The Lost Princess [Hamliza Anastasia AU]

Chapter Eight: Another Rumor On The Street

Tuesday, February 22, 1927. Georgetown, New York. 

Deputy Commissioner John Andre sat at his desk listening to the click of typewriter keys and the low buzz of talk as informants exchanged information and agents gossiped. He sighed. The rumors never ended. "Anything about the Schulyers, even the most preposterous rumor, we take very seriously," He reminded the agents who staffed his office, of which there were three. It was their job to file information coming in and decide what needed to be investigated, and what was probably junk. 

He was just about to stand, a coffee break in mind, when his secretary peeked her head into the room. "Two girls here to see you, Deputy Commissioner," she told him. Andre nodded for her to let them in, and she opened the door to admit two other young women. They looked interesting, with artfully styled hair and scandalously short and low-cut dresses. The style looked flapper-esque, and that was bold of them. General Secretary Frederick didn't like his citizens subscribing to capitalist culture. 

"We shouldn't be here," The one in the red dress muttered. "She's about as much of a Schuyler as I am."  

"She's a street sweeper," The second young woman, who wore a pink dress, told him, sitting down in the chair before Andre's desk and fixing him with her gaze. She was quite pretty, with long ash blonde hair pulled up into a complicated style and large brown eyes, "She was sleeping under a bridge until she took up with them." 

Andre raised his eyebrows, unsure of the situation. "This girl you speak of, she's an Elizabeth pretender?"

Twin nods from the women. Red Dress looked away nervously.

"Thank you," Andre told them, pulling the correct form from his desk and beginning to fill in the details. 

"Aren't you going to arrest them?" the blonde one asked, leaning forward. 

"You've done your duty," Andre told them. It was the polite way to say this is probably going to go into a drawer and never get touched again here at the office. He almost missed guard duty. Here, all information was in code, and only half of it could be believed. For instance, they claimed to take even the most preposterous rumors about the Schuylers seriously, but if they didn't come from a reliable source, no one seemed to care. 

"And he's done his," Added one of Andre's agents. "Listening to your gossip. Now, off with you. We're trying to work here."

"It's not gossip, it's the truth," protested the girl in the red dress.

Andre sighed, this was getting out of hand, and stood. "Only a witness to our history knows the truth," he told them. "My family was living near the palace when the royal family was killed. My father was one of the Schuyler's guards. No one could have escaped what happened in the ballroom that night."

Andre closed his eyes briefly as a flood of childhood memories came to the surface of his mind. Watching the Schuyler girls giggle as they raced around the palace grounds, seeing his father patrol the walls, and most of all the screams that echoed through the darkness that fateful night. 

"My father was one of the Schuyler's guards," he told the women, knowing he was repeating himself, but feeling it was warranted. "He played his role. He did what he did out of simple duty, and now we continue his work. Some of us sweep pavement, others fill pages," Andre cast a significant look over at his agents, who hurriedly got to work. "We have the past to bury. For New York, our New York, we do what's necessary. Happiness is not what matters now."

For all his talk of burying the past, Andre remembered it clearly. The shatter of glass breaking, the way the musket shots echoed, louder than he or anyone else would have expected, off the palace walls, and the high, panicked screams of the Schuylers. But the thing he most remembered was the complete and utter silence afterward. It was as if the world stopped breathing along with the royal family. He remembered his father coming home white faced, telling him not to ask, and dying within the year. Andre's mother said he died of shame. 

"Why are you telling us this?" One of the girls piped up. 

Andre responded "Because I believe he did a proud and vital task. The Hudson flows, a new wind blows, and soon it will be spring. The leaves unfold, the King lies cold. A revolution is a simple thing." 

Red Dress quirked her eyebrows like she didn't understand the metaphor, but Pink Dress nodded. Andre liked her. 

Still thinking about that day more than ten years ago, he wondered, could I have pulled the trigger if I'd been told?

Everyone turned to stare at him, and Andre realized with shock that he'd uttered the words aloud. "Everyone back to work!" He ordered hurriedly, ushering the women to the door, face turned away from them in a vain effort to hide his blush. Deputy Commissioners should not have such thoughts. They should do what they were told without question, even if it meant killing people. "The next time I see the two of you soliciting on Theater Street," he told the women. "I won't look the other way."

"Stare all you like, dear," The pink dress girl whispered, giving him a wink. If Andre could have blushed deeper, he would have done so. 

With a sigh, Andre returned to his desk to finish filling out the form. A revolution is a simple thing, he reminded himself. There was no need to question, no need to wonder. Just sweep the past deep underneath the rug and continue building a new nation from the ashes of the old.