Hours passed, or maybe it was days, I had no idea, before a disembodied voice pulled me back to life. “Rachel?” I blinked my eyes open. The gloomy light weakly announced morning. Where was I? “Rachel! Are you awake?” A rapid knocking followed.
It was James; I could tell that much now. Groggily I mumbled a lie, “Yes,” and struggled to bring myself round as he clambered up to my attic room. I felt drained. Empty. My stomach lay sucked flat against my spine, while my legs sprawled noodle-soft and useless, as if they’d been churning through quicksand. As James neared the top of the stairs, I realized my bedclothes were knotted at the foot of my bed. In my haste to reach for them, I forgot my bandages. Blistering needles of pain shot through to my bones, strangling my breath.
That plastered even more worry across James’s already stricken face. “Mother just told me,” he said. “Are you all right?”
I managed a nod. I had to, though it was another lie. A hollowness inside told me I might never be all right again. Not like this. Not wrapped in cotton and pinned to a pillow.
“No, you aren’t,” he challenged, examining my bandages with widening eyes. “It’s as bad as Mother said. You’re lucky you weren’t killed.”
Yes, lucky.
He shifted from one foot to the other, uncomfortable. “By the looks of it, you’re going to be confined for quite a while.” His brow knitted into a serious frown—too serious for James. Something was up, and I waited, watching dully as a sort of gradual awareness transformed his face. “Hey!” he complained in exaggerated protest. “This wasn’t all some ploy of yours to have me cleaning the Girl’s stall again, was it?”
I couldn’t help but smile. I ached to the marrow, but I had to. James could, and would, tickle the humor out of a graveside preacher. “How is she?” I croaked.
“About the same. She ate a little of that oat meal this morning. I don’t think she fancies me much, though. Nearly took a chunk out of me when I wasn’t looking.” He pointed to his backside. “Did Mr. Stead stop by yesterday? Did he have anything to say about her?”
That remembrance delivered a different kind of pain, one that was harder to ignore. I took a deep breath, fighting against what felt like irons piled onto my chest. “He said he wouldn’t be stopping by as often. He said …” I swallowed, sorting through the words I’d heard and the ones I wanted to forget, “He said she was through the worst of it.” Unlike me. And why had he abandoned the both of us?
“That’s good, then. Well, I’ll look after her while you’re on the mend. That won’t take long, will it?” James smiled mischievously.
I looked into his cornflower eyes and his jaunty grin and saw that he truly was a creature from a different world. It was always bluebirds and rainbows in James’s skies, while lightning storms swept through mine. Maybe I brought them on myself. Nodding mechanically, I cleared my throat and changed the subject. “How long were you at the fire station last night? I didn’t hear you come home.” Of course I hadn’t, drugged as I was.
“It was nearly two,” he replied. “Can you believe it? We all had to stay beyond our shifts and decorate for Independence Day, which meant scrubbing the floor—fairly useless with all the muddy boots tracking in and out—washing every one of the windows, and unrolling and hanging miles upon miles of bunting. Plus we had to repolish the engine that I’d just finished polishing, oil all the harnesses, groom the horses within an inch of their lives, and braid ribbons into their manes for the parade today.” He nodded toward the dormer window, which showed a blue-gray square of threatening sky. “That’s a lot of wasted elbow grease if it gets to raining again.”
“There wasn’t a fire last night, was there?” It was a sudden thought, but I could swear at that instant that I smelled smoke in my room.
“Not with this weather.”
I sniffed the air. Odors of wet potatoes and bleached linen and, yes, a dampened pall of smoke as well.
“You know, Father-”
He read my mind and halted that train on its tracks. “No, Rachel. Even for Father, deliberately setting fires would be too much. And anyway, he’s trying to fight fires by asking for more men and equipment in his column.”
That added up on paper, as they say. But it was still Father’s paper. And they were still his words. He had a way of twisting things that left me uneasy. I stared up at the ceiling. Was that a shadowy image left over from last night, or was it just some newly formed water stain? My mind was so fogged, I couldn’t think clearly. I felt lost in a crowd of lies, not knowing who or what to believe anymore.
“Was Mr. Lee helping at the station last night?”
James raised an eyebrow. “No, he’s still on suspension. Why so many dark thoughts?”
Why, exactly. “I’m not sure.” I turned my head toward the window. “I’ve been thinking about that person that’s out there—that firebug—and sometimes I come back to him.”
“Well, you’re not the only one. I heard some of the men talking. They say he thinks so highly of himself that he’d start a fire just to be seen putting it out.”
A cloud-piercing beam of light shot a pain into my left temple, making me wince. Somewhere a horse whinnied. I ached to answer. “Do you believe them?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know Benton that well. There was that warehouse fire Sunday night, after he was here claiming to ‘smell’ a fire, but I don’t think he was seen anywhere near it.” He shrugged off the worries. “All I know is he’s still on suspension, which means he’s out of the parade—and I’m in.”
I tried to muster excitement for him. He was my brother, after all. “You’re going to be in the Independence Day parade?”
He ducked his head, grinning. “They’re even loaning me a uniform, though I’m not legally a fireman. Numbers, I suppose.” Feigning nonchalance, he said, “Seems there’s a real rivalry with Engine Company Number Five, which is larger. The chief’s assembling as many bodies as he can and putting them all into red shirts.” His gaze slid from my face to my bandages, turning wistful. “I’d hoped you’d be able to come watch.”
I followed his eyes. My arms were burning again like hot embers were packed inside the bandages. I could have cried if I wasn’t already cried out and completely empty inside.
“Well,” he said, preparing to leave, “never mind what I said about being confined. I know you too well to think you’ll be on your back for long.” And he winked. “I’ll give your regards to the Governor’s Girl.” Rubbing his backside on the way to the stairs, he said, “You’d better hurry and get better or there’ll be nothing left of me.”
He wasn’t gone ten minutes when I heard Mother making her way up to my room. She entered carrying a tray and wearing her patented smile that tempered gentle concern with stern efficiency. I was going to get through this, she insinuated even before she spoke. And the sooner the better.
“How are you, dear?” she asked. “Are you in much pain?” and before I could answer, she announced, “I have some strawberries with fresh cream.” She set down the tray, lined in linen and sparkling with Grandmother’s good silver. Something flat was hidden beneath the large napkin.
Like a mother bird fussing over a nestling, she fluffed the pillows behind my back, smoothed the bedclothes over my legs and up to my lap, and draped a knitted shawl over my shoulders. “Chilly for a July morning, isn’t it?” I hadn’t noticed. Then she perched on the edge of the bed. Even that slight movement tugged at my bandages and stippled new pain across my arms. My breath caught. Opening her mouth in that age-old prompt for me to open mine, she spooned a small round strawberry coated in cream onto my tongue. Reluctantly I chewed and swallowed. And tried to smile for her too. I didn’t dare say it tasted awful, that the medicine-y residue of the laudanum trounced any flavor. She popped another strawberry into my mouth and it went down just as pulpy and bitter as the first.
“The doctor says time alone will heal the burns and that meanwhile laudanum will dull the pain. Would you like some more now?”
<
br /> I shook my head. Stinging bees had taken up residence beneath my bandages and my heart was beating faster, but I hated that foggy, confused feeling that the laudanum gave me. I wanted to be able to go see the Girl.
“I know you’re going to be bored up here all by yourself. Would you like me to read to you?” she asked. A magazine was pulled from beneath the napkin. “I’ve brought the newest Godey’s, and from what I can tell they’re predicting lace collars for the fall.” She flipped it open and pointed cheerily to an illustration. “They’re even showing lace flounces for the wrist. Now what do you think about that?”
Buying Godey’s Lady’s Book and Magazine was a huge extravagance for Mother. I knew she’d done it for me, and I did glance at the illustration of the overdressed woman, lace piled at her throat and bunched around her wrists. But if I was going to have anything read to me I still wanted it to be The Reliable Horse Care Manual for American Owners. My eyes left the billowy lace embellishments for the billowy gold manes of the three horses embossed on the book’s cover.
She saw what I wanted, though she didn’t understand. She couldn’t. “Rachel, dear,” she said softly, persuasively, resting a hand on my leg, “that won’t lead anywhere, and I really think it’s time you give it up. I know it’s been a fancy of yours, but treating horses is men’s work, as it should be. Now, why don’t we look through this magazine together and find a new dress style, and I’ll talk to your father about getting some money for some fabric and we’ll sew up something new for you while you’re recuperating.” She tested a little laugh. “Goodness knows you’ve damaged enough since our arrival. A dress really isn’t suited for horse care, is it, dear?”
The door that I thought had been opened to me just days ago was being nudged shut. Softly, persuasively. I shook my head and closed my eyes. “I think I’ll just rest some more,” I said. “I’m really tired.”
“All right,” she replied. “I’ll leave the magazine here and we’ll look at it later.” I heard it placed on top of my gilt-edged manual and knew the horses’ shimmering manes had been snuffed out. “There are some lovely fashions in it, and I know that a project like a new dress will be just the thing to lift your spirits. You’ll see.” Picking up the tray, she left. I never heard her feet on the stairs. She always moved as silently as a ghost, as if she had no substance, no weight. Was that my future? To fret about fashions and curtains and float around an empty house waiting for someone to notice me?
The attic room fell as quiet as a vault then. I could hear my breath going in and out of my nose. Bound in linen and cotton, I lay motionless, hearing, smelling, breathing, but not moving. In the stillness I noticed how the damp intensified the odors of rotting wood and musty paper in the house. I heard the mice stirring within the walls, behind the bureau at first and then invisibly over the stairwell, but even their scratchings seemed subdued on such a gray day. Far below me, in what seemed like another world, the parlor clock faintly chimed the quarter hour. I counted in my head, waiting for it to chime again, but couldn’t concentrate and had to let time tick by unreckoned. The muffled voices of Mother and Grandmother, and sometimes a cabinet’s faint squeak or the soft clunk of a mixing bowl on the wood table, rose high enough to disturb the attic air. I felt myself slipping into that void again, and I gave up and let myself go. This time I dreamed of bread baking inside an oven. I was certain I could smell it, doughy and golden. Hot.
EIGHTEEN
A DISTANT BANG AWAKENED ME, STILL ON THE SAME DAY, I was fairly certain. At first I thought the thunder had returned, but there was no advancing rumble, just a sharp pop immediately followed by another and another. Gunfire. It had to mean the Independence Day celebration was beginning.
I blinked my eyes open, tried to focus them. Staring up at the sloping ceiling, I thought about James and the firehorses, and all the other horses that would be in the parade, and wished I could somehow be there to see them. Out on the street, the hurried clatter of a horse and wagon grew loud and then faded. They were probably on their way to the parade, I thought enviously.
I’d been to the street that ran along the Common—that’s where the parade was passing by—so I could easily imagine how it looked. The expectant crowd would be pushed onto the pavement, necks craning in the same direction. A dog would probably trot across the empty corridor and a child would chase after him, ignoring his mother’s calls. But then a commanding whistle would split the air and invigorating drumbeats sound their rat-a-tat-tat, and everyone would clear the way and even the sun would obediently scatter the clouds.
That’s how I imagined it, and upon the blank slate of my sloping ceiling I made the parade unfold. First would come the grand marshal, a captain in the army, on a handsome bay. Then a commercial entry, perhaps a local coal company driving an enormous pair of black Percherons. In my mind’s eye, the horses’ massive haunches rippled from blue to black as the harness bells shook. After them I placed a team and wagon entered by a bakery and then one by a candy maker. I imagined the driver tossing wrapped samples to the crowd.
They’d be peppermints, of course, and out of the crowd a hand rose high to grab one; it was Mr. Stead, and he turned and smiled straight at me, and I had to push him out of my mind.
Annoyed, I conjured up the firemen. They burst onto the scene with their shining, hissing steam engine, and the onlookers went wild. James strutted among the other red-shirted men, and they encouraged the crowd to greater noise by whooping and waving their hats.
To my surprise, Mr. Benton Lee charged into view, nearly clipping the fire engine’s wheels and—whose parade was this, anyway? I watched in confused horror as the black stallion harnessed to his two-wheeled gig ran backward, squatted, and lifted into a rear. The single seat tipped dangerously, but Mr. Lee—who took the time to give me a sly grin—coolly flicked his beribboned whip and sent the stallion plunging forward and out of the picture.
The parade images evaporated. I became acutely aware of the room’s chill and of the unsettling odor of soot in the air. How dare Mr. Lee shove his way into my amusement? And for that matter, how dare Mr. Stead turn up? They did nothing but plague me with their deceptions and then vanish.
Feeling sorry for myself, I kicked against the bed’s covers. Mother had them tucked in so tightly I was practically pinned to the sheets. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I gasped for air like a bluegill heaved onto a pond’s bank and abandoned. With my chin brushing the fuzzy rolled edge of the coverlet, I fought to calm my heaving chest. Determinedly I focused my attention on the ceiling again, seeking salvation.
For some time all I saw was the spiderweb of cracks running through the chipped plaster and the brown water stains forming a murky band of clouds across the ceiling’s middle. But gradually that murky band became a herd of wild horses thundering across some distant prairie, and recklessly I threw my leg across one, clutched the mane, and galloped. I didn’t notice the sunlight slipping away or the clouds returning, the walls fading from ivory to ash to iron gray. As rain began spattering the roof, blending with the drumming of the horses’ hooves in my mind, I was lulled into another sleep.
When I awoke, the room was again gloomy, bathed in that thin light that masqueraded as both dawn and dusk. I didn’t know what time it was. I did know the laudanum had completely worn off because my arms burned with a relentless fire. And yet there was some air in me. I felt as if I could breathe again, and I sensed the stirrings of something hopeful. The horses had done that. They were better than any tonic.
Out of habit, or maybe unrepentant stubbornness, I gazed toward the spine of my horse care manual. I longed to open its pages and read; but I couldn’t light the lamp, let alone lift the book into my hands. Heaving a sigh of frustration, I turned my thoughts to the Girl. If I could just go see her … But I knew Mother would never let me past the door, especially now that it was raining again. So I lay there, as helpless as a gasping fish, muddling stupidly about ruffles and samplers, and what made something so right when everyone els
e thought it was wrong, and wondering with a dull ache just how I was going to fill the long days ahead.
When Mother floated up to my room again, she carried an early dinner and something flat wrapped in tissue. “I have another gift for you,” she said in an unusually bright singsong voice. My incapacitation seemed to have breathed new life into her. She set the tray on the bureau to light the lamp, then pulled a rectangular card, about four by six inches, from its tissue sleeve. “It’s just now arrived from the gallery, just this very minute.” Proudly she held out the photograph that we’d posed for on Saturday.
Three pale faces stared from the gray frame, and it struck me at once that we looked as trapped and lifeless as Father’s butterflies. There was Grandmother, grim as ever in her black widow’s weeds, awaiting the world’s end. And Mother, neat as a pin in white, her lips pinched together so tightly they’d vanished. With a newly churning stomach, I leaned closer to study my own face. At first glance it seemed just as pale and flat and ordinary as the other two, except—I squinted—what was that beside my ear? A fragment of straw? It was. I quashed a smile. Now I remembered: I’d been cleaning the carriage shed, preparing it for the burned mare. Quickly I examined my hands in the photograph. They were dutifully clasped in my lap as the photographer had directed, but—hardly anyone would notice—that shadow between my thumb and forefinger was actually dirt, rubbed in by the pitchfork’s handle. I couldn’t hold back my smile then. I was sure I was never going to be the perfect specimen; no camera or glass or bandage was going to contain me.
Mother took my smile as appreciation. “This one is yours. Your father ordered a cabinet card for each of us,” she said. “Wasn’t that generous of him?”
I nodded, wondering with wry humor if he’d ever notice the flaws in the image that he’d paid to have captured.
After she’d propped the card against my horse care manual, she took up her perch on the bed and began spooning chicken and dumpling stew into me. “It seems I have my baby back,” she murmured happily, and I could have choked. When the bowl was scraped clean, she brought out the bottle of laudanum and unscrewed the cap. The skull on its stark label leered.
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