“Give her one too,” said Dick as Mr. James Thistlethwaite abandoned his manic quill to join them. “Now tell us, Jim.”
It took a full quarter-pint to calm Cousin James-the-druggist enough to speak. “In the middle of the night someone forced the door of my main warehouse—you know how strong it is, Dick, and how many chains and padlocks it has! He got at my turpentine, soaked a big box in a vat of it, and filled the box with tow soaked in more turpentine. Then he put the box against some casks of linseed oil, and lit it. The place was deserted, of course. No one saw him come, no one saw him go.”
“I do not understand!” cried Dick, quite as white as his first cousin. “We are right on the corner of Bell Lane, and I swear we have heard nothing, seen nothing—smelled nothing!”
“It would not burn,” said Cousin James-the-druggist in an odd voice. “I tell you, Dick, it would not burn! It should have burned! I found the box when I came to work. At first I thought the broken door meant someone after opiates or badly needed medicines, but the moment I got inside, I could smell the turpentine.” His grey-blue Morgan eyes shone with the light of the visionary. “It is a miracle!” he cried. “It is a miracle! God has been good, and I will give St. James’s a thousand pounds for its poorbox.”
Even Mr. Thistlethwaite was impressed. “That is enough to make me wish I wrote panegyrics, Cousin James, and could hymn ye in print.” He frowned. “But I smell something fishy in the city of Bristol, so I do. The Savannah La Mar, the Hibernia and the Fame all belong to Lewsley, which is an American firm. Lewsley is right next door to you in Bell Lane. Perhaps the arsonist broke down the wrong door. I would tell Lewsley if I were you—this is a plot by the Tories to drive American money out of Bristol.”
“Ye see Tories in everything, Jem,” said Richard, smiling.
“Tories are in everything dastardly, at any rate.” Mr. Thistlethwaite sat down at his table again, rolling his eyes at the clutch of hysterical women. “I do wish ye’d shoo them home, Dick. Leave Richard there with one of my horse pistols—here, take it, Richard! I can defend myself with one. But what I insist upon is silence. The muse has beckoned, and I have a new subject to write about.”
No one took any notice of this, but as the regular patrons started to drift in for a noon dinner and the flow of enquirers into what had happened at the Morgan drug warehouse steadily increased, Richard decided to do as Mr. Thistlethwaite had suggested. One of the horse pistols in his greatcoat pocket and a dozen paper shot cartridges in the other pocket, he escorted Ann Morgan and her two dismally plain daughters back to their very nice house in St. James’s Barton. There he sat himself in a chair in the hallway to repel invading arsonists.
Within the space of two days, Thursday to Saturday, all Bristol had spun into a helpless panic. The wardens and specially appointed constables actually put some effort into their exertions, the lamps were lit at five in the afternoon in those few places lucky enough to have street lighting, and the lampmen got busy with their ladders to refill the oil reservoirs, something they rarely did. People hurried home early and wished that the season were not winter and therefore redolent with the smell of wood smoke. Hardly anyone slept during that Saturday night.
On the 19th, a Sunday, all Bristol save for the Jews were in church to beg that God be merciful and bring this Hellhound to justice. Cousin James-of-the-clergy, an excellent preacher even when not on form, gave of his best in a manner some slightly startled members of the St. James’s congregation described as positively Jesuitical and others as alarmingly Methodical.
“For myself,” said Dick, to whom one such remark was addressed, “I care not whether the Reverend sounded Jesuitical or Methodical. If we are to sleep soundly in our beds, the arsonist must be kicking his heels at the end of a rope. Besides, the Reverend’s papa was a regular fire-and-brimstone preacher, do you not remember? He gave sermons in the open air to the colliers at Crew’s Hole.”
“The Steadfast Society blames it on the American colonists.”
“Hardly likely! The American colonists look more the victims,” said Dick, ending the subject.
In the small hours of Sunday going into Monday, Richard woke with a start from a restless sleep.
“Dadda, Dadda!” William Henry was saying loudly from his cot.
Out of bed in a trice, Richard lit a candle from the tinder box and bent over him, heart pounding, as the child sat bolt upright. “What is wrong, William Henry?” he whispered.
“Fire,” said William Henry clearly.
Only his obsession with his son’s health could have stoppered his nose—the room was full of smoke.
In an emergency he was neat and quick, preserved his presence of mind; Richard woke his father with a shout even as his hands worked at his clothes and pulled on his shoes. Ready, he did not wait for Dick, but ran down the stairs with his candle, grabbed two buckets, unbolted the tavern door and slid across the pavement, slippery in a little rain. Others were stirring as he ran around the corner into Bell Lane and there came to a halt, aghast. The warehouse complex of Lewsley & Co. was ablaze, flames licking through gaps in the slate roofs, the narrow and dirty confines of Bell Lane pulsing red. A noise of roar and huff filled his ears; the Spanish wool, the grain and casks of olive oil inside were soaking up the fire and the fire was feeding upon them as it had not fed upon tow and turpentine.
Men armed with buckets were coming from all directions and multiple lines of them strung themselves from the Froom at the Key Head to Lewsley & Co.’s warehouse. Though the tide was not all the way in, nor was it out; a fairly easy matter therefore to dip the buckets into the water and send them on their way. This frenzy of activity confined the fire to Lewsley & Co. and half a dozen ancient tenements; Cousin James-the-druggist’s complex right next door escaped without a mark. No one died—apparently the arsonist was more interested in destroying property than taking lives. So the occupants of the lost tenements had fled in time, their scant belongings clutched in their arms and their children wailing.
Filthy with soot, Richard went back to the Cooper’s Arms as soon as the Sheriff and his minions pronounced Bell Lane out of danger. Both his buckets had gone, only God knew where or to whom. His father and Cousin James-the-druggist were seated together at a table, both showing signs of wear and tear; they were a generation older, had tried to keep up, then gratefully turned their buckets over to younger men as they flocked in from more outlying districts to do their bit.
“There will be a great demand for buckets tomorrow, Richard,” said Dick, drawing his son a tankard of beer, “so I intend to be at the cooper’s as soon as dawn breaks to buy a dozen more. What a world we live in!”
“Dick,” said Cousin James-the-druggist with that same look of exaltation on his face, “for the second time within a day, God has spared me and mine! I feel—I feel as Paul must have done on the road to Damascus.”
“I do not see the comparison,” said Richard, drinking thirstily. “You have never persecuted the faithful, Cousin James.”
“No, Richard, but I have undergone a revelation. I will give every prisoner in the Bristol Newgate and the Bristol Bridewell a shilling as thanks to God.”
“Huh!” grunted Dick. “Do so, by all means, Jim, but be aware that they will spend it on booze in the prison taproom.”
Their speech had permeated to the upper floor; Mag and Peg came down the stairs well wrapped, Peg with William Henry in her arms, her eyes glowing.
“Oh, it is over and you are safe!”
Richard put his tankard down and crossed to take the child, who clung to him. “Father, it was William Henry who woke me. He said ‘fire’ as if he knew what it meant.”
