Bold Sons of Erin (25 page)

Let all that bide.

MRS. SCHUTZENGEL PICKED OUT a cab from the line fronting Brown’s Hotel, giving the driver instructions in a dialect that forbade my understanding. But in I got, after letting the good woman squeeze inside herself, which took not a little time. I fear the carriage’s springs complained, and I know the rig sat lower.

“Nun, ja,”
Mrs. Schutzengel said, once we were properly on our way. “Now you must make the promise again that you say nothing of the woman I take you to, the Crazy Maria. No word. Not even to your great friends.”

“But
Frau
Schutzengel, I must use the information, see, or there is no purpose to—”

“Yes, to the informations.
Ja. Die Fakten muss man haben. Versteht’s.
But you do not speak of the Crazy Maria to any person. This you must promise.”

As serious as a wound to the heart she was.

“Yes,” I told her. “I promise.” I hoped that fate would allow me to honor my word.

We rattled past the great, unfinished outline of the Capitol, winding south of its littered grounds to rejoin Pennsylvania Avenue’s proper course.

“Na, gut,”
Mrs. Schutzengel said, as the horse strained up the slope. “Now you are listening. The Crazy Maria is not a Communist person. We are very few, because we are the most advanced,
wissen Sie doch.
The Communists will lead the . . .
oooch, wie sagt man?
The four fronts of the revolution, we will lead. The Crazy Maria is once the Fourierist, like your Irish friend, Dr. Tyrone. Then she becomes a Socialist, but the men are too weak and do nothing. They only make the talking always. So now she is a Bakuninite.
Ob was daraus wird, weiss Ich nicht.
Because she has been so many persons, she knows many peoples. I think she knows so much it is a great danger to many, if she is stolen back to Europe. That is why she hides, not because she is afraid of the hanging . . .”

Twas then I made a dreadful mistake. I asked, “And what, Mrs. Schutzengel, is a ‘Bakuninite’?”

Twas dark in the cab, but I do believe her face glowed like a stove.

“Ach, diese Verrückten! Laute, dumme Anarchisten sind die,
stupid anarchists. Crazy peoples. They do not understand that there must be organization for the world revolution! It does not happen from wishing and shooting the idiot policeman . . .”

Now, I am not a fellow who believes in harming policemen. I began to wonder if I had not opened a door that had best been left shut. And locked.

Thereafter, Mrs. Schutzengel endeavored to explain the complexities of the great political and economic thoughts of Europe to me, telling me tales of all sorts of nasty fellows, a suspicious number of whom had French names, which cannot bode well for any human endeavor. In little more than a minute, I was lost, although she spoke with a passion even our poor horse must have felt. I chastened myself for my lack of proper attention, then realized, as we passed the Marine barracks, that her fervor did not require me as an audience, but was a machine that went all of itself.

The cab rolled down past the Navy Yard, where forges sparked despite the hour and dark hulls bobbed as tethered elephants will. We turned along the shacks and slops facing the river. A sentry stopped us at the head of the Eastern Branch Bridge, witless, but obliged to show his authority. He held his lantern to reveal himself, not us. The hack driver made his explanations and showed his pass, after which the soldier barely cast a glance into the shadows of the cab. A deadly assassin might have made his escape across that bridge, suffering only a lazy pretense at vigilance.

Hooves and wheels clopped and clattered over the planks. A naval cutter rolled at anchor out in the stream, with lanterns hung fore and aft. I wondered where on earth we might be going, but did not wish to interrupt Mrs. Schutzengel with a question, since she was enjoying her own lecture immensely.

Look you. That is how it is with all these disciples of revolution, tumult and what-not. Speeches are their substitute for prayers.

Perhaps our America will make Christians out of the lot of them.

Full night it was as we stopped at the iron gates. Brick buildings loomed behind brick walls, ill lit and barely attended. The guard was not a military fellow, but an old gummer, and the only other souls I saw were a brace of Negro women taking down a line of wash in the courtyard. A lamp set on the ground lit lofting sheets.

“Frau
Schutzengel,” I said, in rising concern, “this is the city madhouse.”

Mrs. Schutzengel grunted in affirmation. “Now you will be quiet,” she told me. “I am making all the talking here.”

TWAS NOT A PLACE where I wished to spend much time, nor did the company warm me. I suppose such unfortunates must be locked up, to spare the rest of society. Perhaps their surroundings matter little to them. It may be they are no longer truly human, but creatures half declined to an animal state. Yet, I cannot enter such an edifice without imagining myself thus confined. Perhaps it awakens old fears of cellars and locked doors. Or echoes a charge once leveled against myself, at the end of my Indian days.

A succession of queries produced a fellow in shirtsleeves, dinner napkin still clutched in his hand. Mrs. Schutzengel introduced him to me as “Dr. Pankow.” They seemed to be on old, familiar terms. He excused himself for a moment, then reappeared in his coat. With a little, leather-wrapped truncheon in his hand.

We crossed the yard toward a long building of two stories, not unpleasant, but for the window bars. The noises began to reach us some way off.

Inside the brick fortress, Mr. Milton’s Pandemonium awaited, a gas-lit Hell.

A guard, fat and dull, unlocked a gate within, opening a fetid corridor to us. We went along single file, with Day-of-Judgement screams and clashing manacles attending our progress. Horrid faces, half-devoured, pressed against barred gaps. One fellow tried to force his hand through the narrow opening of his cell, seeking to grasp Mrs. Schutzengel’s skirts. He pushed so hard he stripped away the skin of his knuckles and fingers before our eyes. He noised at her like a beast.

“The criminally insane,” Dr. Pankow called over his shoulder. Then he added, “Syphilitics,” in a dismissive tone.

Another door awaited us. A gray-haired fellow sat before it, rising belatedly at the doctor’s approach, still chewing the dinner he was eating from a pail. Our host did not bother to speak, but only made a gesture with his billy.

As the guard unlocked the door, the doctor turned a pleasant face to us and said, “We must keep the women separate, of course.”

A voice but one cell back shrieked obscenities to scorch the soul, all directed at the feminine aspects of Mrs. Schutzengel. Now, I am an old bayonet and a veteran of John Company’s fusses. Soldiers come to know the extremes of language. But the things the creature called to her drew beads of sweat from the innocent woman’s forehead. I marked that her hands were shaking.

We passed into the women’s ward, and the invitations from the mad were tendered to the doctor and myself. The most defiled souls of heartless India did not exceed such moral desolation.

A woman, missing her nose and with lips chewed ragged, squeezed a skeletal arm from her cell to claw at me. I am ashamed to say I jumped like a young recruit spying his first cobra.

The words she hissed mocked every mortal love.

Dr. Pankow produced a key to the cell at the end of the hall and opened the door. I half expected some harpie to fly out and clutch him.

Behind my back, a crazed voice begged, “Two bits, just two bits, Mister. I do anything at all, for just two bits . . .”

I followed my companions into the cell, and found an old slump of a woman seated at a desk. Outlined by lamplight, she was not chained, but did not rise or make the least gesture, either of welcome or refusal. She merely paused over the document she was writing, as if she had heard the buzzing of a fly. Her face was crudely made, as if carved by an amateur’s hand, but all of Mr. Faraday’s currents shone in her eyes. And those eyes judged me.

Her look was so piercing I could not meet it long. I glanced about and found shelves of dark-browed books. But I was not so distracted I failed to see our host pass his key into Mrs. Schutzengel’s hand.

“Danke, Herr Doktor,
” she told him. But her tone was condescending, telling the fellow he might leave us without further ceremony.

And he went, shutting the cell door gently.

“Du, Hilda,
” the old woman said at last. She laid down her pen and shifted slightly, to face us full on. Her clothing was clean, though worn past recommendation. Her aspect was as hard-used as her garments.

Out in the corridor, the doctor’s withdrawal left a wake of shrieks.

“Maria . . . wie geht’s denn?”
my landlady asked.

The old woman shrugged with her eyebrows, too weary to lift her shoulders.
“Diese Armen sind nicht zu retten . . . auch nicht mit unseren Mitteln . . .”

I understood that she felt sorry for her companions in that ward, but did not think they could be helped. Then she and Mrs. Schutzengel launched into a mighty German conversation, firing words as swiftly as bullets leave one of Mr. Colt’s revolvers. I could not get but shreds of it, though I recognized the word for “trust” and had no doubt what the old woman’s repeated glances in my direction meant. I heard my name spoken a few times, always with my rank attached, for even revolutionary Germans respect authority.

I began to expect a lengthy ordeal, with Mrs. Schutzengel translating between us. Thus, I was taken aback when the woman spoke to me directly for the first time. In English worthy of the strictest schoolmistress.

“Please, Major Jones,” she said. “Do sit down.” She gestured toward her cot, which was neatly made up. “I trust you will forgive the indignities of my situation?”

I sat me down on the little bed, while Mrs. Schutzengel possessed herself of a wooden chair kept for company. I believe the legs and spindles cracked at the strain.

Twas then I noticed the tear about to break from the corner of the old woman’s eye.

“I beg your pardon,” she said, looking away almost girlishly. She reached into her dress and produced a lace-trimmed handkerchief washed to transparency.

“
Es war mir eine Neuigkeit, dass Sie verwandt waren,”
Mrs. Schutzengel said in a comforting voice.
“Ich bitte . . .”

The old woman straightened herself, as a soldier will in the wake of a moment’s self-doubt.

“You must forgive my loss of decorum, Major Jones,” she told me. “My dear friend has brought me unexpected—and sadly unwelcome—tidings. Which, I do believe, she first had of you.”

She smiled and, had she not been of the milder gender, I would have thought her a lifelong devotee of tobacco. Perhaps it was medicine or such like that whittled at her teeth. But they did seem to be her own, which is ever admirable in those of a certain age.

She extended a hand toward me, letting the fingers trail down.

“But I have forgotten myself, my dear major! I am the Baroness von Zachen und Lann.”

I rose as good manners required and gave the hand she offered a friendly shake.

“Ah, les americaines
. . .” she said, with a cat’s smile, to Mrs. Schutzengel.

“Pleased to meet you, mum,” I told her, sitting myself back down.

“You see, Major Jones . . . I am not unacquainted with the late General Stone. In fact, we were cousins, although I was the elder.” She smiled, all sadness. “I hear a great deal still. My friends are kind enough to bring me news. But word of . . . of Carl’s loss had not yet reached me. Dear Hilda did not know of his altered name. We must all be discreet, you understand.” She cocked one eyebrow. “But it’s definite? He’s gone from us?”

“Yes, mum. I’d afraid it is true. If we speak of the same person.”

She reinforced herself with a deep breath. “And shall I understand that agents of the tsar have been the instruments of our loss?”

“That is not for me to say, mum. Not until I have finished my—”

“Yes, of course. That’s why you’re here, after all.”

The woman seemed all composure to the inattentive eye. But the hands held in the folds of her lap clutched one another, as men and women do when deep in grief. No more tears escaped her eyes, but her fingers wrestled in sorrow.

“My comrade is convinced that you may be trusted, Major Jones,” the woman continued. “And given that Carl has been murdered, it would seem not only that I should bring no harm upon him by telling you something of his life, but that I might help identify those responsible for his death.”

“It likely would be a help, mum.”

She had to pause again, to collect her manners from the debris of grief.

After looking from me to Mrs. Schutzengel, then back again, the baroness began to tell her tale.

“He was a child of unsettling beauty . . . a true
enfant d’or.
Born Carl von Steinbrock, eldest son of Count Friedrich von Steinbrock, in Estland. A subject of His Imperial Majesty, the Tsar of all the Russias, you see. Although Carl’s blood was of the purest Baltic German lineage. The Steinbrocks had been ennobled at a time when the Prussians were rude pagans, living in huts. In the old chronicles, you may read of Otto von Steinbrouck, who extended his hand all the way into Karelia.” She smiled, this time at herself. “But I must not bore you. Suffice to say that, although such families ultimately saw their lands conquered by the Russians, they soon were recognized as indispensible. Without his Germans, the tsar’s administration would be even more grotesquely inadequate than it is, his courtiers even less civilized, his armies less adept. Examine the annual list of
honors and you shall find more than a mere seasoning of German names.” She canted her head, amused at the quirks of history. “Borders may change, Major Jones, and new allegiances may be demanded . . . but lineage endures. Why, breeding even has value to the revolution.”

Her head drifted from side to side, remembering. “I recall him in vignettes, you see. As if memory begins with a watercolor sketch. Riding his first pony, waving a wooden sword at all of us. And telling the poor peasants he intended to slaughter them the moment he came of age. Later, he was almost fatally striking in his Corps of Pages uniform. The ladies of St. Petersburg adored him. A bit too much, I fear.”