Some miles south west, the drizzle was more welcome. There was the scorching, smoky stench of burning straw and plaster, and the combination of fire doused in low cloud and a mist of damp. Distant sounds, voices and alarm escalated. David remounted, watching the five men of the patrol race back along the pathway towards the village. He reached out, retraining his master, “Not back there, my lord. Now we need to get away.”
Nicholas frowned. “You started this fire?”
“By no means, my lord. You know my dislike of fire, and you know why.”
The simmering flames broke their confines and gusted, plumes of dirty smoke caught in the breezes. Whatever burned, burned soot and reeds, old planks, old thatch, and the bodies in each house lying dead or dying. The rotting remains of the pestilence and their sad empty houses were lit with new light. The breeze became a wind. The drizzle was a swirling silvery haze but the fire was stronger. The drizzle turned scarlet. Another thatch caught, two houses in from the Coles’ cottage. Flames crackled, spitting their sparks high like dancing rubies, each fragmented, a game of tiny escaping explosions high against a dull grey sky. The next house, roofs attached, began to blaze and the flames ran along the thatches in little seeking tongues.
Nicholas shouted, “Damnation. Get here, David, quickly, before this spreads to the trees.”
“We should leave at once, my lord. We have other duties and far more important. Your lady and then his highness –”
Nicholas frowned. “These poor miserable wretches have faced the pestilence. Must the survivors burn alive? If there’s water, I’ll help put out the fire. I’ve experience enough.” He had already turned his horse. The mare snorted, her nostrils flared, smelling fire. But Nicholas urged her back towards the village.
David, again in the saddle, followed, heels to the reluctant horse’s flanks. “My lord, is the aim worth the risk?”
“Come with me or not, my friend,” Nicholas called back. “Your hatred of fire is something I well understand, so give your help, or not. But don’t argue, when it’s action we need.” He was now well ahead, as suddenly the sky turned orange. Above the haze of gathering smoke obscured the leering virulence which varnished all the clouds as though they too were aflame. Only moments down the lane, Nicholas halted. “The horses are terrified,” he shouted. “Stop here, David, and keep hold of my reins.” He dismounted and ran.
Where the cottages huddled the fire spread unhindered, gaining strength and swallowing everything both within and without. First to Ralph Cole’s, kicking open the cracked wooden door. One wall was already crumbling into soot, and showed the single chamber in a swirl of yellow smoke. Nicholas turned on his heel and strode back outside.
Around him there was noise and fear as hot and nauseas as the fire. There were screams, people running, a woman, her gown all in scorched tatters, crawling from the collapse of her home. A young man ran, his hair in flames. People, hugging, helping, shouting and panicking, racing or struggling to the open grass. David tied both horses’ reins to an overhanging branch and followed his master. He marched among the scurry and chaos, offering help. Nicholas called for buckets, organising a line from butts to thatches and eventually a hope of salvation.
Within only moments those ten or more cottages grouped around the church and the grassy square were destroyed, lost in piled rubble, ashes, shattered beams, scattered iron pots and those few precious possessions now ruined. A bedstead, its strings all gone, stood broken legged in a mess of blackened fustian and feathers, its owner fallen through the burned base and now lying on the ground, a shrivelled memory of a life now cooked flesh, no knowing if this had been man or woman, or had died first of the pestilence, or later killed by fire. Eerie and echoing silences were shattered by falling walls and ceilings, the thunderous tumbling of timbers. Faint, distant and smothered, the moaning of someone left alive. Nicholas pulled the dead, dying and living from the rubble which had once housed them. Beside him the frantic patrol fought desperately to save who and what they could, five men working alongside Nicholas and David, checking each house as the wind swept up the flames and threw them like sheets into the rain.
The water butts were half full with wet leaves and insect larvae, little more than dirty puddles but water all the same. Buckets filled, trudged from scalding door to step. So the fire, slow pace by pace, was doused. Step by step and one by one some were saved. One man gasped, “God bless you, sir,” and died, tongue out to taste the cool liquid as he heaved one last breath.
Then dark figures, a single line of black frocked monks from the monastery, alerted by the smell of fire, doggedly trudging the trail from their quiet haven. Nicholas beckoned to David, who was still checking the ruins of an adjacent house. “We’ll leave,” he said. “The monks and their patrol will finish what they can. We’re no longer needed.” David sank down a moment, gasping for breath. His hair was singed, his clothes blackened. Nicholas nodded, and helped him rise. “You’re a brave man, my friend,” he murmured, “to march into the flames you hate and fear.” He supported his squire as they staggered back down the lane to where the horses had been tethered. A hazy twilight had turned the trees to silhouettes, the sky just grey pockets between the leaves. They had not even noticed the passing of time.
The Fox and Pheasant was quiet. The fragile drifting drizzle still blanketed the roof and its eaves, the tucked windows obscured in silver shimmer, and the sun was setting behind the clouds.
Avoiding all other sounds and all other chambers, Nicholas took the back stairs and climbed to the attic. He found his wife half drowsing, the long wait for him having turned to apathetic slumber. When she heard the door close, she blinked and sat up in a hurry.
“Forgive the delay,” he sat beside her and took her hand. “There was more to do than we’d expected. Fire, and half the village destroyed. Unkind to you, little one, but I saved other lives; something I felt I had to do.” He smoothed his thumb across her cheeks. “You’ve been crying.”
She shook her head. “I thought perhaps that you couldn’t get away. I thought you’d – never – get away.”
“Foolish mistrust, my sweet. And before you ask, your friend was dead already, and is now at peace. I saw him before the fire and gave the medicines. I gave him poppy juice, and explained what would happen if he took a stronger dose. I hope that’s what he did. We saved a few others, and some were saved by the men of the patrol. They were courageous, and did what they could, as David did, carrying out both the sick and the healthy from houses aflame and falling. I’ve a squire to be proud of.” But he leaned down and kissed her smut marked cheeks, both arms still very tight around her. “And I’ve a remarkably brave wife too, and I’m proud to call her mine.”
Emeline winced, whispering, “You’re not cross with me for having left home before – for coming here – for bringing danger to everyone – so that you had to rescue me?”
“You imagine I’d be angry because you’ve not obeyed me? But you so rarely do, my love, I no longer expect it.”
“And you said you’re – truly – proud – of me?”
He kissed the tip of her nose which was fiercely pink. “I am exceedingly proud of my exceedingly courageous wife. I’m learning a great deal more about you, my love. And now we eat, we talk, we kiss, and finally we sleep.”
She had decided not to warn him yet, but then she thought better of it. “Are you going down to order supper? Then I had better tell you who is here.”
“A parcel of women, and most of them my wretched relatives.”
“Not all of them women.” She took a deep breath, and said, “Your father is here.”