“That fire was started by a drunken prostitute, mark my words.” Eleanor’s voice snapped her back to the present. “I can find no sympathy for those of her ilk. Painted harlots, flaunting their wares and infatuating our decent young men, plying them with corn liquor until they don’t know their own minds!”
“Bull,” Hattie said, earning herself a sharp look from Eleanor. But Hattie knew well the intertwined cycles of poverty and cruelty—her mother had run a clinic in Boston’s Back Bay. “It’s the supposedly decent men of this town who are preying on helpless women.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying.”
Hattie shrugged off Eleanor’s look of condemnation. “What about Jessie? Hasn’t he been seen in the Green Light?”
Eleanor’s mouth thinned at the mention of her youngest. Young, handsome, and possessing an easy charm he couldn’t have inherited from his mother, Jessie was well known around town for his wild ways.
“Jessie is no longer welcome in our home, and the Green Light is nothing but a stench in the nostrils of decent citizens,” she replied.
“But don’t you worry that among the dead tonight might be other sons of prominent families?” Hattie asked quietly. “That fire was deliberately set.”
“Ssshhh!” Eleanor glanced over her shoulder. “You can’t make statements like that in public.”
“Why not? You know it’s true.”
Eleanor stiffened. “My reporters have already determined that the fire started in a house of ill repute. May they all reap what they sow!”
Hattie raised an eyebrow. “You sound like a temperance lecturer.”
“And what of it? John Gough and his disciples have much to say that is worth listening to.” Eleanor’s voice had risen, and several in the crowd nodded their agreement. She looked gratified, as if the fire were proof of her belief that the waterfront was populated by the devil’s own.
Hattie shook her head but dropped the subject, knowing it was futile to think she could change Eleanor’s mind.
Mayor Payton’s buckboard clattered to a halt behind them, its matched pair of bays wild-eyed from the smoke. Short and barrel-chested, Payton struggled to control the lunging horses.
“We need every able-bodied man!” he shouted, his silver handlebar mustache streaked with soot. “Customs House and City Hall are threatened!”
Hattie turned to Charlotte. “Go quickly and rouse Tabitha.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” Eleanor spat as Charlotte dashed off. “Women like us don’t go to the waterfront—not if we want our reputations to remain intact.”
“Nonsense,” Hattie replied. “I need to check on my sailing crews, some of whom could be trapped inside burning buildings. They’re my responsibility now.” Though she felt a twinge of foreboding, she kept her voice confident. “We’ll be perfectly safe. The police are standing guard throughout the area.”
“But think what you’ll be subjecting the girls to!”
“They’ll be fine—I’ll be there to chaperone them. And it will be an excellent learning experience for them, helping those less fortunate than themselves.”
Eleanor huffed. “This is outrageous behavior for a widow so recently in mourning.”
“No one will think ill of me if I go down to help.” Hattie stared Eleanor down. “Will you do nothing, then?”
“I’ve dispatched a reporter and photographer to the scene. I have no intention of personally mingling with the criminal elements.”
“Many of those criminal elements are men regularly invited into the better homes in this town, men who don’t admit to having their hands dirtied by the proceeds of the very saloons and brothels they rail against.”
“Talk like that will not endear you to your neighbors,” Eleanor admonished in a low voice.
Charlotte and Tabitha ran toward them, buckets in their hands. Resolute, Hattie turned her back on Eleanor and went to meet the girls by the buckboard, taking hold of the extra buckets.
“Help us up,” she ordered the man sitting closest to them.
* * *
HUGE, glowing cinders flew overhead as the wagon rolled to a stop in front of City Hall. Across the street, flames shot through the roofs of several two-story wooden buildings, and the window frames of others were already smoking. Every few moments, Hattie heard the sound of plate glass shattering. It was hot, so hot that even from where she sat, her dress felt on fire next to her skin.
Men begrimed with smoke and soot dragged boxes from City Hall, while policemen pulled furniture from the adjacent courthouse. The town’s new hose cart stopped next to their buckboard, pulled by a huge, black draft horse and several runners. Firemen raced to unwind the hose.
In front of the Green Light, a man in a preacher’s frock coat held up a Bible and cried, “This fire was visited upon us by the wrath of God!”
A policeman headed in his direction, looking irritated. Good, Hattie thought as she climbed down.
Her first order of business was to find her manager, Clive Johnson. “This way, girls.”
They ran toward the harbor, their long skirts dragging through blackened puddles of water. Men rushed past them, shouting at them to get out of the way. As they rounded the corner, Hattie thrust out her arm to stop Charlotte and Tabitha.
Fire roared the length of the block. Dozens of half-dressed women stood crying in groups on the beach below the wharf, their white chemises now soot-streaked and torn, their hair falling in disarray around their faces. Others ran to the water’s edge with buckets, then back to fling water onto the burning structures. Sailors dragged crates of corn liquor from a burning saloon, while more men used axes to break the front windows of the general store and retrieve clothing and tins of food.
“Those women aren’t dressed,” Tabitha said in a low voice, glancing nervously at the prostitutes. “And the men …”
“Never mind that now.” Hattie folded back her mourning veil so that she could see better.
Dear God.
At least a dozen buildings were completely engulfed. Next to where they stood, flames ate through the huge, white block letters of the words Stable and Livery painted on the wooden plank siding of a building. Hattie heard the screams of horses still trapped inside their stalls, then saw several lunge from the smoke-filled interior.
“Get back!” She yanked the girls out of the path of the horses.
Two men ran from the building, fiery beams crashing behind them as the structure collapsed.
Hattie took a calming breath. She scanned the crowd on the beach, spying Clive Johnson standing among them. “Wait here,” she told the girls.
As she approached, Johnson, a portly man of average height, thinning hair, and unexceptional features, exclaimed, “Mrs. Longren! What’re you doin’ down here?”
“Checking on the status of my sailing crews. I trust you’ve ensured they are safe?”
He gave her an odd look, then shrugged. “I reckon.”
“Please locate them and verify their safety. Order them to assist in the firefighting, if they aren’t doing so already. And send someone out to the ships immediately. Have the first mates bring the skeleton crews onshore to help fight the fire.”
He shook his head. “I ain’t leavin’ the ships unguarded.”
She controlled a flush of irritation. In recent weeks, she’d come to expect his attempts to undermine her authority, but they still rankled. “And if we don’t halt this fire,” she countered in a sharp tone, “there won’t be any boardinghouses left standing to shelter the crews who sail those ships. Now do as I say.”
Without waiting for a response, she turned her back on him, pretending not to hear the derogatory comment he made under his breath, then searched the crowd for someone in authority. Her gaze landed on an older woman of imposing height, dressed in a midnight blue gown of the finest silk and brocade, standing ten yards away.