Brookland (72 page)

The men turning the wheel began to spin it harder, and a more forceful stream bathed the bridge's trussing. Only a few moments before, it had seemed foolhardy to hope for a good outcome, but now the dark smoke billowed more copiously and the bright core of the fire began to contract. People whooped their encouragement. Prue understood she would not know until later how much of the Brooklyn lever had been lost, but it did not appear to be half; she tried to contain her worry and tell herself it would not be an entire year's work to rebuild. The charred tip of the lever continued to smolder, and the engine men kept the
stream of water upon it. Before the flames could be stanched, however, a shout arose from behind Prue. When she turned, she saw a mass of white flame where the rectifying house had been. The building's very shape had vanished; and it was so hot, no one was trying any longer to douse it, as it would have been too dangerous to approach those jumping, dancing flames. People stood back as if charmed, their buckets dangling from their hands. The horses in the stable, which stood between the warehouses and the abutment of the bridge, were whinnying madly, and someone hacked at the lock with an ax to free them. They bucked and thrashed their heads as they were led out, one by one, to the Shore Road. Prue saw poor Jolly go by, with the fire reflected in his wild eyes, and thought he was looking around for her, the one person who might convince him he was safe.

Suddenly a tendril of fire leapt across toward the casking house, which caught like a tinder stick. Some unlucky man stood in its way, and remained looking around him for a moment, his pants and shirt on fire, until another threw him to the ground and rolled him on the damp sand. They were both screaming. Shouts also came from the river, and the barge at last weighed anchor and began to lumber toward shore. The casking house was engulfed within moments, and the flames immediately began to lick at the near storehouse.

“Stand back!” Prue shouted to those near the building. They could not hear her over the ruckus from the river and the roar of the fire, but still she kept shouting. Those closest by her, realizing the hopelessness of her lone cry, began to echo it until it passed to those nearest the fire. They looked frantically for someplace suitable for retreat, and everyone else made way. As those closest to the storehouses scrambled back, the fire lit on the near one, and in a moment it was burning fast and hot. It was spectacular to see a thing consume itself so quickly; it nearly overwhelmed Prue with its terrible beauty. The flames spread to the other warehouse without pause, and thence to the shed that housed the timber for the bridge.

People continued to stream down to the waterfront, and the engine drew nearer the shore. It landed not far from where Prue stood, and immediately the men dragged the heavy hose up over the retaining wall and onto the strand. “Clear out!” they called, and everyone backed toward the cliffs. Phineas, still wrapped in the fireman's small coat, walked shivering
through the shallows to shore. Two other men rushed out to him and led him back by the elbows. The pump men again began turning the wheel, and the spray pushed at the fire. The men still struggled to contain the force of the hose. This fire seemed much hotter than that which smoldered on the bridge. Some noble souls continued to throw their buckets of water at the edges of the conflagration, as if those droplets could tame the raging beast. The firemen kept spraying the hose back and forth across the blaze, daring it to spread beyond its current confines.

Prue expected the whole distillery to go up, followed by the ropewalk, the ferries, her own house, and Isaiah's. If the fire did not then spread to the trees, Brooklyn as a whole would likely be safe, as there was considerable distance between the older houses. If it managed to cross the road from Isaiah's house to Olympia, however, it would devour the entire neighborhood, so tightly were the houses packed together. Prue felt sick with worry and guilt as she thought this, but as she did, the blaze began to succumb to the water. It still burned, but less fiercely, until at last it was chiefly burning embers and clouds of charcoal-black smoke, more foul in scent than anything she had yet known. If there was an Other Side, and if the damned were banished there, this would be their very air.

Prue stood for what seemed an age watching the men contain the fire. As the flames subsided into a quiet hiss, the firemen called out to their compatriots to slacken their pace on the wheel. The pressure in the hose lessened, and it began to drip onto the sand.

Prue could hear her own breathing for the first time since the fire had begun. When she looked around, she felt as if she'd wakened from a nightmare. Everyone was covered in sweat and grime, obscured by a thick haze of smoke, and her knees were shaking. A three-quarters moon hung in the starry sky, and despite the acrid smoke, illuminated the scene sufficiently to see.

“Miss Winship?” one of the firemen said to her, and held out his sooty hand to her through the dark mist.

She took it, though her whole body was trembling. “I can't thank you enough,” she said. “We should have lost everything without you.”

He glanced up at the ruined, smoking bridge. “You must keep an eye on it yet; but I believe it is contained. I can hardly believe no lives were lost.”

All around, people echoed his sentiment. “I can't thank you enough,”
she repeated. Her throat burned, and she could think of nothing more to say.

He nodded and wiped his dirty brow with the back of his equally dirty hand. “God grant you won't have need of us again.”

“I pray so,” she said, and others murmured assent. People were beginning to pull their ash-coated kerchiefs down from their sweating red faces and to sit down on the ground to rest, though the fire still smoldered.

The engine men slowly coiled the hose back onto the side of the great machine, and with bodies evidently aching with exhaustion, boarded it to row home. Though there was little light now, Prue saw Tem sitting a short distance off on the retaining wall, her head in her hands. “Who was burned?” Prue asked. “Where is he?”

“Elliott Fortune,” Abiah called to her. Prue's heart stopped beating a moment; it might as well have been her own father. “It's Mr. Fortune, Prue. He's here. He lives.”

Prue made her way through the crowd to him and, had she not been so shocked by the events of the evening thus far, would have begun to cry the moment she saw him. Abiah was beside him, squeezing well water over him from a bucket, using a piece of cloth torn from her skirt. Prue could not tell if he was wincing or smiling. “Mr. Fortune?” she said.

“No need to look so frightened,” he said, looking up at her. His face was unharmed, but even in the dim light she could see his hands were blistered; and where Abiah had unbuttoned his shirt, the skin also appeared raw and slick. “It's not so bad as it looks.”

Abiah shook her head as she kept trickling water on him. She said, “Dr. de Bouton will see him once we've got him home. I wanted to cool him off first.”

“I cannot abide the notion of your being injured, helping to save this distillery,” Prue said.

“No, never fear,” Fortune said, and winced over the latest application of water. “If naught else, I owed it to your father's memory.”

Prue looked around at the wreckage of so much of her father's dream. “Thank you,” she said.

Joe Loosely was at the outskirts of those gathered around. “If I were you,” he said, “I'd look into what Fischer had to do with this, is all I'll say”

Others standing around murmured. “Why so?” Prue asked. The thought had not even occurred to her.

Joe snorted and turned his head to the side. “Thirty-four years this distillery has stood on this property, and with all that combustible liquor, not a single blaze.”

“Perhaps we were overdue,” Prue said. She did not exactly believe this, but had no better theory.

Joe snorted again. “Then what explains the bridge? There wasn't any lightning this evening. I don't know what else could have set it off so hot and fierce.”

“I agree,” Simon Dufresne said.

Elliott Fortune said, “It's no time to think ill of our neighbors.”

Prue said, “Mr. Fischer would never—”

But someone was frantically calling, “Prue? Prue?” from the top of the hill. It was a man's voice, high with distress, and Prue did not at first recognize it. When he hoarsely called out, “Tem Winship?” however, she realized it was Will Severn.

Jens Luquer put his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Mr. Severn? What's the trouble?”

He did not answer, but ran down the hill toward the works. “Tem?” he said, as he began to move through the knot of people. They made way for him. He had not been standing in the smoke all that time; no doubt he could not see through it, despite the moonlight.

Tem rose from her spot on the retaining wall. “Here,” she said. She leaned over and spat into the river.

He ran toward her, but encountered Prue first and stopped, panting and leaning on his knees for support. “Heaven be praised,” he said, still catching his breath, “there is not so much damage as I'd imagined.”

“No thanks to you,” someone muttered, and another whistled to quiet him.

Will Severn continued to pant. “Prue. Tem,” he said. Tem came up behind her and put her hand on Prue's shoulder. “She's disappeared.”

Prue had inhaled the thick smoke for what seemed hours, but only at that moment did she feel herself unable to breathe.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “She was sitting by the hearth reading when I went up to bed. When I was roused by the bells, I looked all round the house for her, but she was gone. I would
have come to your aid, but I had to find her; and I've traveled the whole neighborhood, but she's nowhere. She's nowhere, Prue—her things are gone. Her clothes, Tem's keys—everything.”

Until he spoke, Prue had felt she had borne up as well as could be expected of a person. She had just lost a fair portion of the bridge for which she'd mortgaged all her property, and she'd lost every ounce of product her factory had produced in a year. Elliott Fortune might very well die of his burns and Phineas Bates of the influenza. But when Will Severn told her Pearl was missing, she thought she might at last come undone. She stood, aware of nothing but her breath and the sound of the river running, and afraid she might faint. But in a moment, a thought arose in her mind with the vigor of a bubble in the mash tun: Pearl had been responsible for all this. Even to think it felt like blasphemy, but Prue's imagination swiftly sought to connect the open storehouse door and the flaming bridge with the scraping sounds she'd heard earlier. She could not figure how her small sister might have rolled or dragged a cask of gin up the accessway's incline, but the image remained with her. When she tried to drive it from her, it continued to hover nearby.

There had to be another explanation. “This cannot be,” she said to Will Severn. To the crowd around her, she asked, “Has anyone seen my sister Pearl?”

People looked around before answering, “No.”

“No one?” Prue asked, though she knew the question was redundant.

The river continued to lick past, carrying off pieces of the bridge's debris. She did not think she could voice her suspicion of her own sister. It was bad enough to have thought such a thing, but it would be worse still to give it play in the world. What choice did she have, however? Something must be done: Pearl was unaccounted for, and all the assembled people were waiting for her to speak.

“I wonder . . .” she began, but found her dry, sooty tongue unwilling to complete the work. She cleared her throat, and went on, “I wonder if my sister might have had aught to do with this fire?”

Will Severn said, “No,” and around him people called out their confusion and concern.

“Prue,” Peg Dufresne said, “that's not possible.”

Prue wished with all her heart Peg was correct. She said, “I believe it may be. I believe . . .” she began, but again words failed her, and she lost
her train of thought. Though her body felt parched all the way through, there were hot tears behind her eyes and in her throat. “My sister has had some reason for anger toward me of late, and likewise of anger toward the bridge and the distillery.” To admit this before all the assembled company mortified Prue, yet the words came out more easily than she might have supposed. “You all know her to be of a kind disposition; but I believe it would be unwise not to consider her disappearance as somehow connected to this evening's terrible events.” Pearl had the keys to the buildings; this would account for the open storehouse door. A missing cask of gin would explain the fire on the bridge. These facts were unbearable, given the misery the night had brought, and Prue wondered if she might erase them from her memory.

All around, people were frowning or kicking at the sand as if she'd said something inane. Only Tem answered her. “Very well,” she said, “I see your reasons; but what, then? Do you suppose she ran off? Or what do you think? She fell in the river?”

Prue turned to regard her, and saw Pearl's very face, grimy and exhausted, looking back at her in the moonlight. “Perhaps we should . . .” she began, but felt her mind veering toward another, more awful possibility: that Pearl might have jumped. Then she turned from this explanation, as it was too frightful to bear. “Perhaps we should send out riders.”

“We should dredge the river, that's what,” said Simon Dufresne. “If she's fallen in, there might yet be the chance of saving her, but not for long.”

Prue said to Tem, “She must have walked off, or asked a ride of a passing carriage.”

Will Severn began to weep.

Simon said, “Reverend, excuse me, it's no time for tears. If Pearl is in Buttermilk Channel, she may yet be alive. We need to drag it now.”

Prue's neighbors looked as tired as she felt, and the embers were still smoking all around.