Darwinia

But when she turned he was still in the room.

The principal targets of the attack were the Armory and the several British military vessels anchored at the wharves, all destroyed in the first hour of the bombardment. The Armory and the dockside warehouses burned throughout the night. Seven British gunships were scuttled, the hulks burning sullenly in the sluggish Thames.

Initial damage to the Port of London was relatively slight, and even the wharf fires might have been brought under control if not for the stray rounds that exploded at the eastern end of Candlewick.

The first civilian casualty of the attack was a baker named Simon Emmanuel, recently arrived from Sydney. His shop had emptied of customers as soon as the American ships sailed upriver. He was at the ovens trying to salvage several dozen raisin buns when an artillery shell entered through the roof and exploded at his feet, killing him instantly. The resulting fire engulfed Emmanuel’s shop and spread quickly to the stables next door, the brewery across the street.

Local citizens attempting a bucket brigade were driven off by an explosion in a newly installed gas main. Two city employees and a pregnant woman died in the detonation.

The wind from the east turned dry and gusty. It shrouded the city in smoke.

Caroline, Colin, and Lily spent the next day in the hotel room, though they knew it would be impossible to stay much longer. Colin left to buy food. Most of the shops and Market Street stalls had closed and some few of those had been looted. He came back with a loaf of bread and a jar of molasses. The Empire’s own kitchen was a casualty of war, but the hotel supplied bottled water free of charge in the dining room.

Caroline spent the morning watching the city burn.

The dock fires had been contained, but the east end burned freely; there was nothing to keep the fire from engulfing the whole of the city. The fire was massive now, moving at its own pace, dashing suddenly forward or hesitating with the pulse of the wind. The air stank of ashes and worse.

Colin spread a handkerchief on a side table and put a molasses-soaked wedge of bread in front of her. Caroline took a bite, then set it aside. “Where are we going to go?” They would have to go somewhere. Soon.

“West of the city,” Colin said calmly. “People are already sleeping in the high heather. There are tents. We’ll bring blankets.”

“And after that?”

“Well, it depends. Partly on the war, partly on us. I’ll have to keep shy of military police, you know, at least for a while. Eventually we’ll buy passage.”

“Passage where?”

“Anywhere, really.”

“Not the Continent.”

“Of course not—”

“And not America.”

“No? I thought you wanted to go back to Boston.”

She thought of introducing Colin to Liam Pierce. Liam had never cared for Guilford, but still, there would be questions, objections raised. At best, an old life to resume, with all its burdens. No, not Boston.

“In that case,” Colin said, “I’d thought of Australia.” He said it with a rehearsed modesty. Caroline suspected he’d thought of it often. “I have a cousin in Perth. He’ll put us up until we’re settled.”

“There are kangaroos in Australia,” Lily said.

The Lieutenant winked at her. “Plenty of kangaroos, my girl. Thick on the ground.”

Caroline was charmed but breathless. Australia? “What would we do in Australia?”

“Live,” Colin said simply.

The next morning a porter knocked at the door and told them they would have to leave at once or the hotel couldn’t guarantee their safety.

“Surely not so soon,” Caroline said. Colin and the porter ignored her. Probably it was true, they ought to leave. The air had grown unbearably foul overnight. Her lungs ached, and Lily had started to cough.

“Everybody east of Thames Street out,” the porter insisted, “that’s what the Mayor’s Office says.”

Strange how long it took a city to burn, even a city as small and primitive as London.

She gathered her bags together and helped Lily pack. Colin had no luggage — no possessions he seemed to care about — but he folded the hotel’s bedsheets and blankets together into a bundle. “The hotel won’t mind,” Colin said. “Not under the circumstances.”

What he meant, she thought, was that the hotel would be ashes by morning.

Caroline adjusted her hair in the bureau mirror. She couldn’t see at all well. The atmosphere outside was a perpetual twilight, and the gas had been off since the attack. She combed this spectral wraith of herself, then reached for her daughter’s hand. “All right,” she said. “We’ll go.”

Colin disguised himself during their trek into the vast tent city that had sprung up west of the city. He wore an oversized rain slicker and a slouch hat, both purchased at outrageous prices from a rag vendor working the crowd of refugees. Army and Navy perso

Caroline knew he was afraid of being captured as a deserter. In the literal sense, of course, he was a deserter, and that must be difficult for him, though he refused to discuss it. “I was hardly more than an accounts clerk,” he said. “I won’t be missed.”

By their third day in the tent city, food had grown scarce but optimistic rumors spread wildly: a Red Cross steamer was coming up the Thames; the Americans had been defeated at sea. Caroline listened to the rumors indifferently. She’d heard rumors before. It was enough that the fire seemed at last to be burning itself out, with the help of a frigid spring rain. People talked about rebuilding, though privately Caroline thought the word ludicrous: to reconstruct the reconstruction of a vanished world, what folly.

She spent an afternoon wandering among the smoldering campfires and fetid trench latrines, searching for her aunt and uncle. She regretted having made so few friends in London, having lived such an insular existence. She would have liked to see a familiar face, but there were no familiar faces, not until she came across Mrs. de Koenig, the woman who had looked after Lily so often. Mrs. de Koenig was glum and alone, wrapped in a streaming tarpaulin, her hair knotted and wet; at first she failed to recognize Caroline.

But when Caroline asked about Alice and Jered, the older woman shook her head miserably. “They waited too long. The fire came down Market Street like a live thing.”

Caroline gasped. “They died?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Are you certain?”

“Certain as rain.” Her red-rimmed eyes were mournful. “I’m sorry, Miss.”

Something is always stolen, Caroline thought as she trudged back through the mud and rotting plants. Something is always taken away. In the rain it was possible to cry, and she cried freely. She wanted to be finished crying when she had to face Lily again.