When the innkeeper wavered, Lincoln added, in a shrill shout, “Now, if you please.”
Saunders gave me one more unfriendly look and slunk inside. He returned shortly with three lanterns, each a five-sided glass box containing a burning candle stub.
“Take good care with these,” Saunders said, handing the lanterns over. “With how long it’s been since we’ve last had rain, if a single blade of straw catches, the whole thing will go up in a blink. McWorter was left with a complete loss last spring when his stables fired. And you three’ll go up with it.”
We thanked him and hurried around the corner to the stables’ entrance. Once there, Lincoln used his lantern to light the long-fused torches positioned on either side of the entrance gate. The courtyard was instantly lit by the flickering torchlight.
“Jesse!” I called. “Jesse? Come out, boy, if you’re hiding. Your Auntie’s plenty worried.”
We could hear a few of the horses shifting in their stalls. Otherwise, there was no response.
The three of us exchanged grim nods and advanced through the rutted courtyard together, dodging loose paving stones where we could. On the left was the carriage shed. When the yard was full, the stable boys would park carriages inside the shed, but as there were only two coaches present tonight—my father’s black lacquered carriage and the large calèche coach whose arrival I had seen later in the afternoon—the boys had left them in front of the shed to save time on their departure. I walked up to the carriages.
“Jesse!” I called again. “Jesse?”
Silence.
“Back in the stables perhaps,” said Martha. I nodded. I was about to follow her when I looked again at one of the rear wheels of my father’s carriage. There was a small object balanced atop the hub.
“What’s this?” I exclaimed, swinging my lantern to have a look.
“What is it, Joshua?” called Martha.
“I just found a little cake,” I said, holding a small, half-eaten pastry. It crumbled in my palm. “The widow told me Jesse loved to eat these.” I paused. “I know other boys eat them too, of course, but I think he’s been here. Recently.”
A moment later, Lincoln called from the other side of the yard, “Quiet. What’s that noise?”
I listened intently. Nothing. Then, at the far reaches of my hearing, an insidious sound, a sort of crackling. I scanned the stable enclosure in front of us and there it was, off in a corner: a faint glow.
Fire.
The glow got brighter and larger. I saw a tongue of flame flicker along a wooden wall and then retreat, like a deadly snake poised to strike.
“Fire! Get help at once! The stable’s on fire!”
“The horses!” shrieked Martha. She dropped her lantern, and before I could stop her, she raced into the burning barn.
CHAPTER 14
“I’m going after her,” I shouted to Lincoln, who was standing with his mouth agape on the other side of the courtyard. “You’ll have to sound the alarm.”
But as I sprinted toward the barn door, now swinging in Martha’s wake, I feared a general alarm would do little good. Springfield had no fire company. The town’s fire warden was Tilman Hornbuckle, but it was a certainty he was passed out in an alleyway near Torrey’s by this hour. Fire hooks, ladders, and buckets were supposed to be available at all hours in the market house. But I knew the implements had been liberated one or two at a time in recent months by cash-poor farmers in need of tools.
I threw the stables door open and immediately gagged. The acrid smoke inside the unventilated building was already thick. It was hard to breathe and even harder to see. The shrieking of the horses competed with the crackle and spit of the flames. Both sounds were awful.
“Martha?” I shouted. “Martha?”
“Over here, in the loose room.”
“You’ve got to get out. At once.”
“Not without the horses.”
“Now, Martha!”
“No!”
I propped open the door with a paving stone. Then I took a deep breath and raced toward Martha’s voice.
“Go! Get out!” I heard her yelling.
I reached the loose room and through my watering eyes saw the gate open and Martha inside the pen trying to urge the horses out. Six or eight horses snorted and stomped and screamed, milling all around us in a mass of fear and confusion. The heat blasting from the far side of the barn was like a giant smithy’s hearth. I saw a flash of a familiar white stripe next to me. Hickory.
“Come, girl,” I said, grabbing her mane. I breathed in smoke and