City of Ash (37 page)

“You thought there was some higher feeling?” Mrs. Wilkes laughed. “The higher feeling was this: I needed his influence and he liked to fuck me. That was all.”

I recoiled a little at her crudity.

“What’s wrong, Mrs. Langley? Have I offended your delicate sensibilities? Sex has nothing to do with love, you know.”

I turned away from her. Before us, a man cursed as the wagon he drove bounced hard over a twisted horsecar rail, nearly turning onto its side before two militiamen ran over to help him right it. I stared down at the harbor, at the steamers and schooners anchored out there, so close, so impossible to reach. No docks. No way to get to San Francisco or anywhere else. The thought filled me with such despair I could not breathe through it.

“How much will your help cost me?” I asked.

She didn’t flinch. “You already owe me two hundred dollars.”

“There would be more, of course.”

“How much more?”

“I’ll need money for travel. And for expenses for a few weeks.
Until I can settle things. The rest would be yours. Let’s say … a third of the money in the safe.”

She was silent for a moment. “Half, and you’ve got an agreement.”

I took a deep breath. “Very well. I’ll need you to find out Nathan’s whereabouts before I attempt it. I don’t want him coming home while I’m there. Is that acceptable to you? Or will that cost me more?”

“That’s easy enough. I’ll include it in the price.”

“How kind.” I stared out at the desolation, thinking. “Once I know where Nathan is, I’ll decide when to sneak in. Afterward, I’ll meet you back here.”

“How can I be sure you won’t just take the money and disappear?”

“You have my word.”

“It’s not enough. What if you decide you’ve promised me too much, and you lie to me about what was in the safe?”

“You have a suspicious mind.”

“A hazard of my profession. I suppose I’ll need to come with you.”

“I hardly think so.”

“I don’t trust you. As you don’t trust me either, that should be easy for you to understand. I’ll go with you. I can even help. I’ll stand guard. I suppose you keep a good pantry too.” She slanted me a glance. “Unless you’re opposed to stealing food from your own kitchen.”

I leaned my head back, looking out at the sunset, orange and fiery red against the horizon. I didn’t want to admit that her suggestion eased my trepidation. With her standing guard, there to distract the servants if need be, everything would be much easier. “Very well.”

Her smile was irritatingly self-satisfied. “Lucius will know Nathan’s whereabouts. I’ll ask him in the morning.”

“The sooner, the better.”

“There’s something we’re agreed on.”

The smoke was lifting a bit now, clearing with the slight breeze coming off the Sound. Lights began twinkling on the boats in the harbor, and men picked among the piers, bending
to retrieve one thing or another, little black figures against the reflection of the sunset on the water.

There was a commotion down the way, a group of men crowding around something—a cask. One man fell to his knees, cupping his hands beneath the whiskey pouring out, dousing his face to the delight of onlookers. A great cheer went up.

“We should find someplace else to go,” said Mrs. Wilkes uneasily. “Nothing good comes from drunken men.”

Just then a group of militiamen came up the street, their rifles at the ready. I felt Mrs. Wilkes relax. The men groaned and protested as the militia ordered them away, and one or two of the revelers staggered by, looking at us with glances that made me uncomfortable. The three soldiers kicked in the cask until the whiskey spilled over the grass. The scent of it drifted with the smoke on the air.

One of them came over to us. “There’s an eight o’clock curfew. You people had best be moving on.”

I looked at the others in the yard, most groaning at his words and climbing to their feet.

“Where are we supposed to go?” Mrs. Wilkes asked.

“Don’t matter to me, miss. Away from here’s all I know.”

“Are there relief tents yet?”

“Tomorrow, I hear.”

“How does that help any of us tonight?”

Smoothly, I said, “Officer, this is where we spent last night. We’ve nowhere else to go.”

“I’m sorry for that, ma’am, truly I am. But there’s a curfew tonight and I’m ordered to get everyone off the streets.”

“And if we don’t go?” Mrs. Wilkes asked.

He looked uncomfortable. “I’ll be forced to arrest you.”

I thought of what Nathan and my father would do with that and said quickly, “We’ll be moving along.”

He touched his finger to his cap and said, “Good night, ladies,” and went down the street.

“Well.” Mrs. Wilkes put her hands on her hips and sighed. “I’ve no idea where he expects us to go.”

“There must be somewhere,” I said.

“Oh yes. There’s the St. Charles Hotel—right over there.”
She pointed down the street to an ash pile. “Oh, that’s right, it’s gone. I suppose we might try the Occidental—”

“You may be the least charming woman I’ve ever known. How Nathan stood you, I’ve no idea.”

“Oh, he found me charming enough,” she said nastily. “Though I can’t always say the same for him.”

The comment surprised me enough that I had nothing to say in return. When she began to walk down the street, I followed her wordlessly, trailing behind like a duckling following its mother. She knew the area better than I did; she would know better where to go.

The heat of the day and the fire began to ease, and before we’d gone many blocks, we came to the part of the city the fire hadn’t reached. On one side of the street were untouched houses and yards, trees with scorched trunks whose leaves had curled into themselves, showing their pale underbellies to the heat, but otherwise unchanged, dogs barking joyously in yards, tethered cows chewing their cud.

But on the other side there was only desolation, where heat rose from the smoldering ashes and a heavy cloud of smoke and ash obscured everything beyond a few feet. The streetlamps weren’t lit—when I began to see oil lamps and candles in windows usually glowing with gaslight, I remembered that the gas and electric works was directly in the path of the fire. It had no doubt been destroyed along with everything else.

My lips were dry and parched; my lungs still burned. I felt as if I might never take a deep breath again. My feet blistered in my thin boots, which were not meant for walking, and there was another blister on my shoulder where something had burned a hole in the silk. I would have given a thousand dollars to be rid of my bustle and my corset. As the darkness grew, I moved closer to Mrs. Wilkes; there were too many homeless about, I did not like the shadows.

She paused when we came to a house with a stable off to the side. “What about here?”

“A stable?”

“Have you seen anything better?”

I had to admit I hadn’t. “Do you know who lives here?”

“No.”

“I can’t take the chance that they might recognize me. You’ll have to ask them if we might stay.”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t plan to ask them. They’ll just say no. We look like a couple of whores. Hell,
I’d
turn us down.”

“Then I don’t understand what you mean to do.”

“We’ll just go in there. Quietly.”

“You can’t mean to … sneak in?”

“Unless you want to spend the next hour explaining that we’re respectable women, which they won’t believe because we don’t have a place to go, nor any family or friends to help. That is,
you
don’t have friends to help. I’d guess Lucius might have his tent by now. We could just go there—”

“Absolutely not.”

She sighed. “Then we’ll have to sneak in, as you say, and hope to God they don’t have a dog.”

I followed her around the corner. There was no gate, no cow. Only an old wagon up against the stable wall. The door was half opened, warped, and caught against the dirt, and she slipped inside. My bustle, which was bent and sitting awkwardly, caught as I tried to do the same, and she whispered, “You might want to get rid of that.”

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Beyond was a horse, who stomped a little at us, but then went quiet again. There was a little crash, something scraped along the floor, and Mrs. Wilkes cursed beneath her breath. “Damn sawhorse.”

“Ssshh,” I said, and we both froze, waiting.

When we moved again, she stopped only a few feet on. “There’s a pile of hay here,” she whispered. “We’ll be comfortable enough.”

She sat down. I heard the rustle of hay, her sigh, and I made my way through the darkness until I felt the hay sliding beneath my feet. “Will you help me take off this bustle?”

I turned my back to her and undid the buttons on the bodice, peeling myself out of the tight-fitting silk. She undid the tapes holding the bustle in place as easily and expertly as any maid might do, though she was not the least bit gentle. She jerked the
bustle loose, and it bounced against my petticoats and thudded to the floor beneath my skirts.

I stepped from it, kicking it aside. “I suppose it’s best to leave it here.”

“Maybe the lady of the house will be able to use it.”

I pulled up my sleeves and rebuttoned myself and sat beside her. It was prickly and uncomfortable, but better than the hill where we’d slept last night. I stared up at the shadows of the rafters, listening to the rustling and shuffling of the horse beyond, freezing at the quick scamper of some creature I didn’t wish to identify.

“I don’t imagine you’ve ever spent the night in a barn before.”

“Thus far it’s something I’ve managed to avoid,” I said. “I suppose you have.”

“Once or twice. When I was with a touring company. Sometimes it was the best an advance man could do. And I’ve never known a manager who wasn’t willing to save a dollar.”

“That doesn’t seem true of Mr. Greene.”

“Lucius is better than some. Still, if his idea to open the Regal in a tent doesn’t work, he’ll send us on tour quickly enough until it’s rebuilt.” Another sigh. “I thought I was done with that.”

“You needn’t go, I’d think. Once I open the safe, you’ll have money enough.”

“It’s not just the money that matters,” she said. “I’ll follow the stage, wherever it is.”

I was surprised. I had thought her purely pragmatic, even mercenary. But suddenly I remembered her performance in
Black Jack
. I heard Sebastian DeWitt’s voice in my ear:
“You could learn from her.…”

How clearly I heard him. Suddenly his presence was so strong, I could not bear it. “He must be around somewhere. He can’t have died.”

“No doubt.”

Not even a question as to who I’d been talking about. She’d been thinking of him too, which disturbed me more than I wanted to admit.

We lapsed into quiet again. I closed my eyes, trying not to think of him, breathing deeply of the hay, which smelled sweet
and new, and the musky scent of the horse, along with that of manure and sweat and scorched hair and smoke, and I felt her relax beside me. I heard the swish of the horse’s tail, the rise and fall of her breath, and I felt weariness invade my every muscle.

I ignored it. Instead I forced myself to think of a plan to break into my own house. I thought of the French doors into the parlor with their terra-cotta urns of flowers outside, the china and statuary and clothes I would be leaving behind.

And I was startled at the extent of my relief.

Beatrice

I
woke before she did. My stomach felt so hollow and empty all I could think of was how hungry I was. It wasn’t quite dawn, but it was growing lighter, and now I saw what I hadn’t seen last night: a wheelbarrow and a burlap bag of oats, a harness hanging on a stud, a driver’s whip. The scorched scent of the air lingered in my nose.

I glanced down at my boots, dusty with gritty ash, and my skirt, which had holes burned in it and a great scorched spot blackening the calico. I had no trouble thinking of what to do with the money I’d get from Mrs. Langley, given that the only things I owned were on my back, and in no good shape either.

I shook her awake. “It’s nearly dawn. We have to get out of here before someone comes.”

She sat up, blinking. I went over to the watering barrel by the oats and plunged my face into it. It tasted and felt so good. When
I raised my dripping face, it was to find her beside me, waiting her turn anxiously, and when I stepped aside and she did just what I had, I thought how strange it was to see the well-born Geneva Langley washing her face in a watering barrel.

I took a handful of oats from the burlap bag. The horse made a little snort of disapproval. The oats were chewy and dusty and flavorless, but they made my mouth water anyway, and my stomach knew better than I did; I was swallowing before I had it fully chewed.

Mrs. Langley wrinkled her nose. “Raw oats?”

She hesitated, then reached into the bag and took her own handful, and I’ll admit I liked to see the way her face screwed up as she chewed it, as if it were a punishment.

She followed me out the door, her skirt trailing in the dirt, now that there was no bustle. I moved quickly around the corner of the stable and then into the street and back down into the burned district. There was almost no one about, but here and there a soldier, half-asleep, some sitting at their posts, heads hanging, rifles braced upon their knees. A few dogs nosing through the ashes. I couldn’t smell the tideflats or anything else. All I smelled was smoke, and I wondered for a moment if the fire had burned my nose, if I was destined to smell the fire forever, or if it was simply the way the city smelled now. It seemed permanent, somehow. When I looked about at the ash and the skeletons of buildings, it seemed it had always been that way; I could not remember what the street had looked like before.