White Witch

by Lyn Horner

  The South Side was lost, and Seamus Devlin now doubted they would find safety on the North Side. Flames that soared hundreds of feet into the air and shot burning debris blocks ahead could just as easily cross the main channel of the river as they had the narrower South Branch, he reasoned. Exchanging a grim look with his son, he knew Tye was thinking the same thing, but by silent agreement they said nothing for Jessie’s sake.

  Finally reaching the bridge he’d been aiming for, Seamus slowly coaxed and bullied Nell across the overcrowded, groaning span. Fire billowed behind them, approaching the river. Burning brands had already set fire to several bridges, trapping those who sought to escape over them, but this one remained as yet untouched by flame, for which Seamus whispered a profound prayer of thanks.

  They made it across the river around two a.m., just as the courthouse bell crashed down into deathly silence. Not satisfied, Seamus drove Nell onward. Only when the mare was about to drop in her tracks did he call a halt, stopping in the courtyard of a North Side mansion. The owners had thrown open their gates and were dispensing food and water. Grateful as he was for their kindness, Seamus soon insisted upon moving on.

  Some of his passengers favored making for open prairie beyond the city as many Chicagoans were doing, while others including Tye argued for Lincoln Park to the northeast, bordering Lake Michigan. Seamus decided on the park, but they wouldn’t stop there, he declared. They’d go directly to the lake. The water might be cold, but if need be it would provide a final haven from the fire.

  As he headed Nell toward their destination, the firestorm gained footholds along the river’s north bank behind them, igniting grain elevators and factories with its flaming outriders. It didn’t require Jessie’s gift of foresight to know the blaze was bound to consume McCormick’s giant reaper works, where Seamus and Tye had been employed.

  Dawn was still hours away when Jessie, her father and brother, and their dispirited companions reached the bleak lake shore. Numb with fatigue, they collapsed around the wagon while Nell stood in her traces, head down and sides heaving. A long interval passed in silence. Some of them stared, transfixed by the sight of the burning city. Others sat with heads bowed, refusing to watch the terrible spectacle.

  Sitting between Tye and her father, Jessie leaned against the front wheel of the wagon and closed her eyes, trying not to think. It was useless, though. She couldn’t stop the parade of horrors she’d witnessed tonight from flashing through her mind over and over again.

  “Ye were right, daughter,” Da said in a gravelly tone, drawing her attention. “Ye said this would happen. I should have listened and tried to warn the powers that be.”

  Jessie clasped his gnarled, work-roughened hand. “No one would’ve believed ye, Da. If I wasn’t seeing this with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe my . . . premonition either.”

  Overhearing her, an old woman cried, “A premonition, she says! A white witch are ye, dearie? Ye foresaw all this happenin’, did ye?”

  “’Twas only a . . . a feeling,” Jessie hedged, fearful of confirming the woman’s guess.

  “Call it what ye will, ye saw aright. ’Tis God’s punishment for our sins! We’re doomed to burn in Hell!" The woman cackled dementedly as if it were all a great joke.

  Jessie gasped and stared at the gaunt speaker, who sat slumped down near the back of the wagon. “Sweet Mary! Don’t be saying such things!” she cried.

  “Aye, that’ll be enough o’ that kind o’ talk," Da ordered. “We’ll not be dyin’, nor will Chicago. Even if she burns to the ground she’ll still live. In here.” He thumped his chest. “We built her once; we’ll build her again, mark me words.”

  His declaration silenced the woman, and Jessie was proud of him for speaking up. Yet, as they watched the fire rampage northward, she wondered if the doomsayer was right.

  Monday, the ninth of October, dawned dark with smoke and ash. A new arrival at the shore brought word that fire crews were on their way from Milwaukee, but he also delivered bad news. Sparks had somehow entered the pump house at the waterworks and, although the stone tower survived, the slate roof had collapsed, damaging the pumps. Without a way for the firemen to pump water, nothing could be done. The fire would simply have to run its course.

  By noon the inferno neared Lincoln Park, razing the homes of Chicago’s elite while running out of fuel in areas already burned. As the inferno neared the lake shore, like many others, Jessie and her family waded into Lake Michigan’s chilly water for protection. Together with Nell and their passengers, they stood waist-deep in the choppy waves. When the towering blaze drew close enough to shower them with burning embers they spread wet blankets and clothing over themselves and waited, shivering, for the fire to spend its fury.

  To Jessie it seemed an eternity before the flames finally died down enough for them to stumble from the lake on legs grown numb with cold. Trying to warm themselves by the smoldering dregs of the blaze, they gave thanks for being alive and prayed for an end to the destruction. Their prayers were answered in the wee hours of Tuesday morning when rain, so long denied them, began to fall, dousing the ruins. By afternoon the fire finally burned itself out on the prairie.

  Picking her way slowly through the rubble with her father and brother, Jessie felt a sense of total unreality. Like a scene from a nightmare, the charred, flattened landscape spread out for miles. Here and there twisted segments of brick or stone walls stood upright, looking eerily out of place. Even more so were the few, the very few, buildings remaining intact. What miracle or freak of nature had spared them, Jessie couldn’t imagine.

  Amazingly, relief stations were already being set up amid the wreckage. Stopping at one, the Devlins were given hot food and dry blankets, rushed in from some outlying area. Grateful beyond measure, Jessie wrapped herself in her blanket and felt a tiny flicker of hope.

  CHAPTER THREE

  March 1872

  Jessie strolled homeward, enjoying the early spring weather. Turning her eyes upward, she drank in the sparkling blue sky. Oh, what a glorious day it was! She loved springtime. Another month or two and lilacs, her favorite flowers, would be in bloom. She hoped the young bushes her landlady had planted would bloom. Most mature bushes were gone, killed by the flames. Some destruction wrought by the Great Chicago Fire, as it was now being called, would take years to undo.

  A headline in the Chicago Tribune only three days after the fire came to mind. “Chicago Shall Rise,” it had declared. How the newspaper owners had managed to get it printed, she didn’t know, but the valiant message, echoing her father’s words on the night of the fire, still stirred her blood. The headline had also proven true.

  Almost immediately following the blaze, businesses had thrown up temporary wooden structures. Money, along with trainloads of emergency provisions, had poured in from all over the country and even Europe. Everyone had wanted a hand in the reconstruction. Now it seemed new homes and commercial buildings, grander than any from before the fire, were completed almost daily. These were built of stone and iron, not wood; the new Chicago would not burn so easily as the old.

  Smiling grimly at the thought, Jessie glanced at the sun’s waning position and hurried her footsteps, eager to be home. She had put in a long day of cleaning rooms in the hotel where she worked. It would feel good just to sit down. Not that she was complaining. Indeed, changing bed linens and sweeping floors was a pleasure after the back-breaking labor she’d performed over the past few months. And with her old position gone up in flames . . .

  She’d hoped the North Side family for whom she had worked as a parlor maid before the fire would want her back once their elegant mansion was rebuilt. But the Fullers were now living in Philadelphia with relatives, she had learned by making inquiries. Whether or not they would ever rebuild, she couldn’t wait around to find out. As it was, securing new employment had taken a while, what with all the others seeking work. She was happy to finally have a job and happier still to have a home again, even if it was in a boarding hous
e – only until she and Tye and their father could save up enough to rebuild their own modest house.

  Arriving at her new residence, Jessie entered the sunny vestibule and was greeted by a delicious aroma. It smelled like Mrs. O’Reilley, her landlady, was preparing Irish stew for supper, one of Jessie’s favorite dishes. Her stomach growled in hungry agreement as she mounted the stairs to the second floor, where all rented rooms were located. Tye and her father shared the room next to hers, but they weren’t home yet. Neither were any of the other tenants, she was certain. She was always the first one home from work.

  Once in her room, Jessie washed her face and hands, released her hair from its tight coil and shook it out. As she methodically brushed the mahogany waves, she let her gaze wander around the room. Clean and cheerful, with a fresh coat of pale yellow paint on the walls, white curtains at the window, and a bright patchwork quilt on the bed, it was heavenly after the dreary shack she and her kin had occupied for several frigid months.

  “’Tis a wonder we didn’t freeze to death in that drafty hole,” she muttered, then felt instantly ashamed of her ingratitude. She ought to be singing the praises of the shelter committee. If not for the multitude of one-room cabins they’d hurriedly put up, she and thousands of Chicagoans would have spent the entire winter living on the open prairie or in the city parks, as they’d done during the first few wretched weeks following the fire.

  Nevertheless, life was miserable in their cramped little shack. Washing piles of clothes in the icy winter wind had been no delight, either, but with her father and brother working hard, hiring out themselves, Nell and their wagon to haul debris from the burned zone down to the lake for dumping, she’d wanted to do her share. Taking in laundry had been the only way. She grimaced at the memory of toting buckets of water from the nearest well, close to a mile away from their tiny abode – the only way to get clean water until the city’s water system was restored. How her arms and shoulders had ached! Then, after building a fire to heat the water in a heavy iron kettle, had come hours spent bending over a washboard, scrubbing filthy clothes, until her back was ready to break and her hands were so raw they bled. Ugh!

  Of course she hadn’t been alone in her misery. Countless others had suffered just as much. On top of everything else, they’d had to contend with roving gangs of toughs bent on causing trouble and stealing whatever they could, until the army had finally enforced martial law.

  Recalling the four hooligans who had come along one afternoon as she was hanging out her final load of laundry, Jessie shuddered. Somehow she had managed to put on a brave face, though they had frightened her badly with their lewd talk and pawing hands. If her own menfolk hadn’t shown up . . . Nay! She mustn’t think about what might have happened. Besides, she would have found some way of handling those thugs. She could take care of herself, after all.

  Anyway, that was all in the past. Life was returning to normal now. McCormick’s had reopened and Tye and her father had been called back to work. She had found her job at the hotel, and a short time ago the three of them had moved into this newly rebuilt boarding house. Dismissing unpleasant memories, Jessie set aside her hairbrush and decided to read for a few minutes while the house was quiet. Reading was one of her favorite pastimes and a skill she counted herself lucky to possess, one she owed to her mother. Nora Devlin had insisted her children learn their letters, going against her husband, who had always considered it a foolish waste of time, no doubt because he himself had never learned to read and write.

  Settling into her wooden rocker, one of the few pieces of furniture Tye and her father had saved from the fire, Jessie picked up the dime novel she’d begun a few days ago. It was no literary masterpiece, but it had an exciting plot and a dashing, courageous hero – just the thing to capture her imagination. Quickly losing herself in the story, she read for ten or fifteen minutes until her eyelids grew heavy and she began to yawn. Heavens, she was tired, more from lack of sleep, she knew, than from her labors at the hotel. The nightmare had returned last night, the horror of it waking her and leaving her unable to sleep for fear it would come again. At least she hadn’t awakened screaming this time, as she so often had in the beginning, after the fire.

  She closed the book and laid it aside. Did she dare try to sleep for a short time? Tired enough to chance it, she rose and crossed to her bed. As she stretched out, she prayed the terrible memories wouldn’t haunt her dreams again. Within moments, she was asleep.

  It wasn’t long before the nightmare began.

  She was back there on that monstrous night with the cottage being swallowed by flames as they fled in the wagon. Fire roared and leapt, devouring everything in their wake, attempting to overtake them. Shards of burning wood shot from the blaze and cinders dropped from the fiery heavens, threatening to set the wagon afire!

  Flashes of running, screaming people whirled through her dream like a hellish parade. Then came the worst scene of all: exploding windows, flames bursting forth, a woman’s bloodcurdling screams as she was burned alive.

  “Nay!” Jessie whimpered in her sleep. She didn’t want to see anymore. As if in answer to her desperate cry, the dream abruptly changed, carrying her to a place she’d never been or even dreamt of before. A place of new, even worse torment.

  She was inside a building filled with smoke and her skirts were on fire. She screamed in terror. Then a man appeared, kneeling beside her to beat out the flames. He looked up, gray-green eyes gently caressing her.

  Jessie was brought suddenly awake by a violent bang. She sat bolt upright, trembling in reaction, with no idea where she was for a moment. Then reality dropped back into place and she hugged her quaking body, befuddled by the strange, terrifying new turn her dream had taken. Before she could think about it further, she heard someone take the stairs two at a time. This was followed by a loud slam of the front door downstairs, the same sound that had awakened her, she realized. Now a second person stomped up the stairs.

  How rude! she thought crossly. Only when the door to the room next to hers opened and closed in the same noisy fashion, first once, then twice, did she realize who the thoughtless arrivals were. They were her own father and brother.

  “Saints preserve us! What can they be thinking?” On the heels of her muttered words two angry male voices boomed out, fairly shaking the rafters. “Aiee! They’ll get us all tossed out on our ears!”

  Jessie bounded off the bed and raced into the hall. She was careful to close her own door quietly, though her temper was rapidly approaching the boiling point. Everyone in the house must be hearing the commotion! Just wait until she got her hands on those two! Marching toward their door, she was not surprised to see a tall, dour looking man step out of his room down the hall. Briggs was his name and he was known for his cranky disposition.

  “Can’t a man have some peace and quiet? What’s the meaning of all this racket?” he grumbled. Pinning Jessie with an accusing glare, he demanded, “Are those your relatives carrying on like that, Miss Devlin?”

  “Aye, I’m afraid so, Mr. Briggs, and I’m truly sorry,” Jessie apologized, struggling to smile. “I’ll be putting a stop to it immediately, sir.”

  “I hope so, young woman,” the man snapped, “because I won’t put up with this kind of thing.”

  Gritting her teeth to keep from replying in kind, Jessie excused herself and walked in on Tye and her father without knocking. If she hadn’t been so angry, she might have found the picture that greeted her comical. Her brother was the taller of the two men by several inches, and he was bent forward now, practically nose to nose with his barrel-chested sire as they stood there shouting at each other. So caught up were they in their quarrel that they didn’t even notice her until she shut the door – only a trifle more gently than they had both done moments ago. The noise got their attention. She aimed a furious scowl at them when they turned to look at her.

  “Have both of ye lost your senses? Are ye trying to get us thrown out? If so, ye’re doing a grand job of
it!” she hissed. Moving away from the door, she faced them with her hands on her hips. “This is a boarding house, in case you’ve forgotten! Have a care for the other tenants and save your brawling for the pubs!”

  “Mind yer tongue, girl,” Da barked. “I’ll not have ye correctin’ me manners, nor interferin’. This is between yer brother and me.” Glowering at Tye, he added, “And ʼtisn’t done with yet, me foin boyo!”

  “Save your breath, Da! You’ll not talk me out of it,” Tye retorted with an obstinate set to his jaw. “I’ll be going as soon as I come up with the train fare.”

  “Indeed ye won’t! I’ll not allow it!” Da bellowed.

  “Hsst! Stop it, both of ye, before ye bring the roof down on our heads!” Jessie protested again. “And will one of ye kindly tell me what this is all about? Where on earth are ye going, Tye?”

  “Nowhere! Upon me faith, he’ll be goin’ nowhere!” Seamus vowed. “So ye needn’t worry yerself, daughter."

  Before Tye could issue an angry retort, Jessie insisted, “Da, I want to know what has the two of ye so riled up, and I’ll thank ye not to be putting me off. I’m part of this family, too.”

  Giving a disgusted snort, her father conceded, “Very well, miss, if ye must know, yer darlin’ brother has taken it into his fool head to go chasin’ after a pot o’ gold!”

  “No such thing!” Tye denied hotly. “Mining is a highly skilled, honorable profession and I mean to learn it from the ground up. Besides, ’tis silver I’ll be after, not gold.”

  “Huh! ’Tis all one ’n the same! And no son ’o mine will be wastin’ himself on such folly!”

  “So that’s it,” Jessie said, understanding at last. “I knew ye were excited over all the talk about the latest silver strike, Tye. Where was it? In Utah Territory?” At her brother’s tight-lipped nod, she added, “But I didn’t realize ye were serious about going out there.”