“I’ve got to find him. Give me your shawl.”
Paishey pulled the shawl from her shoulders, immersed it in a bucket of water, and wrapped it, sopping, around her husband’s upper body. It was then that Webb pulled off his hat. Maisie saw Fred Yeoman, who was standing nearby, put a hand to his mouth. Webb wasted no time; he held his wife’s hand in his for a second and then ran into the holocaust.
No one spoke or shouted, but a muttering began between the villagers as Fred turned first to one, then to another.
“Did you see that? Wasn’t that Pim Martin?”
“I didn’t want to say anything, thought I was seeing things.” “Looked for all the world like Jacob.”
“It was him, I know it was.”
“No, couldn’t have been. He’s been dead all these years.”
In the distance, the relentless ringing of the fire tender’s bell could now be heard coming closer, as the people came together to wait for Pim Martin to walk from the burning home of the man whom, they knew, he would himself have murdered, if he could. No movement was visible as the flames bucked and leaped from floor to floor, and some of the onlookers screamed as the reverberation of a falling beam echoed through the house.
“They’ll both be dead. The man was mad to go in, mad.”
Two fire tenders screeched to a halt, their red livery reflecting another eruption of flames from the roof. Maisie and the butler spoke to the fireman in charge, as others pulled hoses and dug in their heels to brace against the force of water that cannoned out toward the eye of the fire. And still Paishey waited, as close as she could to the door through which her husband had entered the house. She neither keened nor cried but waited with her shoulders back, a vigil for her husband until he returned. Soon others gathered around her, both locals and outsiders, waiting, waiting to see if the man they knew only as Webb would walk from the blaze.
“I can hear coughing,” a fireman shouted back to the chief.
Paishey called out, the first words she had spoken since her husband ran into the mansion. “Webb, come back to me, come back to me, Webb. I’n be waiting for you, my Webb. I’n be waiting here for you.”
And then they saw him, the shawl gone, his torso seared with charcoal and dripping with black heat, one hand shielding his eyes, the other dragging behind him, by the scruff of his neck, the smoldering body of Alfred Sandermere.
“Webb!” Paishey was first to his side, as he leaned forward and retched, only letting go of Sandermere when Fred Yeoman touched him on the arm and said, “It’s alright, we’ve got him now. It’s alright, lad.”
The gypsy men pushed forward to claim Webb, dousing him with water again and again, pulling him away from the smoke toward the air beyond the boundary of the fire’s breath. Two firemen placed Sandermere on a stretcher and took him back, close to the place where the gypsies circled around Webb at the bottom of the hill. Soon another bell was ringing and an ambulance approached, followed by the doctor.
Maisie made her way over to the gypsies. “Is he alright? How does he breathe?”
Paishey looked up. “He’n be safe, now, miss. Webb’s breathing alright, and we’ll look after the burns.” She pulled a pot of deep green cream from a pocket in her skirt. “Beulah’s mixture.”
Maisie nodded, knowing the people who had come together to fight the fire would now disperse to their tribes, would gather to be with their own. She moved across to the place where Sandermere was being treated. “Can I help?”
The doctor glanced at her, as he held up a syringe ready to inject painkilling morphine into Sandermere’s body, for the man’s deep mucus-filled moaning told of his distress.
“I was a nurse in the war, in France.”
“Good, then you’ll have seen your share of burns. I need your help to get him stable before he’s taken to Pembury Hospital. Right, then, let’s get on with it—my instruments and that swab.”
The years contracted as Maisie doused her hands with disinfectant from the physician’s case, placed a spare mask across her mouth and nose, and laid out the exact instruments that would be needed. Using forceps, she picked up a swab, snapping the instrument into the palm of the doctor’s hand as she prepared another swab, then held scissors ready.
“Like riding a bike, isn’t it? It all comes back to you when you need it.” The doctor wrinkled his nose to keep his spectacles from sliding down, and Maisie reached across to push them back up again.
She took the soiled swab and handed him the scissors. She remembered the humor, the quips and jokes leveled at death, as he did his work at the same time as the casualty clearing station doctors. And she remembered Simon, that final day working with him, and his last words when shells began to rain down on the operating tent as they tried to save the life of another soldier: “Let’s get on with it.”
LATER, WHEN THE ambulance had left and the gypsies had made their way up the hill, across the fields, and back to their clearing, Maisie found Billy among the Londoners trudging to the hopper huts.
“I thought we’d lost you, Miss. I’m glad to see you.”
“You too.”
“What about that for a turnup, eh? There’s that Webb, showin’ them all who ’e is. You should ’ave ’eard ’em, talkin’ about it.”
“I’m sure they were.”
“They’re terrified of what might ’appen now. There was talk of a meetin’ tonight, at the inn. They want to get everyone together, to work out what to say to Webb when ’e comes. They know ’e’ll come for ’em.”
Maisie stopped. “Then that’s where I’ll go, to the inn.”
“Miss, you’re all spent. Look at you, you’re wore out. You can sort them out tomorrow, they’ve been haunted this long.”
She shook her head. “No, it’s time. They know about Pim now—well, they’ve likely known all along, if truth be told, but now they have proof. And they know the piper must be paid. They have to tell him, to his face, what happened.”
CLAIMING HER MOTOR car, Maisie used a clean handkerchief to wipe her hands and face, then started the engine and drove toward the farm, going as far as she could on four wheels before she had to continue on toward the gypsy camp on foot.
Webb was resting at the edge of the clearing where the air was fresh with a crisp evening breeze that might help clear his lungs. Paishey sat with him, with Boosul on her lap, and together they watched Maisie approach. She saw Beulah’s caravan moved to one side, farther away from the others, for the coffin containing her body rested within. The lurcher lay on the steps and did not stir.
“You were brave, Webb. You risked your life for a man you have every reason to despise.”
He nodded. “I just couldn’t stand there and do nothing to help him.”
“You are hurt?”
“Not as badly as it seemed. Some skin singed, and my lungs are sore, but that will go in time.” He looked at his wife and his daughter, then back at Maisie. “Will he live?”
“The doctor was not hopeful. The burns are extensive, and the risk of infection high. He will be drugged for days, for weeks to come, if he survives.”
“It may be a small mercy, then, that my family perished. That they did not live with such pain.”
A silence descended between them, the only sounds a gentle nickering to be heard, as horses grazed nearby, and a gypsy meal being prepared in the clearing.
“They know who you are, Webb.”
“Yes. The hat has served me well, and the passing years have done their camouflage work on my face, though it seems I look more like my father than I thought, except for the hair. I have come to work here for many a season and have been taken for nothing more than the gypsy they saw me to be.”
“It’s like seeing someone you know in a different milieu. You don’t recognize him because you don’t expect to see him in a certain place.”
Webb shook his head. “I wonder what will happen now?” He coughed, wincing and clasping his chest.