Susan Wiggs - The Firebrand

As they drew closer to the river, she spied an elderly man struggling along the roadside with painful slowness. When a woman bumped him in her rush to the bridge, he stumbled.

“Driver, stop for a moment!” Lucy jumped out of the cart. “I’m going to give my seat to that gentleman,” she said. Phoebe opened her mouth to deliver the expected protest, but Lucy held up her hand. “Don’t waste time arguing,” she said, pulling the shaken, wheezing man to the cart and tucking a saddle blanket around him. “You’ve got to get across the river before the bridge gets even more crowded.”

“But if you do something noble, then I shall have to,” Phoebe wailed.

“Dear, you must stay with the cart,” Lucy said, accustomed to mollifying her friend. “The most noble thing you can do is hold fast to this gentleman and keep him in the cart. I’ll follow on foot.”

The elderly man shuddered and closed his eyes. Lucy put Phoebe’s arm around his shoulders and signaled to the driver to move on. Just then an earsplitting explosion knocked her to her knees. Phoebe squealed and the cart lurched forward, disappearing into a wall of boiling smoke. Someone shouted that a varnish factory had just exploded.

Lucy stayed down on hands and knees, trying to recover the breath that had been knocked out of her. Her lungs seized up, unable to fill. She was suffocating. Lightheaded, half-mad thoughts shot through her mind, but her air-starved brain couldn’t grasp them.

The firelit images around her left a trail through the night sky, like the tails of bright comets. The wind had an eerie voice all its own, keening through the flaming row of doomed buildings. Flying debris—paper, clothing, sheets of metal—littered the air. Everyone else had disappeared. The last of the stragglers had gone to the bridge and there was no one in sight. Focus, she told herself. She stared at a burning building across the way. She’d gone to the very exclusive Sterling House for tea a time or two, her stomach in knots from the lecture her mother had given her on acting like a lady, sipping her tea demurely, nodding in agreement with anything a man cared to say, keeping her scandalous opinions to herself.

She wasn’t sorry to see the last of that place.

What she saw next reinflated her lungs with a gasp of terror. The second-story window, the one she’d seen earlier, was now filled with flame—and a woman holding a bundle, screaming.

Without any conscious effort, Lucy propelled herself across the street.

The fire lashed out with a roar, its long tentacles of flame reaching for the hysterical woman trapped in the window, grasping her.

Lucy stood alone under the window, the heat singeing her eyebrows and lashes. She had no idea how to help the poor woman. The hotel entry was impassable, its doors blasted out by the flames, the marble lobby melting in the inferno. She looked around wildly for a ladder, a rope, anything.

The woman’s screaming spiked to a shrill peal of hysteria. Her dress or nightgown had caught fire. A second later, the screaming stopped. Then something fell from the window.

Simple reflex caused Lucy to hold out her arms. The impact knocked her to the pavement, and once again the air rushed from her lungs. A cracking sound, like the report of a shotgun, split the air. The walls of the hotel shook, and the roof caved in, sucking down the big glass dome, and then the flaming rubble of the building itself. The woman disappeared, swallowed like a pagan sacrifice into the devouring flames.

Lucy sensed a movement in the bundle she held, but there was no time to check. She forced herself to scramble to her feet. Still clutching the bedding, she ran for her life, hearing the swish of raining glass and the boom of gas lines igniting. With a glance over her shoulder, she saw a geyser of smoke and sparks where the hotel used to be. Racing to the river, she hurtled down the bank toward the water. She slipped in the mud, landed on her backside and slid downward into darkness. Firelight glimmered on the churning surface of the water, but the immediate area was sheltered from the flames.

Something buried within the bundle of bedding moved again.

Lucy shrieked and set it down. Planting her hands behind her, she crab-walked away.

Then she heard a sound, the mewing of a kitten.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said, disgusted with herself. “The poor woman was trying to save her cat.” What a noble deed, she thought. The woman must have known she could not survive the fire, and as her last act on earth she’d bundled up her pet and tossed it to a stranger for safekeeping.

Hurrying now, Lucy knelt down beside the untidy parcel. The least she could do for the doomed woman was look after the cat. Firelight fell over her, and she felt a fresh stab of panic, knowing she’d best get over the bridge to safety.

The bulky parcel had been tied with satin ribbons of good quality, a man’s leather belt and a long organdy sash. A lady’s robe or peignoir formed the outer wrapping, and inside that were two pillows, a quilt and what appeared to be an infant’s receiving blanket.

With more urgency than a child on Christmas morning, Lucy removed the wrappings, hoping the cat wouldn’t bolt once she freed it.

It didn’t bolt. It wasn’t a cat.

Lucy shrieked again, this time with surprise, not fear.

Her shriek caused the little creature to wail in terror, round mouth open like the maw of a hatchling wanting to be fed.

Except it wasn’t a hatchling, either. It was a baby. No, a toddler.

Lucy couldn’t speak, couldn’t even think. The firelight winked over the child, who kept wailing and pedaling chubby legs under a long pale gown.

“Oh, God,” Lucy whispered. “Oh, Lord above.” She could think of nothing more to say, and had no idea what to do. A baby. She’d saved somebody’s baby.

She couldn’t tell if it was male or female, though she saw with some relief that it was moving and bawling with great vigor. The fall from the window hadn’t hurt it in the least. It must be hardier than it looked, then.

“Who…what on earth am I going to do with you?” Lucy asked, looking the child in the eye.

Something in her tone or her look must have caught the baby’s attention, for it stopped crying and simply stared at her.

“Well?” she asked, encouraged.

The baby took a deep breath. Lucy actually thought it might speak to her, though she realized it was a very young child. Then it let loose with another wail. As she watched, it rolled over and crawled away, trailing the little blanket in the mud.

Lucy was completely at a loss. She’d never seen a baby up close before, but the sight of it, so helpless and lost, sparked a powerful instinct in her. She reached out and touched it, then tried to gather it up in her arms.

It was awkward, like trying to hold a wriggling litter of puppies, all waving limbs, surprisingly powerful.

“Come now,” Lucy said. “There, there.”

The baby quieted when she spoke, and stilled its flailing for a moment. The heated sky glowed ominously, and she knew she had to get them both to safety. When she stood, the child clung to her, its tiny hands clutching at her and its legs circling her waist.

“You poor thing,” she said, eyeing the burning sky. “We have to go. Once you’re safe, we’ll find out who you belong to.”

But in her heart of hearts, she already knew that the child’s mother had perished in the collapsing hotel. Somehow she would have to find its surviving family. Not now, though. Now, her challenge was to make her way to her parents’ home.

“Come along,” she said. Her hand curved around the baby’s head. The curly, fair hair was soft as down. “I’ll take care of you.” Keeping up a patter of encouraging words, she struggled with the ungainly burden of the child, climbing the riverbank toward the bridge. “You’ll be safe with me.”