Chapter Four

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1871

The fire bell was ringing again.

Meg groaned. With this incessant clanging, her father wouldn’t be able to rest tonight. Again. If only he could, he’d be more at ease, more himself. But it was wrong of her, that her first thought should be for this small comfort, when others might be in harm’s way.

“How many strokes was that?” Sylvie asked when the last one fell away.

Meg hung her hat on the rack at the hall mirror. It was half past nine at night, and they had just returned from evening church services. “I don’t know. Let’s go to the roof to look.”

When they reached the tar-covered roof, they found their father already there. He had long since given up attending church, unable to bear the crowds.

“What do you see?” Meg asked him. Her corset pinched as she inhaled deeply, alert for the smell of smoke.

Stephen pointed south to a patch of sky glowing orange. “Looks to be the same area that burned last night, or very near it. It could be that the ruins reignited themselves.”

Meg squinted, trying to gauge both the distance and the intensity of the color, but it was a mere smudge of light scrubbed against the dark. It wasn’t near enough to bother them here.

A strong wind freed wisps of Sylvie’s hair from her snood, swirling them about her face. “I think it’s farther away than last night’s fire. Don’t you?”

“Can’t say.” Stephen wiped a handkerchief across his brow and struggled to stuff it back into his pocket. Fire agitated him from any distance. “I’ll stay here and keep a watch on it.”

“Are you sure?” Meg asked, somewhat mollified when she noticed he was not carrying his gun. It had been four days since the anonymous letter had been printed in the Tribune, and as much as she wanted to put it from her mind, she couldn’t. Whoever had seen her father on the rooftop—most likely their tenants—might be watching even now. “Won’t you come to bed?”

“Please, Father,” Sylvie added. She had seen the letter too, of course, and had been as upset as Meg. None of their customers had mentioned it, but more boys than usual had come by, spying through their fence. If Meg hadn’t suspected it would humiliate Stephen further, she would have burst into the yard and scattered the rascals herself.

His eyes darting from one rooftop to another, Stephen ran his fingers through his beard. “I’m sure I’m not the only one outside fire-gazing tonight.”

But the walk home from church had not shown a city concerned. It was a warm night, and the German beerhouses were full of merry singing. Promenaders, still in their Sunday apparel like Meg and Sylvie, strolled down sidewalks and through parks. If this evening was unusual, it was for its pleasantness.

Sylvie covered a yawn, then held her skirts to keep them from billowing indecently. “You can’t believe that our safety depends on your vigil. If the danger increases, we’ll hear of it.”

Reluctantly, Stephen agreed. As they all headed back inside, Sylvie’s shoulders relaxed.

Stephen’s didn’t. He went to the parlor and stared out the window across Court House Square. He did not sit, nor did he turn on any lamps. He mopped his brow again.

Meg approached him from the side, as she had learned long ago that to come from behind would startle him. “Do you need anything before I retire?” She raised her hand to touch his back and then, thinking better of it, curled her fingers into a fist and lowered it into the folds of her skirt.

He opened the window, and the hiss of gas lamps on the street below floated into the shadow-cloaked room. It looked like a stage set, without light, without movement, save the wind that rippled the curtains. Stephen stood there, taut with suspense, like a player in some Shakespearean tragedy waiting for the curtain to rise.

He hadn’t had another episode since his breakdown at Hiram’s house a week ago, but a few times he’d teetered on the brink. If only these fires would stop and the fire bell with them! It was hard for anyone to function without enough rest. At some point, surely, his own exhaustion would overtake him.

As if he hadn’t even heard her question, he finally noticed Meg with a start, then whirled to find Sylvie waiting for her in the curtained doorway. “Why are you watching me like that?” His breath pushed hard against the thin wall of his chest. Coughing, he turned back to the window.

Without a word, Sylvie brought him a pitcher of water, poured him a glass, and left both on the tea table beside him.

“Good night, Father,” Meg whispered, then looped her arm through her little sister’s. When they left him, his coughing had ceased, but he had begun tapping the side of his thigh. “He’ll come around,” she told Sylvie in the hallway between their chambers.

“Get some rest,” Sylvie replied. “Tomorrow will be a big day for you.”

Fatigue weighted Meg’s limbs and eyelids as she slipped into her room. Since Wednesday morning, she had sketched and resketched the portraits for Bertha Palmer, her emotions swinging from jubilation over her new commissions and the opportunities before her, to lingering distress over the slanderous letter about her father. As she changed into her nightdress and collapsed into bed, her singular aim was to sleep long and soundly. Her luncheon with Mrs. Palmer was little more than twelve hours away.

Sylvie was right. Tomorrow would be a big day.

Smoke stung Nate’s eyes and choked his throat as he made mental notes for his story. Before him, Chief Marshal Williams wrangled a thin circle of engines around the fire that had started on DeKoven Street an hour and a half ago. Horses harnessed to the engines stamped the ground and flicked their tails, nickering.

By Nate’s count, there were five steamers, three hose carts, and a hook-and-ladder wagon, all pumping water into the fire from all sides. The streams hissed and boiled upon hitting the burning wood, sending up columns of white steam. Neighboring buildings were smoking, ready to ignite. The other firemen who had been called out had been sent to the wrong location.

“You there! All of you!” Williams shouted at Nate and the knot of spectators who had gathered. “If you don’t want this blaze to spread, do something about it!” He gestured to the wooden fences and sidewalks, all fuel for the fire.

They sprang into action. Taking an ax from a fire engine, Nate rushed back to the sidewalk, heaved the tool over his head, and brought the blade down into the planks until he could rip the pieces out with his bare hands. A man named Richard took the ax while he did so, hacking away at the nearby fence, while others cleared the wood away to a place Nate did not see, nor did he have time to consider. No longer a mere spectator, he threw himself into his task. Shards of wood must have cut his palm, for he noticed a trickle of blood. He didn’t feel it.

“Think they can hold it here?” Richard shouted over the roar of the flames. The fire had already eaten through five blocks.

Nate wanted to say yes but knew too much to believe that. Half of the one-hundred-eighty-five-man firefighting force had fought last night’s seventeen-hour fire in the West Division well into today. Then, as was their custom, they had unwound by drinking. After only a few hours of sleep, they’d been called up again. Only now they had to work without equipment that had been damaged last night. There had simply been no time to repair it.

Sweat rolled into Nate’s eyes, and with his wrist, he pushed up his spectacles before tearing at the wood again. It was warm in his hands and beneath his knees. Getting warmer. The fabric of his trousers ripped as he moved to a new section.

“The fire is getting out of control!”

Not slowing in his task, Nate looked up to find a former alderman by the name of James Hildreth shouting to Chief Marshal Williams what he surely already knew.

“What you need is a firebreak, a real one! Tearing up sidewalks and fences won’t do it. Blow up those houses.” Hildreth pointed to a row of them.

Williams’s eyes were bright in his soot-streaked face. “Just blow up those people’s homes? I don’t have that kind of authority.”

“This is an emergency,” Hildreth persisted. “Take emergency measures, man! A few will suffer the consequences in order to save one hundred times as many, maybe more. If you don’t blow up those houses yourself, the fire will devour them anyway.”

“Even if I wanted to, I don’t have powder.”

“I know where to get it!” Hildreth yelled.

With a forceful thrust of his arm, Williams shouted back, “Then go!”

Nate stood, surveying the wreck he and the other men had created, and knew Hildreth was correct. Against such a blaze, with the winds blowing as hard as they were, their efforts had only succeeded in getting the bystanders out of the way. He predicted the fire would come this way in less than half an hour, either by lapping along the ground or by sending firebrands through the air, landing on the rooftops. Evidently of the same mind, Richard returned the ax to the fire engine and fled.

Nate stayed. This was tomorrow’s front-page headline.

An updraft sucked pieces of burning cloth and wood into the air over the fire. A man’s burning shirt sailed into the sky, its sleeves outstretched as though reaching for help. Sparks landed on the remnants of the sidewalk and flamed up. Nate stamped them out, one after another. Other spectators did the same.

Legs planted wide, exhausted firemen sprayed water on the flames in what appeared to be a futile exercise. One of them dropped his hose, ran beyond Nate’s vision, and returned moments later carrying a wooden door, which he braced on the ground as a shield between himself and the heat of the fire. With the door leaning against his shoulder, he resumed hosing from behind it.

The door ignited. The firefighter leapt away when it burst into flame, jerking back as though burned.

“You’re next!” Nate shouted in alarm, still stomping out small fires himself. The fireman’s uniform had begun to smoke, and his leather hat twisted out of shape in the heat. “You’re catching!”

“Come out of there!” Williams called to the men. “Wet the other side of the street or it will burn!”

Nate and another man sprang forward to help reposition a cart while the fireman held the hose. Before they reached their destination, however, the water pressure dropped to a trickle. Nate’s nerves began to unravel. “What happened?”

Face grim and as slick as melting wax, the fireman pointed. “That steam engine just arrived and took my hose from the water plug so he could use it himself.”

Though more powerful, the steam engine didn’t get to their position fast enough. Nate watched as five houses across the street blazed up. Chief Marshal Williams bellowed in frustration.

The smoke made it difficult to breathe. The constant sparks landing around Nate, and on his clothing now, made it a feat to concentrate. Helplessly, he witnessed another steamer malfunction, rendering it without water as well. A quick repair recovered the stream, but not long afterward, an old section of hose burst, and the water stopped again, this time for good.

Williams scrambled to reposition the working engines that were left, but the wind had shoved the fire well past his men. It was pushing the flames northeast, racing across the wooden sidewalks Nate and the others had given up on. As the tongues of fire spread, nothing stopped it. Everything in its path—fences, trees, chicken coops, outhouses, clapboard houses—was consumed.

By now the updraft was even stronger, lifting flames hundreds of feet in the air, turning the sky a lurid orange. Policemen arrived, and more citizen-volunteers, who frantically set about tearing down sheds and fences. This time, Nate didn’t join them, convinced the fire was too far gone to be contained by such efforts.

Glowing embers fell like red snow on his hair, his shoulders, each one a stinging needle digging into his flesh. He slapped at the sparks as soon as they landed, all the while committing the scene to memory.

“The river will stop it, at least,” said a man behind Nate. The south branch of the Chicago River flowed between the West Division and the business district.

But no sooner had the hope been uttered than the steeple of St. Paul’s Church caught fire. Through clouds of smoke, Nate watched as showers of sparks blew through the sky, arcing directly into the heart of the city.

The fire was jumping the river.

Sylvie awoke to a pounding on her door, then listened as the noise echoed on Meg’s down the hall.

“There is devilment afoot.” Her father’s voice registered a constrained alarm.

Stepping into the hall, Sylvie found him pacing. “What’s wrong?”

The courthouse bell was ringing—without stopping. Church bells, too, sounded the alarm. An unnatural light spilled into the parlor. Sylvie ran to the window and peered out. The streets were full of people, all of them looking up, looking south to an orange sky as bright over that section of town as the morning sun.

“What is it?” Meg joined her, still rubbing her eyes.

“It’s—it’s the fire. Is it . . . ?” Sylvie leaned over the sill, as if that would help her get any closer to answers. Where exactly was it? How fast was it moving?

Stephen stood behind her. “It’s coming,” he said. “Mark me, it is coming this way.”

“You’re sure?” But her pulse was already galloping, telling her to run.

On the street below, a few fingers extended into the sky, pointing at something Sylvie couldn’t see. Then more people joined the first to observe. It wasn’t until she heard the screaming that she realized what it was. “Cinders.”

Meg gasped. They were falling like giant grey snowflakes all over Court House Square.

“It’s coming,” Stephen repeated, almost as if in a trance.

Sylvie whirled to face him. “We are standing above a store full of paper!” If the fire reached them, they could lose it all. “There is still time to save some inventory. As much of it as we can.”

Now it was Meg leaning out the window, calling to someone below. “Mr. Applebaum! Where are you taking that?”

“To the train station!” came the answer. “Take your valuables to the train station, and the cars will roll it out of the city until the danger has passed!”

Purpose surged through Sylvie. “That’s it,” she said. “Father, bring all the trunks and crates we own to the store. Meg and I will join you in a moment.”

Footsteps trampled overhead as the Spencers rushed into action as well. For a fleeting moment, Sylvie’s thoughts winged toward her friends, but she had to trust them and their families to God’s care. Surely they were awake, packing, running. God save us all.

Without another word, the girls rushed back to their chambers and dressed in their simplest shirtwaists and skirts. Hair still in their sleeping braids, they flew down the stairs and met Stephen.

“Rare books first,” Sylvie instructed, pointing to the shelf that held them.

When Stephen hesitated, Sylvie marched to stand before him and gripped just one of his hands in hers, holding fast even when he tried to withdraw. “Father, we need you now. Meg and I can’t save the store—our store, your store—alone. You’ve got to help us. We need every bit of you, all right? We can’t do this without you. Please help us.”

Perhaps she only imagined it, but it seemed to her that her words brought a grounding to his restless spirit and a softening to the hard edges of his face. He looked directly into her eyes as if seeing her in truth for the first time in years. “I’m here for you, daughter. I’m here for both of you.”

Sylvie’s relief was palpable but short-lived. Outside, horses pounded the streets as they pulled towering loads of goods. The urgency to be among them was overpowering.

“I’ll get the paintings.” Meg fetched a ladder from the back room while Sylvie dragged another trunk to the counter.

The cash register, the accounting books, the records of inventory purchased and sold, the list of vendors and customers—all of this went into the bottom of the trunk. On top she piled novels by Austen and Alcott, Brontë and Brontë, Dickens and Defoe, Homer and Hugo, until the trunk was nearly overflowing.

Desperation flickered over her as she looked around the store. They had only three other trunks, one of which ought to hold Meg’s paintings, and four wooden milk crates to fill. Forcing herself not to agonize over the titles, she blindly pulled them from the shelves.

Stephen lugged his burden of rare books to the front of the store. “I packed the repair tools too, as I’m sure we’ll have more need of that than ever before. We’ll need a wagon. . . .” His voice trailed off as he looked toward the window, and Sylvie could almost hear the protest sitting on his tongue. The people, the crowds, unnerved him. His reluctance was a tangible thing, a thickening of the air.

Meg climbed down the ladder and placed a portrait of Jo March in a crate. “If that would distress you too much, I suppose I could—”

“Don’t you dare,” Sylvie interrupted. All the times she had buried her disagreement in order to keep the peace seemed to gather with a building pressure in her chest. Anger burned through her, stunning her with its force.

Once again, Meg was making concessions for their father, and once again, it appeared that Stephen would let her. Deep down, there was a better person inside Sylvie, a woman of compassion and sympathy. But right now she was wearied to death of how Meg protected Stephen. Right now, there was a great deal more than his feelings at stake. It was time for him to protect and serve someone else. He’d done it for soldiers in his regiment. He’d done it for the sake of slaves and strangers. Could he not protect and serve his daughters too?

She swallowed the bitterness in her mouth before attempting to speak again. “Meg will be safer here with me, and more efficient too. While you’re getting whatever conveyance you find, we can finish packing the store and choose some valuables from the apartment.”

Seconds dropped away from the clock, every one of them precious. Stephen stood rooted in place, maddeningly motionless, when on the other side of the glass, the entire city had sprung into action, heads bowed, hair and skirts and nightdresses billowing behind them. Dogs plowed between people as they fled the danger, smart enough to do what her father refused to do.

“Go!” Sylvie shouted. “You said you would help us! Behave like a father for once this side of ten years!”

“Sylvie! You go too far!” The color draining from her face, Meg looked at Stephen, when she would be better served to look outside.

Guilt took aim at Sylvie, but she erected a barricade just as fast. “He will not go far enough, and you know it. He should go—not you, not me. He is stronger, and as a man, less likely to be taken advantage of.”

At that moment, Karl Hoffman from the bakery down the block passed by the shop door. Still shocked at her own outburst—but not sorry for it—Sylvie rushed to unlock the door and burst outside.

“Mr. Hoffman! Wait! Are you going to find a wagon or dray?”

He turned but barely slowed his pace. “Ja, where else?”

Casting one furious glance over her shoulder at Stephen, she told Mr. Hoffman, “My father will go with you.”

Stephen swallowed, then stepped forward, and Meg pressed money into his palm.

“Schnell! Hurry!” Mr. Hoffman called, his agitation evident in the use of his native tongue.

The bell above the door shook violently when Sylvie slammed it behind Stephen. Still steaming, she turned back to her sister. “It’s only fitting he should go instead of one of us.”

Meg moved between two shelves and out of view. “God will help us,” she said.

“God will help Father too,” Sylvie whispered so quietly she could not be heard. And yet tears of shame pricked her eyes over the words she’d used as weapons. As she hoped and prayed for his return, guilt dug in.

An explosion ripped through the night. Jumping, Sylvie covered her ears and stared in shock at Meg for a moment before running outside.

“Look!” someone shouted, pointing at an enormous ball of fire in the sky and columns of flame soaring straight up. “The gasworks have exploded.”

All at once, the little flames in the gas lamps along the street guttered and died out. There would be no light for those fleeing now except for illumination by fire. Worse, the gas released into the air was now fuel for an already raging inferno. Sylvie stared around her in dismay. How would their father, who could not handle crowds or loud noises, navigate this?