Unholy Fire

by Robert J. Mrazek

  After reaching the chair, I paused to rest for a moment and then hobbled over to the red door. It opened into another empty room, this one decorated in dark blue. There was another door at the far end of it. It was painted blue. Although that door was also closed, I could now hear what sounded like a band performing in the room beyond. It was playing a slow rendition of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again.”

  As I lurched toward the blue door, it was opened from the other side. A young man wearing a white steward’s jacket stepped into the room. He was carrying a silver tray full of empty glasses suspended over his right hand. Upon seeing me, he lost his balance, and the tray sailed out of his hand, crashing to the floor.

  I trudged past him through the open doorway into the next room. Unlike the first two, this one was large enough to hold a Roman legion. It ran all the way from the back to the front of the mansion. Interspersed with the magnificent ten-foot-high windows were life-size oil paintings of past presidents. Gigantic crystal chandeliers hung from the high ceiling, casting a warm golden glow over the crowd assembled there for the awards ceremony.

  I looked for the president and saw him immediately, his tall, spare frame towering over the others at the far end of the room. He was slowly working his way down a receiving line of men in uniform. There were about twenty of them, officers and enlisted men from every branch of the military, proudly standing side by side at attention. I looked for General Hathaway, but could not see him in his wheelchair through the crowd of onlookers.

  There was no simple way to warn the president of his mortal danger. A military band in bright orange tunics was compacted into the space directly ahead of me, their backs to the corner where I was standing. Beyond the band several hundred guests were observing the ceremony. Most of the women were seated in the rows of spindle-back chairs that ran the entire width of the ballroom. A majority of the men were standing in smoke-wreathed clusters around the spittoons and ashtrays that were conveniently deployed across the open floor and along both walls.

  The first challenge was to get past the band, and my strength was ebbing away with each passing second. I plunged forward through the woodwinds, knocking over two music stands, and drawing dirty looks from all the musicians in my path. To their credit they continued playing without the loss of a note, even making a smooth transition into “When This Cruel War Is Over.”

  The men standing near the spittoons turned to stare at me as I reeled past them across the ballroom floor. Seeing me wrapped in bandages and dressed in army trousers and boots, they may have thought I had been sent straight on from the battlefield to receive my commendation. It was too late to matter. Looking down, I saw a spreading stain of red on my chest.

  President Lincoln was spending a few moments with each man before he presented him with his award. As he shook the hand of a cavalryman in a cherry-picker jacket, I could see that he was already about halfway down the receiving line. Although Sam was seated too low in his wheelchair for me to see him through the crowd, I realized that he must be the last one in line.

  A narrow aisle along the side wall allowed me to bypass the rows of chairs, and I headed toward the end of the receiving line at the front of the room. Wobbling forward, I placed one boot in front of the other like a stiff-legged mechanical toy, maneuvering around the backs of the men blocking the aisle. At one point I blundered into a chair at the end of one of the rows, almost landing in the lap of an elderly man wearing a white suit.

  “I believe you are wounded, sir,” he said in a kindly way, as my fingers left a large blood smear on the sleeve of his coat.

  Dizzy and disoriented, I felt as if the last measure of blood was spilling out of my chest. Although I willed myself to continue struggling toward the receiving line, my legs would no longer cooperate.

  I froze there in the side aisle, hunched forward. Fifty feet still separated me from President Lincoln. That is when I looked to the end of the receiving line and saw Sam in his wheelchair, about halfway to the president.

  He was staring straight back at me. I knew what he was thinking, even though the placid expression on his bespectacled face never changed. He was gauging whether I had the strength to reach him before he had his opportunity to shoot the president. Both of his hands were resting on his lap. A blanket covered his knees. His Colt revolver had to be under the blanket.

  At first it appeared that he was effectively trapped at the end of the receiving line. The other honorees were standing with their backs no more than a foot away from the wall, and with the dense, milling crowd in front of them, it looked impossible for Sam to move his chair any closer to the president. From where he was seated, he did not yet have a clear shot at him.

  The president had his back to the crowd and was talking animatedly to a naval officer when I saw Sam pivot the wheelchair toward the young private standing next to him in the receiving line. He was ordering him to do something, and a moment later, the private took a step forward. As soon as he did so, Sam moved his chair through the narrow gap along the wall until he reached the next soldier. Now, only seven honorees separated him from Mr. Lincoln.

  The president had finished shaking the naval officer’s hand. He moved two steps to the left until he was facing the next man in line. In that time General Hathaway had moved another man closer.

  I knew that I could very well change the course of my nation’s history if I could just stay conscious long enough to act. It was this immutable reality that gave me the strength to go on. Using the arms and shoulders of the men standing ahead of me for support, I forced myself to move forward once more, slowly closing the gap.

  Reaching the front of the room, I swerved right to force a passage through the last cluster of guests standing next to the receiving line. By then Sam had already moved past two more of the men who had been ahead of him and was within ten feet of the president. The general swung his head around just long enough to see me closing in before pivoting back to order another soldier out of his way.

  Pushing through the last group of guests, I hugged the ivory-colored wall behind the receiving line, leaving behind a chest-high stain of red as I lurched toward Sam’s chair. I was no more than five feet away from him when he swung back again and saw me coming.

  Smoothly wheeling the chair sideways, his right hand disappeared beneath the blanket for a second, coming right back up with the revolver. He cocked the hammer and trained it on me, all the while looking in the direction of the president. His movements were masked from the crowd by the honorees standing close beside him, both of whom were watching Mr. Lincoln as he stepped toward them.

  Looking past Sam, I saw that President Lincoln was no more than five feet away. In another moment Sam would have a clear shot. As I covered the last few yards between us, he turned away from the president, and his eyes came to rest on mine. He could have killed me then and still completed his deadly mission.

  Behind the spectacles his eyes seemed as tranquil as I imagined them to be when he had led his men toward the Rebel artillery at Williamsburg with an umbrella under his arm. I waited for the gun to explode in his hand, but for some reason he never pulled the trigger. I launched myself the last few feet and toppled over onto his chair.

  There was no fight left in me. It was only my size and weight that kept him from acting as he wished. I tried to lock my fingers around the wrist of his shooting hand, but they possessed no strength. From three inches away, I watched as the barrel of his revolver pulled free.

  The band had suddenly stopped playing. There was dead silence for a moment, and then people began shouting from all over the room. As I looked up across Sam’s right shoulder, I saw the president being pulled back from the receiving line by John Hay. The young aide was frantically whispering something into his ear as he dragged him along. They were already twenty feet away and lengthening the gap with every stride.

  Even then Sam could have killed me as easily as he had dispatched Laird Hawkinshield. My last coherent recollection was of the expressio
n on his face, the haunted look of a soul from hell, as the barrel moved slowly past my eyes again and came to rest above his heart.

  “God forgive me,” he whispered, just before the gun exploded.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Monhegan Island, Maine

  December 24, 1920

  A frozen curtain of salt-crusted ocean spray covered my study windows like tattered lace, but there was enough rum in me to think I could almost see the coast of Ireland two thousand miles across the Atlantic.

  Close to the edge of the cliff, a black-backed gull hovered motionless in the wind, screaming raucously for my attention. Above him, the darkening sky was filled with low, sodden clouds that threatened more snow. The island was already buried under three feet of it.

  I hadn’t moved from my easy chair in the study all day. The fire had gone out some time during the night, and I could see my breath condensing in the frosty air. As the wind growled down the chimney, I briefly considered the idea of going outside for more wood. Instead, I reached down and took another swig of dark rum.

  At some point I drifted off to sleep. When I opened my bleary eyes, it was to the sight of a man furiously digging a path through the snow toward my cottage. The drifts were almost eight feet high along one stretch of the cliff path, but he began tunneling straight through it. A second figure was bringing up the rear, dragging a sled.

  My first instinct was to run, but even to my rum-soaked brain, the idea that someone was still searching for me was ludicrous. I waited for what fate had in store. Ten minutes later I heard raised voices outside the kitchen window, followed by a shrieking blast of wind as the door swung open and slammed hard against the inside wall.

  The first man through the opening was George Cabot. Although he was covered with snow, I recognized him by the bright red beard that protruded almost a foot beneath his yellow sou’wester. The second man was wearing a hooded leather cloak over corduroy trousers and calf-length boots. It was only when he removed the cloak that I was startled to discover he was a woman.

  “Happy Christmas!” she proclaimed in a booming voice, her short, blonde hair framing the blunt face like a Viking helmet. She headed straight to my chair and proceeded to wrap me in her arms. I didn’t have the energy to protest. Stepping away, she took in the bewilderment in my eyes.

  “I’m Nancy Hollowell,” she said. “Barbara’s daughter.”

  Nancy Hollowell was my only living relative, the daughter of my late niece. Although I had never met her, I instinctively knew why she was there. By the time Cabot was finished hauling in the supplies, there was enough food stacked in the kitchen to feed me for a month. It included two fresh hams, a massive round brick of cheddar cheese, tinned fruits, a cask full of shortbread cookies, a mixed case of French wines, and a crate of fresh citrus. It suddenly occurred to me that she wasn’t planning to leave.

  “You can’t stay here,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

  “Of course, I can,” she replied, as if it was her own home. “I’ve come all the way from Washington, and I’m not about to be put out in the middle of a blizzard because someone has a false sense of modesty.”

  “You cannot stay here,” I protested again. If I had possessed the strength, I would have hauled myself out of the chair and herded her out the door.

  “I will not be bullied, Uncle.”

  George Cabot was carrying in a fresh supply of wood. After building a new fire, he began scuffing his boots back and forth on the study carpet, clearly anxious to be on his way. It being Christmas Eve, he wanted to be home with his family before the storm hit with full fury.

  “Please wait here a moment, Mr. Cabot,” she said, going back into the kitchen to retrieve one of her bags.

  Cabot leaned in close to me and said, “You’re not going to believe this, but that lady crossed over from Port Clyde this morning in the teeth of a force five gale. Ed Barstow refused to come across on his regular run, so she paid one of the lobstermen over there to bring her out in an old twin-masted Hampton. She was sick the whole twelve miles.”

  From the tone of his voice, it was clear he thought she was daft. Returning from the kitchen, she handed him fifty dollars, which on the island was a king’s ransom. I’m sure it just confirmed to him that she was a lunatic. She saw him to the door, saying she would come by to make arrangements for our passage back to the mainland after the storm abated. When she came toward me again, I saw that her face was gray and sunken from vomiting.

  “The little boat was leaping under our feet like a wild horse,” she said, with a ghastly smile, as if her brave words could somehow blot out the memory of the dangerous passage. “I’ve never been on a craft that was pitching and rolling at the same time.”

  My dark mood must have registered plainly on my face because the next thing she said was, “It won’t serve any good purpose for you to be angry with me. I am here, and here I will stay.”

  She went to the fire and proceeded to rub the circulation back into her arms while standing with her back to the hearth.

  “Why are you here, Nancy?” I demanded.

  “You know why I’m here.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “Because you’re dying,” she said without a pause.

  “One of the island busybodies wrote you, I suppose. They have nothing better …”

  “Dr. Boynton wired me three days ago,” she said, interrupting me. “He said that you had cancer, and that it had spread to your major organs.”

  “You don’t mince words, do you?” I said, glaring back at her.

  “When was the last time you ate?” she asked.

  “This morning,” I lied.

  “That would be quite a feat considering there was no food in the cottage. I am making you dinner.”

  I turned my head away in disgust.

  “You might at least evidence some small sign of pleasure at the thought that I’ve come all this way to see you,” she said.

  At that moment it was all I could do not to tell her that having one living relative was far too many as far as I was concerned. But I held my tongue as her eyes wandered toward the bookshelves that covered the opposite wall. A moment later she was across the room and poring over the books that were crammed into every inch of space.

  “Don’t you have anything published within the last two hundred years?” she asked, without turning around.

  As it happened, the study library was devoted entirely to the ancients. I wasn’t about to tell her that every other room was filled with books as well. Leafing through a French edition of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, she looked up and smiled.

  “Books can make good friends sometimes, can’t they?”

  In truth, they were my only friends now.

  “More than half of these are written in French,” she said next. “You must be very fluent.”

  “I’m not,” I said abruptly.

  With those words, I felt a hot stab of agonizing pain in the pit of my stomach. The attacks were coming more frequently now, sometimes striking like a sudden blow to the kidneys, other times like the cut of a serrated knife to the wall of my abdomen. I willed myself to remain seated in the chair, leaning forward slightly, breathing slowly in and out.

  “How bad is the pain?” she said.

  “What pain?”

  “You’re sweating like a coal passer,” she said, “and it happens to be freezing in here.”

  I picked up the bottle of rum from the floor next to my chair and took another deep swallow.

  “That’s your medication?” she said.

  “Better than most,” I declared. “Would you like some?”

  “As a matter of fact, I would,” she said, reaching down to take the bottle out of my hands, and tipping it to her mouth.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  I watched the color come back into her cheeks.

  “I brought a supply of morphine with me,” she said.

  “I haven’t enjoyed the use of opiates in sixty years,
” I said, “and don’t plan to start again now.”

  That seemed to take her back a little.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  “No,” I said, truthfully.

  “Well, I am,” she replied. “I haven’t eaten since early this morning, and I gave that back to the sea.”

  Through the kitchen door, I watched her carve a section of the fresh ham, putting a tidbit in her mouth now and then while she prepared the rest of the meal. Whatever other talents she might possess, she certainly knew her way around a kitchen.

  I felt the pain begin to subside in my abdomen. Outside, the rising wind howled and groaned as it fought to penetrate every crack or fissure around the window frames. Although the cottage had been constructed from massive spruce logs at the turn of the eighteenth century, it had been exposed to constant buffeting from gales and hurricanes and creaked like an old ship.

  While she prepared the meal, I limped up to my bedroom. It was all I could do to confront the wall mirror, but the result wasn’t as bad as I expected. My color wasn’t any better, but my eyes were clear, and my hand didn’t shake while I shaved. I felt better after washing up and went back downstairs.

  The food she had prepared smelled wonderful, and when she invited me to join her, I did so. We sat at the scarred old library table in the study and ate her meal, washing it down with half a bottle of wine. At one point I looked up to see her examining me with the same intensity that a research biologist might study an amoeba under the microscope.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I think you have a very distinguished face.”

  “How old are you?” I asked.

  “Thirty-seven,” she said.

  “Do you have a husband?”

  “I’ve had several,” she responded. “None at present.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “I doubt if you do. I made the mistake of marrying men who saw me as only an appendage, someone who was supposed to stand by their side looking up at them adoringly and batting my eyelashes as if each word they uttered was a pearl of wisdom.”