“Those shits! Setting a fire where your family lives, your kids!” And mine …
“As a warning, it’s much more effective than anonymous notes pushed under the door.” Fergus was breathing heavily and stopped to cough, shaking his head. He glared at Roger, eyes bloodshot with smoke. “If I find out who did this, I will tie them in a sack, row them out to sea, and throw them alive to the sharks, I swear it by the name of God and la Virgine.”
“I’ll help ye do it.” He’d have to, he thought; Fergus couldn’t row with one hand.
“Merci.” Fergus glanced bleakly at the corner of the house; the shrieks and crying of frightened children in the street on the other side had died down, smothered in the sounds of running footsteps and exclamations. “I will find out,” he said, suddenly calm. “But now I must go to Marsali.” Jesus, what the thought of another fire will have done to him and Marsali … the little girls … He felt his blood go cold in his veins at the thought. Fergus was watching his face. He nodded, his own face sober now, and together they went to find their wives and children.
THERE WAS A lot of clishmaclaver going on outside the printshop. Dawn was an hour off and there was barely enough light to see Marsali and Bree and all the kids, withdrawn to the far side of the street and huddled together in the dark like a herd of small bison.
Germain, with Jemmy stoutly by his side, was standing in front of the women and children, fists clenched and his face, too, looking as though he couldn’t decide whether to cry or pound somebody. Fergus exhaled through his teeth, clapped Germain on the shoulder, and went to take one of the twins from Marsali, who had them both in a death grip. Fergus said something very quiet to her in French, and Roger turned tactfully to Bree, who had sat down on the wooden sidewalk and gathered all three little girls around her. Fizzy was clinging to Bree’s shift and sniffing, and Joanie, who tended to be practical, was braiding Mandy’s hair.
“Ye all right?” Roger said, and rested his hand on Brianna’s head, her hair cool and damp in the morning fog off the harbor.
“Nobody died,” she said, and managed a small, shaky laugh. “Do you know what happened?”
“Sort of. Tell ye later, though.”
Other people were coming, some in their nightclothes, others on their way from or to work: bakers, tavern keepers, laborers, fishermen. Two whores hung about under a tree, whispering to each other and glancing from the printshop to the family.
Rather to Roger’s surprise, Fergus made no attempt at secrecy. He told everyone in turn exactly what had happened—and what he intended to do to the maudit chiens who had attacked his family and livelihood.
Roger, catching on, searched the faces as the light began to seep slowly through the fog, looking for anyone who seemed maliciously pleased, or too knowing. Everyone seemed honestly shocked, though, and one tall, handsome middle-aged woman who by her dress could be nothing other than the landlady of a prosperous tavern came up to Marsali and urged her to bring the babes along and come and have a bite of breakfast.
“On the house,” she added, looking at the children and quite obviously reckoning up the cost of their appetites.
“Well, I thank ye kindly, Mistress Kenney,” Marsali said. She glanced at Fergus and coughed a little. “If ye’ll give us a moment to go and put some clothes on?”
The remark caused Roger to realize that he was standing in the street barefoot, wearing nothing but a shirt. He helped collect the children, and as they started to trickle back across the street toward their threatened home, he saw that Marsali was carrying several slugs of type, evidently snatched from the type-case, under one arm. They looked heavy, and she let him take them from her, sighing with relief as he did.
“Ye do wonder what ye’d take, if the house was afire,” he said, trying to be humorous.
“Aye, well,” Marsali said, tucking in the blanket wrapped around the twin she was holding. “It smells that wee bit better than sauerkraut, aye?”
Four days later …
BRIANNA TOOK A handful of the dress she meant to wear and lifted it cautiously to her nose. She’d hung it on a peg in the airing cupboard, along with Marsali’s working dress and apron, hoping for the best. The cupboard itself was no more than a large box like a coffin stood on end, built against the bedroom wall and pierced with dozens of holes through the outside wall, to let the night air dispel as much of the scent of lampblack, varnish, ink, cooking grease, and infant spit-up as possible before the garments were resumed the next morning.