Thank you to many new readers dropping in to say hello or review, and for several new faves and follows! Your engagement thrills me and I am grateful for everyone's continued interest and support.
There is a decidedly melodramatic element to this chapter which I hope works within the anarchic spirit of the story!
With love
MrsVonTrapp x
Chapter Eight
'Sentence first – verdict afterwards'
There had only been one other time Gilbert had felt physically sick with fear; all the way out in Alberta, on his own with his father in the sanitorium, staring helplessly as he coughed up blood and then turned a deathly shade of grey. It had been as if he was watching the man he loved and relied upon being eviscerated from the inside out, breath by hacking breath.
He felt the same sensation now; a simultaneous sucker punch to his chest and gut. He turned back to Anne, who was already out of bed and hovering uncertainly, her face expressing all the mounting horror of their circumstances.
"Anne – I think there's been a – "
"FIRE!" came the yell from the hallway, as more thumping on doors could be heard above the hubbub. 'FIRE! Everybody OUT!"
He and Anne shared a momentarily dumbstruck exchange, before they began, wordlessly, to scramble for their remaining clothes.
Gilbert grabbed at his shirt and jacket, throwing both on with barely a care for buttons, shoving sockless feet into his shoes for the second time in as many months, and snatching the blanket from his makeshift bed.
Anne had wrestled as best she could with her long green skirt, but knew her blouse would defeat her, instead locating a cardigan, fumbling inadequately with the fastenings with fingers that suddenly refused to function. Her boots were beyond her, so she hoped her little court shoes from the wedding would support her adequately. There was no time to pang for the matching glorious bridesmaid's gown still wrapped safely in her trunk.
"Gil!" Anne now called, and he came to grasp her hand, trying to shade her from the panic in his eyes.
"It will be alright, Anne," he reassured, voice trying very hard not to waver. "Stay low to the ground, and don't let go!"
"I won't!"
Gilbert threw the blanket about both their shoulders and raised it over their heads, and they joined the terrified exodus passing them in the hall.
"Shut the door, Gil!" Anne commanded. "You don't want to let the fire breathe!"
He nodded and obeyed, steering them into the stream of people, making too-slow progress for either of their liking, hampered as they were by everyone else's apparent attempts to lug all their possessions along with them. There were men hauling their trunks and women carrying all their clothes in straggling bundles, whilst children poked their heads in all the rooms they passed – the wide open doors causing Anne to despair – and ran into them shouting, and needing to be hauled back roughly by a parent. And all the while, from somewhere behind them, a shrill, continuous wail rose up to splinter their senses.
There was one narrow hallway and too many rooms, and too many people trying to push in to join the exit, making the one escape route even more congested. And then, Gilbert thought ahead to the lone staircase leading to the ground floor, where the same problems would arise, compounded by the crush of bodies having to navigate steps and banisters, and his heart pounded.
All he cared about was getting Anne to safety, and beyond that nothing else mattered.
Inching closer to the staircase, the smoke visibly stirred in the air, and they both immediately covered their mouths with their sleeves, bending lower under the blanket and encouraging those nearest them to do the same, as much as anyone would listen. Ahead of them there was a series of shouts and more wailing, and the children who had scampered about as if playing their own adventure game now clung to their parents and began to cry pitifully, their bewildered anguish heartbreaking to hear.
"It's below us!" a woman shrieked, and this caused an even greater ruckus, the crowd in front cowering backwards and nearly crushing those behind them.
"Gil!" Anne turned to him, grey eyes large on his, squeezing his hand even more tightly.
"I know!" his reply conveyed his own fear and sense of hopelessness. This was bad and getting worse by the second.
"Can anyone get down? Try single file!" Gilbert stood to his full height, shouting out above the heads of those before him, gaining nothing but an indistinct answer and a paroxysm of coughing for his trouble.
If anyone would be prepared to let him through, he would have fought the fire himself, beating a path for the others to follow, and trying to muster the other men to come to the aid of the women and children and older guests. But not only was the crowd not moving, out of both fear and indecision, they were now all wedged together like sardines, pinned together fore and aft, and he was at a loss as to what to do. If the flames began to lick the staircase and climb up to meet them, then the outcome would be catastrophic for all of them.
As they passed another open doorway, Anne glanced inside, and was astonished to see a man, desperation and perspiration beading his brow, trying to tie his bedsheets together using loose, inexpert knots, such as those the son of any Islander would have been mortified to call his own. Anne, however, grabbed at Gilbert, who looked to his left and stopped up short.
Without thinking he lunged with Anne for the door, the pair of them virtually falling through it before the tide of people trickled past, startling the gentleman so he almost dropped his bundle.
"It's a lost cause out there!" he flung at them. "Don't try to stop me!"
"We're not going to stop you – we're going to help you!" Gilbert confirmed grimly, doffing the blanket. "I'm Gilbert, and this is Anne, and we are just as keen to get out of here as you are."
The man – the young man, they both realized, perhaps not even completely out of his teens - stared at them wide eyed for a confused moment.
"I'm… Jeramiah. B-but, people mostly call me Jem."
"Hey, Jem," Gilbert gave a fleeting, slightly forced smile.
"I… I don't really know what I'm doing…" Jem now blustered, beginning to inhale large gulps of air in his panic. His fingers were shaking and he was flushed scarlet, looking wildly from Gilbert to Anne. "A relative of a friend … this is how he escaped himself, once. But I don't… I don't know how…"
"It's alright. It's a good idea," Gilbert nodded, in a voice Anne had never quite heard before; authoritative yet calming – the future Dr Blythe forming before her. "How about I have a look at your handiwork?"
He took over the twisted, ineffectual knots and asked Jem for the other bedsheets, as he quickly, deftly unpicked the man's previous work. He glanced up to her, giving a shuttered look. "Anne – would you please see to the window?"
She nodded, glad to have something to do, and was relieved beyond measure to be able to jimmy the half open window up to its full capacity, enough to fit an average adult through, though admittedly with little room to spare. The gust of cooling air blasted her; such a contrast to the heat of the room and the entire building. She was sure even the walls would be warm to touch now.
She could hear a commotion, but it was outside and below them. She leaned her body out, shouting into the night.
"HELP! We're up here!"
There was a small assorted crowd, but not yet a fire engine, though she thought – hoped - she heard the bell clanging from further away. She searched for anyone who might be assisting rather than spectating, waving her arm frantically, and finally there seemed to be a man who noticed her, and something long and dark materialized in the darkness.
"Here, love!" he bellowed, raising his lantern, and Anne saw below them – a frighteningly long way below them – the beautiful sight of a ladder leaning against the building.
"Thank you!" she screamed, beginning to hear the hysteria rise in her voice.
She shimmied back into the room, turning to see, astonished, a small family in the doorway, and Gilbert working furiously with the young man - Jem – to finish knotting the bedding.
"Will you help us?" the tearstained face of a young mother cried desperately, thrusting the first of her young sons towards them, whilst her husband held a squirming, screaming infant.
"Yes, of course!" Anne's heart had leapt to lodge in her throat, sharing a loaded look with Gilbert who was furiously fashioning the last of the knots. "Someone's fetched a ladder, but it's still a long way below us. We'll need the bedsheets to haul us down and then…" she was overcome by a fit of coughing, the smoke becoming thicker in the room and she doubled over as Jem, with a surprising presence of mind, directed the family inside and shut the door behind them.
There were now seven people sharing the small space – and the single escape route - not three, and those odds were as frightening as they were daunting.
Gilbert sprung into action again, throwing off his jacket, wiping the sheen from his brow with his shirt sleeve, directing his orders at the room with an authority not to be questioned.
"There's a slip knot here that people can sit in, then we'll secure you and you hold on as we lower you down. You will need to then climb onto the ladder below us and pull the sheet off you so we can haul it back up for the next person. It needs to be done quickly and carefully. There are people who will help you at the bottom but I'm sorry, there are no guarantees about any of this."
"Rather 'ere than out there," the man answered gruffly, as his wife clutched his arm and the eldest boy looked at all of them with enormous brown eyes.
"It is your room and your escape, Jem," Gilbert turned back to him now, offering the bedsheet rope. "You are entitled to go first, if you wish."
Jem was still flushed and fearful, but answered as firmly as possible.
"W-women and children first, I'd say," he declared.
"Good man," Gilbert nodded, taking a moment to squeeze his shoulder.
"Right, we need to be quick, now," Gilbert looked in agony from Anne to the woman, but Anne had already made the decision for him.
"Ma'am?" she reached out, motioning for her to come and then having to catch her sleeve to pull her across to the window. "We can tie your baby to you and you can both go down together."
"Harry?" the woman wavered, looking back to her husband in panic and then began to cry as her older boy started to wail.
"'Tis what must be done, Marian," he urged, stroking her hair briefly.
"Mama! Don't go!"
"It's alright, now," Anne bent down to soothe the boy, as his father relinquished one son for the other and Gilbert looped the bedsheet around her, securing tightly, then gathered the other end, lashing it to the nearby bedrail, the heaviest object in the room.
"Harry!" the woman blubbered as Gilbert secured the baby with a sling fashioned from her husband's jacket, and then all three men helped to haul her up to sit in the windowsill, Gilbert trying to look down to see the shingles on the slanted roof and then the frightening gap where they would all have to go over the edge, suspended in the air, until they connected with the ladder below.
"Ma'am – " he began.
"It's Marian… Marian Burke!"
"Marian," he smiled his most confident Blythe smile. "I did this dozens of times as a boy," he began, bending the truth more than a little, but he was sure this was a forgivable sin under the circumstances. "It's just like a swing, or a fairground ride. We'll lower you down and you stay still, and hold onto the knot above you here," he directed her hand as he spoke. "You are quite secure and so is your baby, but tuck your arm around him and hold on with both hands if you need to. You may bump up against the shingles on the roof on your way down, and you can use your feet to right yourself. Then there is a little gap at the edge of the roof where you'll float for a moment, and you must allow this to happen. Because then we can get you near to the ladder, and there will be someone there to help you. We'll see you on the ground."
His manner was so persuasive that the woman was speechless, nodding dumbly, and with a final haunted look to her husband and older boy she was gently helped out, and the men began to relinquish the bed-rope inch by inch.
Gilbert was wedged at the window, supported by husband Harry, with Jem leaning up against the bed to ensure it didn't move and to keep an eye on the fastenings.
Gilbert couldn't see anything after the woman went over the side of the roof, and could only hear her scream rising above the various surprised shouts from below.
It seemed to take an age, inch by agonizing inch, where they all looked at each other and tried to ignore the sick feeling in their stomachs, and the air getting so hot and smoky and thick their lungs might well explode in their chests.
Finally the makeshift rope swung away from them, and then slackened, and there was even, incredibly, a sharp tug – something Gilbert had not remembered to tell the woman to do - and he gathered the lengths back up and through the window with a joyous yelp, lungs too constricted to do anything else.
Anne had been cradling the young boy in her arms, both of them sitting on the floor by the window, as low down as possible.
"Right, lad, quickly now," the boy's father motioned.
"No, Papa!" the youngster shrunk back into Anne, beginning to sob.
"Just a quick ride down in our rope swing with Anne the nice lady, just like your Mama did," Gilbert encouraged, though his look had become pinched, and he darted a worried glance at the black smoke beginning to billow into the room from under the barest crack in the door.
"Now, lad!" his father shouted.
All attempts to cajole or persuade the boy were ineffectual, him wanting no one now but his father, and it would be dangerous for both if he resisted being tied to another. In the end expediency dictated the father go next, his son clinging onto him for dear life so there was barely a need to warn him not to let go, though he was coupled to his father with one of the man's suspenders for safety at any rate.
"I'm sorry," Harry Burke apologized to each of them in turn. "Thank you all. God bless you."
The father must have seemed to half climb down the tiles on the slanted roof himself, monkey-style, his son on his back, for he made short work of them, though it took Gilbert, Jem and Anne to join them to help brace the pair, and still a time before that tug on the rope and their only means of escape was hauled back again through the window.
"Anne," Gilbert gritted out, drenched in sweat, between a fit of coughing.
"Let Jem go! I won't leave you, Gilbert!"
"Anne – I'm not going to argue about this! I led you into this mess, and I'm damned well going to get you out of it!"
"Not your mess – ours!" she cried, the tears beginning to track her cheeks.
He face collapsed at her look to him.
"Carrots, please!" his body slumped, stricken with fear for her.
She couldn't bear to see him in any more pain, even if she was terrified of what she felt she was abandoning him to.
"Alright," she agreed, hoarse from emotion and acrid smoke that burned her throat. She hastened to have him help her into the loop, reaching back to clasp the hand of their newfound comrade Jem, looking into his young face, his soft blue eyes already marked by the events of this night.
"Jem has become my new favourite name, you know," she offered, to Jem's startled, surprised smile.
There was a beat of time between when she sat on the ledge before Gilbert prepared to nudge her over.
"Can't be any worse than Mr Barry's kitchen roof," he whispered into her ear, in game joke of that old, long ago youthful mishap.
She turned to give him a warped, utterly wretched smile.
"Gil!" she choked out.
There was no time … no time… no time, and too much still to say to him. The dread realization made her panic far more than the prospect of dangling suspended from a pair of sheets.
"Gil!" she clutched his arm.
"It's alright, Anne, I've got you," he urged, misinterpreting her hesitancy.
"If… if I am darling, you are my beloved, Gil."
It took him a beat to process this, his hazel eyes flaring in response, before with a strangled sob she launched herself out into the air.
Anne was lowered down as swiftly and as gently as possible, far lighter than any of the previous cargo, little court shoes clattering as they found purchase against the roof tiles, dizzily conscious that she was uncomfortably high up in the world. *
It was deceptively serene after the head-pounding heat and the smothering smoke of indoors… she looked up, but it was all dark overhead, ** and she dare not twist to see back up towards the window and Gilbert. She concentrated on the looming gap as she slid towards it, before the roof gave way to nothing but air, and she was hanging, suspended, knowing this was the time when Marian Burke had screamed, and fighting the urge to do the same with everything in her, because it would worry him to hear it.
She swayed in the silent air, the fear rushing at her ears like water breaking a dam's banks, feeling as if on the end of a hangman's noose.
Would the fall NEVER come to an end? **
"There's another, boys!" hollered a man below her, and rough hands grabbed at her ankles, and then wrapped around her shins, and she was quite bodily dragged down by her armpits and then deposited against the ladder.
"All's right now, missy!"
"Thank you!" she was shaking in body and voice, and he was behind her, tugging off the bedsheet and yanking it sharply before letting it go, to see it flutter above her and snake its way back up the roof.
"Jes' one step at a time, down and down," he instructed. "I'm right below yer."
The ladder was long and endless, a rickety stairway that was the only thing between hell above and heaven below. As they came closer to the ground she could hear the incremental din of the gathering crowd and the cacophony of confusion that would greet her.
"How many more?" her unlikely rescuer asked, as other hands came to calm her, tossing another blanket around her.
"There's two – two gentlemen, up by the roof!" she cried. "Please help them!"
"We'll surely do what we can."
"And the others? There's at least twenty trapped inside above the stairs!"
The man's look was grim.
"Fire's been blocking the path up and down. The water hoses will help now that they're here." He looked back meaningfully in the direction of the most commotion, towards the entrance of the guest house.
Anne followed his line of sight, and when she turned back he was already again heading up the ladder.
Upstairs in the room, their circumstances had leapt from dangerous to dire.
The black smoke was almost suffocating, steaming in under the door now despite their efforts to contain it, gaining a choking hold on their airways.
"Go, Jem!" Gilbert was looping the bedsheet around the slim younger man with one arm and coughing into the other.
"There isn't time! Not – for both of us – to get out!"
Gilbert shared a despairing look with him, but couldn't disagree. The waiting it would take to lower either of them down would take minutes they obviously didn't have. He hoped to God those out in the hallway had somehow made it down to safety, for this smoke would surely do all of them in regardless.
Gilbert, hunched over, moved across to the bed, tugging at the sheet to ensure the knot was still tight.
"It should hold, Jem. Enough for you to get out and down to the ladder."
He wasn't at all sure, and neither, from his reaction, was Jem.
"And you, Gilbert?" Jem coughed.
"I'm right out after you," Gilbert wheezed, "making a play for the nearest drainpipe."
He wished he was joking, but he'd rather take his chances out on the roof than remain in the room. Shaking his hand with grateful gallantry, the younger man climbed out before him, beginning to shimmy down inexpertly, holding onto handfuls of sheet-rope and lowering himself a little at a time. Gilbert didn't hesitate to follow him, clambering out the window and onto the roof, hoping it would hold the both of them, sitting on his rear and sliding down, careful to not overshoot himself on the tiles.
Jem was making slower progress than he was, and Gilbert risked a look across to see that his comrade was struggling, tripping over straggling bits of tied sheet and getting his feet entangled in his panic. Gilbert had a sickening feeling watching him, this young man they owed such a debt to, for he was taking far too long with only his own knots and the brass bedframe for ballast, and the sudden searing heat from above preceded shooting sparks that could only mean one thing… the fire had reached their room.
"Jem! HURRY!" Gilbert cried, though it came out as barely a croak, and a moment later Jem overbalanced completely, Gilbert realizing that their makeshift rope had slackened sickeningly, and that the end of it was suddenly being pulled by Jem towards him…
Jem was sliding down the roof with nothing to tether him.
Gilbert lunged with all the athleticism that his years on the football field had indeed honed, stuck windows aside, and grabbed at the smoking end of the bedsheet rope before it passed him completely, hauling on it with every ounce of remaining strength, effectively sliding down on his back with Jem as if they were mountaineers attached to the same guide rope. Above the roar in his ears Gilbert heard the horrified shouts and squeals of those below, as Jem tumbled slowly off the edge as if turning out of bed, and Gilbert's legs and sockless shoes did everything they could to dig in and find any sort of foothold for himself, ending up colliding heavily with a raised, uneven section of the guttering he had so cavalierly mentioned only minutes before.
He felt Jem swinging in the air beneath him, before it seemed, miraculously, that the weight of him eased and then fell away entirely. Someone had grabbed him, incredibly, just before Gilbert's arms and shoulders completely gave out.
Gilbert wished he had the strength remaining to hold on for his own self now. Or else to imagine it was Anne still suspended in the air at the other end of his knotted rope, and for her he could have held on. Beloved. She had called him her beloved. Did that mean she loved him? That would have made her reaction to his letter extremely interesting.
The letter. Was it to be lost as everything else was, now?
Gilbert was holding on for dear life in every respect, lying half astride the gutter, but he was lacking the breath to sustain the effort, and his lungs were burning, and his head was pounding, and there was a stabbing pain in his shoulder, and his teeth had bitten through his lip, and the gutter had surely sliced into his leg where it had jutted out and helped to slow his own deathly momentum. He could feel unconsciousness stretch its fingers out to him. Either his brain would give out or the gutter would.
In the end, Gilbert and the edge of the broken, weakened roof fell together, with Anne's name on his lips and her scream in his ears.
Chapter Notes
Our title is from the Queen of Hearts in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Chapter 12 'Alice's Evidence'.
*Anne of Green Gables Ch 23 'Anne Comes to Grief in an Affair of Honor'.
**Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Ch 1 'Down the Rabbit-Hole'.
Some Correspondence…
DrinkThemIn: Your dedication to the cause, in rewatching The Proposal, is next-level commitment and I thank and applaud you! I am so glad you were proven right about that crossover reference! As for the dashing hero saving someone (or several someones) from a fire… here's hoping we can well and truly tick that box now x (and you just know I tried to work in The Continuing Story fire scene but it didn't quite work in this context – but excellent for visual reference!)
Bright Promise: Thank you! And now in this chapter, the What Anne and Gilbert Did Next is really to encounter ALL the melodrama I possibly could throw at them!