Page 90 of Libby's London Merchant
There they were, Joseph and Anthony, struggling to pull someone from the cooling room next to the blazing kiln. Anthony’s jacket was on fire. She grabbed up a bucket and ran into the smoking room, pouring water on him and then tugging his coat off.
He looked around in surprise as his smoldering jacket came away in her hands. “Libby, get out of here,” he shouted.
“I will not,” she shouted back, grabbing up another bucket and pouring its contents over Anthony and Joseph until they were both drenched and in less danger from the bits of flaming hops that popped around them.
By then others had joined them, pouring water on the cooling- room floor to keep it from lighting. Two pickers, shielding their eyes with their hands, rushed closer to the kiln to drag out the last man.
Libby turned away, her hand to her mouth, as Anthony grabbed her and pulled her close to him. “Take this one out,” he said distinctly in her ear. “You and Joseph. I’ll help with the other.”
Gagging at the smell of burning flesh, she grasped the man under the armpits while Joseph, his eyes huge in his blackened face, took the man under the knees. Staggering from the weight, they carried him from the cooling room and set him on the ground, where Libby took a full bucket from Maud Casey and poured it over the man’s leg.
“I can help,” said a quiet voice at her elbow. She turned to see the duke with a bucket.
“Take it in there,” she said, pointing to the cooling room. “The doctor needs it.”
He ran inside and in another moment came out with a child overcome by smoke. Anthony walked alongside him, breathing into the child’s mouth as they stumbled out together, arms around each other. The duke laid the child down and Anthony continued, breathing and then pausing and then breathing again.
The man with the burned leg moaned and tried to shift himself. Libby rested her hand on his chest and brushed the hair back from his eyes. His heartbeat was rapid, but steady.
In another moment, the child cried and struggled to rise. Anthony sat back and pulled the boy into a sitting position, looking him over swiftly for further injury and then moving aside as the boy’s mother, sobbing and calling his name, gathered her son into her arms.
Anthony crawled over to where she sat, hugging the man in her lap. Silently she pushed the spectacles back up on the doctor’s nose and he looked up in gratitude. Joseph was there with the doctor’s bag, handing him a pair of scissors. Without a word, Anthony cut away the man’s trousers and stared at his leg. He sat there in silence until she wanted to scream, and then he patted the man on the chest.
“Your name, sir?” he asked.
“Tommy Lilburn, from Cratchmore,” he gasped. He reached up and grabbed the doctor’s shirt. “Are you going to have to cut it off?”
“Not unless you are wild about being a one-legged beggar, Tommy,” said the doctor. “I think I can do you a much better turn than that. It’ll be painful, though.”
Tommy Lilburn nodded as tears of gratitude welled up in his eyes and streaked down his smoke-blackened face.
Anthony patted him. “Good lad. You’ll be fine.” He called to two hop pickers who came closer, their faces pasty under a layer of smoke.
“Take him on a board to the nearest house. I’ll be with you in a moment.” He held the man’s hand, fingers on his pulse, as the pickers ripped the door off the cooling room and brought it back. Lips tight together as Tommy cried out, Anthony gentled him onto the board and nodded to the pickers.
“What are you going to do?” Libby asked as the crowd parted for the bearers and the wounded man.
“Clean it up. It’s not as bad as he thinks, thank the Lord, but he’ll bear watching, and have a few painful days.”
She took his hand. “I can help.”
Anthony touched her cheek. “You would, wouldn’t you? I don’t ask it. What you can do is sit with that man over there until his family gets here for him. Just hold his hand.”
“No,” said the duke, pulling her away and putting his arm around her.
Libby leaned against him, grateful for his shoulder.
“She shouldn’t even be here,” said the duke. “This is no place for a lady. What’s the matter with you, anyway?”
Anthony looked at them. His glance went from the duke to Libby, and his eyes, red from the smoke, seemed suddenly to fill with despair.
“I do ask her help,” he said.
“By God, it’s the last thing you’re going to ask of this lady,” said Benedict.
“Is it?” Anthony asked, and then his attention was claimed by a woman clutching his arm. “Maybe I have asked too much.”
“No, I don’t….” Libby began, but the duke only tightened his hold on her.
