From Waif to Gentleman's Wife

by Julia Justiss

D read curdled in Ned’s gut, banishing all other worries. Though the mill walls were stone, in a wooden-beamed, thatch-roofed building whose floors under the looms would, by this time on a work day, be covered by a fine snow of cotton fluff, a fire could spread swiftly. If that were not bad enough, stored all around were spools of cotton thread, boxes of finished goods ready to be sent to market and the looms themselves, skeletons of wood bound in a spider’s web of warp and woof, all fuel to feed, fan and spread the flames.

  ‘Get the fire wagon from the village!’ Ned commanded the rider, who’d slowed rather than pulled up his horse.‘On my way, sir!’ the man replied and spurred his mount.

  While the horseman galloped off, Ned turned to Davie and Mrs Merrill. Before he could utter a word, with a look she curtailed the instructions he’d been about to issue Davie to take her back to the safety of the manor. ‘Give me but a moment to fetch the medicine chest,’ she said as she hastened into the schoolhouse. ‘How glad I am now that I made one for the school, rather than relying on borrowing Mrs Winston’s from the manor!’

  He was left with nothing to add but a superfluous ‘Hurry’ before heading over to ready the gig. An instant later, she returned with the wooden box and handed it to Davie while Ned helped her up, then jumped in beside her to spring the horse.

  ‘I know you were working to refurbish the mill,’ she said as they jolted down the road at a breakneck pace. ‘Were there any workers within?’

  Grimly he pictured the eight looms on each floor—fully manned for the first time only this week. ‘If all the operators were at their stations, there might have been as many as sixteen.’ Those on the ground floor should have been able to exit quickly, but if the fire had been sudden, those on the first…

  Images flamed through his mind, so horrific he decided to try again to spare her. ‘After years of farming, I’m a dab hand at tending the sick. I’d feel much better, Mrs Merrill, if you’d let Davie drop me off and drive you to the manor.’

  ‘And abandon the workmen in such a desperate moment?’ she asked. ‘Unthinkable!’ Hands gripping the rails to maintain her balance in the lurching gig, she threw him a sideways glance. ‘Mr Greaves, though I appreciate your concern, I’ve been a soldier’s wife in an often hostile land. I’ve witnessed—and treated—wounds I’d rather not describe and probably have more experience than you at dealing with the injured…fervently as I am praying that such skill will not be necessary.’

  ‘Amen,’ Davie muttered.

  ‘Very well,’ Ned capitulated, knowing she was correct, despite his desire to save her sensibilities. ‘I shall be very grateful for your help.’

  After that brief exchange, they fell silent, all preoccupied, Ned assumed, by the same urgent questions that assailed him: Had all the workers got out? Were any seriously burned? Would there be anything salvageable left of the mill?

  Recalling accounts of factory fires he’d read about—and the aftermaths he’d witnessed—Ned tightened his jaw and applied the whip.

  Even the grim imaginings crowding his thoughts during that frantic transit couldn’t completely him distract from appreciating the sparks of a different sort produced each time Mrs Merrill’s body bumped and rubbed against his in the necessarily close quarters of the gig. All too soon, however, the acrid smell of smoke dislodged from his nostrils the spicy scent of her perfume. And as they neared the mill, they could see flames licking the sky above the tree line, while the sound of the fire increased to a greedy roar that drowned out the pounding of hoofs.

  The scene when they arrived was as bad as he’d envisioned. The lower level of the mill was engulfed in a conflagration that totally obscured the first storey. Wooden floors, frames and roofs succumbed to the flames in an explosion of cracks and hisses that provided a macabre accompaniment to the fire’s roar.

  He pulled up the gig and jumped out, then helped Mrs Merrill, who collected her medicine chest. Even here, more than a hundred feet away, the fire’s heat was staggering.

  Mill workers and men from the nearby farms had already formed a bucket brigade, drawing water from the well in the courtyard and handing it forwards to try to douse the flames, though the heat of the fire made it impossible to approach close enough for their efforts to have much effect. With the billowing smoke obscuring vision and the confused mass of people running about, as neighbours summoned by the passing rider continued to arrive, Ned couldn’t tell whether there was anyone injured.

  He recognised the man at the well, hauling up full buckets to pass down the line, as the farmer whose fields he’d just tended. ‘Mr Miller,’ he called, hurrying towards him, ‘did all the workmen get out?’

  ‘Don’t know for sure, sir,’ the farmer said. ‘The fire come up so quick, Perkins, who works the loom by the front door, told me the whole top storey was alight before those below knew what had happened. Young Tanner be working the loom upstairs at the far back. When we couldn’t account for him after his da got here a few minutes ago, weren’t nobody could keep Tanner from going in to try to find him.’

  Glancing back at the building aflame, Ned’s breath seized in his lungs. Praise the Lord in heaven, if the two men didn’t get out of there within seconds, they’d be doomed. But even as that realisation formed, in a gap between the flames near the front door flickered the image of a man stooped low, dragging someone behind him.

  If they could just get out before the wooden frame collapsed…

  In a single swift movement, Ned grabbed the bucket from Miller’s hands and dumped it over himself, then stripped off his soaked jacket and threw it over his head and shoulders as a shield. Setting off at a run, he headed for a stone shed beside the entrance where he’d stored one of the new fire-extinguishing machines his contraption-mad friend Hal had sent him.

  George Manby’s invention might provide him enough water to douse down the entryway so the men could escape—if the compressed air that made it work held its pressure. Sending another prayer to the Almighty that it would and that he could buy the men within enough time to get out, Ned activated the device and headed towards the door.

  After wetting down the flaming doorframe, he sprayed the last of his water over Tanner’s face and shoulders, then threw the device down and helped the coughing stonemason drag his inert son out of the building. Several of the bucket-handlers, having doused themselves like Ned, ran to help, while over the noise of the fire Ned heard the distant sound of church bells, announcing the departure of the fire wagon and summoning the villagers to come and assist.

  He was coughing himself by the time they deposited their burden near the safety of the well. Ned staggered upright to find Mrs Merrill at his side.

  ‘Are you uninjured?’ she asked, sounding as calm and composed as if they were sitting to dinner at the manor rather than standing near a raging conflagration. When, still unable to speak, he nodded, she immediately turned to Tanner and his son.

  ‘Sit, please, Mr Tanner,’ she said, indicating a spot beside the young man. ‘Your hands and face are heat-blistered. Have you any other injuries? If not, after I tend your son, I will cleanse them and apply a salve.’

  Attempting to reply, the older man produced only another fit of coughing before pointing to his offspring. Nodding, Mrs Merrill knelt in the dirt beside the young man and made a swift inspection. ‘I don’t find any burns more serious than your own,’ she told his father. ‘His heartbeat is strong and steady and his breathing not overly laboured. Once the fresh air clears his lungs, I believe he will come back to himself.’

  Having offered the father as much reassurance as she could, Mrs Merrill began washing away the soot and grit covering the young man’s face and hands.

  Throwing another glance at the burning building, Ned shook his head. ‘With the flames and heat so intense, I cannot imagine how you managed it,’ he croaked to Tanner, finally finding his voice, ‘Praise the good Lord that you were able to get him out.’

  ‘Praise…heaven indeed,’ the stonemason replied between coughs, his
own voice smoke-roughened. ‘Praise too…that the walls…be good stone…and the stairs…some distance from the flames.’

  Clapping the man on the shoulder, Ned turned to Perkins, the millworker who’d provided the first account of the blaze, who had trotted over to see about young Tanner.

  ‘Is everyone out now?’ Ned asked.

  ‘Aye, sir, all accounted for.’

  Looking back at the burning structure and realising there was little that he or the bucket brigade could do before the arrival of the fire wagon—and probably not much even then, he thought grimly, surveying the flames now soaring twenty feet beyond the rooftop—Ned turned his attention to the one useful task he could do.

  Discover as much as possible about the fire.

  ‘Mr Perkins, can you tell me how the fire started?’

  ‘Don’t really know, Mr Greaves. Those of us downstairs was attending to our weaving when Fuller and Bixby come pelting down the stairs, shouting about fire. Seemed like the roof above our heads went ablaze nearly as they spoke. Thought Tanner was right behind them…but by the time anyone realised he weren’t out, ’twas near impossible to go back in.’

  Perkins looked over at the grime-besmirched father. ‘Sorry, sir. We’d a gone right back up for him, if’n we’d known he were still there. But…’twas so confused, smoke everywhere and everyone shouting—’

  Tanner reached out a grimy hand to pat Perkins’s arm. ‘Understand,’ he croaked.

  ‘Powerful brave of you to go in after him,’ Perkins said. ‘Powerful brave of you, too, Mr Greaves,’ he added.

  Ned felt his already-reddened face warm with a heat that had nothing to do with the fire. Anxious to continue his enquiries, he waved off their praise and continued, ‘The flames came on suddenly, you said? What do you think started it?’

  Perkins shrugged. ‘Don’t rightly know, but Fuller might.’ He beckoned to a tall man Ned recognised as the most experienced of the weavers.

  Fuller left the group of bucket-wielders who, recognising as Ned had that their efforts were futile for the moment, now stood simply watching the flames. ‘Wish I could tell you how,’ he said, responding to Ned’s repeated query, ‘but it seemed I just looked up and it were everywhere.’

  ‘Might a spark have exploded out of the fireplace and set the dust under a loom afire?’ Ned asked.

  ‘Not under mine, nor any near me. We be careful about sweeping beneath them looms and putting the screen back every time the fire’s stoked. It seemed to come through the roof beams, though I admit, I didn’t stop to wonder on it, just lit out fast as I could with the flames chasing at our heels.’ Fuller frowned and shook his head. ‘Not ’til just now, talking with Bixby, did we think it odd that it come up so sudden, and from above.’

  At that moment, the unconscious young man whose burns Mrs Merrill was tending jerked to alertness and began coughing. His father leaping to assist her, Mrs Merrill helped him to a sitting position, while Bixby hurried to fetch him a drink of water.

  After thirstily downing the water between bouts of coughing, the boy waved away the cup. ‘Fire started…right in front of me…Roof just fell…already aburning…like flames come…out of the sky. Trapped me…behind the loom.’

  Before Ned had time to mull over the implications of young Tanner’s description, in a clanging of bells and thunder of hoofs, the fire wagon arrived.

  Abandoning the Tanners to Mrs Merrill’s competent care, Ned raced over, the other workers following him. Before the vehicle had come to a halt, they had the pumping machine unloaded, while others began rapidly filling buckets to dump into the holding container. Ned helped the men wheel the device as close as he dared to the burning building, then grabbed one of the pump handles while a second man took the one opposite and others manned the pedals.

  Frantically he forced the lever up and down, doing his part to spray gushes of water upwards on to the burning building. Though the water covered the front wall and a part of the roof, Ned feared the stream wouldn’t reach far enough to extinguish the flames on the back wall.

  Determined to save whatever he could, however, he renewed his efforts, waving away a worker who would have relieved him. Soon sweat soaked his body, his muscles burned and all he could taste or smell was smoke.

  As he continued the dogged but, he knew in his bones, ultimately doomed quest to salvage the building, anger and despair warred in his mind.

  Fire did not fall out of the sky. Had the mill been set ablaze deliberately?

  Suddenly he remembered the man who had harangued Mrs Merrill just before he and Davie had arrived. Was it only a coincidence that a stranger mouthing radical rhetoric had accosted her just a short time before the mill went up in flames?

  Had ‘Mr Hampton’ been responsible? But how could anyone be devious and uncaring enough to deliberately spark a blaze that had injured—and might well have killed—innocent workers?

  Fuller interrupted his thoughts with an offer to take his place. When Ned, compelled to continue doing as much as he could to combat the blaze, refused him, Fuller said quietly, ‘A real shame, Mr Greaves. You just got all the equipment in place and the men back to work—and now this. Blazing like it is, be lucky to save anything.’

  That comment needing no answer, Ned kept to his work.

  Finally, a timeless agony of aching muscles and frenzied effort later, with the well nearly dry and the flames reduced to an occasional crackle amid a steaming, smoking ruin, Ned and the other grimy, exhausted bucket handlers abandoned their efforts. Stoically Ned strolled over to survey the wreckage.

  The stone walls still stood and through the smoky haze, he could see charred hunks of framing from the floor and roof that had collapsed into the first storey. But even though it was still too hot to approach close enough for a thorough assessment, he knew that the weaving frames themselves, along with all the supplies and the finished goods awaiting transit, were a total loss.

  Five weeks of hard labour and a sizeable capital investment, lost in an hour.

  Too numb and weary to ponder the repercussions now, Ned turned his back and went to check on the injured. The only blessing in this catastrophe, he reflected, was that thanks to the bravery of the elder John Tanner, no precious life had been lost.

  The first thing he saw as he made his way through the crowd of people to the makeshift aid station was Mrs Merrill, kneeling beside a man on an improvised stretcher. Speaking in a low, soothing voice, she gently washed soot and blood from a wound over the man’s ear. Several other fire fighters who’d sustained burns, scrapes or bruises sat next to the Tanners, sipping water with bandaged hands.

  Mrs Merrill’s gown was muddy at the hem and liberally besmirched with dirt and soot, the straw of her bonnet had disappeared beneath a coating of fallen ash, and several strands of copper hair had escaped her braids to curl like feathers of flame across her soot-streaked cheek. But to Ned, she had never looked lovelier.

  People responded to her calming touch. Already she’d made herself valuable within the Blenhem Hill community, her efforts on their behalf accepted with respect and gratitude. A glow of affection and pride in her, in himself for his part in having the wisdom to keep her here, lightened the gloomy depths of his fatigue.

  She could be just as useful and valuable as chatelaine of his other properties, applying that competent, soothing touch to quell his ache of need and quench the flames of desire as skilfully as she was succouring the injured.

  Hanging on to that bright thought to counter the bleakness struggling to swamp his spirits, he went to kneel beside her.

  ‘How can I help?’

  She turned to smile at him and a jolt of connection zinged between them. As he had at the schoolhouse, he was suddenly overwhelmed by the compulsion to pull her into his arms—this time out of a need for comfort as well as from desire.

  She returned some answer about having enough assistants to fetch water, his frazzled wits barely registering her words as he struggled to submerge his craving. How long
could his steadily crumbling control resist that ever-more-powerful need?

  He shook his head, trying to refocus on the present. ‘How do all your patients?’

  ‘No severe burns, thank goodness. A few cuts from falling timbers and one of the weavers turned his ankle while escaping the blaze. The Tanners’ injuries are more serious, but if they do not develop a contagion of the lungs from the smoke, I believe they will both recover. This salve will do for their burns now, but if Mrs Winston doesn’t have carron oil in her medicine box, I must make some up, and obtain some silver nitrate from the apothecary in the village to continue their treatment.’

  She glanced over at the father and son, both reclining exhausted and pinch-faced against the side of a wagon. ‘Some laudanum for pain wouldn’t come amiss, either.’

  ‘I’ll send to town and make sure you have all the supplies you need.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked, angling her head to inspect him. ‘You’ve a cut over your eye.’

  Ned didn’t remember sustaining the injury. Now that she had called his attention to it, though, he realised his forehead did sting, a minor discomfort compared to battling the heat of the inferno.

  ‘Tis nothing,’ he assured her.

  ‘Nonetheless, it should be tended. Let me cleanse it for you.’

  Ned barely restrained a gasp as she leaned forwards to touch his face. Even through the smoke stench that clung to all of them, he still caught just a hint of her perfume. After a slight detour to make his heart lurch, the scent went straight to his loins, intensifying once again the longing he’d been trying to subdue.

  Despite his soggy, filthy garments, their position kneeling on muddy ground and the crowd all around them, Ned ached to place a kiss on the sweet curve of a mouth hovering so close to his own.

  Fortunately for his sanity and her reputation, a farmer emerged from the milling crowd and dropped to a crouch beside them, forcing Ned’s attention away from the intoxication of Mrs Merrill.

  ‘Mr Greaves, you know yet how the fire started?’ Miller asked.