“Ma’am? Ma’am, are you hurt?”
Gemma focused her blurring eyes and the round mustachioed face of the passing policeman came into view, the one who had been coming off his night rounds. He raised her up by the elbow, saying, “That was a big ’un! Thought for a moment we were all going into the bay.”
“A-a big ’un?” Gemma echoed faintly. The quake had seemed to go on forever: she had clung to the ground on hands and knees, feeling it buck and heave beneath her like a mule. That terrible roaring, backed by the sounds of falling roof tiles and shrieking timber—dogs baying and horses screaming—it had gone on and on, until suddenly everything fell still. For ten agonizing seconds, Gemma could hear again, the chink of stray bricks hitting the ground and the cawing of startled birds and her own voice muttering stop, make it stop, make it stop, as though she were a small child huddled in a closet against the terror of the night. She’d just begun to struggle to her feet when the ground shrugged, throwing her down with a cold chuckle as the earth began to twist and dance all over again. One of the gate’s stone pillars collapsed with a crash, pulling its iron railings down in a snarl of black spikes. A sharp spearlike point chipped the pavement three inches from Gemma’s face—she stared at it, hypnotized, as the last wrenching spasm pulsed through the earth, dying off in smaller shuddering gasps.
And then it was finally done, the world gone ghastly still, and this policeman was talking about a big ’un.
“Easterner, are you?” the policeman guessed. “Lord love you, ma’am, earthquakes happen around here all the time. That one was a rattler and no mistake, but everything’s built solid up here on Nob Hill. It’ll all be fine, you’ll see.”
Gemma jerked a nod. She couldn’t take her eyes off the twisted iron spikes of the octagon house’s fallen gate. A few inches the other way, they’d have plunged into her face.
“You go inside, ma’am. Likely you’ll find you haven’t lost much more than the dishes and a window or two.” He looked a little more pale than his confident words indicated, but he set Gemma on her feet and began moving down the street. Hyde Street had filled up with strange white figures—for a moment Gemma thought they were ghosts, and then she realized it was her neighbors, men and women alike rushing down into the street in their white nightshirts. “All right, everyone, back inside, now. Careful of broken glass—”
People were beginning to talk in hushed whispers, breaking the silence, and Gemma saw the octagon house’s servants streaming out into the gardens. Incredibly, the house didn’t seem to have been badly damaged, at least from the outside: the cupola crowning the domed roof now canted at an angle, and most of the chimneys were on the ground rather than the roof. But like most of the buildings she could see along Hyde Street, the house still stood tall.
Staggering inside, she saw that the grandfather clock had crashed over in a snarl of broken dials and brass gears. Two chandeliers had plummeted to the floor and shattered, but two more still hung, chiming faintly with vibrations from the aftershocks. Half the panes from the skylight had broken and showered down all over the central atrium. Three of the maids were weeping, bleeding from glass cuts, and Mrs. MacNeil was clapping her hands to restore order: “—sweep up this mess while the kitchens get a cold breakfast set out.” Gemma’s ears still buzzed, and she couldn’t seem to stop her thoughts from racing like her heart. Absurdly, she found herself wondering about the Chinese Room three floors up. All those porcelain urns and delicate bronzes, the jade and the thousand-year-old figurines—had they all smashed into slivers? So many beautiful things, born in care and artistry and craftsmanship halfway around the world, looted from burning palaces and loaded into crates by thieves, finally meeting their end here swept into a San Francisco rubbish bin . . .
And then she thought of the screaming horses and baying dogs, the roar that was surely the sound of buildings collapsing south of the slot where houses had not been raised over solid Nob Hill foundations, and she began to shiver. She didn’t care how nonchalant that policeman had sounded; people had died this morning. How many were trapped, how many were—
The sharp sound of running footsteps snapped her mind back into focus: Henry Thornton, coming down the staircase in his evening tails, loading a pistol. He had evidently not changed for bed yet when the earthquake hit. “Gemma,” he greeted her distractedly. “Try to keep order here, will you? I’m off to my offices in the Financial District.”
“You’re going to work?” she couldn’t help asking, incredulously. “Are you going to dock a day’s pay if any of your clerks are late? What is wrong with you?”
“Don’t be hysterical.” His burned fingers were stiff, manipulating the handful of bullets, but he still managed to load the gun with ease. Gemma knew hunting rifles, the sort of weapon common on a Nebraska farm, but she couldn’t identify this sleek model he was tucking in his pocket. “I’m going to assess the damage. The greatest danger in earthquakes isn’t the quake, it’s the resulting panic—that, and people who spot the opportunity for looting. Stay inside, I’ll be back when things are calmer.”
And he left without a backward glance, shoes crunching over the broken glass and out through the front doors to the shattered street outside, calling for his Rolls.
When things are calmer. What on earth was happening to Suling in the middle of all this chaos, making her bid to find Nellie? And Nell, a Bronx girl to her bones, no more experienced with earthquakes than Gemma, was she scared out of her wits in her cell in St. Christina’s? Were the inmates rioting, maddened by the chaos, or—
“H’lo, you.” A shaky voice sounded behind Gemma, and she blinked to see the handsome actor from the ball last night. What was his name, John Barrymore? “Fell asleep on a sofa outside the ballroom, woke up thinking I’d been tipped into a saltshaker. Got rattled and rolled right off that sofa . . . hey, you’re the singer.” He tried a smile, clearly still shaken. “Sorry I can’t give you a kiss, my lovely. I’m still a bit unsteady on m’pins.”
Gemma caught him by the elbow as he staggered, steering him to a tapestried settee by the wall. “You just endured an earthquake, Mr. Barrymore, and so have I. That’ll be something to tell the folks back East, won’t it? These San Franciscans seem to know what to do, so we Easterners should probably just keep calm and let them get on with it.”
She eased him down on the settee, talking lightly until he stopped shaking, then she pointed him at Mrs. MacNeil—“She’ll see you get a glass of water and a sandwich, some food will set you right”—and ran up the stairs. The chandelier in her ice-blue bedroom had plummeted down onto the bed with a crash, though somehow all her glass bottles of perfumes and powders were unbroken. Toscanini’s cage hadn’t fallen over, but the budgie was screeching and hurling himself against the bars. Gemma took him out and cuddled him to her breast, stroking his downy head until he ceased flapping and curled into her palm. The bird’s tiny heart was thrumming in one fast, continuous pulse. Gemma didn’t think her own was going much slower. Another shock of tremors hit, much smaller than the first, but she went to her knees anyway, shielding the bird with her body. The windows rattled in their frames, but nothing broke as the tremors died away.
I am supposed to be running away, Gemma thought. Packing her clothes and the birdcage, leaving the octagon house forever, heading for the boardinghouse to see if Suling had managed to spring Nellie out of the asylum. That had been the plan, admittedly desperate. But now the whole city was a mess, and no plan sounded like the right one. Was the house on Taylor Street even still standing?
Shivering, Gemma tucked Toscanini back into his cage and drew the green baize cover down to calm him, then pried off her evening dress and taffeta petticoats. She buttoned herself into a plain skirt and shirtwaist, hooked up her sturdiest boots, threw her jewelry and a few other things into a bag. She hesitated for a long moment, but left the bag and the birdcage in her bedroom as she ran for the stairs. Who knew if the streets beyond Nob Hill were safe to walk, and a woman stumbling through rubble laden with baggage would be such easy prey—Thornton had mentioned looters. At least the octagon house was standing solid and well guarded by servants; her bird would be safe for now, until she knew for certain where she could take him for shelter.
Gemma tore back down to the atrium, past Mr. Barrymore, who was munching a sandwich between a pair of sympathetic parlormaids, past Mrs. MacNeil, who was supervising the footmen and their brooms, and set off down Hyde Street. Less than half a mile to her old boardinghouse—men and women in their nightshirts were trailing back into their homes now, Gemma saw, looking sheepish at their alarm. Servants were heading out with brooms, sweeping up smashed glass and grumbling: “Better fire up that stove, the missus will screech if she doesn’t get her morning ham and eggs, earthquake or no . . .” Another chimney lay toppled in the street like a beached whale, but Gemma saw a man in a homburg and a smart suit clamber right over it, checking his pocket watch, clearly on his way to work. Am I going mad? she wondered, making the turn onto Union Street. Was it utterly normal to feel the earth shudder this way and just—go on about one’s day?
“Gemma,” Alice greeted her as Gemma came round the back of the Taylor Street house—which, thank God, was still standing. “Slow down, what are you babbling about—Suling? No, I haven’t seen her. Or your friend Nellie or Reggie or whatever she’s calling herself. How would Suling know her? Here, take this bucket.”
Disappointed but hardly surprised, Gemma took the bucket as Alice began filling another at the cistern. “It doesn’t look like you lost a single window here.” Gemma was starting to feel somewhat alarmist for panicking the way she’d done, but the inside of her head was still such a whirl, she could barely think straight. “Everyone seems to be taking things in stride. You San Franciscans really are blasé,” she tried to joke.
“Too blasé for their own good.” Alice looked ready to head off to the Academy for work, her hair rolled in its neat pompadour, her shirtwaist crisp, but her face was grim as she hoisted another bucket and started off toward the kitchen. “Here, dump your bucket in that tub there. We want all the pots and utensils filled, as much water as we can. I tried to get Mrs. Browning on it, but the stupid woman’s having the vapors upstairs. No time to lose—”
Squinting into the distance when they came back out onto the porch, Gemma made out three or four twists of smoke rising into the blue morning sky. The sight of those lazy black swirls over the rooftops twisted her stomach into a knot. She might not know much about earthquakes, but with all the years she’d spent in open Nebraska grasslands and then cramped New York tenements, she knew something about fire. “Oh God . . .”
“Don’t fall apart now.” Alice filled buckets until the cistern clanked empty; Gemma helped her lug them. Snatching up her bag, Alice then set off down Taylor Street toward Market, beckoning Gemma to follow with a jerk of her head. Her air of command was so matter-of-fact, Gemma followed in a daze without even thinking why. “It might be a good time to pray, if you’re devout. San Francisco is going to burn.”