Epilogue

The rickety stairs creaked under Gavin’s shoes as he and Alice climbed the steps of the old tenement building. The place was dirtier and dingier than he remembered, and smaller, too. But the stairwell and hallway still smelled the same-boiled cabbage, urine, unwashed bodies. Doors cracked open, and eyes stared at him and Alice. Their clothes stood out as richer and finer than anything the people here might own, though Gavin had taken care to wear simple twill and flannel while Alice wore a plain blouse and skirt. He swallowed and kept climbing.

“Don’t be nervous, darling,” Alice murmured. “I’m not.”

Gavin didn’t respond to this. Any number of things could go wrong. The worst was that Ma or Gramps might be dead. Or Ma might be angry with him for not writing in so long, or for not sending money. Or worse, she might just be disappointed.

They reached the fourth floor, and Gavin automatically turned right, just as he had done every day when he was a child, though the hallway was narrower than he remembered. The only light came from a high paper-covered window at the end of the hall. The place was scorching in summer and freezing in winter. Right now, in early autumn, it was tolerable, at least. He went to the first door, and for a moment he was six. He even had his fiddle with him.

“I haven’t been here in years,” he whispered. “Do I knock or just go in?”

“Oh good heavens.” Alice reached around him and rapped smartly on the wood.

“Who is it?” came a voice from inside. The familiarity of it stung Gavin’s eyes.

“Ma?” he said hoarsely. “I’m home.”

The door banged open. Carrie Ennock, a short, thin woman with work-reddened hands and graying brown hair pulled into a bun, popped into the hall. “Good God! My Gavin! It’s Gavin!”

She reached up with both hands to pull him down for a kiss, then hugged him hard. The top of her head barely came up to his chin.

“I knew you were coming. I knew it!” Her low voice was filled with emotion. “After that long note that everyone heard. It was you. I heard you. Oh, I’m so glad you’re back!”

“I’m here, Ma.” Gavin’s own eyes were wet. “I’m sorry I didn’t write. It got complicated.”

“You’re here. You’re safe. That’s all I care about.” She hugged him again. “You’re so tall now. A man.”

“I never noticed you were so short, Ma,” he said, trying to lighten the mood.

She tapped his chest with her hand. “That’s enough from you, young man. And who’s this?”

He stepped aside. “Ma, this is Alice, my fiancee. Alice, my mother, Carrie Ennock.”

“How do you do?” Alice extended her hand.

“Well, that’s wonderful!” Carrie shook Alice’s hand, then embraced her, too. “Alice. I have a daughter named Alice. But I’m being stupid. Come in! Come in! This is your home, after all.”

The little two-room flat was just as Gavin remembered it-cramped and bare and cold. Carrie kept it clean, but sewing was spread out everywhere. Clearly she was still doing piecework for seamstresses and tailors, and Gavin wondered about her eyesight.

“Where is everyone?” he asked.

Carrie rushed about, clearing cloth off two ancient ladder-back chairs and offering one to Alice, who took it as if it were an easy chair in a high-class tearoom. She seemed not to notice the lack of light or heat or the cracks in the floorboards or the smoke streaks on the plaster, and for that Gavin was grateful.

“Well, let’s see,” Carrie said. “Jenny is with her Elmer, of course. They have two little ones now-Benjamin and Louise. You’re an uncle! Harry is. . well, he’s out looking for work, I imagine.”

Drinking, Gavin mentally filled in.

“Patrick found work down at the docks, which is helpful, but he hasn’t found a girl yet.” Carrie picked up needle and thread and started sewing again, an automatic gesture. She had to sew, Gavin knew, until the sun went down. Even her wayward son’s return wasn’t reason to stop, since she was paid by the piece. “And Violet’s at the factory. She’ll be off in a few hours. We can all have dinner together!”

Gavin could see she was calculating how to feed two more people on whatever was-or wasn’t-in the little cupboards. He reached out and stilled her hands with his own.

“Ma,” he said, “you don’t have to do this anymore.”

“What do you mean, honey?” She pulled away and went back to sewing. “I’m nearly done with this piece, and I can just get in another before dark. And what have you been doing? Talk to me while I work.”

“I mean, Ma, that you don’t have to sew anymore. Or work. Or live here.”

Her needle never stopped moving. “How’s that?”

From his pocket, Gavin took a thick stack of bank notes. He laid it on the table where Carrie could see it. She glanced at it but kept sewing.

“What is it?”

“It’s yours, Ma,” he said.

“Just like your father,” she replied, still sewing.

At one time, that remark would have made him angry. Now he was just curious. “How so, Ma?”

“You vanish, and you think money makes it all right.”

“Did Dad ever send money?” Gavin asked, surprised.

“For a while. Then it stopped. Just like-well, it stopped.”

“I talked to him, Ma. I found him.”

Now she did stop sewing. “Gavin Eric Ennock, don’t you dare come back into my life with wild stories that-”

“It’s true, Ma. He’s alive. I found him. In China. He’s not coming back, but he wrote a letter that explains everything.” From his pocket he took a handkerchief and unwrapped the silver nightingale. “I don’t blame you for being angry at him, or at me. Not all of it was his fault or mine. Part of it was the clockwork plague, though the plague was more our fault-mankind’s fault-than we knew.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Carrie held the nightingale up to the light.

“It’s hard to describe. I’ll try, but after we’ve all had something to eat. At a nice hotel with a fine restaurant.”

“With that?” Carrie said, gesturing at the bank notes. “It’s a little hard to believe. Where did it come from?”

“I’m a baroness, Mrs. Ennock,” Alice put in. “And, not to put too fine a point on it, I’m quite wealthy. Filthy rich, I believe you Americans say, and I’ve given a portion of my fortune over to Gavin. That money is his quite legally, and he has a suite of rooms reserved for you and your family at the Revere House.”

“Oh!” Carrie looked overwhelmed. “I–I wouldn’t know how to behave at such a fancy place.”

“Mrs. Ennock.” Alice leaned forward to touch her hand conspiratorially. “When you have pots of money, no one cares one bit how you behave. It’s a lot of fun, believe me.”

At that, Carrie laughed. “All right, then. Please call me Ma. And I want to know how my son ended up with a baroness.”

“You’ll hear all about it,” Gavin said, relieved. “But Ma-what about Gramps? You didn’t mention him.”

Carrie hesitated, and Gavin’s heart jerked. “Your grandfather. . isn’t quite the same, honey. He doesn’t eat much, and he sleeps a lot.”

“Where is he?”

“In the sleeping room. Go on, then.”

Gavin took up his fiddle and went into the back room. Alice followed. Just as he remembered, there were no beds, just narrow pallets of threadbare blankets on the floor. A narrow window let in grudging light. His grandfather lay on one of the pallets. His hair was all but gone, his skin deeply wrinkled and mottled, his eyes closed.

“Gramps?” Gavin knelt beside him. “Gramps, it’s me, Gavin. I’m back.”

At first Gramps didn’t move. Then he stirred slightly and his eyes opened. They were the same blue as Gavin’s, though filmy with age.

“Boy?” he said gruffly. “That you?”

Gavin took his hand. “I’m here, Gramps. I’m back.”

“Well, where the hell have you been all this time?”

Alice put a hand to her mouth to smother a laugh, and Gavin smiled. “It’s a long story, Gramps.”

“Don’t tell me now, boy. I don’t have time. Just do one thing for me, will you?”

“Anything, Gramps. You know that.”

“Play.”

Alice gave Gavin his fiddle. Carrie appeared in the doorway, holding the nightingale as Gavin tuned up. He sang:


I see the moon, the moon sees me.

It turns all the forest soft and silvery.

The moon picked you from all the rest,

For I loved you best.

Gramps gave Gavin a proud smile, exhaled once, and died.


They held the wedding a month later on the deck of the Lady of Liberty. Alice wore a white gown, which was still the rage for brides, and her spiders and whirligigs accompanied her down the aisle to the helm. Gavin awaited her in a new set of white leathers of his own, and he couldn’t stop smiling. Click flatly refused to carry the rings, though he did deign to sit on the generator and watch. The priest, hired from a local parish, seemed a bit overwhelmed at marrying a baroness aboard an airship high above the city, but he performed the ceremony without a hitch. Carrie Ennock, her hands no longer reddened with work, looked ready to burst with pride and happiness, and Gavin’s brothers and sisters cheered when Gavin lifted Alice’s veil to give her a long, lingering kiss.

They held a reception directly afterward, with a great deal of drinking and music from hired musicians. Gavin thought it strange to have music played for him instead of by him, but it was his wedding day, so nothing was likely to be normal.

After the sun went down and Alice’s whirligigs shuttled the guests back to the ground, they abruptly found themselves on an empty deck. The lights of Boston spread out below them like snowflakes scattered across velvet.

“Alone at last with my wife,” Gavin said, trying out the phrase.

“Alone at last with my husband,” she replied, doing the same.

“So why are we up here instead of in our stateroom?” He held out his arm to her. “Madam?”

She took it. “Sir.”

He paused to kiss her one more time. “I love you-”

“Always,” she finished. “Yes. Yes, indeed.”

They strolled below, and Gavin couldn’t stop himself singing. Alice joined in.


The moon picked you from all the rest,

For I loved you best.


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