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.

“You saw the note?”

“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.”