“You too noisy,” she said accusingly to her mother. “You woke me up!”
Brianna repressed the urge to say, “You can sleep when you’re dead,” and instead grabbed Esmeralda and shoved her into Mandy’s arms. She could hear Roger, behind her, trying to rouse Jemmy, who was dead to the world and planned to stay that way. “Come on,” she said to Mandy, who was slowly picking some sort of fuzz off her shift. “You can do that later. Hold on!”
With Mandy whining and clinging to her neck like a cranky gibbon and Esmeralda a solid lump mashed between them, she made her way one-handed backward down the ladder, bare toes curling to keep a grip on the foot-worn rungs. The smell of smoke was stronger now, but not choking, not yet … Tendrils rose past her toward the ceiling, coiling in slow-growing clouds under the beams as she looked up.
“Get out, get out!” someone was bellowing, louder than the rest, and as she hit the bottom of the ladder and turned, she saw Germain, wild with fear and furious with it, pulling one of his screaming sisters—by her hair—toward the door, kicking at the other who was scrambling round on the floor, evidently looking for something. “Va-t’en, j’ai dit!” he was shouting. “Move, salope! MOVE!”
“Germain!”
Marsali, white-faced, had both babies in her arms, a leather bag pressed between them. Germain heard her and turned, his face ten years older than he was, drawn with terror and determination.
“Je ne laisserai pas ça se reproduire,” he said to Marsali, and shoved Félicité hard toward the door, then bent and yanked Joanie off the floor, wrestling her outside as she wailed and struggled. There was a sudden loud crack and a thump; Brianna turned to see Roger and Jem in a heap on the floor, the ladder skewed sideways, a rung hanging loose where it had given way under their combined weights.
“Get up, Da! Mama, Mama!” Jem ran to her and clung. She grabbed him with one arm and hugged him hard, then let go and pushed him toward the open door. Damp night air whooshed into the room, a welcome freshness—and an instant danger, Bree saw, seeing the smoke whirl up in a frenzy as the cold air touched it. Roger was crouched on one knee at the foot of the ladder, trying to stand.
“Take Mandy outside,” she said to Jem, who was standing in the middle of the floor, looking lost. “Now.” And thrusting Mandy and Esmeralda into his arms, she ran to Roger and grabbed his arm, got a shoulder under it, and managed somehow to get him on his feet, and then they were shuffling and staggering like people in a three-legged race, bumping off counters and knocking over tables, books, papers …
My God, the whole place will go up like a torch …
And then they were outside in the street, all of them coughing, crying, touching each other, counting noses again and again.
“Where’s Fergus?” Roger asked, his voice rasping.
ROGER FOUND FERGUS a few moments later, at the back of the printshop, stamping out the last fragments of a small fire that had been built against the back door. The door itself was charred at the bottom, but the only remaining traces of the fire were a large black spot on the ground, a few scattered chunks of graying ember, and a small cloud of ashes and flecks of half-burnt paper that flew around Fergus’s stamping feet like a cloud of black-and-white moths.
“Merde,” Fergus said, noticing Roger.
“Mais oui,” Roger replied, coughing slightly from the drifting smoke. “One of your competitors?” He nodded at the half-burnt door, where someone had painted the words NEXT TIME in dripping whitewash.
Fergus shook his head, teeth clenched. His hair was standing on end and, like Roger, he wore nothing but a nightshirt, though he’d had the presence of mind to put on his boots before running outside. The fire was out, but Roger felt the heat from the smoking door on his bare legs.
“Loyalists,” Fergus said briefly, and coughed hard. Roger felt the tickle of smoke in his own throat and cleared it hard in hopes of quelling it; coughing still hurt.
“Marsali and Bree and the wee’uns are all right,” Roger said. Fergus nodded, cleared his throat, and spat into the ashes.
“I know,” he said, with a slight relaxation of his hard-lined face. “I heard them cursing. Les femmes sauvages.”
Roger hadn’t noticed the cursing, but he didn’t doubt it.
“Have they tried before?” he asked, lifting his chin at the paint-smeared door. Fergus lifted one shoulder in a Gallic shrug.
“Letters. Filth. A bag full of dead rats. Another bag with a live serpent—luckily it was a rattlesnake and not a cottonmouth. Marsali heard it before she picked the bag up.”
“Jesus Christ.” It was something between a curse and a prayer, and Fergus nodded, appreciating both.
“Les enfants savent qu’il ne faut rien toucher près de la porte,” he said matter-of-factly. He took a deep, slow breath and shook his head at the door. “This is—” His lips tightened and he glanced at Roger. “You know—milady and milord told you, I expect. What … happened to our little one. Henri-Christian.” The name came hesitantly, as though it had been a long time since Fergus had spoken it aloud.
“I do,” Roger said, a lump in his throat making the words come out low and choked. He cleared it, hard. “Fucking cowardly wankers!”
“If you care to call them that.” Fergus was white around the mouth. “Cowards, certainly. Canaille!” He kicked the door so hard that it juddered in its frame. Recovering from shock and panic, Roger found his own anger rising.
“Those shits! Setting a fire where your family lives, your kids!” And mine …
“As a warning, it’s much more effective than anonymous notes pushed under the door.” Fergus was breathing heavily and stopped to cough, shaking his head. He glared at Roger, eyes bloodshot with smoke. “If I find out who did this, I will tie them in a sack, row them out to sea, and throw them alive to the sharks, I swear it by the name of God and la Virgine.”
“I’ll help ye do it.” He’d have to, he thought; Fergus couldn’t row with one hand.
“Merci.” Fergus glanced bleakly at the corner of the house; the shrieks and crying of frightened children in the street on the other side had died down, smothered in the sounds of running footsteps and exclamations. “I will find out,” he said, suddenly calm. “But now I must go to Marsali.” Jesus, what the thought of another fire will have done to him and Marsali … the little girls … He felt his blood go cold in his veins at the thought. Fergus was watching his face. He nodded, his own face sober now, and together they went to find their wives and children.
THERE WAS A lot of clishmaclaver going on outside the printshop. Dawn was an hour off and there was barely enough light to see Marsali and Bree and all the kids, withdrawn to the far side of the street and huddled together in the dark like a herd of small bison.
Germain, with Jemmy stoutly by his side, was standing in front of the women and children, fists clenched and his face, too, looking as though he couldn’t decide whether to cry or pound somebody. Fergus exhaled through his teeth, clapped Germain on the shoulder, and went to take one of the twins from Marsali, who had them both in a death grip. Fergus said something very quiet to her in French, and Roger turned tactfully to Bree, who had sat down on the wooden sidewalk and gathered all three little girls around her. Fizzy was clinging to Bree’s shift and sniffing, and Joanie, who tended to be practical, was braiding Mandy’s hair.