SEVENTEEN

ALL THAT NIGHT THE STORM TOSSED WAVE AFTER CRASHING wave onto my room. Screeching winds shook the very nails from the roof’s shingles. An unearthly thunder rattled the beams. Twisting with pain—and guilt—I heard the violence as God’s anger at me: for reworking the scene in the Garden, for daring to think that I could reach beyond my grasp, for listening to that wild-eyed woman and thrilling to her defiant words. The hour of judgment had come—my hour, anyway—just as Grandmother had foretold. And it had come in both fire and fury. Rachel, what have you done f

The torment was nearly unbearable. The bandages that wrapped my hands and forearms only trapped the fire closer to my skin. Holding my arms as still as I could, I kicked and kicked and kicked at the pain. How was I going to survive this? What was going to happen to me?

Sometime during that nightmare the doctor arrived to examine my burns and to spoon a heavy dose of laudanum into me. I remember he looked at Mother and shook his head. I couldn’t focus my eyes. Was that a Bible he was holding? Was I dying? Lightning flashed through the room and he was gone, though Mother was still floating in the background. She slipped her hands beneath me and somehow lifted me up and I was as light as a feather. Murmuring words I couldn’t understand, she smoothed my pillow and gently laid me back onto it. When she let go, I fell into a sea of bedlam. Raggedy shadows seemed to dance across my ceiling, laughing. Painfully bright lights taunted me, then fled. Even as the medicine dragged me into a stupor, my arms stung like the skin was being stripped from them at that very instant; and I remembered those poor foxes back in Wesleydale, their skins stretched across the barn wall—testament to the awful price paid for crossing boundaries. And I had crossed into Mr. Jude’s garden and something about that made me indecent and maybe even evil, too, because I was always galloping headlong down a path of my own making when everyone else was content to travel the one already paved. And I missed Peaches. And I still wanted to heal horses; I didn’t care about the cost. I wanted to give them life. You’re not God boomed a voice in my head at the same instant that thunder boomed above, and I didn’t know if it was Father or Mother or God Himself who had spoken. Rachel, what have you done?

Gradually the noises scattered, like guests leaving a party and carrying their words and laughter off into the night, leaving me in an empty room with all the doors and windows shut fast, so deaf that there must have been cotton stuffed in my ears. Never had I felt so abandoned.

The laudanum drugged me into a dreamless sleep. As if I was no longer part of my own body, I watched myself floating and flailing and floating again through a hot, airless void, trying to run, but not going anywhere at all.

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?”

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.