Less than a month passed between the night of the Wrap Party, which marked the end of the filming and editing of The Life and Adventures of the Great Naturalist Charles Darwin, and its debut in a plush Broadway theater. A short time by ordinary reckoning; but it was a dire eternity in Julian’s reign as President.
Sam Godwin, who maintained close contact with the military, had taken on the thankless duty of conveying bad news to Julian—a role he was forced to play increasingly often. It was Sam who told Julian that the Army of the Californias had been met with fierce re sis tance by ecclesiastical forces at Colorado Springs. It was Sam who told him how the Rocky Mountain Division of that Army had rebelled, and swung its support from the Executive Power to the Dominion of Jesus Christ on Earth. It was Sam (and I envied him this task least of all) who was obliged to tell Julian that, after extensive but ineffectual shelling and burning, Army commanders had worked out a truce with the Dominion Council and declared a unilateral cease-fire—all in violation of Julian’s direct orders.
Sam emerged from that session ashen-faced and shaking his head. “At times, Adam,” he confided in me, “I don’t know whether Julian even understands what I say to him. He acts as if these reverses were inconsequential, or too distant to matter. Or else he storms and rages at me, as if I were the author of his defeats. Then he hides away in that Projection Room of his, mesmerizing himself with moving pictures.”
There was worse to come. A mere three days before the debut of Charles Darwin, news reached us that the joint leaders of the Army of the Laurentians had declared solidarity with their comrades in California and had raised the possibility of a march on New York for the purpose of unseating Julian Conqueror. The name of Admiral Fairfield (who had been so successful at sea) was mooted as a possible successor. That might have been the keenest cut of all, for Julian admired the Admiral, and they had got along well during the Goose Bay Campaign.
These small and large insurrections shook the foundations of his Presidency; but Julian continued to make plans for the Broadway opening of his film. Local churches had begun calling for a boycott of it, and it would be necessary to cordon the theater with Republican Guards to prevent riots. Nevertheless Julian invited us all to the premiere, and made sure the finest carriages were available, and told us to dress in our best clothes, and make a grand occasion of it; and we did so, because we loved him, and because we might not have another chance to pay him such an honor.
A phalanx of gilded carriages, surrounded and preceded by armed Guardsmen on horseback, made its way out of the Palace grounds on the appointed afternoon.
Calyxa and I rode in one of the central carriages, following the vehicle that carried Julian and Magnus Stepney, with Sam and Julian’s mother in a third conveyance behind us. It was near Christmas, but the streets of Manhattan were not merry. Banners of the Cross had been pulled down in order to clear a line of sight for the sharpshooters Julian had placed on all the rooftops between Tenth and Madison Avenue. But the streets weren’t crowded in any case, in part because of the new Pox—the same Pox Dr. Polk had worried about last summer—which had been communicated by fraudulent vaccination shops to young Eupatridian ladies, and which had spread from there into all walks of life in the great City of New York.
It was not an especially virulent disease—not more than one in forty or fifty New Yorkers had come down with it—but it was unpleasant and deadly. It began with fevers and confusions, followed by the appearance of yellow pustules all over the body (especially the neck and groin), and culminated in bleeding lesions and a rapid decline into death. As a result many people chose to keep at home despite the season, and many of the pedestrians we passed wore paper masks over their noses and mouths.
All that, plus a chill wind blowing from the north, lent a certain bleakness to the city’s Christmas.
Fear of Pox had not altogether prevented public gatherings, however, since the disease seemed to be transmitted by something more than casual contact. The theater as we approached it was brightly-lit, its sidewalks swarming with patrons and curiosity-seekers, and the roast-chestnut vendor was doing a roaring business.
The theater’s grand marquee proclaimed the title of the movie, and added a banner announcing THE WORLD DEBUT OF JULIAN CONQUEROR’S BRILLIANT AND STARTLING CINEMATIC MASTERPIECE!* A cordon of Republican Guards kept out would-be troublemakers, mobs of whom had been dispatched by church committees as an obeisance to the Dominion. The film, of course, was not attractive to especially pious or conservative people; but there were more than enough Aesthetes, Philosophers, Agnostics, and Parmentierists in Manhattan to make up the deficit. These people were Julian’s constituency, if he could be said to have one, and they had turned out in force.
Julian left his carriage just as ours was pulling up. He would watch the movie from a protected box above the gallery, along with Magnus Stepney, who was accorded that privilege as the star of the film. Sam and Julian’s mother had a similar box assigned to them, while Calyxa and I held reserved seats in the orchestra section. We were only halfway through the enormous lobby, however, when a man I recognized as the Theater Director came up to us in a rush.
“Mrs. Hazzard!” he cried, recognizing her, for she had had some dealing with him in her role as lyricist and composer.
“What is it?” Calyxa asked.
“I’ve been trying to reach you! We have an unexpected and serious problem, Mrs. Hazzard. As you know, Candita Bentley* vocalizes the role of Emma. But Candita is ill—a sudden attack—Pox,” he confided in a scandalized tone. “Her understudy is down with it, too.”
“The show is canceled?”
“Don’t even whisper it! No, certainly not; but we need a new Emma, at least for the songs. I can call up someone from the chorus; but I thought—since you wrote the score, and since everyone says you have the voice for it—I know this is absurdly short notice, and I know you haven’t rehearsed—”
Calyxa took the startling invitation very calmly. “I don’t need to rehearse. Just show me where to stand.”
“You’ll sing the role, then?”
“Yes. Better me than some chorister.”
“But that’s wonderful! I can’t thank you enough!”
“You don’t have to. Adam, do you mind me voicing Emma?”
“No—but are you confident you can do this?”
“They’re my songs, and I can sing them as well as any of these Broadway women. Better, I expect.”
Calyxa had been offered the vocal part of Emma early in the planning of the production, but she had reluctantly refused it, since she was preoccupied with Flaxie and the ceaseless duties of motherhood. Tonight’s unexpected opportunity obviously pleased her. Stage fright wasn’t one of her faults.
I wished her well, and she hurried off to prepare. There was a general announcement that the curtain-time had been postponed by fifteen minutes. I milled in the lobby in the meantime, until Sam Godwin approached me.
His expression was somber. “Where’s your wife?” he asked.
“Recruited into the show. Where’s yours?”
“Gone back to the Palace.”
“Back to the Palace! Why? She’ll miss the movie!”
“It can’t be helped. There have been fresh developments, Adam. She’s packing for France,” Sam said in a very low voice, adding, “We leave tonight.”
“To night!”
“Keep your voice down! It can’t be that great a shock to you. The Army of the Laurentians is moving on the city, the Senate is in open revolt—”
“All that was true before this evening.”
“And now a fire has broken out in the Egyptian district. From what I’ve heard, most of Houston Street is in flames and the burning threatens to cross the Ninth Street Canal. The wind spreads it quickly, and if the flames reach the docks our only avenue of escape may be cut off.”
“But—Sam! I’m not sure I’m ready—”
“You’re as ready as you need to be, even if you have to sail with just the shoes on your feet and the shirt on your back. Our hand has been forced.”
“But Flaxie—”
“Emily will make sure the baby gets to the boat. She and Calyxa calculated everything well in advance. They’ve been ready a week now. Listen: our ship is the Goldwing, docked at the foot of 42nd Street. She sails at dawn.”
“What about Julian, though? Have you told him about the fire?”
“Not yet. He’s sealed himself in that box above the balcony and ringed himself with guards. But I’ll speak to him before the movie is finished, if I have to knock heads together to get at him.”
“I don’t expect he would be willing to leave before the end of the show.” Nor would Calyxa be, now that she had been recruited into the business.
“Probably not,” Sam said grimly. “But as soon as the curtain rings down we must all leave at once. Look for me in the lobby between acts. If you don’t see me, or if we’re separated—remember! The Goldwing, at dawn.”
A bell rang, signaling us to take our seats.
Of course my head was whirling with these plans as the curtain rose on Charles Darwin; but (apart from the fire in the Egyptian quarter) none of it was entirely unexpected, though I had hoped the need for flight would not arise so soon. There was no immediate active role I could take, however, so I tried to focus my attention on the event at hand.
The orchestra played a lively overture combining the film’s major musical themes. The excitement in the audience was palpable. Then the lights went down and the projection began. A grandly ornate title card announced:
THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF
THE GREAT NATURALIST CHARLES DARWIN
(FAMOUS FOR HIS THEORY OF EVOLUTION, ETC.)
Produced by Mr. Julian Comstock and Company
WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF THE
NEW YORK STAGE AND SCREEN ALLIANCE
featuring
Julinda Pique as Emma Wedgwood
and introducing
Magnus Stepney in the Title Role
That faded to a simpler card reading:
OXFORD
IN THE COUNTRY OF ENGLAND
Long before the Fall of the Cities
Thus the scene was set; and now young Darwin appeared for the first time, strolling through the Oxford countryside, which was really the game preserve of the Executive Palace dressed up with signs reading FORTY MILES TO LONDON AND WATCH OUT FOR FOX HUNTS and such, to create a general impression of Englishness.
I had not seen any of the finished footage of the movie before tonight, and I had entertained some doubts about Pastor Stepney’s acting skills. But he performed a respectable Darwin, somewhat to my surprise. Perhaps a career in the pulpit is acceptable training for an actor. In any case he made a handsome naturalist; and the famous Julinda Pique, though nearly twice his age, portrayed a suitably attractive Emma, with make-up to conceal any cosmetic imperfections.
I have already given the outline of the story, and I won’t repeat it here, except to mention certain highlights. Act I held the audience’s attention in a merciless grip. Darwin sang his Aria about the resemblance between insects of disparate species, voiced by a powerful tenor. The Oxford Bug Collecting Tournament was portrayed, with Emma cheering from the sidelines. I was unfailingly aware that, while it was Julinda Pique’s form and figure on screen, the voice that seemed to issue from her mouth was in fact produced by Calyxa in a side-booth. I had been afraid that Calyxa’s inexperience would betray her; but from her first refrain* she sounded strong and straightforward; and there were murmurs of appreciation from the audience.
Of course the audience was disposed to be sympathetic, being composed mainly of apostates and rebels. Still, it was shocking to hear heresies so openly proclaimed. When the villainous Wilberforce sang Only God can make a beetle he was repeating exactly the orthodoxy I had learned in Dominion school; and Darwin’s riposte (I see the world always changing / unforced, unfixed, and rearranging) would have earned me a stern lecture, or worse, if I had offered it up to Ben Kreel in my youth. But was Darwin wrong? I had seen too much of the unfixed world to deny it.
The insect tournament concluded with victory and a kiss for Charles Darwin. Darwin’s subsequent vow to travel the world in search of the secret of life, and Wilberforce’s jealous pledge of vengeance, formed the subject of a rousing Duet, which rang down the curtain on Act I, to riotous applause.
A dry December wind blew steadily from the north that night, fanning the flames in the Egyptian quarter. The Spark had hurried out a special edition, and newsboys were already hawking copies of it outside the theater doors. BIG BLAZE HITS GYPTOWN was the vulgar but accurate headline.
This was dismaying news, for an uncontrolled fire in a modern city can quickly become a general disaster; but the theater was far from the flames, and there was no panic in the crowded lobby, only some excited conversation.
I looked for Sam, and found him coming down a stairway from one of the high balconies.
“Damn Julian!” he said as I came up beside him. “He won’t open that theater-box to anyone, including me—sits in there with Magnus Stepney and armed guards on the doors—no exceptions!”
“I expect he’s nervous about the success of his film.”
“I expect he’s half mad—he’s certainly been acting that way—but it’s no excuse!”
“He’ll have to come out eventually. You can speak to him at the conclusion of the last act, perhaps.”
“I’ll speak to him before that, if I have to pull a gun to do it! Adam, listen: I’ve had a report from the Guardsmen I sent along with Emily to the Palace. They say she had two wagons ready to go, and that she set off for the docks along with Flaxie and several nurses and servants and a fresh contingent of Guards. It was all very neatly and efficiently done.”
I didn’t like the idea of Flaxie being spirited through the streets of Manhattan on a perilous night like this, without me to protect her; but I knew Julian’s mother loved the baby as if it were her own and would take every possible precaution. “And they’re safe, as far as you know?”
“I’m certain they’re safe. Probably snug aboard the Goldwing by now. But there’s trouble at the Palace—that’s the bad news. The servants and Guard troops saw her drive away with all her possessions, and they’re bright enough to divine the reason for it. Lymon Pugh is doing his best to preserve order and prevent looting. But the news will get around quickly that Julian Conqueror has abdicated the Office of the Executive—and he has, whether he knows it or not—and the Palace grounds might yet be invaded by rioters or a rogue Army detachment.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the hounds are at our heels, and I hope this damned Movie comes to an end soon!”
With that, the bell rang for Act II.
Act II was the story of Darwin’s travels at sea, a stark contrast to the rural idyll of Act I. As such, it mirrored the tempests and turmoil taking place in my own mind.
Here was the Beagle (actually an old schooner hired by Julian for the production, anchored off Long Island), bound for South America with its crew of hardy sailors. Here was Emma Wedgwood back in En gland, refusing the courtship of the increasingly bitter (and wealthy) Wilberforce. Here was Wilberforce in a low dive by the sea, paying a drunken pirate captain to pursue and sink the Beagle.
Here, too, was South America with all its peculiar tropical beauty. Here was Darwin discovering sea-shells in cliff-sides and prying up the bones of extinct mammals from ancient marl, all the while singing a meditation on the age of the Earth and fleeing from unusually aggressive armadillos. Here he was on the Galapagos Islands, collecting mockingbirds and confronting a ferocious Lion (really a mastiff dressed up in a carpet and a wig, but very convincing for all that). Jungles (mostly paper) stretched to distant mountains (painted), and a Giraffe appeared fleetingly.*
The Beagle encountered Wilberforce’s cut-throats on the return voyage to En gland. The Beagle was boarded, and the ensuing battle was very realistic. For pirates Julian had recruited a number of men from New York waterfront dives, who suited the part in perhaps too many ways. They had been told how to strike blows and wield swords without killing anyone; but their grasp of the technique was often uncertain or impatient, and some of the blood in the scene was more authentic than the professional actors might have liked.
Darwin proved to be a surprisingly skilled swordsman, for a Naturalist. He leapt up on the Beagle’s windlass, and defended the forecastle against dozens of assailants, singing:
Now we see in miniature the force that shapes Creation:
I’ll slay a Pirate—this one, here—and stop the generation
Of all his heirs, and all their heirs, and all the heirs that follow,
Just as the Long-Beaked bird outlives the starving Short-Beaked Swallow.
Some pious men may find this truth unorthodox and bitter:
But Nature, Chance, and Time ensure survival of the fitter!
It was as good a scene of fighting as had ever been filmed, at least in my limited experience. The attending crowd of Aesthetes and Apostates was not easily impressed, but cheering broke out among them, and triumphant shouts when Darwin pierced the Pirate Captain with his sword.
The Beagle reached London battered but unbowed—watched from the shore by Emma, and from the shadows by Wilberforce, now a Bishop, who gritted his teeth and sang a reprise of his murderous intentions.
In the lobby, waiting for the third and final act to begin, I moved through the crowd to the great glass doors of the theater. I could see that the wind had gained strength, for it tore at the awnings and banners along Broadway, and the taxi-men at the curb were huddled together, struggling to keep their pipes alight. A two-horse fire wagon came rattling by, its brass bell ringing, no doubt headed for the Immigrant quarter.
Messengers in Republican Guard uniforms came and went in flurries, shouldering past the ushers and ascending and descending the stars to the high balcony where Julian kept his box. Sam did not appear in the lobby, however, and I went back into the auditorium for Act III without being further enlightened.
It was during this final act, as Darwin and Bishop Wilberforce sang at one another relentlessly during their great Debate, that the truth of my situation began to sink in. Even as the audience showed its appreciation for the drama—with cheers and whistles for Darwin, boos and catcalls for Wilberforce—my spirit was weighed down by the knowledge that I would soon be leaving my native country, perhaps forever.
I considered myself to be a patriot, or at least as patriotic as the next man. That didn’t mean I would bow down to just any individual who assumed the Presidency, or to the Senate, for that matter, or even to the Dominion. I had seen too much of the imperfection and shortsightedness of such people and institutions. I loved the land, however—even Labrador, as much of it as I had seen, though with a tempered love; and certainly New York City; but above all the west, with its sundered badlands, open prairie, lush foothills, and purpled mountains. The boreal west was not rich or greatly inhabited, but its people were kind and gentle, and—
No, that’s not what I mean. I don’t suppose westerners are humbler or nobler than anyone else. I knew for a fact there were crooks and bullies among them; though fewer, perhaps, head for head, than in Manhattan. No: what I mean is that I had grown up in the west and learned the world from it. From its wideness I learned the measure of a man; from its summer afternoons I learned the art and science of repose; from its winter nights I learned the bittersweet flavor of melancholy. All of us learn these things one way or another; but I learned them from the west, and I was loyal to it, in my fashion.
And now I was leaving it all behind.
These feelings gave a particular edge to Darwin’s Aria on the subject of Time and the Age of the Earth, though the sermon was not a new one to me, for I had heard these sentiments from Julian often enough. The mountains I admired were not eternal, the wheat I fed on grew from the bed of a primeval ocean, and ages of ice and fire had passed before the first human beings approached the Rocky Mountains and discovered Williams Ford. “Everything flows,” in the words of some philosopher Julian liked to quote; and you would be able to watch it do so, if you could hold still for an eon or so.
That idea was as disturbing to me, this night, as it was to Bishop Wilberforce, up on the screen. I did not approve of Wilberforce, for he was a villain to Charles Darwin and a menace to poor Emma; but I felt an unexpected sympathy for him as he climbed the crags of Mount Oxford (actually some headland up the Hudson), hoping to gun down Evolution and murder Uncertainty into the bargain.
It was Calyxa’s voice that brought me out of my funk. Emma Wedgwood sang,
It’s difficult to marry a man
Who won’t admit the master plan
In nature’s long exfoliation,
But finds a better explanation
In Natural Law and Chance Mutation—
His theories shocked a Christian nation—
But I love him nonetheless!
Yes, I love him, nonetheless!
and she sang it so wholeheartedly, and in such a winsome voice, that I forgot that it was Julinda Pique’s image on the screen, and saw Calyxa in my mind’s eye; and I became Darwin, battling for his bride. It wasn’t a trivial analogy, for Calyxa was in as much danger from the collapse of Julian’s Presidency as Emma Wedgwood ever was from the Bishop’s bullets and schemes.
Those bullets and schemes were cunningly portrayed, and the audience gasped and cheered at each turn and reversal, and it seemed to me that Julian’s Life and Adventures of the Great Naturalist Charles Darwin was a great success, and that it would play to packed houses wherever it was allowed to be seen, if it was allowed to be seen. But by the end of it I was so wrought up with anxiety over current events that I didn’t wait for the end-credits to finish showing, but jumped the orchestra and cut around the screen to the hidden booths where the voice-actors and noise-makers did their work.
That might not have been a wise act, for rumors of fire and abdication had already made the audience nervous. Ticket-holders were startled by the sight of me dodging in such a hurry past the screen, and casting awkward shadows on it; and when I tripped over a snare drum of the sort used to mimic the sound of gunshots, causing a racket that might have been the opening cannonade of a military attack, the audience finally gave up applauding and cleared the auditorium, endangering an usher in the process.
Calyxa was surprised to see me, and a little miffed that I cut short the curtain-calls. But I caught her by the arm, and told her we were forced to leave Manhattan this very evening, and that Flaxie and Mrs. Godwin were already aboard the Goldwing. She took the news stoically and accepted a few compliments from her fellow players; then we left by a stage door at the rear.
The crowd in front of the theater was already well-dispersed, but a cordon had been kept for members of the Presidential party, and we were admitted through those lines.
Sam hailed us as soon as he saw us, but his expression was grim.
“Where is Julian?” I asked.
“Gone,” he said.
“Gone to the docks, you mean?”
“No, I mean gone, plain gone—gone in the general sense. He sneaked out of the theater with Magnus Stepney during Act III, and left this note with my name on it.”
With a disgusted expression Sam passed Julian’s note to me, and I unfolded the paper and read it. It had been written with obvious haste in an unsteady hand, but the penmanship was recognizably Julian’s. The note said:
Dear Sam,
Thank you for your repeated attempts to reach me with news of the imminent departure of the Goldwing for foreign waters. Please tell my mother and Calyxa that I admire their extensive and thoughtful planning for this eventuality. I regret that I cannot join them, and you, and Adam and all, for the voyage. I would not be safe in Europe, nor would those I love be safe as long as I was among them. And there are more personal and pressing reasons why I must stay behind.
As unsatisfactory as this explanation is, it will have to do. Please don’t attempt to seek me out, for nothing can change my decision, and I would only be endangered by the attempt.
I thank you all for the kindnesses you have shown me over so many years, and I apologize for the hardships those kindnesses too often caused you. Thank you, especially, Sam, for acting in the place of my father, and for guiding me usefully even when I defied your guidance. Your lessons were not wasted, and never more than briefly resented. Please be kind to my mother, as I know she will be upset by my absence, and please emphasize my love for her, which is everlasting, if anything is.
Also thank Adam for his boundless friendship and many indulgences, and remind him of the promise he made to me.
Yours,
Julian Comstock (never really a Conqueror)
“Do you know what he means, Adam?”
“I think I understand it,” I said in a small voice.
“That’s more than I do! Damn Julian! It’s just like him to throw a shoe into the works! But about the promise he mentions—”
“It’s nothing much.”
“Do you care to tell me about it?”
“It’s only an errand. Escort Calyxa to the Goldwing, and I’ll join you there.”
Calyxa made some objection to this, but I was adamant, and she knew me well enough to hear the steel in my voice, and she yielded to it, though not gracefully. I kissed her and told her to kiss Flaxie on my behalf. I would have said more, but I didn’t want to increase her anxiety.
“Only an errand,” Sam repeated, once Calyxa was settled in the carriage.
“It won’t keep me long.”
“It had better not. They say the fire is spreading quickly—you can smell the smoke on the wind even here. If the docks are threatened we sail at once, with you or without you.”
“I understand.”
“I hope so. I might have lost Julian—I can’t do anything about that—but I don’t want to lose you as well.”
His statement made me feel very emotional, and I had to turn my head away so as not to embarrass myself. Sam took my hand in his good right hand and gave it a sturdy shake. Then he followed Calyxa into the carriage; and when I turned back they were gone.
All the crowd had gone away before them. Except for a few Republican Guards still keeping a vigil, the street was nearly empty. Only a single horse cart remained at the curb. It bore the insigne of the Executive Branch.
Lymon Pugh was holding the reins. “Drive you somewhere, Adam Hazzard?” he asked.
A few trucks and carriages passed us as we rode up Broadway, all of them headed away from the burning Egyptian quarter. A brisk wind blew steadily along the empty sidewalks, lofting up loose pages from the special edition of the Spark and inconveniencing beggars in the darkened alleys where they slept.
Sam’s parting words had touched me, and I have to admit that Julian’s unexpected letter caused some turmoil as well. I supposed he had his reasons for doing as he did. Or at least imagined he had good reasons. But it was hurtful that he hadn’t lingered long enough to say goodbye face-to-face. We had survived so many harrowing turns together, that I thought I was owed at least a handshake.
But Julian had not been himself lately—far from it—and I tried to excuse him on those grounds.
“He was probably just in a big hurry,” Lymon Pugh said, divining something of my thoughts.
“I carried it to Sam myself.”
“How did Julian seem when he passed it to you?”
“Can’t say. It was handed out from behind that curtained box of his. All I saw was a gloved hand, and all I heard was his voice, which said, ‘See that this gets to Sam Godwin.’ Well, I did. If I unfolded it on the way, and had a quick read of it, I guess that’s your fault.”
“My fault!”
“For teaching me my letters, I mean.”
Perhaps it was true, as the Eupatridians believed, that the skill of reading shouldn’t be too widely distributed, if this was the general result. But I passed over his indictment without comment. “What do you make of it?”
“I’m sure I don’t know. It’s all above my station.”
“But you said he might be in a hurry.”
“Perhaps because of Deacon Hollingshead.”
“What about Deacon Hollingshead?”
“Rumor among the Guard is that Hollingshead holds a personal grudge against Julian, and is hunting him all over the city, with a body of Ecclesiastical Police to help him.”
“I know the Deacon is hostile to Julian, but what do you mean by a personal grudge?”
“Well, because of his daughter.”
“The Deacon’s daughter? The one who famously shares intimacies with females of her own sex?”
“That’s more delicate than I’ve heard it put, but yes. The girl was an embarrassment to Hollingshead, and he locked her up in his fancy house in Colorado Springs to keep her out of trouble. But Deacon Hollingshead’s house was blown up during the trouble with the Army of the Californias. The Deacon was safe here in New York, of course. But he blames Julian for his daughter’s death, and means to take his revenge on Julian directly. A noose or a bullet, it don’t matter to the Deacon, as long as Julian dies.”
“How do you know these things?”
“No offense, Adam, but news that circulates in the Guard barracks don’t always reach the upper echelons. All of us that Julian hired to be Republican Guards are fresh from the Army of the Laurentians. Some of us have friends in the New York garrison. And talk goes back and forth.”
“You told Julian about this?”
“No, I never had an opportunity; but I think the rogue pastor Magnus Stepney might have said something. Stepney has contacts among the political agitators, who pay attention to questions like this.”
Or it might all be hearsay and exaggeration. I remembered how, back in Williams Ford, a head-cold among the Duncans or the Crowleys became the Red Plague by the time the grooms and stable-boys told the story. Still, that was unhappy news about Hollingshead’s daughter. I had always felt sympathy for the girl, though all I knew of the situation was what I had learned from Calyxa’s pointed verses at the Independence Day ball a year and a half gone.
“Any particular reason we’re heading back to the Palace?” Lymon Pugh asked, for that was the destination I had given him.
“A few things I want to pick up.”
“Then off to South France, I suppose, or somewhere foreign like that?”
“You can still come with us, Lymon—the offer stands. I’m not sure what your prospects are in Manhattan just now. You might have a hard time drawing your wages after tonight.”
“No, thank you. I mean to take my wages in the form of a breed horse from the Palace stables, and ride the animal west. If any horses remain, that is. The Republican Guards are fond of Julian, and remember him as Conqueror, but they can read the writing on the wall as well as the next man. Many of them have pulled out already. Probably some of the Presidential silverware has gone with them, though I name no names.”
We call people rats, who desert a sinking ship; but in some cases the rat has the wisdom of the situation. Lymon Pugh was correct about the looting and the reasons for it. Ordinarily the Republican Guard is a non-partisan group, and survives these flurries of Regime Change without much trouble simply by transferring its loyalty to the next man in the chair. But Julian had made the current Guard his own animal, and it would sink or swim along with his administration.
We came to the 59th Street Gate. Apparently some members of the local chapter of the Army of the Laurentians had heard about the sacking of the Palace, and felt they ought to be allowed to join in, since their northern comrades would be marching on Manhattan any day now. A group of these vultures had gathered at the Gate, and were clamoring for admittance and firing pistols into the air. Enough Guardsmen remained on the wall to act as warders, however, and they kept out the mob; and the mob retained enough respect for the Presidential Seal to allow us to pass through, though they did so grudgingly and with some shouted sarcasm.
I asked Lymon Pugh to make two stops on the grounds of the Executive Palace. One was at the guest-house where, until this evening, I had lived. Calyxa had packed up our most treasured possessions days earlier, in anticipation of the necessity of flight, and these had already gone to the docks. Only a few odds and ends remained behind. One such was a box of souvenirs and mementos, which I had put together without Calyxa’s knowledge, and I took it out of the sadly empty building with me.
From there we went to the Palace itself. Lymon Pugh had been correct in his description of the Republican Guard’s paradoxical behavior. Some men still occupied their traditional places at the portico, stubbornly “on duty,” while others sallied freely up the marble stairs, and down again, burdened with cutlery, vases, tableware, tapestries, and every other portable object. I didn’t blame them for it, however. As of tonight they were effectively unemployed, with poor prospects, and entitled to back pay in whatever form they could get it.
I hoped no one had already taken what I had come to retrieve. In that regard I was lucky. Few of these men (some of whom gave me a sheepish salute as I passed them) had ventured into the underground section of the Palace, which still had an unsavory reputation. They had not breached the Projection Room, and the master copy of The Life and Adventures of the Great Naturalist Charles Darwin was just where Julian had left it, divided among three pie-tins, along with the score, script, stage instructions, etc.
I didn’t linger once I had retrieved these things. I suppose, if there had been a prisoner in the Palace’s underground jail, I might have paused to release him. But there weren’t any prisoners to release. The only prisoner Julian had kept was the one he had inherited—that is, his murderous uncle Deklan—and Deklan had since taken up a new residence: in Hell, or atop an iron post, depending on how you look at it.
Lymon Pugh was waiting when I emerged from the Palace. He had made good on his word, and taken a pedigreed horse from the Palace stables, and fitted it up with a fine leather saddle and saddlebags; and I could hardly rebuke him for the theft, for he had brought along a second horse just like the first, and similarly equipped, for me.
“Even if you’re only riding as far as the docks, you ought to ride in style,” he said.
The saddlebags were a convenient way to transport the three reels of Charles Darwin, as well as my other souvenirs, and I packed these things carefully. “But I’m not going straight to the docks,” I said.
“No? Where first, then?”
“Down to the rough part of town—a certain address.”
He was interested in this plan. “Won’t that be near the fire?”
“Very near—perilously near—but still accessible, I hope.”
“What’s there?”
I shrugged. I wasn’t ready to confide my awkward hopes in him.
“Well, let me ride with you at least that far, whatever your purpose is.”
“You’d be putting yourself in danger.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time. If I get nervous I’ll shy away—I promise.”
It was a welcome offer, and I accepted it.
Just before we remounted I fetched from among my own goods a spare copy of A Western Boy at Sea (I had packed half a dozen) and gave it to Lymon to keep. He marveled at it by the light that leaked from the Palace doors. “This is the one you wrote?”
“It has my name on the front. Just up from the Octopus. The Octopus doesn’t appear in the book.”
He seemed genuinely moved by the gift. “I’ll read it, Adam, I promise, just as soon as I come to a slow spot in my life. Here,” he said, reaching into his pocket, “here’s something for you, in return. Something to remember me by. Call it a Christmas present.”
I accepted his gift, which he had made himself, and solemnly thanked him for it.
We nearly had a disastrous adventure even before we left the Palace grounds. On the way to the 59th Street Gate we rode through the Statuary Lawn, where sculptures and relics from the days of the Secular Ancients were preserved. It was an eerie place even by daylight, and eerier still in the diffuse night-glow of the city, with the copper head of the Colossus of Liberty listing perpetually to the south, the Angel of the Waters gazing in solemn pity at Christopher Columbus, and Simon Bolivar frozen in a cavalry raid on the Needle of Cleopatra. The road twined among these bronze enigmas from ancient times as through a maze. We seemed to be alone in it.
But we were not. A small group of men on horseback, who must have forced their way through one or another of the Gates, was lurking among the statues, perhaps on the theory that they could rob any Eupatridians or unaccompanied Guardsmen departing the property with loot; and I suppose they imagined they could get away with this outrage, in the general atmosphere of chaos and abandonment.
Whatever their plan, they saw us coming and rode at us from their hiding place in a tight group. I counted six of them. The lead man did not disguise his intentions, but pulled a rifle from his saddle-holster. “This way!” Lymon Pugh cried, and we spurred our mounts; but the thieves had calculated their attack very finely. They were about to cut off our escape route, and probably kill us for our modest treasure, when the rifleman suddenly looked past us, his eyes wide, and shouted an obscenity, as his horse reared up under him.
I turned in my saddle to see what had frightened him so.
It was nothing hostile. It was only Otis, the elderly bachelor Giraffe, who liked to spend his evenings among the statues. All the night-time activity at the Palace had made him nervous, I suppose, and when Otis was nervous he was apt to charge, which was just what he did—he came out from behind Liberty’s battered diadem with his long neck swaying majestically, and galloped straight at the bandits. I think he would have roared, if nature had blessed him with such a talent.
The thieves scattered in several directions. Lymon and I took the opportunity and fled the scene without looking back, not slowing until we saw the lights of 59th Street.
I heard some gunfire as we passed out of the Gate. I don’t know whether Otis was injured in his confrontation with the bandits. I believe he was not, though I can’t produce evidence. Giraffes are as mortal as any other creature, of course, and entirely vulnerable to bullets. But I didn’t think Otis would let himself be killed by such low men as those—it wasn’t in his nature.
* A bold boast, but that’s how show-business operates.
* A Broadway voice-actress, famous for her silvery voice and impressive girth.
* I had not entertained the thought
That I could love a scholar,
For they read from books an awful lot
And seldom spend a dollar.…
* Giraffes, strictly speaking, are not native to South America; but we had a Giraffe, and we used it.