The Midwife's Tale (40 page)

“And you’re an incurable curmudgeon,” she teased. She rose from Will’s side and lifted Samuel’s hand away from the cloth he held to his forehead. When she tried to remove the cloth, dried blood held it fast. “Let me soak it a little,” she suggested.

He ripped the cloth away before she could stop him and opened up the gash again. Fresh blood oozed to the top of his right brow. “That helped,” she quipped. “You’ve opened the wound again.”

“Best way to clean it out,” he argued.

She cocked a brow. “According to whom?”

“Just do what you’re gonna do and leave me in peace.”

“That’s exactly what I had in mind,” she snapped as she inspected the wound. From the bruising around the small gash, she suspected he had smacked headlong into a fair-sized branch.
“You probably knocked the tree down,” she remarked as she washed his forehead.

“Got a right mind to do just that. Tomorrow. If I can find the danged thing again.”

She chuckled, made a poultice, and tied a strip of cotton around his head to hold the bandage in place. “That should do it. I’ll change it again in the morning.”

“What about Will?” he asked.

She hesitated. Taking him outside tonight in the cold might not be wise, but tomorrow would hardly be better. With his poor vision, Samuel would not be up to caring for the boy, so she had little choice but to take the boy home with her. “If you could carry him, I’d like to take him back to the tavern. That way, if I get called away, Lydia can keep an eye on him for me. Once he’s feeling better, I’m sure he’d want to be here with you,” she added.

Samuel clenched his fists. “You won’t send him back to Reverend Hampton?”

“No. Not until I find out from Will exactly what happened. I doubt Reverend Hampton knows what the other boys did. Even so, he won’t be bringing them all back to Trinity for another few weeks. Will can use the time to fully mend.”

Samuel rose from his seat. “I’ll talk to Reverend Hampton first before you give Will back to him. Pack your bag. I’ll get the boy ready.”

Within moments, Will was cradled in Samuel’s arms, still asleep and unaware he was being moved. Martha tugged the blankets tighter around his bare feet and tucked the end of the blanket between his knees and the crook of Samuel’s arm. As they approached the door, Martha heard an ominous sound that raised the hackles on the back of her neck. She paused, heard it again, and grabbed a firmer hold on Samuel’s arm.

“Did you hear it, too?” he asked.

She swallowed hard. “I heard it. We’d better hurry.”

She opened the door, saw the brilliant orange glow that lit the night sky, heard that awful sound again, and felt her entire body go numb. “It’s the fire bell,” she croaked, unable to stem the rising fear that she also knew exactly which building in Trinity was on fire.

32

M
artha stood in the doorway of Samuel’s cabin, transfixed by fear as an image of more horrendous proportions formed in her mind. The bits and pieces of Will’s ramblings fell into place next to the images of all of her interactions with Reverend Hampton.

Her mind raced back and forth through the recent past and collected snippets of her impressions of Reverend Hampton and his proclaimed intentions to minister to a motley crew of orphaned street urchins.

Boys. Treasure. Thefts. Fire. Was Reverend Hampton truly a minister? Or a Pied Piper, luring lost children into his lair, where he had transformed them into a ring of thieves? Was the fire an accident? Or a diversion?

She trembled as the truth dawned. With wisdom born too late to matter much now, she realized she had dismissed a healthy skepticism of the stranger who had used a collar and a gift for preaching to slip past her defenses. She no longer dismissed his
attitude toward the boys who managed to escape and run away, any more than she could justify his trips to surrounding towns for supplies instead of coming to Trinity. His reluctance to place Will under Samuel’s tutelage now took on ominous undertones.

“Hurry, Samuel! We haven’t got a moment to lose,” she urged. She feared she might be wrong, but she dreaded the greater possibility that she was right even more. After he got Will outside, she went back into the cabin, stuffed her slipper into her bag, and dragged the trunk with Samuel’s treasures outside. “We need to hide this. Quickly. Where?”

Samuel looked down at her for several long moments before his clouded gaze brightened, as if he had the same thoughts that troubled her. “In the outhouse.”

She set down her bag, dragged the trunk to the rear of the cabin, and stored it inside an outhouse that looked far too decrepit to be standing on its own. When she made her way back to Samuel, he nodded toward the path ahead. “I can take it slow and easy. Go on. Warn the others. I won’t let no harm come to the boy.”

She grabbed her bag and lifted her skirts with her other hand. “Take him to Dr. McMillan’s and tell Rosalind to put Will in the guest chamber upstairs. I’ll meet you there later,” she cried before she raced toward the fire in the distance.

A host of emotions pounded through her veins with every beat of her galloping heart. Anger, betrayal, and outrage dueled with her fears while pride in Will’s attempts to foil the nefarious plot against the people of Trinity kept her running long after the stitch in her side would have sent her to her knees. The blurry faces of the people she had trusted, in blind faith, jeered at her through her fears, but she had no time to waste on self-recrimination.

Not now.

Not when her home might be burning to the ground.

Once she reached the cemetery, her worst fears were confirmed.

The tavern was on fire. She paused to catch her breath and stared at the conflagration consuming the tavern her grandfather had built some sixty years ago. She could hear the shouts and cries of her friends and neighbors as they joined together to fight the fire set by either Reverend Hampton or one of the boys while the rest ransacked abandoned homes.

“James! Lydia!” she cried, and tossed her bag aside, praying her family, as well as the patrons in the tavern, had escaped. Concerned that the fire also posed a real threat to Grace and the other horses in the stable, she ran at full speed through the cemetery. When she reached East Main Street, the smoke was heavy enough to sting her eyes and ashes blew in her face. Straight ahead, men who were still dressed in formal clothes had formed a fire brigade and passed buckets of water up from Dillon’s Stream. Some of the women, their fancy gowns now ruined, stood in groups holding children back a safe distance, while others were down at the banks of the stream filling buckets with water and passing them up to the men.

She ran up to Fern and Ivy, who were watching several small children. “James and Lydia? Are they safe?”

“Thank mercy! No one was certain you got out alive. James is frantic, but he got everyone else out and cleared the stables, too,” Fern gushed.

“So is Lydia,” Ivy added. “They’re at Dr. McMillan’s office, but they’re not hurt. Only shaken,” she assured her.

Martha closed her eyes and said a quick prayer of thanksgiving before panic struck again. “The diaries! I’ve got to get the diaries!”

When Ivy reached out to keep her from getting any closer,
Martha shrugged free. “Tell James and Lydia I’m all right. Where’s Sheriff Myer? Or Thomas?”

“Up ahead, but don’t worry about the diaries,” Fern admonished.

“Fern, please take the children home with you and lock your doors. Ivy, tell the other women to do the same. Find the sheriff and tell him, too. I don’t have time to explain,” she shouted before running toward the tavern. She prayed Ivy or the sheriff or Thomas or someone would warn the townspeople their unguarded homes were being robbed, even as she ran forward to save her precious diaries.

The smoke became a thick fog that made it hard for her to see or breathe. The heat from the fire was so strong she thought the sun itself had fallen from the sky and landed on top of the tavern. Flames licked through the roof of the building like orange fingers clawing at the sky. She cupped her hand over her mouth and rushed past the men fighting a losing battle with the blaze to the back of the tavern, ignoring the men who screamed at her to stop.

Her room was fully ablaze. The door was open, just far enough that she could see there was still time to save her diaries. Choking, she ran into her room and grabbed her diary as well as the daybook for Victoria. The covers were singed and hot to the touch, even with her gloves on, but she tossed them into a basket of sorts she created with the folds of her skirts. Her eyes were tearing so badly she could barely see. She got to the other side of the room only seconds before a large timber fell precisely where she had been standing. Sobbing in frustration, she finally found the smoldering box containing her grandmother’s diary.

Without thinking beyond the possibility that the precious papers inside were still salvageable, she kicked the box to the door and outside. Struggling for fresh air, she lunged for the
door, but not before burning bundles of her herbs fell like a wreath and encircled her bonnet.

Fighting to free herself, she dropped her diary and Victoria’s daybook. She could feel the flames burning through her gloves as she dropped to her knees to search for her books. First one. Then the other. She shoved them outside and blindly crawled after them until a pair of strong arms lifted her off her hands and knees.

Thomas bellowed as he carried her to the back of the wagon yard. “Foolhardy woman! You could have been killed!”

She wriggled free and dropped to her feet with a thud that shook her bones. Struggling to remove her smoldering gloves, she shouted back at him. “My diaries! I shoved them outside. I have to find them!”

When she started back toward the tavern, or what was left of it, he braced a hand on each of her shoulders. “For heaven’s sake, stay here. I’ll find them.”

“I can’t lose them. Not now! Let me—”

“Stay here! I’ll get them.” He tightened his hold. “The longer we argue, the greater the chance they’ll be reduced to ashes,” he warned.

She slumped her shoulders. “Just be careful. There are three, all told.”

He left her standing there. When he returned moments later with her diary and the box with her grandmother’s papers, he laid them at her feet. “The other book was on fire. I’m sorry,” he murmured.

“Victoria’s daybook,” she whispered. Gone. Forever. Her disappointment was profound, but she still had room for some optimism. The fire might have claimed the daybook, but not the memories it contained or the wisdom she had found by making each entry. She could only pray Victoria would one day come
home so they could share the memories together and create new ones.

With her most irreplaceable possessions at her feet, she quickly explained her suspicions about the academy to Thomas. “Tell the others before it’s too late. Before . . . before . . .” The world around her began to swirl, and she caught his arm to keep from falling. The last thing she remembered before a wall of heavy silence fell and a curtain of darkness blanketed her world was the sound of the tavern roof caving in and the sight of her home being thoroughly consumed by flames.