a glint of white against the dark stones of the park wall caught my eye. The Mechanics’ gear symbol had been scrawled there in chalk. At first, I thought it was a signature claiming credit for the riot, but then I noticed a gap in the stones at the middle of the gear where the mortar was missing.
I’d read a novel once in which the spies left secret messages in a gap between stones in a wall. They’d called it a “drop.” Was this my drop? The children were busy arguing about which house on the block was most badly damaged, so I slipped the folded paper out of my glove and tucked it into the niche before saying briskly, “Enough of that, you two. It’s time to get to our lessons. Rollo, you may make all your arguments in your essay.”
As we crossed the avenue, I hoped I hadn’t misinterpreted the symbol. It could be dangerous for my article to fall into the wrong hands.
It proved to be my busiest day thus far in the Lyndons’ home. I not only had to teach Rollo along with Olive, but we got word shortly before lunch that neither the drawing master nor the music teacher would be coming that day. The police were restricting access to the magisters’ district, and only residents were allowed to pass the barriers. While Rollo and Olive worked on their assignments, I concocted lesson plans for the afternoon.
Lord Henry was absent from lunch, and I had my hands full keeping the three children from turning their squabbling to physical violence. I barely caught Rollo before he flung a spoonful of soup onto Flora’s skirt. Even Olive, who was usually so obedient, tried to roll peas across the table. “You’re behaving like slum hoodlums,” I finally snapped in frustration, startling Rollo and Olive into temporary silence while Flora smirked.
That afternoon, I moved lessons to the family parlor so I could make sure Flora was reading her book. She sighed dramatically a great deal while she read, but she was regularly turning pages. I assigned Rollo some Latin conjugations to do while I supervised Olive’s piano practice on the parlor’s grand piano.
I had the strangest feeling that I was being watched, and I glanced over my shoulder to see Lord Henry standing in the doorway, a folded newspaper under his arm. He caught my eye, gave me a grim nod, then put on a smile and strode into the room, saying cheerfully, “I think it’s time for a break. You may go upstairs and do whatever you like for an hour.”
“But I don’t need a break!” Olive protested.
“I suspect Miss Newton does. If you want, you may continue your practice in the schoolroom.”
When the children had gone, he said, “I hope I wasn’t being presumptuous, but you appeared to be somewhat frazzled. This is more than is usually expected of you.”
“It’s been no trouble at all,” I lied.
“And I wanted to show these to you,” he said, heading to a table where he unfolded his newspaper. “They published extra editions for the afternoon to report on the riots.” He leaned over to read the headlines, then grunted in disgust. “As I expected, the Herald has little to say on the matter, other than reporting the extent of the damage—and probably inflating the estimates.” He pulled a second newspaper out from under the first, then glanced at me. “Don’t tell anyone you saw me read this.” It was the World.
He leaned over to scan the headlines, and then all the color drained from his face. “Oh, dear Lord,” he whispered. “They couldn’t!”
Even though I was fairly certain I already knew, I asked, “What is it?”
Still ashen, he shook his head in disbelief and said, “British troops fired on some slum children who were playing in the Battery park. It doesn’t appear that they were following orders, but it still says a lot about the way the British regard the colonists.”
As he spoke, he jabbed his finger repeatedly at the article, as though it was the article’s fault. I leaned over to see the byline “Liberty Jones.” “That’s—that’s awful,” I stammered, shaken by the thought that he was reading my words.
He moved on to the next article. “Apparently, the people of the slums were so outraged that they rioted uptown in magister districts. The authorities are baffled about the riots. No one knows how they got past the barriers they set up after the shootings and came this far without