza said. “It’s passed.”

  “Good,” Mr. Tweed said. “I’ll have more of the duck.”

  “Yes, sir.” Eliza turned to the sideboard, where the feast had been laid out. In addition to the duck, there were oysters, roast beef tenderloin, ham with champagne sauce, and sweetbreads. She picked up the platter of duck and carried it to Mr. Tweed. After he had served himself, she carried the platter around the table for his guests.

  “Boss, your cook is as good as Ranhofer,” Mr. Connolly said, a brick of a man with a block-shaped head.

  “I would damn well hope so,” Mr. Tweed said. “I sent her to Delmonico’s for lessons from him. And don’t call me Boss.”

  “I like the term,” said Mr. Hall, a twinkle behind his pince-nez spectacles, the twitch of a smile beneath his elegant beard. “Boss Tweed. It suits you.”

  “Let’s see if it sticks,” Mr. Sweeny said with a scowl that angled his thick, wide mustache.

  “If it sticks, it sticks,” Mr. Tweed said. “I take the people of this city as they are, and they can call me whatever the hell they want. But here, it’s just Tweed or Bill, understood?” Mr. Tweed sat back in his chair. “Or Grand Sachem,” he added, at which a chuckle rounded the table. “It’s a pity General Sanford couldn’t join us. But I’ve been assured of his cooperation tomorrow.”

  “He’ll hold back the troops?” Mr. Sweeny asked.

  Mr. Tweed nodded.

  Eliza and her father attended to the guests for another hour or so, until the food was gone, most of it consumed by Mr. Tweed, and the wine was gone, most of it consumed by the others.

  “Gentlemen,” Mr. Tweed said, “as splendid as the evening has been, we have some important matters to discuss before we adjourn, and my wife has stated in no uncertain terms she expects me home before dawn. Shall we move to the library?”

  The others agreed and rose from their chairs. They moved as one from the dining room out into the main hall, and a moment later, the closing of the library door muted their voices.

  “Let’s get this wreckage cleaned up,” Eliza’s father said. “And then we can see what Margaret’s cooked up for us in the kitchen.”

  “I wish Mr. Tweed would hire on more help,” Eliza said, stacking the empty silver platters. The brownstone wasn’t large, but it was a lot to manage for two servants, a cook, and her scrubber. And Eliza wanted to do something more than clean Mr. Tweed’s house. She wanted to make something of herself, the way other black men and women had. Maybe open a shop or a restaurant …

  “It wouldn’t make sense for him to hire on someone else,” her father said. “Mr. Tweed is never here. If he didn’t use this house to meet with his associates as he does, I doubt he’d keep any of us on. Just be grateful. It could be much worse for us. Lotta folk out there …”

  He didn’t finish, but Eliza knew what he meant. The City of New York and Brooklyn were overflowing with Irish and Germans, and there weren’t enough jobs. Blacks were competition, and the city didn’t want any more freed slaves coming up from the South looking for work. That’s why there’d been talk of the city seceding with the Rebels. That’s why the Democrat Copperheads in New York sympathized with the Confederates and wanted the Union to be defeated.

  Grace experienced these thoughts with the same anger and powerlessness she had with her great-grandmother’s memories of spaces for “whites only.” None of it was right, but there wasn’t anything Grace could do about it. She looked down at the tray of dishes in her hands, and was struck by the moment’s similarity with her last time in the Animus. Her great-grandmother had cleaned houses for rich white ladies, and it seemed to Grace in that moment that the generations of her ancestors held nothing in their hands but stacks of dirty dishes.

  She slammed down the tray she was holding a little too hard, and it flipped a serving spoon onto the floor. She left it there, even as she felt the simulation weaken.

  “Eliza?” the old man who was her father and David asked. Since David’s simulation was extrapolated, he was acting out this moment as Eliza remembered it, and doing a better job than her at staying synchronized. “Is something wrong?”

  “It’s nothing,” Grace said.

  “It doesn’t seem to be nothing,” he said.

  Grace forced herself to bend and pick up the spoon, and she felt the simulation strengthen.

  “I know you worry for me,” Eliza’s father said. “But I worry more for you. I need to see you’re taken care of when I’m gone—”

  Eliza spoke up then. “Please don’t talk—”

  “I speak the truth.” He held up one of his calloused hands. “No sense hiding from it. The truth will always find you out. Your grandmother never saw her freedom, but I made sure any child of mine would be born free. I know you want more than this, and I want more than this for you. One day you will have more, much more. I know you will. But these are very troubled times, and for now, you have work and a kind employer.”

  Eliza and Grace both watched him for a moment, and both realized he was right. Grace couldn’t change this history, as angry as she felt about it, and fighting it would only expel her from the simulation. She’d come here because Monroe said finding this Piece of Eden was the best way to make it safe for her and David. So that’s what she would do.

  “Yes, Father,” Eliza said.

  She walked over and helped him gather the silverware.

  “You are determined and you are brave,” her father said. “You do your grandmother’s name proud.”

  “I hope so,” Eliza said.

  Grace let Eliza’s consciousness out of the corner room and gave the girl free access to the rest of her mind’s real estate. Eliza immediately set about clearing the dishes and the table with efficiency and speed alongside her father, though he went a little slower these days, wincing at pains in his joints when he thought she wasn’t looking. For now, though, she could make up the difference, and Mr. Tweed had so far seen no reason to let her father go.

  They brought all the dishes to the kitchen, where Margaret’s scrubber would take care of them, and after that, Eliza’s father would polish the silver pieces. Margaret had boiled a lamb shank meant for Mr. Tweed’s guests, but Mr. Tweed had declined it to be served, which made for an uncommon and delicious meal for the small staff. They ate together around the kitchen table, but quickly, for the guests would be ready to depart soon. Margaret even put out some mint jelly to eat with the meat.

  Just as they were finishing, they heard the library door open, and men’s voices bumped one another out into the main hall. Eliza and her father went to see if anything was needed by the guests, who
filed out the front door one by one into their carriages and rode off into the warm night. After they had all left, Mr. Tweed summoned Eliza’s father alone into the library and shut the door again.

  That caused Eliza some unease, and even though she risked getting in trouble for it, she went to stand by the metal grate in the wall near the floor of an adjacent hallway, through which she could hear the conversation taking place.

  “Is there any way to stop it?” her father asked.

  “I doubt even canceling the draft would prevent it at this point. It is no longer a problem to be solved, but one to be managed.”

  “How bad will it be?”

  “It will be unlike anything seen before in this city,” Mr. Tweed said. “Or even this country.”

  “Worse than the police riots?”

  “I believe so, yes. But good will rise out of the ashes. I will be there with the powers of Tammany Hall behind me to rebuild the city in wisdom and strength. But we must act quickly. Are you up to the challenge?”

  “I am, Mr. Tweed,” her father said.

  “I have a letter for you to deliver. I need a messenger who won’t arouse interest or suspicion. I also need someone I can trust, and over the years I’ve come to trust you.”

  “Where am I to deliver it, sir?”

  “There’s an establishment in the lower Fourth Ward,” Mr. Tweed said. “The Hole-in-the-Wall. Have you heard of it?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s quite infamous, sir.”

  “Indeed, it is. There’s a bartender there by name of Cudgel Cormac.”