The Fallon Blood, page 52
part #1 of Fallon Series
At a rap on the door early on Monday he turned from the open sea chest. “Who is it?”
“It’s—It’s James Fallon. I want to speak to you.”
Robert frowned. He didn’t want to speak to any Fallons, James perhaps least of all. He opened the door. “Listen, James—”
James’s fist caught him in the mouth. He tumbled back, falling to one knee by the bed. James closed the door, and stared down at Robert contemptuously. “Leave Charleston. We don’t like bastards here. Leave, and don’t come back, or you’ll get worse.”
Robert tasted the blood in his mouth and shook his head. “I suppose, for your being my half-brother, I should accept that.”
“I thought you would,” James sneered.
“But I won’t.” Robert surged to his feet, and his left fist caught James flush on the mouth.
James staggered back against the door. Incredulously he wiped at his mouth and stared at the blood on his hand. Robert stood in the center of the room, waiting. With a yell James rushed forward, fists flying. Robert met him almost joyously, and they stood toe to toe, hitting as if each blow were meant to knock the other man out.
It had lately become the fashion for young gentlemen to study boxing along with their fencing, and James had studied under Jem Tyler, who had fought two hundred matches in England. He fought with skill and science. But Robert’s school had been the docks and the forecastle, where a man’s authority depended as much on the power of his fists as his rank. He blocked what blows he could, took those he had to, and delivered a rain of short, sharp, murderous punches to the midsection and ribs.
Finally the cumulative effect told on James. His knees buckled, and he crumpled to the floor. Unbelieving, he stared up at Robert. He’d never been beaten; it was impossible that this byblow had put him on the floor. Laboriously he got to his feet, and launched another blow.
Easily Robert blocked it, and hooked a wicked right into James’s belly. As the taller man doubled over he raised his fist high, and halted. He’d been about to deliver a finishing punch, a fist into the socket behind the jaw, breaking the jaw and bringing unconsciousness. This was his half-brother he was fighting, not some drunken boatswain. Angry at himself, he pushed the still doubled James away and turned to dig a bottle out of his sea chest.
A scrabble at the door brought him round; James was darting into the hall. Robert muttered a curse. Well, what did it matter? He examined himself in the mirror. Aside from a small cut at the corner of his mouth, no one would know he’d been in a fight. But there’d be a mouse under his eye by nightfall.
In spite of himself he couldn’t keep his mind off the Fallons. He’d planned to go at once. But he could not do it. The family was tearing apart. He had to tell them he was going, let them begin to knit themselves back together. With an oath he snatched up his hat and walking stick and left the room.
Halfway down the stairs to the common room, he saw James at the bar, pouring brandy with a shaking hand. James turned at his footsteps. When he saw Robert the glass dropped from his hand. He wet his lips slowly, then suddenly grabbed the bottle and dashed out into the street.
Outside, Robert saw him once, far ahead in the crowd. He looked back, and when he saw Robert, began to run. Probably thought he was being pursued, Robert thought. It was no more than he deserved.
He quickly lost sight of James in the early morning throng, mostly street peddlers claiming a good spot and sellers headed to the beef or vegetable markets. He’d no doubt they were going to the same place, though, even before the butler opened the door and he heard the tag of a conversation inside.
“Well, just you keep knocking at his door until he comes out,” Gabrielle said. “The idea of him running past me like that.”
“But Mama,” Catherine protested, “I’m supposed to go shopping with Alice and Mary, and then we’re going to Mary’s house to look at patterns. Besides, I don’t think he’ll come out. I think I saw a bottle in his hand.”
“A bottle?” Suddenly Gabrielle became aware of Robert standing in the door. “What do you want?”
His stubborn streak ignited. “I’ve something to tell you, ma’am, but I’ll not say it standing here.”
“Why you—” Catherine began indignantly, but her mother shushed her.
“You run along, dear. I’ll tend to this. Mr.—” Her mouth tightened. She couldn’t call him Mr. Fallon, but she had to call him something. And she couldn’t have an argument on the doorstep. “Come into the drawing room, Robert.”
Robert followed. “Ma’am, I apologize for speaking the way I did. You have every right not to want me in your house, so I won’t stay long enough to take a seat. I’ll just say what I have to, and go.”
She turned from closing the door and looked at him in exasperation. “Robert, you’re already in the house. Sit down.”
“No, thank you.”
“God, you’re as stubborn as your fa—I mean—Oh, do sit down. I’ve no intention of standing until you’re through, and I don’t want to look up at you the whole while.” She sank into a chair, and after a moment he took a seat across from her.
“I suppose I can be stubborn. All I wanted to say is, I’m leaving Charleston, and I won’t be coming back. I’d appreciate your telling the family that I won’t trouble them again.”
Gabrielle found herself almost at a loss for words. “I don’t understand. Why? You’ve gotten nothing you could’ve hoped for when you came here.”
“I didn’t come here for anything from the Fallon family. Remember, I didn’t find my—Mr. Fallon. He found me.”
“Then why? Why are you going, and why did you come in the first place?”
“I’m going because my being here is having an effect on this family I don’t like and didn’t want. And I came for the same reason I’ve come to Charleston before. The only really happy times of my life were spent as a child in and around this city.”
She nodded thoughtfully The man was a skilled liar; she’d find out just how skillful.
“Your only happy times, you said. Weren’t you happy wherever you went when you left here? Jamaica, I believe Michael said.”
“Your brother found out who my father was before we left,” he said flatly.
She pushed aside the thought of what Justin would’ve been like to such a child. “But you found out when your mother died? And she told you to go to Michael?”
“No, she didn’t tell me to go to him. In fact, I don’t think she’d have mentioned him at all if she hadn’t had to. You see, Justin used me against her, hurting me and letting her know it. It was the only reason he let me live. But she knew that when she died he’d kill me. I didn’t want to believe it, then, even after everything. So she told me about my father. Just his name. Not even where he was from. I didn’t discover that till I came here years later. But even at sixteen I knew that if I were a Fallon, Justin would certainly kill me. I stayed by her bed until she died, and then I ran.”
Bit by bit she drew his story out, jumping now forward in years, then back, searching for discrepancy. And finding none. Slowly she was coming to believe him. And she realized something else, too. When she thought of him as Michael’s bastard and Elizabeth’s son, she hated him with a passion. But when she thought of him as Michael’s son, she didn’t know how she felt.
She didn’t want to throw open her arms to him, but she could feel sorrow for the boy trapped under Justin’s insane mercilessness. And he looked so much like Michael; there was nothing of Elizabeth in his face.
“I must be going ma’am,” he was saying.
“No. Stay a while.”
He shook his head. “I haven’t talked this much about myself in the last five years together. I really have to go, though. Captain Byles promised to hold my berth, but if I don’t leave now, I’ll miss it. He’s sailing with the tide.”
“I meant don’t go with the ship, Robert.” She was surprised to realize she really did mean that. “Stay here in Charleston.”
He stared at her in utter confusion. “I don’t understand you at all. From the beginning you’ve made no secret that you couldn’t wait to see the last of me. Now you just change your mind?”
“I haven’t changed. At least, not entirely. But I suddenly realize I’ve been against you for all the wrong reasons. You are Michael Fallon’s son.” She took a deep breath. It didn’t get any easier as she went on. “I’m not saying everything’s going to work out overnight. It may not work out at all. I want to try, though. For you, for Michael, maybe for me. Robert, will you stay in Charleston?” The last sentence left her feeling as if she’d run for miles.
“I—” She looked at him, and her eyes were truly asking. “I’ll stay,” he said. The smile that blossomed made him think of sunshine.
“Good. Good. Can you ride, Robert? Then I’ll have the best horse in the stable saddled. Ride to Tir Alainn and bring him back. Tonight we’ll sit and find a way through this. But for now, bring Michael to me.”
The burning afternoon sun was beating down as Robert galloped up the drive at Tir Alainn. He hadn’t stopped except to ask directions, and he and the horse both were lathered and tired. He leaped down, tossed the reins to a staring black man, and raced up the stairs. A shout spun him around.
Michael, his shirt clinging to him with sweat, raced up the path from the rice fields, flogging his horse. “What’s the matter, lad? You came in here like the devil was at your heels. It’s not Gabrielle? She’s all right? She’s—”
“She’s all right. She sent me for you. Bring Michael to me, she said.”
“She said that, did she? And to you?” Michael put back his head and shouted for pure joy. “We’ll need fresh horses first. Kip! Lucifer! Get Hawk and Strider saddled! Stir your stumps!”
Twenty minutes later they pounded down the drive. They kept the horses at a gallop, slowing occasionally to breathe them. But always Michael was impatient to push on, to resume the gallop and hold it as long as possible. The lowering summer sun baked them, and powdery dust hanging in the air coated their lips and filled their nostrils.
Every wooden bridge they crossed rattled and drew the eyes to water, but they stopped only twice. A swallow for the horse, a swallow for the man, and they were gone. Darkness came, but the heat was still there, and worse for the air’s heaviness. Short of Clement’s Ferry they saw the ominous red glow in the sky toward Charleston. They looked at each other, fear hanging between them. It looked like fire. Without a word they leaned low over the tired horses, whipping them back to a gallop. They’d run them into the ground now, before they’d draw rein.
The glow grew brighter as they drew nearer. A bar of fire stretched the length of the city, flames clawing at the night sky like a madman’s vision of hell.
The streets were choked. People who lived away from the blaze struggled to get closer and see. Those who lived close fought to get away and live. Michael and Robert forced a way through, ruthlessly whipping aside men who grabbed their reins or tried to hinder them. More and more they found streets leading toward the fire too clogged to use. They begun to head down the peninsula toward Broad Street. They’d circle around the lower end of the fire.
A numbness grew in Michael’s brain. There was going to be no circling around. He knew that now. The house on Queen Street was in the midst of the devil’s bonfire. Desperately he searched the throng for a familiar face They all looked alike, painted with fear and washed with the glow from the fire.
Suddenly he leaned from the saddle; he had seen a maid from his house. “Miriam, where’s Mrs. Fallon? Where’s my wife?”
“I don’t know,” the woman screamed. “She send me on a errand. She send most everybody out. I don’t know where she be.” Tears ran down her face, and she began sobbing.
“When did it start? Do you know if she knew about it? Stop that and answer me, damn it. When did it start?”
“Before I leave,” she wailed. “It start before I leave. Mrs. Fallon, she say it way off. She say one time she get scared by fire, but she ain’t scared this time.”
“Papa!” He jerked around. “Papa!” He saw Catherine, standing on the seat of his carriage and waving.
He forced his way to her, coughing as the wind shifted to carry smoke down on them. “Thank God, you’re all right. Where’s your mother? And James?”
“I don’t know, Papa. I don’t know.” Tears streamed down her face; her body quivered with tension. “Papa, she always reads in the evening. And I, I think James was drinking in his room. Oh, God, Papa, I don’t know.” The tension broke; she sank down on the seat, her body wracked with sobs.
Michael slipped out of the saddle and pushed his way through the edge of the crowd. From a block away he could feel the heat, and it grew hotter with every step. Firemen heaved on the handles of their pumps, but the hoses were directed at buildings not yet aflame. They’d already given up on everything in the blocks on fire. One of them loomed in front of him.
“Go back! There’s nothing—”
He backhanded the man out of the way without breaking stride. Nothing he could do? Gabrielle was in there.
Someone grabbed his arm, and he whirled with raised fist. Robert backed away, holding up his hands, his arms full of blankets. “We’ll need to wet these, and us, in the water trough over there.” He saw the protest forming. “Or did you expect to carry both of them out by yourself?”
Michael nodded jerkily and took one of the blankets. He jumped into the trough, barely waiting for clothes and blanket to soak before leaping out. The blanket wrapped around his head, he ran into the fire. Robert followed at his heels.
The wetness didn’t reduce the heat. It just kept the cloth from burning. Steam quickly began to rise, and breathing was impossible except through a fold of the blanket. Through the leather the pavement felt like hot coals.
Only one thing gave Michael hope. Here and there a house, with all around it blazing, merely smoldered, or only the roof burned. It would be so at his house. It would be so. Then he could see his house. Flames already roared from the windows of the upper stories, but the ground floor was still intact. There was yet a chance.
He raced forward and reached to swing open the gate. And jerked his hand back with the red bar of a burn across it. Without a pause he kicked the gate open and ran through. The oak in the front yard had no more leaves, and even some of the heavier branches were beginning to show flame. He took the steps two at a time, threw his weight against the door, and smashed it open.
Gabrielle lay sprawled in the entry hall as if she’d collapsed trying to get to the door. Frantically he rolled her over. She stirred slightly, murmured. He wanted to cry with joy. Then he looked up.
Halfway up the first flight the stairs became a wall of flame, and two burning timbers blocked the way. Robert was fighting to get through. He tugged his coat off and managed to loop it around one of the timbers. He strained, trying to pull it out of the way before the coat burned through. Suddenly the timber shifted. It slipped, then more. And fell against him. He leaped back, shirt sleeves ablaze. Frantically he managed to beat them out, then started back up the staircase. Snatching his blanket, he swung it preparatory to looping it around the timber.
“No!” Michael shouted. “You’ll never get out without that around your head.”
“James is up there! Your son—!”
“I know it! God, don’t you think I know it? But I can’t get to him, not if I stay here till it burns down on top of me! And if I stay much longer, she’ll die! Oh, God, I hope he’s dead! Please, God, let him be dead!” He realized he was shaking, uncontrollably. It wouldn’t stop. He grabbed hold of Gabrielle, and calmness came to him. He had to be calm, because he had to get her out.
He motioned Robert toward the door. “Go. I’ll follow with her when you’re clear. Go, damn it, and don’t forget the blanket.”
Robert hesitated, then ran out. Michael watched him splash into the trough by the gate, then dart away down the street, the blanket like a shawl around his head and shoulders. He picked Gabrielle up and followed, trying to ignore that everything was burning as far as he could see, that buildings were collapsing into the street.
Carefully he lowered her into the water trough. It was hot, too, but it could still save her. He splashed water over himself, soaked the blanket. Tenderly he kissed her eyelids. Then he arranged the blanket around her, carefully positioning an edge to filter her air. Squinting his eyes against the heat, he picked her up and turned down the street. All he had to do was keep moving forward.
Within half a dozen steps his nose and mouth were dry. Not dry as thirst, but swelling, skin-cracking dry. He felt the burning of it deep in his chest. Blisters formed on his face and hands, and his eyebrows singed. The heat through his boot soles blistered the bottoms of his feet. They broke as he walked, and new blisters formed. But he kept on moving. That was all he had to do, the only thought he allowed in his mind. Keep moving forward and he’d get her to safety. That was all that was important. For endless steps that thought kept him moving.
Something touched his arm. He looked around in bewilderment. Someone took Gabrielle from his arms, and he realized they’d made it. There was Robert, and Catherine, too. “Doctor,” he croaked. “She needs. Doctor.” A man was in front of him, peering into his eyes. “Not me. Her.”
“I’ve looked at her,” the man said. “She’s dead.”
Michael pushed him aside and stumbled to where Gabrielle lay on the pavement. Someone had put a coat over her face. He ripped it aside with an oath. The soft brown hair still framed her face, auburn highlights glinting from the firelight. Her satiny skin still had the glow of life. She looked as if she were sleeping. She even had that slight smile she had when she was—
The doctor stopped behind him. “There was nothing you could have done. When you reached her, it was already too late. Once a certain amount of smoke gets into the lungs, I’m afraid—”
