The Passions of Emma (48 page)
She wandered the house. She stood before the washstand that Shay used of a morning and thought: This is where he stood just hours before; he touched this razor and this towel. But the hollow yearning came again, and so she turned away from it.
And saw Bria.
Saw her by the stove again, wearing the night rail she had given her. But instead of reaching for the teakettle, she was facing the window this time, looking out, her eyes wide and dark and filled with utter terror.
“Bria!” Emma cried, and in that instant she was gone.
And the coals in the stove—which had been left to go out that morning—burst into flame.
Emma could see the fire glowing red around the crack of the loading door, she could smell it burning.
But that’s impossible
, she thought—and in that instant the fire went out.
But that’s impossible
, she thought—and in that instant the fire went out.
She walked to the stove on trembling legs. She touched the top, but it was cool. She opened the loading door. The coals inside were gray, burned to ashes. Cold.
She looked out the window. She saw that the wind had come up, but that was all. It was blowing hard, as hard as it had been blowing that day when Merry had—
“The mill . . . Oh, God, the mill!”
E
mma flew out the door so fast, she caught her heel on the last step of the stoop and fell, hitting the ground in a skid, ripping her skirts and scraping the skin off her hands and knees. She scrambled back to her feet and, gathering her skirts up as high as her calves, she ran around back, to the harbor beach. The wind was whipping the bay into a chop. Yachts and fishing boats bucked and winged over the water, white and henna sails flashing.
mma flew out the door so fast, she caught her heel on the last step of the stoop and fell, hitting the ground in a skid, ripping her skirts and scraping the skin off her hands and knees. She scrambled back to her feet and, gathering her skirts up as high as her calves, she ran around back, to the harbor beach. The wind was whipping the bay into a chop. Yachts and fishing boats bucked and winged over the water, white and henna sails flashing.
She climbed onto the pier and ran, nearly tripping twice on the warped boards, ran all the way out to the end of the pier so that she could look uptown, around the curve in the harbor, and see the Thames Street cotton mill. The wind pressed against her face and flapped her skirts, making a tumult of noise in her ears. She shaded her eyes with her hand against the glare of sunlight off water.
The mill was there: granite stone walls and gray slate roof. A white cloud of steam spewed from the tall chimney stack, as it always did. But no smoke or flames curled out of the high, grimy windows.
“It’s all right,” she said to herself. “Everything’s all right.”
But it didn’t
feel
all right.
feel
all right.
It was four blocks from the house to the mill, and she ran the whole way. She passed an onion digger walking home from the fields, and he yelled at her, “Hey, lady, where’s the fire!” She
wanted to scream back at him, to shriek with the fear that was now clawing at her, but she was too out of breath.
wanted to scream back at him, to shriek with the fear that was now clawing at her, but she was too out of breath.
She ran through the big brick-arched gates and into the empty courtyard. She still couldn’t see any smoke or fire. But she ran straight up the iron stairs that led to the tin-plated, iron-banded door of the spinning room.
She climbed the stairs so fast she slammed into the door with the flat of her hands. She reached down and grabbed the latch and jerked up . . . and nothing happened. She jerked down . . . and nothing happened.
The door was locked.
The iron stairs beneath her feet shook and trembled with the force of the throbbing machines inside. Even with the wind she could hear the noise they made, clanging and rattling and humming like a million angry bees.
The wind lulled for a moment, and she thought she smelled something scorching, as though an iron had been left too long on starched cotton. She looked up, but all she could see was the gray slate peak of the roof. And then she saw, curling up from underneath the cornice . . .
Black smoke.
Shay McKenna couldn’t bring his dory back from a day of fishing the bay without sailing past the wharves of the Thames Street cotton mill, where his daughters worked in the spinning room. So it was that every day he would look at those gray stone walls and that smoking chimney stack, and make the same vow: “I’ll get you out, darlin’s. Soon I’ll be getting you out of there, I promise.”
If you were born Catholic and Irish in a
clachan
called Gortadoo, you were used to being poor, used to scratching like a chicken on a plot of dirt you could never own. You were used to living in a stone hut with straw sacking for a bed and, maybe, if you had the luck
of the Irish, a stool or two to sit on. And you were, God save you, used to sending your children out to the potato fields with hoes in their wee hands as soon as they could walk.
clachan
called Gortadoo, you were used to being poor, used to scratching like a chicken on a plot of dirt you could never own. You were used to living in a stone hut with straw sacking for a bed and, maybe, if you had the luck
of the Irish, a stool or two to sit on. And you were, God save you, used to sending your children out to the potato fields with hoes in their wee hands as soon as they could walk.
He’d been used to it then, back in Gortadoo, but he wasn’t used to it anymore.
Bria, lying on their bed at night after a twelve-hour shift, lying on her stomach while he rubbed her aching, cramping legs, talking to him . . .
“Merry’s got to stand on a box while she works her spinner, her being too small to tend to her bobbins without it.”
“There’re cockroaches scurrying all over the floor at your feet. The bobbin boys douse them with lubricating oil and set them alight.”
“The o’erseer, he strides out onto the catwalk and blows his whistle, and everyone pulls the levers on their frames and starts their spinning. And then he locks us in until after the shift is over.”
“It’s the littlest fingers that manage the best. And you got to be swift and nimble with them, to catch the threads when they get tangled or break.”
“The cotton lint gets in your eyes, and up your nose, and down your throat. The air’s always so damp and dusty and full of that lint.”
“Your ears ache from the din, and your eyes start to burn so, what with staring so hard at the threads ballooning, ballooning, ballooning. . . . God save us, I’ve been seeing them ballooning threads in my dreams.”
Dhia
, how it tore at his guts to see his girls drag themselves out of bed in the dark hours of the morning to go off to that place with the shift whistle shrieking in their ears, to be shut up all day away from the sunlight, shut up with the dust and the machines and the ballooning threads that would haunt their dreams—
, how it tore at his guts to see his girls drag themselves out of bed in the dark hours of the morning to go off to that place with the shift whistle shrieking in their ears, to be shut up all day away from the sunlight, shut up with the dust and the machines and the ballooning threads that would haunt their dreams—
The mill whistle blew shrilly, startling Shay so that he let go of the tiller for a moment, and the boat turned up into the wind, sail flapping, hull creaking. For it hadn’t been the short sharp blast that announced a shift change, but the long warning wail of an impending disaster.
He stood up in the cockpit, narrowing his eyes against the heavy
push of the wind . . . and saw oily black smoke pouring into the sky from the mill where his girls were. Where his life was.
push of the wind . . . and saw oily black smoke pouring into the sky from the mill where his girls were. Where his life was.
Emma was halfway down the stairs when the mill whistle blasted into a long, shrieking wail.
Oh God, oh God, oh God . . .
Her feet skidded on the metal treads, and she nearly went tumbling down head over heels.
It’s on fire and they’re trapped in there, Bria’s girls are in there, and I promised I would come for them, only I can’t, I can’t get them out because it’s locked, locked, locked . . . It’s on fire and it’s locked . . .
Her feet skidded on the metal treads, and she nearly went tumbling down head over heels.
It’s on fire and they’re trapped in there, Bria’s girls are in there, and I promised I would come for them, only I can’t, I can’t get them out because it’s locked, locked, locked . . . It’s on fire and it’s locked . . .
Workers from other parts of the mill were already pouring out into the yard, along with streams of acrid black and gray smoke. Emma hit the bottom of the steps running, for she’d seen Mr. Stipple come staggering out with a handkerchief to his face.
She flung herself at him, grasping the lapels of his coat. “Mr. Stipple, thank God, thank God . . . You need to unlock the spinning room—”
He tried to pull away from her, shaking his head. His small eyes, like two round white buttons, stared wildly in his fleshy face.
She shook him, her fingers digging deeper into the rough, greasy wool. “Give it to me, then. Give me the key.”
He jerked against her. “No, no. Can’t—”
“The key!” she screamed at him, snarling the words into his face so that he reeled back.
“In . . . my office.” He shook his head again, his eyes staring more wildly. “I’m not going back in there. The fire’s in the mule room and that’s too close, too close . . .”
She let go of him and plunged through the mill’s cavelike entrance just as the fire bell from the station up the block began to clang.
Her skirt was in her way, tripping up her legs, so she ripped it off. She was in the hall with the yellow time cards lined up in neat
soldierly rows on the wall. She still couldn’t see any flames, but squall clouds of smoke floated down the hall from the back of the mill. She had to feel her way to Mr. Stipple’s office, following the wainscoting on the wall, and she thanked God it wasn’t far, for already her eyes were tearing and her chest burned. The door was closed and for a moment she was seized with a terror that it too would be locked.
soldierly rows on the wall. She still couldn’t see any flames, but squall clouds of smoke floated down the hall from the back of the mill. She had to feel her way to Mr. Stipple’s office, following the wainscoting on the wall, and she thanked God it wasn’t far, for already her eyes were tearing and her chest burned. The door was closed and for a moment she was seized with a terror that it too would be locked.
But the knob turned easily beneath her hand, and only after she’d flung the door open did she think there could be a wall of flames on the other side.
There wasn’t.
She slammed the door shut behind her and plunged into a room that seemed strangely dim and quiet after the tumult outside, and considerably less smoky. She gasped and coughed, and sucked in a deep breath of sweet, sweet air.
But she had to hurry, hurry . . .
She started for the desk, thinking the key would be there, and tripped over the rolled edge of the carpet, banging into a big iron safe, bruising her hipbone. She didn’t even feel it, though, for just then she noticed a pair of hooks on a wall with peeling, watermarked paper. A worn black derby hanging on one, and from the other, an iron ring heavy with keys.
She lunged across the space between the desk and the wall and snatched at the keys.
The iron ring was hot and it burned her hand, startling her so that she cried out and dropped it. She ripped off a piece of her petticoat and used it as a pad to pick the keys up again. She could feel the room getting hotter, as though she stood in front of the open door of a coal stove. She straightened just as the old wallpaper burst into flames and instantly melted to ash.
She whirled and flung herself back across the room toward the door, knocking into the desk again, sending it skidding over the thin carpet. She reeled into the tall metal filing cabinet, snagging
her hair on one of the brass handles, and she couldn’t get it loose, couldn’t—
her hair on one of the brass handles, and she couldn’t get it loose, couldn’t—
She was loose and plunging across the room, reaching for the door.
It crashed open, banging against the wall. Smoke billowed over her in a cloud, thick as sea fog. An arm covered in a yellow slicker and thick leather gauntlet reached through the sooty haze, and she grabbed it.
A startled face, topped by a black helmet, seemed to be floating disembodied in the smoke. “Lady, what in blazes . . . ?” He ran his hands up and down her arms, as if he had to be sure she was real. “Jesus, I got to get you out of here, but first I need—”
“The key,” she gasped, choking, as she held up the ring in her hands. “I have it.”
He bent over and took her up into his arms then, as though she were a child. He carried her through the door and into a hallway so thick with smoke it was like trying to peer through a wool blanket. Emma pressed her face into his chest and tried not to breathe.
He took long strides at a half jog as the wainscoting beside them caught fire and they were enveloped in a
whoosh
of heat. But then they were through it, and water from the fire hoses doused them like a sudden downpour of rain.
whoosh
of heat. But then they were through it, and water from the fire hoses doused them like a sudden downpour of rain.
Other books
Worth Pursuing by LK Chapman
The Poisoned Rose by Daniel Judson
Before the fall: arrival (Embassy row # 0.5) by Ally Carter
Desnudando a Google by Alejandro Suarez Sánchez-Ocaña
One Summer Night At the Ritz by Jenny Oliver
Wrack and Rune by Charlotte MacLeod
Witchmate (Skeleton Key) by Renee George, Skeleton Key
In the Barrister's Chambers by Tina Gabrielle
Peace by T.A. Chase
Aunt Dimity Goes West by Nancy Atherton