The Kingdom of Ohio

by Matthew Flaming

  “Yes,” Paolo adds, settling into the chair beside Peter’s. “What happened?”

  “I did know him, although not as he is now.” She looks around the dingy room, the peeling paint and the faces of the two subway men, and she thinks of the inventor’s words: another world. Glancing up at Paolo, she hesitates, telling herself that, having relied on Peter’s friend so far, the Italian might as well know the truth, whatever he may think of her after the admission.

  “In fact,” she says, “the Tesla who I called my friend was a very different man from the one we met tonight. And the truth is, I cannot explain it. Perhaps it has to do with my journey across time.”

  Paolo’s eyes widen, but before he can ask the question forming on his lips she continues in a rush.

  “This is, I realize, hardly an adequate answer, or one that permits easy belief. Yet the interest of men like Morgan and Tesla suggests that I am not alone in believing such things are possible.”

  “Across time?” The Italian raises an incredulous eyebrow. “But that is—”

  “Hard to swallow, I know,” Peter interrupts, seeing the look on her face. “But she’s right about Morgan and Tesla. So I figure we ought to listen before deciding.” He turns to her. “So will you tell us? How you got to New York, I mean? Don’t think you ever really laid out the whole story.”

  “I can try.” She draws a breath, gathering herself—because this is not something that she has ever considered as a story. And now, contemplating how an entire lost world might be expressed, she cannot find anyplace to begin.

  “Let me tell you the history of it,” she forces herself to say. “At least, the parts that I know.

  “After I arrived in New York, I went to the library, hoping to learn what happened. However”—she shakes her head, struck again by the sheer scale of the cover-up that seems to have taken place—“I could find hardly anything.”

  Peter watches her, his expression giving back neither belief nor disbelief, and she feels a surge of longing to reach out and touch him, but restrains herself. Across the table, Paolo cups his chin in his hands.

  “But,” the Italian asks, “you know what happened, yes? Whatever the papers say.”

  She shrugs. “In a sense. But I hardly know where to begin. It might help if you simply asked me what you wish to know.”

  Peter nods. “So before you came here, you lived in that Ohio place? And your father was the king?”

  “Yes. Although”—she shakes her head, as with the recollection she feels tears jump to the corners of her eyes—“he was not a king as you might imagine. My father was a lifelong dilettante, a romantic. He loved silly poetry and landscape painting. When his older brother, Claudius, was killed and my father discovered that he would have to assume the throne, he wept and tried to refuse the title.”

  Peter tries to picture her as a little girl, the childhood meaning of these words. “And when you came here—you said you were being attacked? Was it because of the machine? Was it Tesla? And how—?” He stops as she raises her hands against this barrage.

  “These are all good questions,” she says slowly, “and I will try to answer. But—” She closes her eyes, stricken by the thought of how much has been lost, how little can be explained or even fully remembered.

  “The interest of the federal government, I have realized, was to prevent a public outcry. Since, I must believe, there would have been some outcry if the world knew what happened.

  “As for my own experience, I never saw the face of the man who destroyed my home, my family, and my country. All I have been able to learn is his name, Captain John Harlan of the United States Army. And even Mr. Harlan was only a pawn in the hands of other men, whose identities I can hardly begin to guess.

  “Still, somewhere, I imagine, in some office or drawing room, someone must have met and decided . . .”

  IT WAS, in fact (I have learned from the sparse historical records) the morning of June 16, 1894, when a meeting took place between an army captain named John Harlan and a United States Senator, in a quiet back parlor of the newly constructed Officers Club in Boston.

  Through the curtains of the room, pale afternoon sunlight filters across the thick green carpet, the rows of military portraits and the clusters of gilt armchairs. In one corner a group of junior officers play billiards, their voices low in deference to the captain and the diplomat.

  Harlan, in his mid-thirties, is the younger of the two men. Decorated in the investigation of President Garfield’s assassination, he is an up-and-coming officer with a proven track record. The Senator is from an old-money family; his father was also a senator, and his grandfather the first governor of Ohio.

  The campaign for Toledo should have been—as the Senator puts it—“a pleasantry. A bit of long-overdue tidying up.” He takes a sip of his whiskey from a cut-crystal tumbler and leans back in his seat. “These farmers want to be Americans.”

  The Senator’s cheeks are pocked and swollen, pouches of weary flesh hanging from his face. His funeral-black suit makes Harlan’s blue uniform seem dapper in comparison. Seated in an uncomfortable straight-backed armchair, Harlan nods and fiddles with his drink.

  “You would, of course, agree?” The Senator peers at Harlan, who realizes that he has been silent too long.

  “Of course.” Harlan nods, then, lowering his voice, continues—“I have no reason to believe that you and I differ in the interests which we have at heart: that is, the interests of the nation.”

  “I am glad to hear that is the case.”

  “Yes, sir.” Both men sip their drinks and Harlan listens to the faint clack of billiard balls.

  “There may be those,” the older man murmurs, “who romanticize the issue or, through idleness of ambition or want of patriotism, confuse our sovereign destiny with so-called humanistic concerns.”

  “Sir?” The captain allows the slightest surprise to edge into his voice, hoping to disguise his scorn for the Senator’s little speech. Although it is seldom mentioned directly in either the official records or in polite company, everyone with an ear to Washington knows the powder-keg nature of the Ohio Problem, the old conflicts ready to flare up and shatter the delicate political balance.43

  “I anticipate that the matter will be short and bloodless,” the Senator says.

  Harlan does not dignify this statement with a response. He has always known that certain difficult decisions must be made, that a man needs both friends and favor to advance in life. Growing up on a hundred-acre farm outside of Baltimore—an ancestry that he tries to skirt in conversation—John Harlan knows what happens to those without some means or connection, an observation that his time as an enlisted man has further solidified. Ordinary men are shot in mine strikes, burned in tenements, ordered to charge so that the enemy might waste precious ammunition. Ordinary men are tossed and torn by powers beyond their control.

  But for those willing to make accommodations, to curry favor with the influential, Harlan knows, the world has its rewards. A captain’s epaulets. A general’s granddaughter waiting for him at home, whispers of greater things. But still, he cannot bring himself to take pleasure in this task he has been given—despite the fact that he has been searching for exactly such an opportunity as this: a chance for heroism, which has been in short supply since the Civil War.

  “And the Toledo family?” Harlan asks, keeping his expression neutral. “What is the government’s position with regard to them?”

  The Senator winces slightly at the mention of this name, before waving the question away. “No different than our position toward any other citizens of the United States. The Toledos have done some great things by way of civilizing the Ohio frontier. Insofar as their prosperity has benefited this country, we owe them a debt of gratitude.” He smiles humorlessly. “Only it must be made clear that no other flags, either Confederate or Ohioan, will fly on American soil.” The Senator sips his whiskey. “Consider this expedition a reminder of that fact.”

  “Yes, sir.
”

  “The best of luck to you.” The Senator sets down his glass and stands.

  “Thank you, Senator.” Harlan stands and accepts the proffered hand. For a moment, it seems as if the old politician is going to say something more—but he turns and limps away, cane tapping counterpoint to his steps. The junior officers at the billiards table snap to attention as he passes.

  TWO MONTHS LATER, John Harlan sits on his horse, watching the perfect, pink Ohio sunset. The wooded hillsides outside the town stand black and silhouetted against the pale rose of the sky. In the valley below, the lights of houses are beginning to come on in the growing dusk, the guttering of candles, the yellow glow of oil and paraffin scattered around the Maumee River and through the buildings, an incantation against wilderness and night.

  In the woods behind Harlan, two regiments of infantrymen are waiting. In their factory-milled woolen uniforms they sweat and sit in loose circles, drinking corn whiskey and throwing dice. They curse and laugh and try to think of anything but dying.

  In the branches spiders spin their webs madly, trying to catch all they can before winter’s famine; when the men remain still for too long, they find themselves tethered by tiny, shining strands. As the shadows grow, officers walk between the men, reminding them to stay awake—to drink if they need to, but stay steady enough to bayonet a man and move in a charge.

  At the edge of the woods, on horseback, Harlan studies the peaceful setting. Toledo, the royal city, jewel of the Midwest. But although her factories and houses are well built, solid, and prosperous, Harlan also sees that nearly half the town is dark and deserted, the owners of those houses having fled to the hills when they heard of his approach—and of the bloody rout that had followed his clash with a group of armed farmers near the border of the Kingdom.

  Looking down at Toledo, Harlan nods to himself and spits on the ground. He has seen enough battles to know a winning hand when he holds one. Strangely, though, this thought doesn’t fill him with the same rush of excitement that it has on the eve of other engagements. If anything, he now feels an edge of sadness. Of regret, even. But he pushes these sentiments away and spits again. He is a soldier, he reminds himself, and at thirty-one has killed more men than he has lived years.

  Shifting in his saddle, he tugs at his gloves, flexes his fingers inside the tooled leather, and glances at his new pocket watch—a gift left for him at the Officers Club by one of the Senator’s secretaries. Almost time now. He leans from his horse to speak to the aide-de-camp waiting at his side.

  “Get them ready. Quietly.”

  “Yessir.” The aide runs off into the night and a moment later Harlan hears terse, barked orders, the rustle of packs and gear. It takes them only a few minutes to assemble, he notes approvingly, and then the man is at attention in front of him again.

  “Sir, the men are waiting for your orders.”

  Harlan hesitates, drawing a breath and closing his eyes. Such moments always feel to him like the brink of a precipice, the mass of men and nerves straining for release. And his hand on the brake that will let them go.

  “Sound the charge,” he says.

  At the heart of Toledo, the royal mansion stands silent and waiting. The house is modeled after a French chateau; in sketches and photographs it is airy and graceful with a column-lined façade and wide French doors leading onto rolling lawns dotted with topiary sculpture. It is not a fortress, and the hired guards—there has never been a standing army in the Kingdom—who are stationed at the perimeter of its gardens are painfully aware of this fact.

  The avenues around the mansion are laid out like the spokes of a wheel, and the Royalist defenders have blocked off these streets with barricades constructed from overturned wagons, garbage, and debris. Behind these rough defenses they prime their muskets and wait.

  The charge is heard on the hillsides outside the city. A bugle call and then another, the sound of horses’ hooves growing closer. The defenders take aim into the empty streets. For a long time—too long, this wait unraveling the steadiness of hands and hearts more surely than any bullet—nothing happens. They spit on their muskets and climb to the top of the barriers, straining to see. Then all at once the air is murderous and alive with gunfire and flying metal.

  Musket balls tear into flesh, men fall in twos and threes and the men behind them bellow and scramble forward. The army soldiers run toward the barricades with their shoulders hunched and rifles outstretched, and the defenders reload and fire and reload again until the streets reek of gunpowder and the barrels of their weapons grow so hot that the powder sometimes explodes as it is tamped down, blowing off fingers and hands.

  The position of the Royalists is a good one, and the federal troops soon realize this. For the men behind the barricades, it is almost too easy: they fire at the exposed infantrymen in the streets and duck down again to reload. It’s like a shooting-gallery game, and within the first few minutes of fighting the streets are littered with the bodies of soldiers, their blue uniforms staining to black with blood.

  The defenders of the city each have their own reasons for being here. Some of the men believe they are fighting for their land, as rumors have circulated that the federal government will confiscate the farms that the Ohioans carved from the wilderness. Others are fighting for the payment that has been offered by the Toledos. Still others are here out of simple loyalty, to the family their grandpar ents followed to this frontier. And all of them, in this instant, feel invincible: they smile at one another’s smoke-smudged faces and laugh, verging on hysteria.

  Harlan’s men take refuge. They hide in alleyways between buildings and behind abandoned street vendors’ stalls, pinned down, sniping ineffectively at the barriers. Then the word comes, shouted from one island of safety to the next: fire the buildings. It isn’t clear whether this is an order or simply someone’s bright idea, but it makes no difference. For the men trapped in the streets, it is a matter of survival. Someone produces a bundle of hay soaked with paraffin, someone else a torch—and soon factories and houses begin to burn. The wind fans the flames inward toward the barricades, and now it is the defenders who must fall back.

  Abandoning their makeshift ramparts, they turn and run, looking for new positions behind walls and piles of garbage. But no real second line of defense exists: there was no time to prepare one. With a roar, Harlan’s men rush the fortifications and now men on both sides are falling. More houses start to burn and families run out into the street, mothers in nightgowns pulling their children from the flames. Gradually, the superior numbers and training of the federal troops begin to take their toll. Panicked defenders drop their weapons and run, while those who remain are forced to steadily retreat.

  In the sitting room of the mansion, everything is quiet. The French doors are closed and the curtains drawn, oil lamps glistening behind crystal shades. In an armchair near the cold fireplace sits the king, Louis Toledo; around him are gathered his valet, two bodyguards, and the old family butler, Nonce. Across the room, on a burgundy velvet sofa, the princess, Cheri-Anne, sits fidgeting nervously.

  Watching her father, she is struck by the thought that for once he looks dignified, even regal. Louis is dressed in a dark suit; the royal purple sash is draped across his chest, the silver Toledo crest pinned to his lapel. When news of the federal troops’ approach arrived, he had ascended to his chambers and then reappeared, perfumed and clothed in this finery. Calmly, Louis had read a passage of Byron to the assembled militia. And now, as he stares at the empty living room fireplace, fingering the silken sash, she wonders at the sudden transformation of his normally overwrought character. Through the lace curtains over the French doors, the evening sky has begun to glow red.

  “Sire.”

  Louis Toledo looks up at the wizened butler. “Yes, Nonce?”

  “We should go, sire. It is time. If we wait much longer—”

  “I won’t be going.”

  “Sire?” Nonce’s eyebrows bristle. “As we discussed, your carriage i
s waiting.”

  “I know.” Louis climbs to his feet and crosses to a mahogany sideboard, pouring a glass thimbleful of cognac. He turns and addresses the room. “I—I have changed my mind. Though I have failed as king in some respects, let no one say I failed here. A king should live and die by his kingdom. This”—he gestures, encompassing the room, the house, the countryside beyond—“has been my life. By God, I shall not forsake it in its hour of direst need!”

  For a moment, shock and disbelief drive all other thoughts from her mind as these words sink in. It must be some kind of horrible joke, she thinks, one of his stupid pranks—

  “Sire!” Nonce hesitates for an instant, then rushes angrily ahead. “I have served three generations of Toledos, and I tell you that this is not what your father would have wished. If you think you do a noble thing, you are mistaken. Flee! What will it benefit your family if you are cut down or arrested like a criminal?”

  “Enough!” Louis stares unsteadily around the room, mopping the sudden sweat on his forehead with a handkerchief. “My mind”—his voice cracks—“my mind will not be changed.”

  “Father! This is madness!” She stares up at him with a growing sense of despair as she realizes that he is serious. If Tesla were here, she thinks irrelevantly, if he hadn’t moved back to distant New York, he would have some answer to this insanity. Then abruptly she remembers the untested machine that waits in the basement laboratory, and her heart begins to race.

  “Daughter.” He returns her gaze, a brief confusion crossing his face—the same incomprehension with which he has always watched her. “The carriage will transport you to safety. But my fate is here.”

  Like an image snapping into focus, understanding comes to her then. His calm demeanor, his sad smile: all of it makes sudden, terrible sense. Because all of his romantic heroes, the poets and novels that he loved, were training for this moment, she realizes. For him, this is not about politics or business, but rather the wheel of fate and the fall of empires, the chivalrous last stand and the noble death. Glimpsing the terrible equation of her father’s obsession, she shakes her head. Unless you act now, some inner voice whispers. Unless now, at last—