1. Sudbury
"Papa, please stop the coach!"
Elizabeth startled out of her slumber to find Margie leaning forward, looking quite vexed.
Mr. Wythe tapped the roof with his walking stick, and the carriage gradually stopped.
Before it was even completely stopped, Margie was out the door. She jumped to the ground without waiting for the footman, and immediately demanded the coachman lift her up top. The footman from the back of the coach arrived just in time to hand her up to the coachman, who lifted her the rest of the way up.
By the time Elizabeth had joined her on the ground (with just a touch more decorum), the footmen asked, "Do you care to ascend as well, Miss Bennet?"
"No, thank you, Mr. Julliard. I will await Miss Wythe here."
The man nodded, then looked back up at Margie, either being prepared to assist in any way he could, or more likely trying to work out exactly what in the dickens she could be about.
Elizabeth was wondering the same thing herself. Margaret had her nose in the air and was turning slowly around in circles.
"Part bloodhound, Our Margaret."
Elizabeth smiled at Mrs. Wythe who had just joined her, and Mr. Wythe who was just coming behind. Neither parent felt any compulsion to disrupt Margie, so Elizabeth waited to see what would happen.
When she finally saw Margaret, her heart nearly stopped. Margaret was looking as vexed and frightened as it was possible to be.
"Fire, Papa! It is a fire. A big one! I smell lumber, tar, hay, thatch, and maybe even burned flesh. I fear this is bad – very bad!"
Margaret had stopped spinning and was looking intently at her parents while the rest of the assemblage was looking at her.
"How far, Margaret?"
"Some few miles, Papa. I can only suppose it to be Sudbury. There is nothing else betwixt here and there."
Mr. Wythe sniffed a bit himself, picked up some grass and tossed it in the air to check the wind, and said, "I believe you to be correct, Margaret. We must proceed cautiously and see if we can be of assistance. It has quite a number of wooden structures – far more than is usual these days. A fire could be bad… very bad."
Jumping immediately into action, Mr. Wythe spoke for a few minutes with the coachman and footman, assisted the ladies back into the carriage, and said, "I will ride up top with Dodge. We want to get as close as we can, but not too close."
All nodded in agreement, and in another minute, they were traveling along slightly slower than they had. Twenty minutes later the smoke was quite noticeable to Elizabeth, and another quarter‑hour left the horses starting to fuss and fidget. At that point, Mr. Wythe and the footman climbed down, put one man on each horse's harness and walked them cautiously. By that point, there had been plumes of smoke billowing into the sky visible for miles for quite some time. Margaret's blood hound nose would not have even been necessary if the terrain had not blocked it.
Elizabeth would never forget the sight she saw when they walked around the last bend in the road that made Sudbury visible. She saw what could only be described as a wall of flames, with at least a half‑dozen or more houses fully engulfed. The fire seemed to be spreading even as she watched from the relative safety of the coach.
Looking carefully, Elizabeth saw just what she was looking for, and yelled out the window, "Mr. Wythe, on your left, Sir! What think you of that place?"
Mr. Wythe was with the rightmost horse so had not seen what she did, but when he looked, he said, "Well spotted, Lizzy! That will do."
The two men lead the horses off the road, across a lawn into the middle of a substantial apple orchard. They were still a half‑mile from the village, and downwind from the fire so there was far more smoke than she would have preferred, but there was a small hillock between the town and the back corner of the orchard, and the smoke was noticeably better than it had been once they navigated to that point. It would have to do.
Everyone was starting to feel the effects of the smoke. They had all been coughing from time, but this far it was mostly at the level of an annoyance.
As soon as the coach stopped, Mr. Wythe said, "Dodge, get those horses tied up in the best place you can find, and then stay here with the ladies. See if you can find a well or stream and get some water stored up, as it will be needed. Julliard, you are with me."
Mrs. Wythe said, "A moment, Mr. Julliard. Please pass down our trunks before you go. Send any victims you can to us here, and we can make bandages and such from the clothing."
A minute or two later, the tradesman and the footman took off at a run for the village, while Elizabeth wondered exactly what he meant by 'with the ladies', since in about a minute the orchard would be at least one lady short.
She stepped down from the coach, looked around and said, "Can you manage without me, Mrs. Wythe? I am under your direction but sitting here waiting for something to happen does not suit me very well. I grow weary of passivity."
The mother gave her a good look, then smiled and said, "I would expect no less, Lizzy. I shall not ask you to keep Margaret out of trouble, as that seems a lost cause, but I will ask you to try to limit the trouble you drag her into."
Elizabeth jumped up, kissed her cheek, and said, "Margie, are you with me?"
Margaret was already a couple of steps away, when Mrs. Wythe shouted, "Wait!"
She opened a trunk, pulled out a few petticoats, and quickly cut a half‑dozen large strips about a handspan wide and a couple of feet long. She pulled a jug of water out of the carriage, poured it onto the strips, and then tied them around the girl's heads like a bandana.
Mrs. Wythe said, "Ware the smoke, Girls! I cannot overstate that case! People die more from smoke than fire, and it can sneak up on you. Give the other strips to those that need them and send everyone you can to me. Be careful of falling buildings. It will do you no good to escape the flames, only to be taken out by a timber."
Margaret caressed her mother's cheek, then the two ladies took off at a run. On the outskirts of the orchard, they saw two ladders and a hand‑barrow. The barrow even had some racks on the side that looked like they would just fit the ladders, so the ladies maneuvered the ladders onto the barrow, and with one girl on each side of the long handle, they took off at the closest to a run they could manage for the village.
About halfway between the orchard and the village, they circled around the hillock that was blocking the wind and over a small creek that fortunately had a footbridge, and they were hit by the smell of the fire like a bucket of rocks falling on their heads. Elizabeth remembered a frighteningly angry nine‑year-old Lydia cutting a lock of hair from Mary and throwing it in the fire. That exact same sickening smell was the first one to accost her through her mask, and she wondered how much worse it must be for the villagers who had no masks and were in the middle of it.
The next smell was something like what she had encountered one time in a neighboring estate where the master of the house wanted to cook his own meat (quite why, no one knew because he had no skill whatsoever), and ended up burning it to a crisp in a firepit set up just for that purpose in his front lawn. She understood that meant some animal, or person had perished in the fire; and most likely more than one.
The next thing she noticed was that the smoke made her eyes water and blink uncontrollably, while her breathing started to be just a bit ragged, despite the cloth across her mouth. She looked over at Margaret and saw the same kind of look of disgust, but she imagined that it must be twice as bad for the young lady if her sense of smell was particularly acute. They were both breathing heavily from pushing the heavy barrow, and both started coughing a bit more than they had been, but it was still manageable.
Sensing her thoughts, Margaret said, "Do not fret, Lizzy. My nose is very sensitive in clean air, but now I doubt I am any more troubled than you are."
Elizabeth said, "That is troubling enough, but I will believe you."
By the time they were finished with that small conversation, they had rolled the barrow into the high street in the center of the village, and pushed it past a burning stable where the sound and smell of burning horses became so overpowering both girls had to stop, bend over hands on knees coughing, and do their best not to retch. For Margaret, her best turned out to not be good enough, but she at least had sense enough to move the rag out of the way. Once she had voided the contents of her stomach in the gutter, she pulled the rag back down, and said, "Let us see what we can do."
The first order of business fortunately presented itself almost immediately. A young boy of around twelve years came stumbling out of a house carrying a baby of around a year. The boy was coughing ferociously, but looking proud of his accomplishments, as he should be. The baby was screaming, which Elizabeth took to be a good sign.
Lizzy asked in alarm, "Your parents, Son. Are they inside? Or anyone else?"
"No, mum. They be over at the Haddon estate. Me sister twer with us, but she went to the haberdashery a few hours past, and I've not seen her. I should have taken Sis and run, but I didna know what to do."
"You have done well, Young Man! Very well indeed! Do not fret."
Lizzy held her arms out for the baby, and the boy passed her over. The child was crying, coughing quite a bit, and unsurprisingly wet, but otherwise seemed like she would survive.
"What is your name, Lad?"
"Ewan, ma'am."
The boy followed that up with a ferocious bit of coughing but seemed otherwise unharmed.
"Well, Ewan. You have done well. Let me ask you. Are you strong enough to push that barrow with your sis and a few others out to the apple orchard back that way?"
"I can push her to London if'n I must."
Lizzy laughed, and said, "I doubt that will be necessary. Let us see who else we can find, shall we?"
She handed the young baby back to the boy for the moment and continued down the street. It took only another three or four minutes to find another few girls and boys between ten and fifteen, carrying younger siblings, friends, or just people they had found along the way, along with a group of older people. The younger were doing relatively well, with only a few of the youngers coughing and wheezing. The elders were doing much worse, but nobody seemed on the verge of collapse.
Lizzy set out to direct their actions, and fortunately, a number of years of directing a house full of stubborn and independent girls had at least taught her to give instructions with the lady‑like subtlety of an ill‑tempered sergeant. She handed out the kerchiefs made from their petticoats to the most affected, and saved the rest for greater need, and then set to it.
Margaret just sat in wonder as she watched her friend work. Lizzy was only five years older but seemed a dozen. With each new group of stragglers, Elizabeth rearranged the group with each person carrying or leading a younger that was as big as Elizabeth thought them capable of moving. The smallest were distributed to siblings if they were healthy, or to the barrow if absolutely necessary. Elizabeth instructed two of the older lads to remove the ladders, and continually moved and shifted the group to keep it as workable as possible.
Within ten minutes the group had accumulated some older siblings and a few mothers, and Elizabeth finally picked one of them and asked her to be in charge. The woman nodded distractedly because she had four of her own children to tend to, and Elizabeth then carefully instructed the group to go together pushing the barrow and two more that came from the dry goods store out to the apple orchard. Elizabeth hoped others would see them and follow, because while she did not know the area well, she doubted that they would find a better place. She had asked several people, but nobody had any better ideas and Mrs. Wythe was waiting there.
As the group started out, she pulled two of the oldest boys aside, and bade them return with all possible speed, with the barrows, but to be certain to get a full report from Mrs. Wythe about conditions in the orchard. Both assured her of their compliance, and the group moved out.
"AAAAAAYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
The scream snapped Elizabeth out of watching her last group walking off to the orchard, and she spun around to try to see what was happening. The site before her eyes made her heart drop practically to the floor. The scream was coming from a woman a floor above the street, who was busily smashing out a window with a chair leg with one hand, while holding a screaming baby with the other. A quick look at the floor below showed smoke billowing out the windows, and fire behind them, so there was not a chance in the world that the woman could get out by herself, let alone with the baby.
Elizabeth thanked her lucky stars they had found the ladders, so she yelled, "Margie! The ladder!"
They both took off at a run, picked the ladder up and ran back towards the burning building. She saw quite a few men stumbling out of other buildings, but most of them were coughing entirely too much to be of any use. Some were moving so poorly that she was not even certain they would be of any use even to themselves. She paused beside one elderly looking gent and thrust the few remaining strips from their petticoats into his hand asking him to distribute them, and then continued along the way.
When they arrived in front of the burning building, she said, "Drop the bottom in that ditch, Margie."
With the base anchored, Elizabeth did what she had seen their own field hands in Hertfordshire do. She grabbed the top rung, and then started walking it hand‑over‑hand towards the bottom, pushing the top up with each rung. She found when she got to three‑quarters, the ladder got too heavy for her to lift herself, but just as she was running out of strength, Margie jumped in beside her.
By sheer luck, the top of the ladder landed just a few feet under the window. Elizabeth was not willing to hazard a guess about whether her unconscious mind was smarter than she thought it was, or Fortuna was just smiling upon her. In the end, it did not matter. Without a second thought, Elizabeth hiked her skirt up a bit and started climbing the ladder.
About halfway up, she was frightened nearly enough to give up and go back down, because something in the window in front of her exploded, and she got sprayed with glass splinters. A thick plume of smoke and heat smote her like an avenging god, and she started coughing ferociously. She saw blood dripping down from cuts she imagined must be on her forehead, but other than feeling like a half‑roasted chicken, she was serviceable. She reckoned that was probably the end of the excitement for the moment, so she resumed climbing as fast as she could move.
What seemed like an instant later, she was right below the window, and the woman was handing the baby down to her. She reached her hands up to get the baby, and noticed the backs of them were also bleeding, but not profusely enough to do any more than annoy her.
The woman croaked more than yelled, after coughing several times, and spitting a great gob out on the floor.
"Take the child, Girl! Take her down. She is your responsibility now, understand?"
"Of course! But you will let me help you?"
"GOOO! NOOOOW!"
Elizabeth followed the mother's instructions. The love of a child was powerful, and the woman seemed sensible enough to know what she was about, so Elizabeth followed her instructions to the letter, scrambling down the ladder as fast as she could without dropping the baby or slipping.
When she arrived at the bottom of the ladder, she handed the child to Margaret and turned around to go back up but was pulled up short by a large hand on her upper arm.
"Pardon my roughness, Miss, but I will see to my wife now. Take care of the babe."
Elizabeth turned around and jumped to the ground, while the man scaled the ladder in half the time it would have taken her. By the time he got to the top, his wife had cleared the rest of the glass from the window and was climbing backwards out of it. Elizabeth watched the man help his wife to the top step, and then they both scrambled down to the bottom as if they did it every day. For all she knew, they did – but she was mightily impressed anyway.
By the time the couple got to the bottom, the fire had moved to the upper floors, and the building was obviously lost.
Elizabeth was coughing furiously by that time, as was most everyone in the area. Her hands were bleeding, but she (incorrectly) thought she had seen worse when falling from the hayloft inf the barn. Her face was probably a mess, but a quick swipe with the sleeve of her dress left the sleeve a bloody mess, but it did not have an alarming amount of it. It seemed that her work for the day might not be done.
Elizabeth looked around, and they had attracted enough attention that there were a dozen women and children gathered around, and her two boys had returned with five more from the orchard. Some of the women were running into their houses and bringing out essentials to stack on the street, while others were trying to rattle the frightened youngsters into some semblance of order.
Elizabeth looked around and asked, "Do any of you ladies know aught about bandaging and nursing?"
"Aye! Most of us do, but Maggie here is the very best. Daughter of the apothecary."
The woman was pointing to a young girl of perhaps Elizabeth's age who was blushing profusely.
"Where might he be, Maggie?"
"He was attending a birth, so he will return when he returns. Babies have no notion of convenience for the rest of us."
Everyone laughed a bit, but it seemed they would not have reliable medical help any time soon.
Elizabeth said, "Very well. I will not presume to instruct you, but may I make a suggestion? This lady's mother is in the apple orchard just around the hillock there. She has a couple of trunks of material to make bandages, but not much else. She is tending to everyone there as best she can, but she could certainly use some help. Would you go there, and either be treated or help?"
The oldest woman in the group said, "Of course, we will. Thank you for pointing it out."
Elizabeth asked, "As you probably know, it is around a hillock. The smoke was not so strong as it is here when we left, but I do not know what it is like now. At any rate, Mrs. Wythe will work with you to work out what to do."
"A sound suggestion, and we thank you. Less GO!"
The last was said with a tone of authority anyone still alive would follow, and her ragtag group started organizing themselves to depart.
Elizabeth halted the young lady, and asked, "Maggie, are your father's concoctions still available?"
Maggie looked downtrodden, and just pointed to one of the burning buildings, saying, "No, ma'am. That is our place."
Elizabeth looked at Margaret and then at Maggie, and Margaret took the girl's arm and started leading her away as the tears fell.
Elizabeth turned to two of the boys who had reliably made the trip twice before, and said, "They will need a lot of water at the orchard. Is there a stream?"
"Yes, ma'am. Not far from the edge."
"Excellent. Thank you. Can you find a few buckets to take back without putting yourself in danger."
The boy grinned and was off running.
With no further discussion, the women managed to organize the group, and within another minute, they were all gone.
Once the group left towards the orchard, Elizabeth put them from her mind. Mrs. Wythe was there, and the women she had just sent were almost certainly more capable than she was, so they obviously would not need her help. She saw most of the men working with buckets of water and sand, trying their best to save what remained of the village. One of the men who had watched the exchange looked at the women and children leaving the village, then looked directly at Elizabeth and gave her a bit of a salute.
She gave him a curtsy in response, and he smiled somewhat grimly, but waved her over.
"I thank you for your quick thinking, Miss. You have saved some lives and it will not soon be forgotten. We need to try to save as much of the village as we can. I fear it has more wood construction than is the fashion these days, for obvious reasons."
"How may I help, Sir?"
"I am Mr. Sutton. I owned the stables you see burning there. We do not have much time. The fire is almost certain to burn everything from here to the post office. It is stone, as are the buildings on the other side, so we hope it will stop there, if we are prepared to fight it."
Elizabeth, thinking he was not just looking for a dog to agree with his every utterance, looked at the fire, and the post office, and had to hope the man knew what he was speaking about."
"I have only seen two largish fires before, Sir, but nothing on anything close to this scale, so I cannot pretend to know. I believe you may be correct. How can we help?"
"I hate to ask you, but if you will simply walk down the street and see if there is anybody who needs your assistance, it might save me from sending one of the men to do so. Please do not put yourself in any danger. Come running for one of us if you need help."
Elizabeth nodded in reply, said, "We will not let you down, Sir!"
Gathering Margaret, Elizabeth did as the gentleman suggested, walking down the street and looking for any signs of trouble. The women had only made fifty yards at best, when she heard somebody yelling for help from inside one of the buildings. Looking around, she saw the man who were obviously prepared to fight the fire, so she ran towards the building to see what she could see.
Entering the smoking building, she saw a young boy alternately yelling for help, and coughing. Next to him was another young boy, perhaps ten years old, who was passed out. There was no way to know if he was alive or dead, so Elizabeth asked the other boy, "Are your parents, or someone else upstairs or otherwise announce?"
"No, ma'am. They'se as off seeing to the cattle."
Elizabeth nodded, and picked up one of the unconscious boy's arms. Margaret grabbed the other and together they dragged the boy out the door. The arrived just in time for one of the older boys from the orchard to arrive. They checked as best they could to make sure the unconscious boy was still breathing, and then Elizabeth charged them with taking the boy in a barrow at top speed to the orchard. The boys reported that Mrs. Wythe and the village wives had things well in hand, except they needed supplies.
Some of the boys went to work with the men to try to make sure the fire stopped at the post office, and some of the younger ones directed Margaret and Elizabeth to houses that might have the material they would need, and a half‑hour later they were off with the barrows to help the women in the orchard.
Another goodwife came by carrying some bedding and blankets, and Elizabeth redirected some of the younger children who had wandered into town that really should not have, to help her with it out to the orchard.
By the time Elizabeth and Margaret and made a complete run of the village two or three times, the men had managed to get the fire contained. As they had hoped, the stone building of the post office had stopped the fire from spreading farther, and all that remained was to watch what little remained of the North end of the village burn the rest of the way to the ground, clean up the mess, and start rebuilding their lives.
Elizabeth and Margaret, decided to go back to the orchard to see if they could help, since there did not appear to be anything else that they could do in the village, and they hoped the air was still better there.
On the way to the orchard, Elizabeth looked up and sighed in resignation. She could see black clouds scuddling across the sky. She had been caught in enough storms in Hertfordshire to know what they portended, so she just pointed at the sky for Margaret to look.
Both ladies were coughing quite ferociously, and a quick glance told Elizabeth they were both covered in soot from head to toe. She ascertained that they were to soon be covered with black mud from head to toe, which was going to be decidedly worse, but there was not a lot they could do about it.
Mr. Wythe and Mr. Sutton climbed slowly down from the roof of the post office and joined the young ladies.
"Well done, Lizzy. I believe you handled that all beautifully. No doubt you and my Margaret saved some lives today."
"I do not know about that, Mr. Wythe… but I do believe we helped. Have you heard from the orchard?"
"Yes, there are some four-dozen people there, some badly injured, and a few… well, beyond injury. Very few were caught directly in the fires, so there are not that many serious burns among the survivors, but there are a few and they are bad enough. Mostly, people are having a terrible time with smoke. There were those you two sorted out, and quite a number from other places in the village. I fear the smoke here will be too thick for them to sort themselves out for some days, even if they had houses. Even the ones that did not burn will be barely habitable for a time."
Mr. Sutton added, "In past times, I would have welcomed all in my stables, but now… well, you see. Mr. Haddon is the village patron, but his estate is six hours in a good coach, and longer with a farm cart. There is no way they could get warm and dry before everyone is soaked to the bone."
Mr. Wythe sighed, and said, "You know what I am thinking, but is the gentleman at home?"
"I happen to know he is not. I do not know the man at all well, but his reputation is quite good. His sister is there with her companion, but the housekeeper is a good woman and I do not think she would turn you away."
Mr. Wythe looked at Lizzy, and said, "What say you, Lizzy. Pemberley is about six miles south, a mere hour or two even for the slowest cart. I know you could walk it in two hours. Would Mr. Darcy take in some refugees?"
Elizabeth was all astonishment at both the suggestion and the implication that she might be able to answer it; but she had been asked a serious question, and they deserved a serious answer. It seemed like the entire world was conspiring to set her life on its head, so she thought she might as well meet her fate head‑on.
"Mr. Wythe, Mr. Sutton - I happen to know Mr. Darcy quite well, and I am certain he would not mind housing some people for a fortnight or two until they can get it sorted out. He would not even question the action and would probably be offended that we even had the discussion, so let us keep it to ourselves. We must gather the people who need to go and be off. There is much to do, and not very much time to do it in. You can see the clouds, I presume. Do you have sufficient horseflesh and equipage to get everyone safely to Pemberley?"
"That's the spirit, Lizzy. We have been discussing it, and I believe it can be done. I can get six adults and some babes inside our carriage. The rest will be farm carts or Mr. Sutton's carriage which survived because it was away from the stables. The most injured will need to be laid out on the farm carts, but we can fill them with bedding on the bottom of the wagon, and then an actual bed on top. It will do."
Elizabeth said, "Do you think you gentlemen can get everyone that needs to go loaded up and ready?"
Both men laughed, and said, "We are men - we can do anything."
Elizabeth laughed along with them and said, "Perhaps Margaret and I might ride ahead to prepare the way, so the people have somewhere to set up. If the village can spare one horse, we could ride double. You will probably need the rest for the wagons and farm carts.
"Well, Lizzy. Perhaps your questions will be answered in the coming weeks."
Elizabeth sighed, and said, "Perhaps. We shall see."
With that, Mr. Sutton invited the pair to take his horse which was grazing contentedly outside the village. Margaret had in the past assured Elizabeth that she knew all there was to know about horses, so Lizzy just deferred to her judgment. The horse had a man's saddle. Lizzy looked at it dubiously, and Margaret just laughed and jumped on the horse astride and reached her hand down for Lizzy.
It seemed that she was off to Pemberley.
A/N: The Wall of Flames is my own recollection of my family's sawmill burning when I was 9 years old - not a sight I'd recommend. I've been close to quite a few fires personally, but not trying to make this into a horror‑fest. I was shooting for bad, but not too terrible. You judge. Wade