“Pastor Courtney,” Gilbert calls from underneath the weight of McCaw. “Where can I set this man down?”
The pastor takes one look at McCaw and says, “Not him, too.”
McCaw is a big man, and Gilbert doesn’t have enough breath left in his body to respond with anything other than a grunt.
“Any pew you can find, Mr. Hunt.” Pastor Courtney turns to McCaw’s sister. “Mrs. Johnston, you all right?”
Phyllis McCaw Johnston is one of those women who will be more than all right until the day she drops dead. Her clothing is fine, she wears at least a pound of gold around her throat, and it does not look like she’s done anounce of work in her life. But when Gilbert arrives at the church doors and says “You mind getting those for me?” she does as she is told.
Gilbert stumbles through the doorway and into the church’s dark interior. The pastor has lit all the lamps he has, plus the altar candles and even the leftover lanterns from last summer’s camp meetings. Still, Gilbert can barely see the pulpit.
From the pews, Gilbert hears the moans of the injured, and he lurches forward, looking for one that is not in use. Now he sees why the pastor has told people to avoid the center aisle; a line of bodies runs down the middle of it. Gilbert is tempted to stop and look for Louisa’s slight build, the rise of her rib cage, but he is staggering under the weight of his charge, so he steps over the bodies instead.
“The pews are so narrow,” says Mrs. Johnston as Gilbert comes to an empty one. “Surely, he’d be more comfortable over there on the floor.”
Gilbert looks behind him at the dead. “Don’t look too comfortable to me.”
Pew or no pew, Gilbert doesn’t know how he is supposed to lay McCaw down. The man’s back is so badly burned, he can’t press it up against anything. And he fell on his face, so there’s no telling what is broken or bruised, aside from the left thigh, which is clearly in need of attention.
“Maybe we see about getting a cart?” says Mrs. Johnston. “Try to transport him home?”
“Maybe,” wheezes Gilbert, who isn’t fond of the way McCaw’s sister bandies around the wordwe. She doesn’t own him, and he doubts that Cameron Kemp would be so charitable as to knowingly lend him out to the McCaws, even in a crisis. “But wherever he goes next, I got to put him down now.”
Gilbert squats beside the pew, then unlocks McCaw’s arms from his neck and begins to roll the good doctor onto the long seat.
“Careful with him!” says Mrs. Johnston.
He wants to shout,What do you think I’m doing?Instead, he just lowers McCaw down onto the pew and winces as the doctor lets out a sharp cry. “Dr. McCaw, you done good,” he soothes as he rips at McCaw’s torn pant leg, exposing a thigh, which has been cut to ribbons.
Mrs. Johnston reaches for her brother then, which is when Gilbert notices the two dark circles spreading across the bodice of her dress. She musthave seen him noticing because she immediately tries to cover her chest with her arms. “I’ve got a new baby. I should have been home by now.”
“You don’t need to explain yourself,” says Gilbert, quick as he can. But in truth, her explanationdoesmake him feel a tad more generous toward her. That baby came dangerously close to losing both his mama and his next meal.
He thinks about trying to find a jacket or shawl he can give her, but he’s barely had time to look around the sanctuary when he is clapped on the back by Angus Graham, who runs The Bell Tavern. “Hunt, I saw it with my own eyes. Wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t.”
Gilbert glances at Mrs. Johnston, who looks every bit as confused as he is. “Beg your pardon?”
“The way you snapped all those ladies out of the air. Like you was a bullfrog catching flies. Never seen anything like it.”
There is something deeply discomforting about being praised like this, the dead and dying all around them, and Gilbert looks for the quickest way out of the conversation. “Dr. McCaw should get the credit. He sat up in that window, long past the point where most men would have jumped.”
Mrs. Johnston nods appreciatively. “And he’s paying the price, too.”
Mr. Graham looks over at the pew. “I see that. You have my sympathy,” he says to Mrs. Johnston, but he won’t be deterred. “Hunt—I know what I saw. And what I saw was miraculous.”
Gilbert needs the conversation to end. For Mrs. Johnston’s sake, and for his own, too. “Thank you, Mr. Graham,” he says and watches the innkeeper make for the door.
When he is gone, Gilbert tries to apologize to Mrs. Johnston for taking up so much of the man’s attention. If he has learned anything in his life, it is that no good can come from showing up a white man, and certainly not a white man as well-connected as Dr. McCaw. “I don’t know what he was going on about. Any man would have done the same thing.”
She tilts her head a little. “I’m not so sure about that.”
CECILY
Cecily is one block awayfrom the theater green and then she is two, but it’s when she can no longer hear the lick of the flames or the shouts of the crowd that she begins to feel truly afraid.
The back roads of Court End are quieter than she expected them to be, and it is the quiet that makes her uncomfortable. She jumps every time she hears a door slam or a dog bark. The creak of a dray, drawn by a pair of horses, sends her diving for the tree line, but she is not so quick when a man in a dress coat bolts past her on foot. All she can do then is hold her breath and hope his business is not with her.
Already she is second-guessing her decision to run. If she is caught, she will be dragged back to the Price place in chains. When Master Price discovers that she intended to fake her own death, he’ll take her straight to the whipping post that sits in the center of the yard. He has made use of it only a handful of times in Cecily’s recollection, but each left an indelible impression on her.
