“Anders,” Fiona whispered. “He’s already beaten.”
Anders glanced over his shoulder at Fiona. He blinked at her and seemed to remember his purpose. He threw the man to the ground, and gave him a final kick in the head, before turning to her, still panting in exertion. Although they stood a foot apart, she could hear the crazy beating of his heart. “Are you all right?” he asked. “I’ll kill him if—if he hurt you.”
The man made a pitiable sound, like he wished he were dead already.
“I’m all right.” Anders was still frenzied from attacking the man, and Fiona wished she could calm him somehow. “I’m fine, really,” she added.
“I told you not to . . .” he mumbled. “I wish you hadn’t . . .”
“But I did,” she said.
He drew his fingers over her hair, smoothing the places where the man had yanked at her braids. With worried eyes, he examined her ripped-open jacket, and her ruffled shirt. He carefully brought the shirt and jacket back into place. She averted her gaze instinctively, not wanting to invite more attention from a boy who was—who would soon be—entirely Emmeline’s.
The gentleness of his touch, especially after the fury with which he’d beaten the man with the murky eyes, made her chest rise in a way she couldn’t disguise. The old want was there, before she could stuff it away. She wanted him to do exactly what he had done that spring night: press her against the wall and put his mouth to her mouth. To distract herself, she asked, “Did anyone see you come this way?”
“I was careful.”
“Good. You had better be careful, and get back soon.”
“First I’ll see you as far as Water Street.”
This seemed unwise, and she was about to tell him so. But he came forward and clasped her hand.
“You can tell me not to, but I’ll still follow you. I’ve been following you all day. Didn’t mean for you to know. I was trying to keep a safe distance, or this man never would’ve gotten so close to you.”
“You should go back to the barn,” she said.
He pressed her hand, and released it. She raised her eyes to his to show she meant it, but he only stared back in a way that made her stomach weak. His hand floated to her face, tucking strands of hair into place, and—afraid of what he might do next—she stepped out of the doorway and onto the sidewalk.
Although she had told him not to, he followed her all the way to the river. She sensed him like her own shadow—always a quarter block behind—and walked tall knowing she was safe.
Fifteen
We are beside ourselves with anticipation for the wedding of Miss Emmeline Carter to Mr. Frederick Tree tomorrow afternoon. We all agree she is very lovely, and we all acknowledge she is very new. How will she bear up under the pressure of being a society bride with all eyes upon her?
—“Leisure Life” column, Chicago Crier, October 7, 1871
From the plush chaise by the picture window in her bedroom, Emmeline watched a parade of deliveries enter the Carter residence. The flowers and tables and chairs, the arches and tents, the crates of lemons and oranges, a gold-foil box the size of a person, which she supposed contained her wedding dress, as well as a smaller box for the veil, and another for accessories. Father’s new suit was among these deliveries, too, and it was the image of Father in white tie and black tails—proud to see hundreds of the city’s most prominent people assembled on his lawn, gathered to watch him escort his only daughter to the altar—that she found most difficult to part with. She did not see Fiona among the busy traffic on the lawn. It was Fiona she was watching for. But her friend must have come in the back way to avoid notice, and gone up the servants’ stairs.
“Oh, there you are,” Emmeline said. “I was worried.”
“I’m all right,” Fiona said.
“You wore the burgundy,” Emmeline went on, gazing wistfully at her friend. “You look beautiful in burgundy.”
“You were right. If I’d gone in my maid’s clothing, we would have gotten less.” Fiona was bent over, examining the skirt. She yanked the fabric suddenly, ripping a seam open.
“Oh!” Emmeline jumped from her seat. “What are you doing?”
“Here.” Fiona pulled out a few errant strands of thread, and handed a stack of bills wrapped in brown paper. “Seven hundred.”
“Oh.” Emmeline took the money, and went back to her chair, to the twilight view of the property where the Carters had built their reputation. The trees were orange, the lawn purple. She had never found it quite so lovely as now. “Seven hundred.”
Fiona was unbuttoning her jacket, stepping out of the full-length skirt with its tiered ruffles. “You’ll be able to live in hotels for half a year if need be on that.”
“Yes, I suppose.”
“Eat well, dress well.”
How many days had passed since she had decided to leave? Not many, especially when she counted up all the days she’d lived in the North Side, all the days of her engagement, all the days she’d planned to be a bride. Of course, she had imagined the hotels she and Anders would stay in, the first-class train tickets, the fine suits she would buy him so that they could go to elegant restaurants without anyone questioning their presence. What a good story it would be—Emmeline Carter, who had in a few seasons won the attention of top-drawer Chicago, on the run with a lowlife boxer. Fiona had just handed her enough money to make it all come true—and yet those dreams seemed more elusive now. It wasn’t so much that she wasn’t curious for her life with Anders—it was that she couldn’t wish this world, with its lawns and parties and fineries, away. “I suppose.”
“What’s wrong? I thought you’d be happy.”
Emmeline rolled over on the chaise, and regarded her friend in petticoat and corset. “I am,” she replied not very convincingly. “Very, very happy.”
Ever since she had left the house on Terrace Row, Emmeline had yearned for Fiona. To tell Fiona everything, and have Fiona listen, and agree that it was an impossible predicament. They would go over every detail, and consider every outcome, until it was perfectly clear what Emmeline should do. Until there was no doubt. But there was something stiff and uninviting about Fiona, even though she had stripped to her white underthings. She stepped forward, regarding Emmeline with those knowing green eyes.
“What happened?”
Although the question lacked the usual Fiona openness, Emmeline couldn’t help herself. The whole afternoon, with its agonies and indecisions, its revelations and desperate desires for contradictory things, came in a rush. She told her of the amusing episode with Cora, and the dressmaker, and the impressive house on Terrace Row. “The house,” she said, after saying a lot of other not-quite-sensible things, “the house is so perfect, and Father was so proud. I can’t stand the notion that I’ll never have him over for a supper in the grand dining room.”
All the time Emmeline had babbled, Fiona had been still and impassive. When Emmeline stopped speaking, Fiona gave a slow nod, and went into the closet. A few moments passed before she returned, with the plain, worn clothes that made up her maid’s uniform.
“Well?” Emmeline asked a little desperately. Fiona was never so slow to reply. “Aren’t you going to say something?”
Fiona was buttoning her plain white collared shirt, and she didn’t answer until she had reached the top button. “Have you ever known anything for sure?”
Emmeline didn’t understand what this had to do with the house on Terrace Row or disappointing her father or Cora Russell wanting the bouquet. “What do you mean?”
“Known something was true with such certainty that your whole body got quiet and told you so?”
“Well, I’ve known a lot of things. . . .” Emmeline felt confused and wished Fiona would stop acting strange. “You mean, like, that blue is your best color? Or that you truly dislike someone and always will? Or that you’ve said the wrong thing, said it out loud, and you’ll never be able to take it back?”
“Not exactly.” Fiona had pulled her skirt
over her hips, contorting to do the buttons at the small of her back.
“Then what do you mean?” Emmeline asked impatiently.
“You love Anders, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you love Freddy?”
Was that what Fiona had been going on about? Emmeline had never asked herself this question, not really. But now, with Fiona giving her that serious face, she was certain that she did not. And just in the way Fiona had described: her insides got very quiet, and she knew the truth as though a clear, strong voice had spoken it directly into her ear. “No. . . .” she whispered.
“In that case, you can’t go through with the wedding. Of course you’ll be giving up a lot; I know that will be hard. But you may get most of it back, and in the end, it will have been worth the risk. When you know for sure what is good and right, what is true for you, you must act on that, and not convince yourself of something else. We must all be true to our own hearts.”
Emmeline felt cold, and small, and she wished Fiona would make her tea and tell her a silly story, so that they could both laugh until their bellies hurt. But Fiona’s attention was fixed on buttoning the cuffs of her shirt. Emmeline sighed, and threw herself back against the silk pillow of the chaise, clinging to it as though it might comfort her. The formality with which Fiona waited, fully dressed and attentive as any servant, seemed some sort of rebuke.
“You should have seen the view from the parlor,” she said, not quite to Fiona. “The lake, the whole view was the lake, going on and on forever. . . .”
Fiona had crossed the room by then. If she heard what Emmeline said, she gave no sign. “There is a lot of work to do, and they’ll be wanting all the help they can get downstairs. Do you need anything?”
Emmeline put her fingers against the windowpane, and shook her head.
“I know you’ll do what’s right, Emmy. Get some rest tonight. You’ll need it.” Emmeline thought Fiona had already left, when she spoke again. Her voice had gone down an octave as if in warning. “I couldn’t stand by and watch otherwise,” she said. “If you went ahead with something that wasn’t true to your heart.”
Sixteen
’Tis the last rose of summer
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone;
No flower of her kindred,
No rosebud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes,
To give sigh for sigh.
—Thomas Moore, “The Last Rose of Summer” (1805)
When there was no more work to do, Fiona entered her own narrow bedroom, rested her shoulders against the door, and shut her tired eyes.
For once, the Carter household staff did not resent her. Everyone was run off their feet, but Fiona had worked as hard as any of them, carrying the long tables into the backyard under the white tent that had gone up that afternoon, arranging flowers, kneading bread, steaming tablecloths, sorting silver. Emmeline’s bell did not ring, and so there had been no reason for Fiona to leave the general hubbub that filled the lower areas of the house. Now she was weary to the core. But it did not matter. She already knew she could not sleep peacefully here tonight.
Instead of preparing for bed, she lit the candle on the little wooden table. The candle’s flame flickered, and Fiona gazed into its light, wondering what on earth to do. She’d had to force herself to abandon Emmeline, helpless and needful of advice as her friend had been. Fiona knew that look on Emmeline’s face, and was accustomed to rushing to her aid when she was in distress.
Yet tonight some stubborn part of Fiona had refused to go along with Emmeline’s wishes.
Certain facts that she had tried to bury had become impossible to deny. After seeing Anders, after sensing him behind her as she walked the long blocks back to the North Side, after hearing the beat of his heart . . . she loved him. And that meant more than it had before. It was not only that she wanted to watch the way his smile broke open when he made himself laugh, to listen when he talked about anything, to make him happy, and keep him warm. She wanted him to treat her as he had today, as though she required watching out for, too.
Upstairs, when Emmeline had made those wide, inconsolable eyes, Fiona could have told her it was all right.
“Marry Freddy,” she could have said. “Move into the elegant house on Terrace Row with the lovely view of the lake and make your father proud. No one will ever know you planned to run away with a boxer from the old neighborhood, for I will never tell.”
Then Anders would be free. But he would be wounded, and it was Fiona who would have delivered the final blow. He might be hers in the end, but only because she’d told lies and played cruel tricks. Anyway, he wasn’t safe here—that was the mean, final fact she kept coming back around to. The best thing for him was if he and Emmeline escaped, with their considerable funds, and were far away from here as long as possible.
Through the thin walls of the servants’ quarters she heard murmurs and snoring, the restless turning over of old bones against stiff sheets. Fiona had trained herself long ago to do what she did not want to do. She was used to unpleasant tasks, and not afraid to suffer. But tonight, on the eve of the wedding of the season, as the household drifted into anxious sleep, there was no right thing for her to do. So she blew out the candle, and left her little room.
The Carter residence had been transformed for tomorrow’s festivities, but it felt ghostly without any music or voices to enliven the nuptial decorations. As Fiona went through the backyard, the dry grass crunched underfoot. The tent rippled. She half expected an alarm to ring when she left the property, but there was nothing. No dog barking, no light from an upstairs window. She was free to go, and always had been.
In the past few days, she had done a great deal of sneaking around at night. But the streets did not frighten her now. She crossed the river without a tremor. She had the strange conviction that as long as she did the right thing, no harm would come to her.
As Fiona crossed the river, she heard the courthouse bell ringing the fire alarm, but did not make much of it. Since October began, bringing with it a dry blast of late summer, the fire bell had rung every night.
Even in the midnight dark, the tar still bubbled and hissed from the baking it had received during the day. But to see any of this, one had to be above the skyline—as were the editor working the night desk at the Tribune, the men filling the six-story grain elevator, and Gabriel, Anders’s cousin, who had been awakened by the smell of smoke and crawled out his window and up to the Dorrans’ roof to see what was burning. From that high vantage in the old neighborhood, a bright orange haze was indeed visible, due west—past the ship masts that rose from the docks, across the south branch of the river. Gabriel hurried to fasten the shiny new brass buttons of his uniform’s vest, which he loved, don his brimmed cap, and then ran all the way to the Van Buren Street Bridge.
A policeman was holding back the crowd of curious gawkers on the eastern side, but Gabriel’s uniform allowed him passage to the west side, where the rumors were general—the trouble had begun in the planing mill on Canal, and the culprit was either the boiler or some mischief-maker, though it didn’t matter much in a place like that. It was all wood and scraps. Any little spark would do the job. Everyone agreed that they were lucky it was a windless night, although no one felt lucky. There were several lumberyards in the surrounding blocks, where the great trees of the Wisconsin woods, having been turned into planks and posts and boards, were stored before being shipped south and east.
Gabriel had never been this close to a real fire, and it humbled him to stand beneath the brilliant spectacle, awful and beautiful at once. The buildings that the flames had spread to emanated heat like the gate of hell, and their former shape disintegrated and transformed so that what loomed above them seemed some terrifying beast from another world—it screamed, clawed the night sky, and devoured everything it came across. At least three engine companies had arrived at the scene by then, and
their canvas hoses crisscrossed the street. A dozen or so men aimed their weak streams of water at the old mill. Gabriel stared helplessly at the structure, at the smoke that billowed from its roof, the flames that gusted from its upper windows.
Yesterday, Gabriel had just been a watchman, and a novice at that. But a man on horseback whipped the men into formation, like soldiers coming into battle. They soon acquired an awful aspect—singed beards, swollen eyes, their clothes in disarray, their faces blackened.
They needed every able and willing body. Like that, Gabriel became one of them. He understood this abruptly and thoroughly. No one asked what company he was with, or doubted that he belonged. They were an army, fighting a common enemy, and their individual names and where they had been earlier in the day no longer mattered. As long as the enemy continued its destruction of their city, they would move together, act together, doing all they could to halt its voracious path.
Meanwhile the whirl of bright particles was blown upward and away, over a sleeping city, blissfully unaware of the conflagration that spread and threatened their homes and ways of life. And even Fiona, awake past midnight, was so consumed with her own tortures that she did not consider what raged across the river.
“Fiona!” her mother exclaimed in happy surprise, and lowered her feet to the ground. They had been resting on Fiona’s father’s lap; Fiona had never seen her mother go barefoot before. She stepped into her slippers, put down her tin cup, and came to the door.
“Where is Jack?” Fiona asked, surveying the cozy scene. A beaten book of verse lay open in her father’s lap, and her mother still held the crochet hook and yarn she’d been working. “Where are Kate and Brian?”
“They’re asleep, love. Do you know how late it is?”
“Oh, yes—of course.” Walking south from the Carters’ Fiona had not known where she was heading, but now in the presence of her mother and father—assessing her with their kind, bright eyes, waiting for her to explain what she was up to—she knew she had come to the right place. She wanted to forget her life, and curl at their feet and listen to their stories of Ireland. “I should be, too.”
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