The Mistress

With nothing left to lose, he had climbed to a steel girder in the terminal. He had no thought but that he wanted to be up high, like a bird, where nothing could touch him. He still remembered the faces of the onlookers. No one dared move or look away. Their riveted expressions of awe and dread had given him a keen sense of power. So long as they watched, he held them in the palm of his hand. Their attention went wherever he commanded it. With a heady feeling of complete control, he could make them gasp, cause their hearts to pound, force them to weep or sweat with worry for him. When he leaped down and stood unscathed on the platform, coins had showered him and he knew he was made for this life.

Not long afterward, he had apprenticed himself to a saloon owner in the bowery where he had performed stunts of increasing complexity. He quickly graduated to confidence games, tricking people out of their money by convincing them that a painted brick was solid gold, or that his Colombian parrot could tell the future, or that he was a direct descendant of an Egyptian king. In his lonely search for a place in the world, he had donned every persona except his own. He didn’t even know who he was anymore, and didn’t much care.

Hoping he’d left a bottle of spirits in the boat, he decided to seek shelter instead of standing around watching the chaos. The wind whipped viciously at the opera cloak he had helped himself to, temporarily covering his face with the expensive fabric. At the same moment, someone—a very large someone—jostled him, and he found himself shoved back against a timber bridge support.

“You move pretty fast for a dead man,” growled a deep, unpleasant voice.

The cloak was pulled out of his face. “Nice threads, Dylan,” said the voice, rich with sarcasm. “But you weren’t wearing it the last time I saw you. Seems I recall you were wearing ten thousand dollars in bank notes strapped around you.”

Damn it. He was hoping to avoid this. What a fiasco. He thought his daredevil escape over the falls meant he’d seen the last of Costello. Within hours of fleeing Niagara Falls, he had donned a new identity and hopped a train, knowing his former partner was likely to track him down in due time. As smart as Dylan and even less scrupulous, Costello had a special gift for getting what he was after.

“Vince,” he said, staring down at Costello’s meaty fingers, which clutched the cloak at his throat. “How did you find me?”

“I followed the smell, you low-bellied slug.”

“Very funny.”

“Yeah, I was tickled pink when I read in the papers how a certain Mr. Kennedy just got back from hobnobbing with the Vanderbilts all over the Continent. The bit about your being granted the Studleigh Prize by Queen Victoria was a dead giveaway.” He snorted. “Studleigh was the name you took for card-sharping in Albany.”

Dylan didn’t bother playing dumb. “How have you been?” he asked, and since Costello had not killed him yet, he dared to add, “How’s Faith?”

Vincent Costello dropped his hands. His face, which resembled a very healthy russet potato, with interesting knobs and creases, closed in a furious scowl. “You broke her heart, Dylan. She thought you were going to marry her. Even though I just about spent my last breath trying to convince her you’re no damned good, she’s got it in her head that she wants to marry you.”

“Well,” he lied, “the feeling was mutual.”

“Then do you mind explaining why you simply disappeared? With, I might add, our entire capital strapped to your waist.”

“Oh,” said Dylan, tensing to flee. “That.”

“Yes,” said Costello, pulling a gun. “That.”

“What’s blocking the roadway ahead?” Lucy Hathaway asked the driver. Their coach, a bulky rockaway with an extended front and the school crest painted on the doors, had rolled to a halt. She had to lean out the window to speak to him. Kathleen could see the roaring wind snatch at Lucy’s jet-black hair.

“A horse car,” the driver yelled. “Someone cut the horse loose and took the fare box. I can see the thief heading on foot for the river.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Lucy pulled her head back in and flopped against the leather seat. “At this rate it’ll take half the night to get back to Miss Boylan’s.”

Phoebe used the speaking tube rather than risk mussing her hair. “Driver, go around the horse car. We really must be getting back.”

Kathleen cast a worried glance at the Randolph Street Bridge behind them. The railed span overflowed with people, livestock, horses and mules hitched to all manner of conveyance.

“Saints and crooked angels. The fire must be even worse than it looks,” she said. In all the excitement and traffic she had not even told them her news—that Lucy had won the bet. Dylan Francis Kennedy had invited her to Crosby’s tomorrow night. She said nothing, though, for the victory seemed a trivial matter now.

Phoebe impatiently rapped her fan at the speaking tube. “Driver, did you not hear what I said? Go around the horse car at once.”

They could feel the coach swaying as the team strained in the traces. But there was no forward movement. Kathleen looked out at the crowded street. With a cold clutch of nervousness she saw the reason they had made no progress.

“Our driver has fled,” she told the others. She dropped her cultured manner of speaking and unknowingly echoed the thick brogue of her mother. “Sweet heaven, preserve us, we have no driver.”

“Don’t be ridicu—” Phoebe half stood, her hand on the door handle.

At the same moment, an explosion split the air. The fire had reached a store of gunpowder somewhere. The coach jerked forward with such force that Phoebe was slammed against the seat. With a scream, she plopped down. Kathleen felt her head snap back with the motion. The driverless horses scrambled ahead in full panic. Not only did they draw the coach around the abandoned horse car, they headed in a new direction entirely.

“We are going directly toward the fire,” Lucy said. Her voice was thick with fear.

“We’re going to die,” Phoebe wailed. “Dear God, we’re going to die and I never even had the chance to marry a duke. And I never saw Pompeii. And I’ve never eaten an oyster. And I’m still a virgin—”

“Can you shut her up?” Kathleen asked Lucy.

Lucy clutched at Phoebe’s shoulders and shouted “Shut up!” in her face.

Kathleen battled the rocking, lurching motion of the uncontrolled coach as she yanked the expensive silk skirts up between her legs and tied the fabric to fit like bulky trousers.

“Do be careful,” Lucy shouted, realizing her intent. “Please, be careful.”

Kathleen nodded grimly. She unhooked the stiff leather windshield of the coach. Immediately smoke and blowing sparks streaked into the interior. Phoebe started to scream again, but Kathleen ignored her and climbed. She was able to grasp the underside of the high seat where the cowardly driver had perched.

The hot wind roared over her face, carrying the scent of the terrified, sweating horses. By the age of eight, Kathleen had learned to drive her mother’s milk wagon and she was determined to control these beasts. “Ho there,” she shouted, hoping they would respond to a verbal command. “Ho!” Then she yelled, “Please, ho!” and finally, “Ho, damn it!”

The team ignored her. They churned along a broad avenue flanked by burning buildings. Their long manes streaked out behind them. Straining every muscle in her body, Kathleen managed to hoist herself through the windshield to the driver’s perch. The speed was dizzying, terrifying. So was the knowledge that the crazed horses were drawing them deeper and deeper into the heart of the fire.

The reins. She had to get hold of the reins. The trouble was, the driver had dropped them and they now snaked uselessly along the street.

She kept shouting Ho and they kept ignoring her. She spied a length of leather that had not come entirely loose, but had become fouled around part of the undercarriage. Perhaps she could reach that. Holding the seat with one hand, she stretched down and forward with the other.

A groan came from her throat. She couldn’t reach. Kathleen wanted to sob in frustration, but she had never been one to cry and saw no point in starting now. She kept reaching. Stretching. The leather slapped tantalizingly against her hand again and again. She finally grabbed hold and gave a shout of triumph. With all her might she hauled back on the single rein.

At first the horses fought her control, but eventually responded to the desperate tugging.

Another explosion sounded. It was terrifyingly close, the heat of it sucking the air from her lungs. With the force of a blow, the blast knocked Kathleen from her seat. She was slammed against the pine block roadway, stunned, unable to draw a breath. People rushing toward the lakefront veered to avoid the racing coach. The horses turned sharply in the middle of the street. The tongue of the coach unbalanced the vehicle and it went over on its side. While she watched in helpless horror, the horses reared, protesting the resistance, struggling to free themselves.

The impact of her fall reverberated through Kathleen’s teeth and bones. With slow determination she hauled herself to her feet and hurried over to the coach. The straining horses were dragging it on its side, but the big rockaway barely moved. Kathleen grabbed for the half door just as it banged open.

“We’re all right,” Lucy said, hiking back her skirts to clamber out.

“Thank God.” Kathleen took her hand, helping her, then reached for Phoebe. White-faced and clearly shaken, Phoebe was battling tears. “Hurry,” Kathleen said. “The whole neighborhood is burning around us.”

Phoebe’s beaded gown tore on the door latch as she scrambled out. “Help,” she shrieked to a man and woman hurrying past. “You must help us!” The passersby clutched their bundles closer and ignored her. She exhorted a man on a horse for assistance, and shouted to a hose cart driver, but no one stopped.

“Help me free the horses,” Kathleen said.

“No, we must get the coach up. It’s our only hope of escaping,” Phoebe wailed. “Sir,” she yelled at a huge man in fringed buckskins. “We need help with the coach—”

He said nothing but took out a gleaming knife. Phoebe shrank back as he pushed past her. With two easy slices, he cut the traces. Then he slapped the horses on the rumps and they raced away.

“He…he…the horses!” Phoebe yelled.

“At least they have a chance now,” Lucy said.

Kathleen fixed her gaze on the hose cart crew. On the side of the conveyance she could make out the number 342. Her blood chilled, for that was the fire district that encompassed her parents’ home. Suddenly the rushing crowd, the blinding heat, the bellowing roar of the fire all faded away. She stumbled on the broken pavement and lurched around a light post, approaching the crew.

“Have you come from the West Division?” she shouted.

One of the men kept the hose stream aimed at the building that had exploded. “You bet. Nothing left there to save, miss.”

A whistle sounded and the hose cart crew drew away. Sick with fear, Kathleen stumbled back to rejoin her friends.

Lucy grabbed Phoebe’s hand. “This way. We’ll go on foot.”

“I’ll do nothing of the sort,” Phoebe objected.

“We’ve wasted enough time squabbling already. Come along, Kathleen.”

As it turned out, Phoebe had her way. By trading a ruby brooch, Lucy found seats for the three of them on the back of an express wagon. The vehicle, laden with rugs and furnishings from a law firm, lumbered along Washington Street, heading toward the Sands at the edge of the lake. Kathleen felt dazed, unable to think or speak. Her legs dangled off the back of the wagon, and she realized she was facing west.

Nothing left there to save.

She wondered dully how long the area had been burning. Had flames consumed her parents’ house while she was laughing and flirting with Dylan Kennedy? Had her little sister Mary and baby brother James fled in terror while she was drinking champagne at the Hotel Royale?

The knot of guilt in her stomach tightened. She clutched at her middle, only vaguely aware of her friends’ anxious discourse as they sifted through the rumors that sped through the night. Field and Leiter’s six-storey retail emporium was in flames. The gasworks and numerous substations stood directly in the path of the fire. The waterworks was threatened. If it failed, there would be no water for the hose crews.

None of it mattered to Kathleen. She couldn’t bear to think of anything but her family and what might have become of them.

And then she acted without thinking, doing exactly what instinct told her to do. Without looking left or right, she jumped off the back of the cart. Through the steady roar of the fire and the howl of the wind, she could hear her friends calling her name but she didn’t turn, didn’t pause, didn’t flag in her determination. In seconds, a wall of smoke and flame swallowed the retreating express wagon. It occurred to her that she might never see her friends again.

Between her and the West Division lay a fiery maze only a fool would try to cross. But she had to go anyway. She had to find out what had become of her family.

Chapter Four

“Can’t go that way, miss,” yelled a passing merchant who staggered along, weighted by a stack of goods from his shop. “It’s burning worse’n hell.”

Kathleen acknowledged him with a nod, but ignored his advice and continued along Van Buren Street toward the bridge. She had gone this way a thousand times over the years, making the journey from the opulent prosperity of the North Side to the chaotic neighborhoods of the West Division. She always knew, once she reached the river, that the bridge was more than a way to cross the water. It seemed to span two worlds—the world that she’d come from, and the world she yearned to inhabit.

Tonight, for a cruelly short period of time, she had been there, in that world where she desperately wanted to be. Her brother Frank often teased her about her longing and ambition, and he swore that once she sampled the good life, she would find it as stale and artificial as faded silk flowers.

Frank was wrong. Her first taste of high society had been…delicious. Dylan Kennedy had made it so. Imagine, Dylan Kennedy singling her out for his attention, flattering and kissing her as if she were the most desirable woman on earth.

She wanted to savor the memories, but at present it was all she could do to survive the night. There was no use pretending she wasn’t afraid. She was. Everything she could see on the other side of the river was in flames. Wind and fire were one and the same, turning buildings and trees to dizzying towers of fire. The heat reached across the water, searing her cheeks.

Struggling against the crowd, jostled and buffeted like a leaf on the wind, Kathleen tried to pick her way to the bridge. The very sky itself rained flaming brands down on the twin arch supports of the span. In the river, boat whistles shrieked for the bridge to be opened on its pivoting pier, but the walkway was crammed with frantic people, every one of them fleeing directly toward Kathleen. They came on in a solid wall of humanity, and the fire behind them roared like a live thing, a dragon.

She fell back at the bridgetender’s house. She’d never get across here. Choked by frustration, she turned north, praying the Madison Street Bridge would be less crowded. In order to get there she would have to pass the gasworks, a frightening prospect given the rain of fire.

But not nearly as frightening as the situation she discovered in the middle of the street. A hail of cinders spattered her, and she cringed within her cloak. She stopped and stared at a police paddy wagon lurching along the roadway. A red-faced driver, his cheeks puffed out around a whistle, stood high on the box, his whistle shrieking. They came to an impasse, where the macadam road was blocked by stacks of crates and trunks someone had abandoned.

The driver and a man on the back had a hurried conversation, then unhitched the horse. People passing by took one look at what was happening and picked up their pace.

Blessed be, thought Kathleen. They’re freeing the jailbirds.

The lieutenant opened the back of the wagon, then joined the crowd rushing toward the north and east. Men poured out into the middle of the street. She recognized their striped garb, but even more, she recognized the harsh, deep lines in even the youngest faces. Their eyes were hard and darting, even when they looked up at the flaming sky and, suddenly aware of their freedom, dispersed like sparks in the air.

She did not know any of these men, but the look of them was familiar to her. These were the faces of men who had grown up as poor as she, but rather than toiling for a wage at the stockyards or a lumber mill or a varnishing factory, they had taken to crime. Some of the men had the very look of violence in their gleaming eyes and badly healed broken noses, while others might have been altar boys in church in their younger years. A body just couldn’t tell, she thought, keeping to the side of the street, away from all the commotion.

Appearances could be so deceiving.

She concentrated on forging a path through the smoldering debris to the nearest bridge, and tried praying through her gritted teeth. But the words to even the simplest prayer simply would not come. She did not know how to ask for all that she wanted—for her family to be safe, their home to be standing. Forgiveness for seeking beyond her means for a life not meant to be hers. Safety for her friends, whom she had abandoned in order to make the desperate dash across the city.

Some of the newly freed convicts started looting the shops and businesses that lined the street. They helped themselves to jugs of liquor, lamps, bolts of cloth, anything that wasn’t nailed down. Despite her understanding of these men, the pillaging shocked her, and she hurried faster. Even so, she was not quick enough to elude a heavyset, mean-eyed convict who shoved himself up against her on the walkway. He was a black man with a sculpted mouth, a bald head and a thin, raised scar under one eye.

“Let’s have a look at those jewels now, sister,” he said, his meaty paw reaching for her borrowed necklace.

There was no time for fear or hysteria. Kathleen had been raised in the rough West Division, and she didn’t hesitate. “Over my dead body, boyo,” she said, and at the same time, she brought up her knee. The mean eyes bugged out, and she felt the rush of his hot breath as he doubled over, wheezing, leaning against the concrete base of the bank building. Kathleen knew she had only seconds before he recovered, angrier than ever, so she darted down a side alley.

Away from the bridge. But there was nothing else for it. Too many of the convicts overran the vicinity. She preferred the unknown perils of the fire to the very familiar dangers of newly freed prisoners. She hoped the narrow, smoke-shrouded alley would lead to another westbound street, but instead found herself in a maze of walled-off mews. After a few sharp turns to the right, she became disoriented. She passed no one; the area had been evacuated. Stable doors hung open to empty stalls, the stores of hay fueling the conflagration. Only the occasional rat streaked past, seemingly as lost as she.

Suddenly a crashing sound ripped through the air. Looking back the way she had come, she saw that the walls on either side of the alley had caved in on themselves. A fountain of dust and ash rose from the sky. But out of the ashes came something…someone. A man. Staggering, wounded. She blinked and squinted against the stinging smoke.

There was another crash, and she lost sight of the man. Then the wind screamed through the alley, scouring the air so that, for a few seconds, she could see clearly.

He wore prison stripes and a look of hideous fury.

He had a bald head and a scar under one eye.

And he was hopelessly pinned by a fallen roof beam.

Kathleen wheeled around and started to run away, for the first time truly afraid for her life. After a few yards, she dared to turn and look. He fought with the charred, smoking beam, desperately trying to drag himself out from under its weight. With one arm, he reached toward a shadowy doorway. Bright embers and sheets of tarred roofing wafted down, setting fire to all they touched.

Kathleen hurried away, expecting to feel a rush of relief.

Instead, she kept thinking of the way the Negro man struggled, the twist of his open mouth. She imagined his bellows of pain and rage, drowned by the roar of the storm. She wondered if he knew how to pray.

And against all common sense, she stopped running and turned back. He was a convict, a thief and possibly a murderer, but was it for her to condemn him to the flames of eternity?

She trembled as she returned to his side, crouching down and tugging at the huge beam. Tears of hot sap spurted from the wood, burning her hand. She flinched, but kept pulling at the beam.

“Best get on out of this place,” the man said in a low voice.

She didn’t pause. “You can’t stay here,” she said. “You’ll burn like Saint Joan if you do.”

He managed to push one leg out from under the beam. His foot was clad in a cheap China canvas shoe with holes cut for his toes. His arms were still pressed to the ground.

“Can’t move,” he said with a rough sneer. “An’ that ought to make her ladyship happy.”

She swallowed hard, tasting a dry grittiness in her throat. “Hush up. I’m trying to help you.”

He eyed her with suspicion. “Help me what? Burn like the sinner I am? You done enough already, thank you very kindly.”

Realizing that she lacked the strength in her arms, Kathleen sat down in the roadway and pressed her feet to the beam. “Look, I don’t have time to argue with you. Push from below, and I’ll push with my feet until we move this thing off you. Unless you prefer to sit here and caterwaul like a bleedin’ infant until you suffocate.”

He seemed to respond to her sharpness more than her compassion. With a nod, he indicated that it was time to push. With him heaving from below and Kathleen pushing with both legs, the beam finally moved. Crawling inch by inch, the convict freed himself. Kathleen jumped up with a shout of triumph. Then, seeing that he might be injured, she stuck out her hand.

He closed his soot-blackened hand around hers, nearly pulling her down as he levered himself to a standing position.

“There now,” she said, “I’ll help you walk. But keep your greedy mitts off the necklace.”

“You’re no bigger’n a minute,” he said. “How you going to help me?”

She angled a glare up at him. “Didn’t I just? It’s not the size that matters,” she reminded him. “Come, and be as quick as you can.”

He settled a big, heavy arm across her shoulders and they started along the smoke-filled alley. Kathleen could feel him wince each time he put weight on his injured ankle. His bald head, shining with sweat, had a gash across the right side. Still, he drove himself to match her pace.

“Why?” he rasped, wheezing with the rhythm of their hurried footsteps.

She knew what he meant. “You’re a bully and a thief, but so are most men. That doesn’t mean they should all be burned alive.”

He coughed out a laugh. “I can name a dame or two who’d disagree.”

The injured man smelled, and he weighed heavy against her, but Kathleen just wanted to get the two of them to a place of safety. The fire pursued them like a deadly enemy with a mind of its own. The wind drove the flames to lick at their heels. They needed to find a place of relative quiet, where the air was at least breathable. They walked for what seemed like hours, encountering dead ends and blocked passageways. Sometimes the smoke blinded them utterly.

“Do you know where we are?” she asked the convict.

“Not a blamed notion.” He grunted as his foot struck a stray brick in the road. “My name’s Eugene, by the way. Eugene Waxman. Friends call me Bull.”