“Mistress!”
“Mister Henderson!”
“Come quickly!”
With those and other cries, the manor children burst into the hall. They were led, as always, by Tom, Cook’s redheaded son. He rushed straight to the main table, his gaze locked on Catriona’s face. “It’s the blacksmith’s house, mistress. It’s burning!”
“Burning?” Rising, Catriona stared down at Tom. “But . . .” She frowned. “It can’t be.”
Tom bobbed his head urgently. “It is, mistress! Flames leaping into the sky, an’ all.”
Everyone rushed to see. Wide-eyed, Catriona halted on the back step and saw that Tom hadn’t lied. The blacksmith’s small house, wedged between the forge and the granary, was alight. Angry red flames licked over the wood and stone building, engulfing it from the rear. Beyond, out of sight behind the house, lay open pigpens, presently empty.
As they watched, the flames caught better hold and roared, throwing red sparks high.
Within seconds, the stable yard was a scene of confusion. Pandemonium reigned. People ran this way, then that, bumping into each other and cursing, some running to fetch pails others had already grabbed.
Dragging in a breath, Catriona lifted her head. “Henderson—you and the stablelads to the pump. Huggins, check the stable. Irons, where are you?”
The big blacksmith, a dripping pail in his hand, raised his arm. “Here, ma’am.”
“You and all the men start dousing the fire.”
“Aye, ma’am.”
“All the women—into the kitchens. Grab whatever will hold most water.”
They streamed past her; she heard the clatter as the huge pots and pans were collected. They all helped, even Algaria—a deep jam pot gripped tightly, she flung water onto the burning building.
Down on the cobbles, her face lit by the garish glow, Catriona monitored their frantic efforts. Huggins came puffing up. “The horses and animals are well enough—I’ve left two lads with them.”
Her eyes on the flames rising above the cottage, then fanning over to embrace it from behind, Catriona grabbed his arm; she had to scream for him to hear. “Take half the men and start throwing water onto the back. That’s where the source is.”
Huggins nodded and went. Catriona coughed as billowing smoke gripped her throat. Turning, she surveyed the yard—there was a large crowd waiting, buckets, pails, pots and pans in hand, around the pump. It wasn’t hard to guess the problem. The roads had cleared, but it was a long way from spring—the main snows on Merrick had yet to melt, so the river was still at its winter ebb. Only a gentle gush came up through the pump, enough for daily needs, but not enough to fight a fire.
A hot roar at her back had Catriona whirling; she backed as heat hit her like a surging wave.
Sparks and cinders rained down—a real danger for those running close to throw their precious water on the fire. Then came a loud crack!—a beam exploded; flaming debris showered down, driving everyone back.
Gasping, Catriona found herself cowering protectively over Tom. “Blankets!” Tom looked up at her—she shook his shoulder. “We need blankets to beat out the sparks. Get the others and fetch the horse blankets from the tack room.”
Tom nodded and fled, shrieking through the din for his cohorts to follow him. They did, an unruly band streaking for the stables. They returned in double time, staggering under the weight of the heavy blankets balanced across their arms. Catriona grabbed one and started beating out the flaming cinders. Other women saw and did the same.
Huggins and his band had reached the back of the house; Catriona heard them bellowing for more help. Brushing the back of her hand over her flushed forehead, she looked around. “Jem, Joshua!—take your pails to the back.”
They nodded and changed course around the side of the forge.
In the yard, everyone redoubled their efforts, trying to fill the gaps left by those who’d gone to the other front. But the pump would yield only so much. Glancing back through the swirling smoke, Catriona saw Irons had stripped off his shirt and was now bending his back to the pump handle. Henderson was slumped, wheezing, on the water trough—now empty.
“Lady!”
Catriona turned at the tug on her sleeve. Huggins, doubled over and panting, struggling to catch his breath, grimaced up at her.
“ ’Twas the woodpile behind the house—that’s where it started.” He paused to drag in another breath, his eyes going to the fiercely burning cottage. “We can douse the pile, but it’s almost ashes now. But that won’t stop it. The flames have got a good hold on the back wall, particularly on those big lintel beams across the back.”
Following his nod, Catriona stared at the huge wooden beams that crossed the cottage, one above the door and window, separating the ground floor from the first, and the other above the first floor, supporting the roof timbers. Matching beams spanned the back.
“It’s going to go.” Huggins shook his head and slumped forward again. “We can’t reach those big beams, and we haven’t got enough water even if we could. It’s an inferno, up there.”
Catriona stared at the greedy flames, then dragged in a huge breath. She coughed and took a firm grip on her wits. And ignored the fright licking at her nerves. “All right.” She squeezed Huggins’s arm, sending him a little of her hard-won calm. “Tell your men to concentrate on saving the granary and the forge.” She hesitated, then added: “The granary first if a choice has to be made.”
They couldn’t afford to lose the grain and other foodstuffs stored in the granary, their larder for the rest of the winter.
Huggins nodded his understanding and stumbled away to issue her orders. Catriona took one last look at the fiercely burning cottage and went to find Irons. She found him slumped by the pump; Henderson was manning it again. Grim-faced, his gaze on his burning home, Irons heard her out, then, with a pain-filled grimace, nodded.
“Aye.” With an effort, he hauled himself to his feet. “You be right. Cottage can be replaced—granary, and what’s in it, can’t.”
He started bellowing orders himself; Catriona rushed forward once more to take charge close to the house, instructing the water-bearers where to fling their loads.
Her voice hoarse and fading, she grabbed a pot from a maid hard of hearing and showed her where to throw it—at the junction between the walls of the cottage and the granary. Handing the empty pot back to the woman, she paused, wiping the sweat from her brow, trying not to notice the heat washing over her—
She heard a cry.
Not from the yard, but from the cottage.
She stared at the building, the rough stone between the burning beams glowing pink—and told herself she’d imagined it. Prayed she’d imagined it.
But it came again, a whimpering wail that died beneath the flames’ roar.
“Oh, Lady!” Hand to her mouth, Catriona whirled and searched the host of scurrying women for the blacksmith’s wife. And found her, frantically grabbing the older manor children, having to peer through the soot and grime covering their faces to recognize her own. As Catriona watched, the woman grabbed one girl close, hand gripping the slender shoulder like a claw—she saw the woman scream her question, saw the girl shake her head, her own features changing into a mirror of her mother’s horror. Then both mother and daughter looked straight at the burning house.
Catriona didn’t hesitate. She grabbed a horse blanket from one of the weary beaters and flung it over her head and shoulders. Then she lunged for the closed door of the cottage.
She forced it open, and stepped through—
The flames roared—a wall of heat beat her back.
She staggered and nearly fell; cries and screams from all around filled her ears. Sure of the whimper she’d heard under the roar, she tightened her grip on the blanket and gathered her courage to step forward once more.
Before she could, she was bodily lifted and unceremoniously dumped on her feet ten feet back from where she’d stood. “Damn, stupid woman!” was th
e mildest of the oaths that rang in her ears.
To her stunned amazement, Richard grabbed the singed blanket from her. Then threw it about his head and shoulders and plunged into the cottage himself.
“Richard!” Catriona heard her own scream, saw her hands reach out, grasping, trying to catch him to hold him back—but he was already gone.
Into the flames.
Others ran to her and gathered about, their eyes, like hers, glued to the open doorway. They waited, tense, on their toes, ready to dash closer at the slightest sign.
The heat held them were they were. Waiting. Hoping. Praying.
Catriona prayed the hardest—she’d seen the inside of the cottage. Raging inferno didn’t come close to describing it—the whole back wall and the ceiling were a mass of hot, searing flames.
Everyone in the yard fell silent, all gripped by the drama. Into the sudden, unnatural silence came a loud, prolonged creak.
Then the main beam beneath the front of the roof exploded.
Before their horrified eyes, it cracked, once, then again, flames spitting victoriously through the gaps.
A second later, the lower beam, between the ground and upper floor, groaned mightily.
Then, in a vicious splurge, flames spat around the lintel of the door itself. In split seconds, the wood started to glow.
Richard lunged through the door, staggering—a wrapped bundle in his arms, clinging, crying weakly.
Everyone rushed forward—the blacksmith’s wife grabbed her child, Irons grabbed both of them in his huge arms and lifted them away. Catriona, Henderson and two of the grooms grabbed Richard, gasping, coughing, struggling to breathe, and hauled him away from the cottage.
On that instant, with a deep, guttural groan like the dying gasp of a tortured animal, the cottage collapsed. Flames shot high; there was a deafening roar. Then the fire settled to crack and consume its prey.
Bare hands smothering the flames flickering in Richard’s hair and along his collar and shoulders, Catriona had no time for the cottage.
Richard was not so distracted.
Staring at the furnace growing beside the forge, he finally managed to catch his breath—finally noticed what she was doing. With an oath, he spun and caught her hands—and saw the telltale burns.
“Damn it, woman—don’t you have the sense you were born with!”
Stung, Catriona tried to tug her hands free. “You were alight!” She glared at him. “What happened to the blanket?”
“The child needed the protection more than me.” Grabbing a full saucepan from a passing waterbearer, Richard plunged Catriona’s hands, gripped in one of his, into the cold water. His face like thunder, he dragged her, her wrists locked in one hand, the other holding the water-filled pan, across to the back doorstep.
He forced her to sit. “Stay here.” Dumping the pan in her lap, he trapped her gaze. “Stay the hell out of this—leave it to me.”
“But—”
He swore through his teeth. “Dammit—which do you think your people—or I—would rather lose—the granary, or you?” He held her gaze, then straightened. “Just stay here.”
Without waiting for an answer, he strode away. Into the directionless melee about the pump.
Within seconds, the women were drifting away, pans and pots in hand, uncertain expressions on their faces, all headed to join Catriona. Among them was Algaria. In answer to Catriona’s questioning glance, she coldly lifted a shoulder. “He said we were more distraction than help—that the men would do better fighting the fire without worrying if their women and children were safe.”
Catriona grimaced; she’d seen more than one of the men stop and hunt through the crowd, or leave their post for a moment to shout orders at their children. The women, as they neared, collected their children as they came. The men, now all gathered about the pump, about Richard, taller than them all, were staring at the burning building, listening intently while Richard pointed and rapidly issued orders.
With a sigh, Catriona lifted her hands from the icy water and studied them. Then she grimaced and put them back into the pot. She looked up at Algaria. “Can you check the baby for me?”
Algaria raised a brow. “Of course.” She paused, looking down at Catriona. “That was a foolish thing to do. A few minor burns could hardly harm his black soul.”
With that, she turned away and glided, like a black crow, into the house; stunned, her wits too shaken to respond quickly, Catriona stared, open-mouthed, after her.
Then she snapped her lips shut, glared briefly, and swung her gaze back to more important things.
As she looked, the group of men dispersed, breaking into teams which rapidly deployed as bucket lines, one to each side of the cottage, and another streaming into the barren gardens, ultimately linking the river with the back of the cottage. Peering through the dark, Catriona could see men filling buckets with snow, still piled in drifts through the gardens, and passing the buckets up the line, accepting empty buckets back. Some of the field workers came hurrying with shovels, the better to shift the snow.
In the yard, two pairs of grooms staggered along, each pair carrying one of the huge loft ladders. Others rushed to help steady the ladders against the walls of the forge and the granary; they were long enough to reach the roofs.
By the time the ladders were in place, the first filled bucket arrived and was quickly carried up the ladder to be poured down the wall between the granary and the cottage.
At the center of the yard, his face set, Richard viewed their combined efforts. He hoped his witch was praying to Her Lady—they were going to need all the help they could get. The main thrust of the flames through the cottage had been via the central beam running forward to back through the roof, supporting secondary beams which in turn had supported the roof struts. They’d all burned, but now the flames were spreading outward from the center of the cottage, in both directions, licking along the timbers and beams ultimately abutting the walls of the granary and forge.
Luckily, both granary and forge were significantly taller than the cottage wedged between; if that hadn’t been so, both would have caught alight by now. They had a chance, a slim one, of saving both buildings, each, in different ways, essential to life at the manor.
Richard strode into the action before the cottage, now all but pulsing with flames. Time and again, he swore at grooms or laborers who sent their bucket loads too far from the vital walls. “We need it where it counts!” he roared up the ladder.
Grasping one bucket, he used his height to send its contents washing over one of the exposed beams in the granary wall. “That,” he yelled, pointing to the area, “is where the danger lies.”
One of the dangers.
He kept a sharp eye on the men on the ladders, stepping in to rotate them as they, most exposed to the heat rising from the fire, wilted. And when it seemed they were losing the battle for the forge, he went into the garden, grabbed a spade, strode down to the riverbank, and hacked through the softened ice to the water below, uncaring of the iced slush freezing his boots.
Within seconds, Henderson and one of the older grooms were beside him, helping to widen the hole. Then they were bucketing as fast as human hands could manage, sending pails filled with icy slurry up the gardens. Once the faster rate was established, chest heaving, Richard ran back up the slope, grabbing men as he went, positioning them bodily, too out of breath to speak.
As tired as he, but equally determined, they understood; nodding, they formed another bucket line from the river to the front of the forge.
Running back to the yard, Richard paused before the cottage only to rotate the men on the ladders again, then strode quickly to the pump. “Faster,” he ordered, as he fetched up beside it. “We need more.”
Two wilting farmhands looked at him in dismay. “The river’s low—we can’t,” one of them stammered.
“Low or not,” Richard growled, physically displacing them, “faster will still yield more.”
He set a new
pump rhythm, half again what it had been. “Here”—he passed the pump handle back to the farm-hands—“keep it going like that.”
They both looked at his face and didn’t dare argue. They pumped. Faster. Richard waited to make sure it was fast enough, then nodded, and glanced at the other four men recovering from their shifts. “If you need to, rotate more often. But if you value your hides, don’t slow down.”
Quite what he meant by that, he neither knew nor cared, but the threat had the desired effect. The group manning the pump lifted their effort and sustained it—long enough to make the vital difference.
On the back step, leaning against the wall, her hands still in the pot of water, Catriona watched it all—the fight to save the manor’s buildings. Watched Richard exhort the men to greater efforts, watched him instill his own determination into them. Watched him form them into a coherent force, then direct it at the enemy in the most effective way. Watched him whip them up when they were flagging, when the flames seemed poised to gain the upper hand. Saw them respond, meeting every demand he made of them.
She’d sent the other women and all the children inside, given orders for food to be prepared, for water to be heated. Done all she could to support the effort he was making for her—for them.
Eventually, they won. The flames, denied any hold on the neighboring buildings, spluttered, faded, then died, leaving the cottage a smoldering ruin of glowing embers and charred wood.
They were exhausted.
Richard started sending the men in, the oldest and weakest first, keeping the strongest with him to finish damping down the scene. At the last, when only wisps of smoke and an acrid stench rose from the building, he and Irons hefted grappling hooks, swung them about the ends of the big beams—and brought the whole structure crashing down.
Henderson, Huggins and the handful of grooms still standing used pitchforks to drag, poke and prod the smoldering remains about the yard, spreading them to minimize any chance of fresh fire.
With heavy axes, Richard and Irons weighed into what was left of the cottage, one from either side. By the time they’d finished, there were no contacts remaining between what had been the cottage and either the forge or the granary.
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