"You don't mean that," Alexandra said.
"I don't?" In the darkness, Clemens raised an eyebrow. "Thank you for informing me of that, because I didn't know it. And why, pray tell, don't I?"
"Because if Vernon 's house was wrecked and ours wasn't, he and Lucy and Mary and Jane and Rover would have moved in with us instead of the other way round," his wife answered.
"Boring names for their children. Boring name for their blasted dog, too." But Sam sighed. "All right, I don't wish your brother's house was wrecked. I wouldn't want him in my pockets, any more than I want to be in his. Heaven only knows how much I wish our house hadn't been torched, though."
Alexandra reached out and set a hand on his shoulder. "I know, Sam. I feel the same way. But we all came through safe, even Sutro, even the cat. That's what matters. How many people weren't so lucky?"
She was right, of course. She usually was. That she was right failed to lighten Sam's mood. "My soul rejoices every time I think the Royal Marines furnished you with a gentleman arsonist." He did his best, which was none too good, to put on a British accent: " 'Terribly sorry to disturb you, ma'am, but if you'd be so kind as to gather up the tykes and the pets so I can pour out the kerosene and touch a match to it?' Bah!"
From what Alexandra had told him, he wasn't exaggerating much. The British invaders had set a number of fires to cover their withdrawal to the Pacific, and Turk Street was one of the streets down which they'd pulled back. They hadn't actually set fire to his house. They'd set fire to the one next door, and the fire-what a surprise!- had spread. Lots of fires had spread through San Francisco in the wake of the British bombardment and invasion. The sour smell of stale smoke still tainted the fog.
"Try to sleep," Alexandra urged.
"I am. I do," he said. "I try every night. Sometimes, Lord knows how, I even turn the trick. A Hindu straight from his bed of nails would have trouble sleeping on this divan."
She patted his shoulder again. "It will be all right," she said. "As soon as we have a place of our own, it will be all right." And with that, and without further ado, she rolled over onto her side and did fall asleep.
Orion and Ophelia were sleeping, too, on piles of rugs and blankets. Their steady breathing mingled with Alexandra's in a rhythm that did nothing whatsoever to lull Sam to sleep. He muttered under his breath again and stared up at the ceiling. Eventually, he did doze off, and tossed and turned through the night, his head full of dreams of exploding shells and snarling rifles.
When morning came, he put on the suit he'd been wearing the day the British came. It was, at the moment, the only suit he owned. He downed a bowl of Lucy Perkins' oatmeal, which stuck to his ribs like a cheap grade of cement, declined a cup of her watery coffee, and fled the house as fast as he decently could, or perhaps a little faster.
He was farther from the Morning Call offices than he had been while he still had a home of his own. Trudging down to Market and then along it showed him a sample of what the British had inflicted on San Francisco.
Most of the houses along the narrow streets that led down to Market were fine. No Royal Marine incendiaries had penetrated so far north and east. Here and there, though, where a shell from an ironclad's big gun had landed, rubble took the place of what had been a home. Some gaps, where shells had started fires, were bigger still.
The northern end of Market Street was more of the same. A couple of shells had landed right in the middle of the street, and dug sizable craters. Dirt and rubble filled those craters. Work gangssome made up of white men, including convicts in striped suits; others of pajama-wearing, pigtailed Chinese-were clearing away wreckage one ruined house or shop at a time.
And then, a little north of the Morning Call offices, three or four blocks were nothing but wreckage. Those were the blocks the Royal Marines had passed on their way to and from the Mint. They were also the blocks where some of the hardest, most desperate fighting had gone on. The stench of damp smoke lingered most strongly there. Another stench still lingered, too, the sickly-sweet smell of meat going bad.
A white straw boss was shouting orders to a gang of Chinese. Clemens called out to him: "Hey, Sweeney, find any more bodies in the ruins yesterday?"
"We did that, Sam," the straw boss answered. "Only one, though; better than it has been. Heaven only knows who the poor bastard was, with him so swole up and black and all." He held his nose. "He'll go in one o' the common graves, poor sod, for not even his own mother could be naming him the now."
"Filthy business," Clemens said, and Sweeney nodded. Sam could look west and see some of the swath of devastation the invaders had cut through San Francisco. It ran straight toward the ocean; he would have been able to take in more of it had some of the city's hills not blocked his view.
"Is there any word yet on how much in the way of gold and silver the Sassenachs are after stealing?" Sweeney asked.
"If words were drops of water, Noah would be up at the top of Telegraph Hill right now, building a new Ark," Sam answered, which made the Irishman grin around the stub of his cigar. "Whether there's truth in any of them, heaven only knows. I've heard a quarter of a million dollars, but I've heard fifty million dollars, too."
He tipped his hat and went on his way. Sweeney shouted at the Chinamen. They hadn't slowed down while he was talking with Sam. as a gang of white men would have done. He shouted at them anyhow.
At the Morning Call offices, Sam hung his straw hat on one of the trees in the entry hall, then called out the question uppermost in his mind the past few days: "Has Blaine decided to take the carrot yet, or will they have to hit him a few more licks with the stick?"
"Still no word out of Philadelphia, boss," Edgar Leary answered. "That means the war's still on."
"Give me two synonyms for 'idiots,' " Clemens said, and then gave them himself: " 'Fools' and 'Republicans.' They haven't got any notion of when to start wars but, just to make up for it, they haven't got any notion of when to quit them, either. Well, what's gone wrong since yesterday?"
"British are shelling Erie, Pennsylvania," Leary said with a certain weary relish. "Wires say there are big fires down by the waterfront. We know about that here, don't we?" He turned red and grimaced. "Uh, sorry, boss."
"Sorry I got burned out, or sorry you mentioned it?" Clemens asked. "Never mind. You don't need to answer that. You ought to live with my wife's brother; then you'd really know what sorry was all about. What's the news out of Montana Territory?"
"There is no news out of Montana Territory," Leary said. "The British are over the border, that volunteer outfit with the funny name is skirmishing with them-"
" Roosevelt 's Unauthorized Regiment," Sam supplied. "I like it. Anybody who's unauthorized and proud of it is my kind of fellow. Why, I come from a long line of unauthorized-" Instead of interrupting Edgar Leary, he interrupted himself. " Montana, dammit."
"Nothing else to tell," the young reporter said. "The cavalry is skirmishing with the British soldiers, and Regulars are moving to help."
"Moving where!" Clemens asked irritably. " Montana 's a hell of a big place. Are they all over it like measles, or sort of settled down in one spot in particular? And if they are in one spot, which one is it?"
"Whichever spot it is, it's one that's out of reach of the telegraph lines," Leary replied. "Of course, there aren't very many telegraph lines in Montana, on account of there aren't very many people in Montana."