by Susan Wiggs
Father Michael took a black bound missal from the pouch tied to the scourge around his waist. They all gathered around Kirby, and the pulsating light from the fire outside bathed everything in a surreal and eerily beautiful glow. Even the throaty roar of the consuming flames added to the atmosphere of inevitability and solemnity.
Dylan Kennedy closed his hand around hers, and Kathleen kept hold of Kirby. She was expected to marry. All women of her station were. She had been asked many times, by Ned Coombs at the Quimper shipyards, a joiner. And Rye Stokes, who was a tanner. And of course, Barry Lynch, she recalled with a pang of guilt. She had never given him any encouragement, she rationalized. So she was not really being disloyal, was she?
Kirby’s fingers twitched, and she imagined he meant to reassure her. Do it. What are you waiting for?
Kathleen shut her eyes and made a heartfelt wish. In her most secret moments, she had dared to imagine a wedding like the one being planned for her mistress, with a caterer, flowers, a trousseau, a full symphony and a dozen attendants on each side, flights of doves to celebrate the moment of joining and everyone of importance in attendance.
Now here she was, a dazed and bedraggled refugee clinging to the hand of a man she had just met. Yet she felt as if her heart had always known him, and she couldn’t have been prouder if a choir of angels and the Pope himself had presided over the union. In dreams, she had seen the laughing sky-blue eyes and the beautiful blue-black hair, the perfect, patrician features and the demeanor of Dylan Kennedy, a man who knew exactly who he was and where he belonged in the world.
And so, as the fire screamed and roared at the courthouse doors, she pledged her life to him.
SEVEN
Dylan could not think of a more absurd end to his misbegotten life. Rarely impulsive, he had been half joking when he’d proposed to Kate. But the others had latched on to the fantasy, making it their quest to see the tragic young couple wed before they died.
Now it was over. They were wed. It was all a perfectly nice bit of theatrics. The priest, the mayor and the judge were true professionals, conducting the swift rite with appropriate solemnity.
“I never saw,” whispered the beleaguered Kirby Lane, “a sweeter, more holy wedding.” He smiled at them as if from a great distance. “The two of you…rob this night of its fury.”
Dylan tried not to hear the earnestness and despair in the man’s voice, but it haunted him. Good God, the man really was dying.
Chilled to the marrow, Dylan bent and kissed his new wife, only to be startled by the heat and ardor of her response. It was the kiss of a bride who was in love, exactly what she fancied herself to be. What she actually was, of course, was an insurance policy.
If he survived, he would be back in hot water. The beauteous Miss Kate’s fortune would come in handy.
The fire had raged on through the brief ceremony, and it was looking less and less likely they would make it to tomorrow.
He kept hold of her hand and smiled down at her, giving no inkling of his thoughts. “There,” he said. “Now you are a married lady.” He touched her cheek, feeling a curious lurch of sentiment in his chest. It might even be a genuine emotion, but he was such a master of pretense that he could not be sure. Yet something about her moved him. She was beyond beautiful, though her beauty alone didn’t explain the effect she had on him. The honesty of her expression captivated him, and he could tell the others in the courtroom were affected by her as well. In a world of too little goodness, here was someone pure and sweet, untainted by the evils of mankind. And quite conveniently wealthy. He mustn’t forget that.
“What are you thinking?” she asked softly.
“Just pondering your many virtues.”
“Is that all?”
She didn’t seem satisfied with lighthearted quips, so he dug deeper. “I was thinking that marrying you is one of the few good choices I’ve made in my life.”
She bit her lip and lowered her head. When she looked back, she said, “I’ve never been anyone’s good choice before.”
“That,” he said, “is impossible to believe.”
The wounded Kirby Lane moaned, and Father Michael bent to comfort him. The others gathered around. Kirby’s face was shockingly pale and glazed with moisture. He closed his eyes and his lips moved soundlessly. “He is in extremis,” Father Michael whispered, drawing them away so Kirby wouldn’t hear. “I don’t know what to do.”
“For the love of God, you’re a priest,” Dylan snapped. His fear for the dying man emerged as anger. “Of course you know what to do.”
Father Michael pressed his hands together, then knelt beside the wounded man. He tried to offer water, but Lane could not drink. The priest whispered in Latin, and Dylan guessed that it was the prayer of extreme unction, uttered as a last-ditch effort to find grace in the next world. Dylan didn’t think it did any good, but he had always believed in hedging his bets. Feeling as powerless as the others, he stalked to the door.
“I’m going for help,” he said between his teeth. “This man needs a doctor.”
“You won’t find a doctor or anyone else out there,” the mayor said.
“We’ve got to do something, goddamn it,” Dylan burst out. “We can’t just stand around while he—”
“Hush up,” Bull interrupted. “Don’t you be talking like a fool.”
Father Michael beckoned them all with a silent gesture. Lane lay unmoving, except for his mouth. Dylan went down on his knees and strained to make out the words.
“…save all that passion for what matters,” Kirby was saying, and he went on, but Dylan couldn’t decipher the rest. They stood around in a frozen tableau, waiting and watching in shock and sadness.
After a while, Kirby Lane exhaled a woman’s name, as if expelling his soul from his body. And then he breathed no more. Father Michael’s shoulders slumped as he rolled up the marriage certificate and herded the others to a doorway where the ceiling was still intact. “Kirby Lane,” he said in the most mournful voice Dylan had ever heard. “Requiescat in pace.”
The slow, steady disintegration of the building continued. Plaster and debris pelted them, and a large iron fixture fell with a bang. No one could think of anything more to say. The priest covered the body with a fringed drapery panel. With a shuddering sigh, Kate pressed her cheek against Dylan’s shirt.
She did not weep; he suspected that would come later, like sensation returning to a frozen limb.
They all watched the golden blizzard of the fire. From where they stood, they could see no escape route. Even several feet from the window Dylan could feel the heat of the blaze encroaching steadily, getting hotter by the minute. The huff and roar of the fire was almost rhythmical, like the tramp of footsteps of an invading army.
Yet unlike an army, this had the fierce uncontrollable power of the wind behind it. This was not a force that would respond to charm or fast talking. For the first time, Dylan found himself confronted by something he could not control or manipulate or talk his way out of.
Through the veil of flame, he saw…something. A movement.
He bolted for the main door. “Where are you going?” asked Kate.
He turned back briefly. In that second his heart constricted with wonder. His wife. He’d had them before, of course, but he had never been pleased by the prospect…until tonight.
“I just need to check something out, love. I’ll be back.”
“But—”
He raced outside into the red-hot maw of the dragon. So much had been destroyed that there was less and less to burn. He ran to where he had spied the movement. When he saw what it was, his heart sank.
Two goats, trotting willy-nilly in a panic, shied first one way and then another. They lifted their feet from the hot ground, bleating constantly. Dylan contemplated the improbable sight for a moment. Then he was amazed to see the goats disappear, seemingly into thin air. Following them, he saw that they had entered the LaSalle Street tunnel. He moved in to get a better view. Just then, f
lames sucked through the opening, and he pulled back to avoid getting burned.
The torrent of flames subsided. Shielding his face from flying sparks, he went to investigate. The air that wafted up from the dark tunnel was stale…but decidedly cooler. Though hope flickered like a beacon inside him, he reminded himself that he was bound to the courthouse by a wounded man, an elderly judge, the nervous mayor, a priest…and Kate.
His wife.
Yet into these thoughts slipped the automatic self-preserving instincts that had guided him all his life. He could slip away. On his own. Here, now, he could go underground and disappear. Unhampered by the others, he might make it to safety. Hop a train and see where it took him. He could resurrect the marquis de Bontemps in New Orleans, or don a new persona in San Francisco, or become Dirk Steele—Man of the Comstock, in Nevada. Perhaps that broken-down cabin on the shores of Lake Tahoe still stood unoccupied….
But something strange occurred to him. He didn’t want to go. He felt faintly disgusted with himself. He had always dived for safety before. Why not now? Because he liked being Dylan Kennedy. He was comfortable in this skin. And he didn’t want to give up on a chance to change his life.
Maybe that was what this fire was to a lot of folks. Some people’s lives were burning down to nothing this night, and they would be compelled to start over from scratch.
He wanted to start again. He wanted to do it with Kate.
Discomfited by the unfamiliar sensation of considering the needs of another person, he went in search of some sort of cart or conveyance. He found nothing but hot, smoky rubble until, in what might have once been a toolshed of some sort, he spied a wheel that still seemed intact.
Using his cloak to keep his hands from burning, he excavated the object. A two-wheeled barrow. It had been recently used to transport horse manure, but it was sturdy enough to hold the weight of a man, maybe more.
He steered the barrow into the courthouse, bumping it up the steps with a great clatter. Father Michael came out to see what the commotion was about. He didn’t need an explanation. “Bring the water can,” he said over his shoulder. Then he jumped into action, shouting for the others to come, promising them that Dylan had found a way to escape. They all came out to the courthouse steps.
Trying to conceal an icy sense of doom, he executed a formal bow. “Your chariot awaits.”
Father Michael shepherded them down the stairs, his shoulder propped under Bull’s arm to steady him. The mayor helped the elderly judge. Dylan didn’t let a flicker of doubt show as he made the judge sit in the barrow and covered him with a water-soaked carpet. Then they all wet down their clothes with the last of the water. Father Michael whispered a prayer for Kirby Lane. Dylan caught Kate’s eye, struck by the depth of her fright yet at the same time, moved by her unflinching courage. She had never once wept or panicked.
In the broad, barren square, they watched the courthouse in its death throes. The brownstone center section burned out of control, and oddly, the bell still clanged as flames feasted upon the tower. The limestone façade melted in the heat and ran down the sides like huge tears. Jets of smoke and flame escaped the windows and vents. The clock briefly read the true hour—2:12 in the morning—and then the great hands slid down the clock face. A moment later, the giant tower crashed into the basement. The earth shook with the impact as Dylan and Father Michael shepherded everyone away.
“There’s a passageway through the horse car tunnel,” he explained. “We can make it to the lakefront.” He was such a good liar he almost believed himself. For all he knew, the passage led to a deadly furnace. “We can,” he reiterated. “It’ll be all right, Kate.”
It was a wondrous phenomenon, seeing the trust and relief that flooded her face. “Let’s go, then,” she said.
Until that moment, Dylan had not realized what a powerful force her trust was. Though surely an emotion born of their extreme danger, the love she claimed to feel for him made him want to slay dragons, move mountains, walk across hot coals.
The opportunity presented itself the moment they crossed the courthouse yard. The roadway, once constructed of pine blocks, flamed like a river of fire. He led the way along its edge to a spot where the flames had died down for lack of fuel. “We’ll have to run,” he shouted over the wind, catching Bull’s arm. “Can you make it?”
Bull flexed his bad ankle. “Don’t have no choice now, do I?”
Dylan pointed the way to the sloping passage he had spied earlier. There was no sign of the goats, dead or alive, which meant they had gone somewhere.
“Let’s go,” he said, feeling a surge of determination. As he spoke, he swept Kate up in his arms. She gasped and tried to scold him, but he heard nothing except the roar of the fire and the swish of blood in his ears as he ran across the road. Father Michael and the mayor pushed the judge in the wheelbarrow, and Bull came limping along behind.
Dylan refused to put Kate down until he reached the other side where the surface wasn’t smoldering. The road led to the shadowy underground passageway. They paused to make a torch out of a burning wooden beam, then Dylan led the way. Ducking under a low, crumbling ceiling, they found themselves in a crude tunnel with no end in sight. But anything was preferable to the horror they had left behind them.
“I keep thinking of poor Mr. Lane,” Kate said.
“Believe me, he’s not thinking of you.” Dylan grabbed her hand and forged ahead. The glowing length of wood afforded very little light, but he could see the passage narrowing up ahead. He said nothing. If they had to go single file, if they had to crawl, they would, dragging the judge behind them. Now that there was even a glimmer of hope, Dylan realized he would stop at nothing in order to survive. He bent lower, held the makeshift torch in front of him like a knight of old and pretended to be a man of honor. The man she believed him to be.
In the bowels of the dank tunnel, there was a silence he hadn’t heard since the bellowing of the wind-driven fire that had raged all night. He could hear Bull’s heavy breathing, the squeak and grind of the barrow and a scrabbling sound he suspected came from rats. He saw no point in talking, for there was nothing left to say. Either they would live through this, or they wouldn’t. He trudged on, brandishing the red-tipped board, and inevitably, the thing went out. He swore between his teeth and then tensed, expecting a rebuke from Kate, but she surprised him by echoing his oath with the panache of a seasoned dockworker.
Dylan hoped he would live through this, because he was really growing fond of his wife. Of course, if they did survive and Costello found them, there would be trouble. But amidst all the mayhem, and with Kate’s fortune, they might be able to quietly disappear. Perhaps they would visit Monte Carlo or Bolivia….
A patch of pale gray glimmered before his eyes. At first he thought it was a trick from staring so long at the glowing board, but as he continued forward, he saw that they had reached the end of the tunnel. “Hurry,” he said, finally daring to offer hope. “I think I see the other side.”
The lighted spot drew them and he picked up the pace. The uneven surface sloped upward. Bull added his strength to pushing the wheelbarrow, and they emerged into the gray half light.
People darted like wraiths through the smoke, most of them pushing steadily eastward, toward the lake. Shouts and whistles filled the air when Mayor Mason appeared, and he nearly broke down and wept as he was greeted by the sight of his sons. They had spent an hour trying to return to the courthouse and had nearly given up hope.
The mayor let out a cry and stumbled toward them. The overloaded cart lurched and sagged as he clambered aboard. “Hurry,” he said to the others, “there’s no time to lose.”
Kathleen shook her head and latched on to Dylan’s arm. “There isn’t room,” she said. “The mayor and Judge Roth must go.”
By now, he knew her well enough not to argue. Ah, how he wished this could be real. A beautiful, wealthy woman worshiping him, refusing to abandon him. Though the two older men protested, she got her way. The m
ayor of the city paused to bow his head to Kate. “It has been a distinct pleasure, Mrs. Kennedy. A wedding I’ll not soon forget.”
She flushed, clearly confused and delighted by her new title.
“The rail yards in the South Division are clear,” one of Mason’s sons shouted. “Trains are pulling out to the safety of the suburbs.”
“That’s where we’ll go, then,” Dylan declared. The four of them would have to cross the river again, then double back to reach the lakefront terminal. It seemed a minor undertaking compared to the ordeal they had just endured.
After the cart bore the others to the north, he led the way on foot along a city block of gutted buildings and ruined carts, blackened trees and broken glass, pocked by still-flaming heaps of unrecognizable debris. Ruined walls and shattered masonry blocked the roadway, and they had to veer around it. No landmark remained to tell them where they were, but the weak shimmer of light on the horizon beckoned from the east, where the lake lay. After crossing the bridge, they came to an area of exclusive town houses the fire had not yet reached. The small patches of lawn were sere but not charred, the trees bare but not burned. An air of abandonment haunted the empty houses.
Kathleen grabbed his sleeve. “Dylan, look.” She pointed to a decrepit residence, its broken shingle whipping in the wind.
“The Hotel St. George,” he said, his hand straying to the deed inside his shirt. “Maybe my luck’s about to change again.”
“Don’t be too sure of that,” said Bull. The fire drew nearer with each heartbeat. They could hear the ominous crackle of timber not far away. A moment later, the roof took fire.
There was no time for regrets. They rushed down the block toward the lake. At least, he hoped it was the right direction for the lake. The capricious wind leaped and swirled, teasing flames to conflagrations on both sides of the avenue.
Ahead, the wagon disappeared into the smoke. Telegraph posts stood in the bluish light like branchless trees, the wires long gone. Iron beams, twisted and distorted by the raging heat, lay across the road. They walked on, weariness dragging at them, until Dylan recognized the rail yard of the Illinois Central and Michigan Central. “We’re near the water’s edge,” he said. The grain elevators were mere skeletons, but a line of train cars appeared to be intact. A locomotive, huffing black billows from its smokestack, was coupled to a short line of cars. Rail workers ran to and fro, trying to organize the evacuation. “Let’s go,” he said, picking up the pace. “Maybe we can get clear of the city.”