The Firebrand

by Susan Wiggs

  Tightening his grip on Diana’s hand, he felt his wife’s mounting fear, heard it in the little gulping breaths she took. As he forged ahead, Rand bargained with fate: He would devote more time to Christine. He’d work harder to please Diana, quit flirting with women no matter how provocative he found them and find a way to make Diana more content in her role as wife and mother. If only he could save his child.

  Everything came to a standstill at a jammed intersection near Courthouse Square. Too many streets converged here, and chaos ruled. Disoriented, Rand wasn’t sure of the way north.

  “Which way to Water Street?” he bellowed at a passing drayman with a lurching, overloaded cart. The man didn’t look at him but pointed. “You’ve got three blocks to cover and it’ll be hard going. There’s a bad flare-up ahead.” A gap opened up and he drove his cart through it.

  Rand pressed on. He noticed that Diana had fallen silent again, and he slipped his arm around her waist. “We’ll get there,” he promised, but a sudden explosion drowned his words.

  “Look at the sky.” She pointed at the wavering, burnished horizon ahead. “The whole city is on fire.”

  He led the way up a side street. In the middle of the roadway, a police paddy wagon had broken its axle. Swearing, the driver opened the wagon and fled while the conveyance disgorged a dozen convicts in striped shirts and trousers. Some of the prisoners swarmed into burning shops, but one of them advanced on Rand and Diana. Firelight flashed in his flat, dangerous eyes as his gaze traveled over Diana’s gown and jewels.

  He raised a rocklike fist. “Give me all your valuables. Now.”

  Diana gave a squeal of alarm and buried her face in Rand’s shoulder.

  Rand pulled away from her. In an instant, his fear for Christine and frustration with the crowds crystallized into a pure and lethal rage. He didn’t will himself to act, but the next thing he knew, he had the convict shoved up against a concrete wall, his hand clamped over the man’s windpipe.

  “Get the hell away from us,” Rand said, his voice harsh with a deadly purpose.

  The looter gagged, clawing at the hand on his neck. Rand let him go and backed off, sick at the thought of what he’d nearly done. The convict staggered away and disappeared into the crowd.

  “Heavens, Randolph, I’ve never seen you like that,” Diana said.

  The breathless admiration in her voice did not please him. He took her hand again. “We’re almost there. Hurry.”

  “I can’t see a thing through this smoke.”

  Rand pulled her along as fast as he could. Buildings burned from the roof down and others from the ground up. People dropped bundles from windows and exterior staircases. A ladder crew helped women trapped in a tall building, and the rescued ladies scattered like ants when they reached the street.

  “Surely Sterling House has already been evacuated. Becky Damson would have fled to safety.” Diana’s eyes streamed as she spoke between panting breaths. “Yes, Becky’s got a good head on her shoulders. She is probably already at the lakeshore with Christine, waiting for us to find them. That is where we must go—to the lake.”

  Rand could think of no reply and she didn’t seem to expect one. He prayed Diana was right about the nurse-maid. Miss Damson had been recommended by the concierge of the hotel. But Rand had assumed she would be an adjunct to Diana, not a substitute.

  He ground his teeth together, for he knew if he spoke they would be words of recrimination. And what was the point of that, especially here and now?

  The wind picked up, and there was no way to stay ahead of the flames. He could hardly see his own wife in the thick curtain of smoke. For a few detached moments he felt adrift, his sense of direction unseated by a force too huge to control.

  Rand didn’t like things he couldn’t control.

  He drove himself harder, pulling insistently at Diana, who by now was so exhausted that she lacked the energy to complain. He focused on one thing and one thing only—getting to Christine.

  They passed Ficelle’s Paint and Varnish Factory, a long, low building that covered half a block. Firebrands rained down on the roof of the factory, and an ominous glow throbbed behind its small, square windows.

  “I think we’re almost there,” Rand told his wife. “Only a block to go.”

  Diana coughed. “I can’t see anything.”

  “It’s just there, see?” His heart lifted as he spotted the distinctive dome of Sterling House.

  Then a roaring gust of wind cleared the smoke like the parting of a curtain. It gave Rand a glimpse of hell. Sterling House, where he’d left his baby daughter, was engulfed in flames.

  “No!” he bellowed, and for the first time, he let go of Diana’s hand.

  As he started to run, an unnatural and toxic burst of white heat flared inside the varnish factory. A flash, followed by an earsplitting explosion, shattered the night. The detonation sucked the oxygen from the air, from his lungs, even.

  The force of it picked him up off his feet and blasted him backward. The landing broke his arm; he could feel the dull snap of the bone, the stunning pain. Gritting his teeth, he dragged himself up and dove for Diana, who lay slumped on the pavement.

  As he covered her body with his own, chunks of brick from the collapsing building rained over him. With his good arm, he tried to hold on to his wife and pull them both away, but the shower of bricks turned to a deluge. Rand could feel the breaking of his ribs, and then his shoulder was struck numb. The falling rubble kept coming in a thick, deadly avalanche, burying him and Diana.

  No oh no oh please… The disjointed plea was drowned by the lethal crash of the building. Diana made a sound—his name, perhaps—and her hands clutched at him. Something hard and sharp struck his skull.

  He had the sensation of floating, though he could not have moved amid all the falling bricks. There was no pain anymore. Only light. A hole in the sky, its edges burning, a white glow in the center.

  And then there was nothing.

  Five

  “Look at that,” Phoebe said, indicating a building by the river. “The hose crew has simply abandoned Sterling House.”

  The fashionable hotel’s distinctive glass dome glowed bright yellow as flames licked up its walls. In the smoke-filled street in front of the residence, a cart was reeling in its hoses and moving on.

  “I imagine they realized they could never control the fire,” Lucy said. They’d seen so much destruction on the slow journey to the bridge that she began to feel as beaten down as the crew. “Let’s pray the building was evacuated,” she added. Most of the hotel’s windows disgorged mouthfuls of flame. But on the second story, a single window stared at her like a blank, dark eye.

  As they drew closer to the river, she spied an elderly man struggling along the roadside with painful slowness. When a woman bumped him in her rush to the bridge, he stumbled.

  “Driver, stop for a moment!” Lucy jumped out of the cart. “I’m going to give my seat to that gentleman,” she said. Phoebe opened her mouth to deliver the expected protest, but Lucy held up her hand. “Don’t waste time arguing,” she said, pulling the shaken, wheezing man to the cart and tucking a saddle blanket around him. “You’ve got to get across the river before the bridge gets even more crowded.”

  “But if you do something noble, then I shall have to,” Phoebe wailed.

  “Dear, you must stay with the cart,” Lucy said, accustomed to mollifying her friend. “The most noble thing you can do is hold fast to this gentleman and keep him in the cart. I’ll follow on foot.”

  The elderly man shuddered and closed his eyes. Lucy put Phoebe’s arm around his shoulders and signaled to the driver to move on. Just then an earsplitting explosion knocked her to her knees. Phoebe squealed and the cart lurched forward, disappearing into a wall of boiling smoke. Someone shouted that a varnish factory had just exploded.

  Lucy stayed down on hands and knees, trying to recover the breath that had been knocked out of her. Her lungs seized up, unable to fill. She was suffoca
ting. Light-headed, half-mad thoughts shot through her mind, but her air-starved brain couldn’t grasp them.

  The firelit images around her left a trail through the night sky, like the tails of bright comets. The wind had an eerie voice all its own, keening through the flaming row of doomed buildings. Flying debris—paper, clothing, sheets of metal—littered the air. Everyone else had disappeared. The last of the stragglers had gone to the bridge and there was no one in sight. Focus, she told herself. She stared at a burning building across the way. She’d gone to the very exclusive Sterling House for tea a time or two, her stomach in knots from the lecture her mother had given her on acting like a lady, sipping her tea demurely, nodding in agreement with anything a man cared to say, keeping her scandalous opinions to herself.

  She wasn’t sorry to see the last of that place.

  What she saw next reinflated her lungs with a gasp of terror. The second-story window, the one she’d seen earlier, was now filled with flame—and a woman holding a bundle, screaming.

  Without any conscious effort, Lucy propelled herself across the street.

  The fire lashed out with a roar, its long tentacles of flame reaching for the hysterical woman trapped in the window, grasping her.

  Lucy stood alone under the window, the heat singeing her eyebrows and lashes. She had no idea how to help the poor woman. The hotel entry was impassable, its doors blasted out by the flames, the marble lobby melting in the inferno. She looked around wildly for a ladder, a rope, anything.

  The woman’s screaming spiked to a shrill peal of hysteria. Her dress or nightgown had caught fire. A second later, the screaming stopped. Then something fell from the window.

  Simple reflex caused Lucy to hold out her arms. The impact knocked her to the pavement, and once again the air rushed from her lungs. A cracking sound, like the report of a shotgun, split the air. The walls of the hotel shook, and the roof caved in, sucking down the big glass dome, and then the flaming rubble of the building itself. The woman disappeared, swallowed like a pagan sacrifice into the devouring flames.

  Lucy sensed a movement in the bundle she held, but there was no time to check. She forced herself to scramble to her feet. Still clutching the bedding, she ran for her life, hearing the swish of raining glass and the boom of gas lines igniting. With a glance over her shoulder, she saw a geyser of smoke and sparks where the hotel used to be. Racing to the river, she hurtled down the bank toward the water. She slipped in the mud, landed on her backside and slid downward into darkness. Firelight glimmered on the churning surface of the water, but the immediate area was sheltered from the flames.

  Something buried within the bundle of bedding moved again.

  Lucy shrieked and set it down. Planting her hands behind her, she crab-walked away.

  Then she heard a sound, the mewing of a kitten.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said, disgusted with herself. “The poor woman was trying to save her cat.” What a noble deed, she thought. The woman must have known she could not survive the fire, and as her last act on earth she’d bundled up her pet and tossed it to a stranger for safekeeping.

  Hurrying now, Lucy knelt down beside the untidy parcel. The least she could do for the doomed woman was look after the cat. Firelight fell over her, and she felt a fresh stab of panic, knowing she’d best get over the bridge to safety.

  The bulky parcel had been tied with satin ribbons of good quality, a man’s leather belt and a long organdy sash. A lady’s robe or peignoir formed the outer wrapping, and inside that were two pillows, a quilt and what appeared to be an infant’s receiving blanket.

  With more urgency than a child on Christmas morning, Lucy removed the wrappings, hoping the cat wouldn’t bolt once she freed it.

  It didn’t bolt. It wasn’t a cat.

  Lucy shrieked again, this time with surprise, not fear.

  Her shriek caused the little creature to wail in terror, round mouth open like the maw of a hatchling wanting to be fed.

  Except it wasn’t a hatchling, either. It was a baby. No, a toddler.

  Lucy couldn’t speak, couldn’t even think. The firelight winked over the child, who kept wailing and pedaling chubby legs under a long pale gown.

  “Oh, God,” Lucy whispered. “Oh, Lord above.” She could think of nothing more to say, and had no idea what to do. A baby. She’d saved somebody’s baby.

  She couldn’t tell if it was male or female, though she saw with some relief that it was moving and bawling with great vigor. The fall from the window hadn’t hurt it in the least. It must be hardier than it looked, then.

  “Who…what on earth am I going to do with you?” Lucy asked, looking the child in the eye.

  Something in her tone or her look must have caught the baby’s attention, for it stopped crying and simply stared at her.

  “Well?” she asked, encouraged.

  The baby took a deep breath. Lucy actually thought it might speak to her, though she realized it was a very young child. Then it let loose with another wail. As she watched, it rolled over and crawled away, trailing the little blanket in the mud.

  Lucy was completely at a loss. She’d never seen a baby up close before, but the sight of it, so helpless and lost, sparked a powerful instinct in her. She reached out and touched it, then tried to gather it up in her arms.

  It was awkward, like trying to hold a wriggling litter of puppies, all waving limbs, surprisingly powerful.

  “Come now,” Lucy said. “There, there.”

  The baby quieted when she spoke, and stilled its flailing for a moment. The heated sky glowed ominously, and she knew she had to get them both to safety. When she stood, the child clung to her, its tiny hands clutching at her and its legs circling her waist.

  “You poor thing,” she said, eyeing the burning sky. “We have to go. Once you’re safe, we’ll find out who you belong to.”

  But in her heart of hearts, she already knew that the child’s mother had perished in the collapsing hotel. Somehow she would have to find its surviving family. Not now, though. Now, her challenge was to make her way to her parents’ home.

  “Come along,” she said. Her hand curved around the baby’s head. The curly, fair hair was soft as down. “I’ll take care of you.” Keeping up a patter of encouraging words, she struggled with the ungainly burden of the child, climbing the riverbank toward the bridge. “You’ll be safe with me.”

  “Oh, thank the Heavenly Father above, you’re safe.” Patience Gloriana Washington opened the door of the huge mansion on North Avenue to let Lucy in. Patience wore her plain preacher’s garb, a habit she’d adopted when she’d embraced poverty, but no somber robe could mask her naturally regal air. Though she had never set foot outside Chicago, she resembled an African princess. Famous for her magnetic preaching in Chicago’s largest Negro church, Patience was a close friend of the Hathaway family. Her older sister, Willa Jean, had been the Hathaways’ housekeeper since the war ended, and Lucy and Patience had practically grown up together.

  “Land a-mercy, what you got there, girl?” she asked, regarding the muddy, bedraggled bundle in Lucy’s arms.

  Lucy sagged against the door, exhausted, her arms shaking from carrying the baby all the way from the bridge. About ten blocks ago, it had fallen dead asleep, its head heavy on her shoulder, and now it rested there, ungainly as a sack of potatoes.

  “It’s a baby,” she whispered, pushing aside the blanket to reveal a head of wispy golden curls. “Its mother bundled it up and dropped it from a window while the building burned and I—I caught it.” She took a long, shuddering breath. “Then the building collapsed, and I fear the woman died.”

  “I swear, that’s a miracle for sure.” A soft glow suffused Patience’s face. “It purely is. Especially since—” She broke off. “Boy or girl?”

  Lucy blinked. “I don’t know. There wasn’t time to check.”

  “Land sakes, let’s take a look.” With expert hands, Patience took the sleeping baby into the parlor and gently laid it on
an ottoman. The child stirred and whimpered, but didn’t fully awaken. She unpinned its diaper. “A girl,” she said. “A precious baby girl. Looks to be about a year old, more or less.”

  Lucy stared in awe as Patience swaddled the child. A baby girl. She couldn’t believe she’d rescued a baby girl. The child stretched and yawned, then blinked. When she saw Patience’s face, she let out a thin wail.

  “Oh, please,” Lucy said. “Please don’t cry, baby.”

  When she spoke, the baby turned to her, and an amazing thing happened. Something like recognition shone in the little round face, and she reached up with chubby hands. The deep, fierce instinct swept over Lucy again, and she picked the little girl up. “There now,” she said. “There, there.” Nonsense words, but they made the crying stop.

  Patience watched them both, her eyes filled with a sad sort of knowing. “The Almighty is at work tonight,” she murmured. “Sure enough, he is.”

  For the first time, Lucy noticed streaks of hastily dried tears on Patience’s face. A chill slid through her, and she stood up, still holding the tiny girl. “What’s happened?”

  Patience touched her cheek, her warm, dry hand trembling a little. “You best go see your mama, honey. Your daddy was bad hurt fighting the fire.”

  Lucy felt the rhythm of dread pounding in her chest like a dirge.

  “I’ll take the baby,” Patience offered.

  “I’ve got her.” Lucy led the way up the stairs and rushed to her father’s bedroom, adjoined by double doors to his wife’s suite of rooms. Dr. Hauptmann was bent over the four-poster bed, and Viola Hathaway sat in a chair beside it. Patience’s sister, Willa Jean, knelt on the floor, crooning a soft spiritual.