Page 20 of The Autumn Wife
He shouted to the children while in a full run. “Get buckets. All the empty ones you can find.”
“There’s some in the laundry.” Cecile tossed her burden of slates aside. “I’ll fetch those.”
She charged across the field, the golden roll of hair bobbing, the kids following in her wake. Then, forcing all thoughts of Cecile Tremblay out of his mind, he continued his race toward the road, shouting to the laborers pouring out of the log bunkhouse to join him for the quarter-mile sprint to the settlement.
As stabbing pains dug into his lungs, he approached the outer edge of Montreal. Theo noted that the fire raged closer to the fort, on the far western end of the settlement. But as he’d suspected, the wind had carried sparks east. Those sparks had landed on the thatched roofs of several buildings, roofs that had not seen rain in weeks. Madness, it was, that after thirty years of settlement and dozens ofinfernos, these wooden houses hadn’t been replaced with stone.
He jogged down the riverside Saint Paul Street into the eye-watering burn of falling ash. Women with babes in their arms ran in the opposite direction. Older people were being pushed in carts.
Beams cracked, and a house caved in just ahead. Embers rained down, searing his forearms and hair. He paused, assessing the situation. The house that had just cratered was lost, and the one beside it, nearer to him, was already aflame. But the merchant shop next in line was still intact save for one flickering flame on the roof.
“Here,” he shouted to the milling crowd and the laborers arriving in his wake. “Form a line from the river’s edge to where I stand by this shop.”
Fortunately, only a narrow strip of grassy common separated the Saint Lawrence River from Saint Paul Street. The crowd fell into a rough line, some heading toward the river to fill their buckets. Within a few moments, the man beside him thrust a pail into his belly, water sloshing over the rim. Jules, Theo realized, recognizing the fire-bronzed hair, sticking up like he’d just rolled out of bed. Theo hauled up the bucket and hurled the water onto the now-growing flame on the thatch before swinging the empty back into Jules’s hands.
Soon, townspeople joined the line, a crowd of merchants, servants, laborers, Abenaki who werecamping in the field behind the settlement, children from the lime ricks, Etienne, convent novices, and…
Cecile.
There she was, standing between Jules and Etienne. His vision sharpened and narrowed. Her blond hair—loose in a braid that danced against her back with every exchange of buckets—might as well be a net for sparks. And her swinging skirts made for too-easy kindling. The buckets were heavy, and as she sank under the weight of one, Jules relieved her of it.
Theo opened his mouth to shout for her to leave—they had enough men on the line—but Jules’s full bucket hit him in the solar plexus, turning the shout into anoof.Grunting, Theo swung it up and emptied the water over the thatch. When he thrust the bucket back into Jules’s hands, he glared at Cecile over the ruff of Jules’s red hair in an effort to catch her eye.
When he did, he willed her to read his mind.
Get out of here.
Her dark eyes flashed before she showed him her back, defiant in this as in so many things. He knew the Reverend Mother had tasked her with paperwork, but he’d seen Cecile scrubbing laundry with the novices, shouldering food sacks into the storehouse, and hauling platters of meat from the convent kitchens to the table set outside for the laborers’ midday meal. But, damn it, a woman who looked as fragile as glass shouldn’t be hauling full water buckets in the midst of an inferno.
Go back. Fetch more buckets,he mentally screamed.
She didn’t look up at him again.
Seizing another bucket from Jules, he aimed with all his might, making the best of his frustration. Droplets of water dripped from the eaves—a sign that even his best efforts were not effective to douse the far side of the roof, which needed just as much soaking. He glanced around, spied a mason coming late to the fire, and shouted for him to return to the building site to fetch a ladder.
The sound of cracking wood came from the house next to the shop he was trying to save, and the roof collapsed with a thud. Grit fell from the sky, edged with fire. He was about to throw the latest bucket of water upon Cecile to soak her skirts and hair when a cry rang out. A figure shot out of the narrow alleyway between house and shop. Her skirts trailed fire as the screaming woman ran, tripped on a rut, and sprawled.
He shot the contents of the bucket meant for Cecile at the woman instead. Jules followed with another bucket. Cecile shot to the woman’s side and doused the last of the flaming skirts. Dropping her empty pail to the ground, she fell to her knees beside the woman.
Jules pointed to the shop’s roof. “New flames!”
Theo turned in time to see an ember catch, flaring up from the other side of the shop roof’s peak. He stepped back into line and grabbed another full bucket just as someone planted a ladder against theshop. Seizing a rung with one hand, he climbed up until his head poked above the edge of the thatch. Heaving the bucket onto his shoulder and setting one hand flat beneath the bottom, he hurled the bucket high enough that it hit the peak and spilled its contents down the other slope.
The lick of flame dimmed. A curl of smoke rose as the bucket rolled back down toward him. Catching it, he handed it back to Jules and exchanged it for a full one, launching the contents high. He did it again with a new bucket. And then again.
“Hey!” Jules, standing on the third rung of the ladder, shouted after they’d exchanged a dozen or so more buckets. “Switch places!”
Theo thrust an empty bucket at him. “Shut up and keep the water coming.”
“You want me to ignore your orders?”
What orders?“No time for this, Jules.”
“We need maximum effort, right?”
Theo glowered, a look that had zero effect on this damn foolhardy mason.
“You’re always going on about taking shifts so we don’t get injured.” Jules glanced back to exchange his empty bucket for a full one from Etienne, then bent his elbow to make his bicep swell. “So put fresh muscle into this job.”
