Traitor Angels (27 page)

Robert had moved. Now he stood between the trestle tables, his head hanging, his shorn skull shining white in the dimness. His hands gripped the lantern’s handle.

At my side, Antonio raised his sword. “It’s over, Robert. You have no friends left. Surrender or I’ll be forced to hurt you.”

Robert’s eyes flashed onto mine. A new emotion rippled across his face; he looked just as he had before he’d thrown the candle at me in my cell—silent and seething. In that horrible instant, I realized what he was planning to do.

“Don’t!” I screamed, but it was already too late: Robert had thrown the lantern at the piles of kindling lining the wall behind my father. It shattered with a tinkling of glass, followed a heartbeat later by the
whoosh
of a fire flaring to life.

FLAMES RACED ALONG THE WOODPILES. EVEN AS I
dashed toward my father, the entire back wall was vanishing behind a sheet of glowing red. He was crawling on his hands and knees, shouting my name, sounding panicked.

I reached him at the same instant Antonio did. Together we hooked our arms under his armpits and hauled him to his feet. Around us the bakehouse was turning to flame, its grease- and soot-caked walls disappearing into red waves. Smoke had transformed the air into a thick black mist. Another few moments and we might not be able to find the door.

With the crackling of flames filling our ears, we half dragged, half carried my father across the room. A few feet from the door, Thomasine cradled Lady Katherine’s body in her lap, sobbing.

“We have to get out of here!” I shouted. Thomasine shook her head, tightening her arms around Lady Katherine’s shoulders.
“She’s gone,” I said, more gently. “We can’t help her anymore. All we can do is save ourselves.”

Tears shone in Thomasine’s eyes. Nodding hard, she eased Lady Katherine from her lap and rested her lifeless form on the ground. Then she scrambled to her feet and pushed the door open. The fire roared forward, eager to race through the doorway.

We dashed into the yard. Except for the stacks of kindling, it was empty. There was no sign of Robert.

I clutched blindly at Antonio’s arm. “Robert escaped! I wasn’t paying attention—all I could think of was helping my father!”

“It’s too late to worry about Robert.” Antonio thrust my father at me, then slammed the bakehouse door shut. “Get into the street. Raise the alarm.”

Wind whipped my hair over my face, so I saw him through a brown screen. “But . . . aren’t you coming with us?”

“There are people in there.” He nodded at the wooden house on the other side of the yard. “They will be burned to death in their beds if I don’t wake them.”

“I’m coming with you.” I guided my father between the piles of kindling, the two of us moving so fast it felt as though we were flying across the grass. Thomasine hurried ahead of us, flinging open the house door and darting inside.

“Go!” Antonio called out to me. “You must get far away from here.”

Heat licked up my back, so intense it felt as though my bones were fusing together. I risked a glance back. The bakehouse had disappeared completely behind a wall of wavering flames. Lady Katherine’s and Sir Gauden’s bodies must already have been consumed. Most of the yard behind us was red with fire.

We kept running, my father stumbling on the uneven ground and nearly pitching forward onto his face. I yanked him up. We continued in an awkward jog that didn’t feel nearly fast enough. Father’s arm was heavy on my shoulders, and he panted from exertion. We half fell into the house. Antonio shoved the door closed behind us. With my arm still wrapped around my father, I led him down a narrow passageway, following the gleam of Thomasine’s fair hair. Smoke curled along the ceiling and closed off my throat. The walls and floors were disappearing before my eyes, replaced by roiling black smoke. I whipped out my free arm, frantic to touch something that would tell me where we were.

My hand hit emptiness. No wall. Perhaps we had reached a room. Father and I staggered on, Antonio’s hand resting on the small of my back, urging me forward. Together we stumbled into a room that must have been the kitchen—I thought I saw the outline of a long table and the dark hole of a hearth. The walls were already aflame. Including the far wall, which we needed to pass through to reach the lane. We were trapped.

Father erupted into a coughing fit. He hunched over, bracing his hands on his knees, his body shaking from coughing. “Leave me, daughter,” he sputtered. “I’m an old man, I have lived long enough.”

“I’m not leaving you.” Again I scanned the room, fighting the hopelessness cresting within me. The walls were collapsing in flames. The bricks beneath my feet were so hot I feared my shoes would start smoking.

“There!” Thomasine pointed. Flames had leaped across an empty space in the opposite wall, leaving behind a black rectangle. A staircase. “We can jump out a second-story window!”

There was no time to think. Antonio and I nodded, and she raced ahead of us. He and I grabbed my father’s arms and followed on her heels. The stairwell was too narrow for the three of us to navigate together, so Antonio flung my father over his shoulder like a sack of grain and began climbing. His legs shook from the effort.

Up and up we went until we reached a corridor filled with smoke. Three filmy white shapes hurtled toward us—as they neared, they sharpened into two middle-aged men and a girl my age, all dressed in long nightgowns and nightcaps. The girl’s face was badly burned, her cheeks scored bright red.

“Who the devil are you?” one of the men shouted. He was thickset, and his nightcap had slipped to reveal his shaven skull. This must be the baker, Mr. Farriner. He glanced at my father, his mouth dropping open in surprise. “Mr. Milton! How did you get out of the bakehouse?”

“We were passing by and saw fire,” I yelled, ignoring the question directed at my father. “The ground floor is an inferno. Is there any other way out of here?”

Farriner nodded, gesturing for us to follow him. We took to the stairs again, Antonio still carrying my father and now bringing up the rear. His ragged breathing mingled with the crackling flames, creating such a wall of sound I could hear nothing else. The steps narrowed as they curled around and around; we must be nearing the garret. The walls had grown hot to the touch, and I kept my arms at my sides. Every breath I inhaled burned my chest. Tears poured out of my eyes so thickly that the door at the top of the stairs wavered in and out of focus.

Farriner opened the door. We stumbled in after him. Once
Antonio and my father had come inside, Farriner slammed the door shut. In here the smoke had grown so heavy I couldn’t see my own hands as they stretched in front of me, seeking the rippling sensation of glass under my fingers; glass in a window we could break and escape through—

Someone seized my hands and dragged me to the floor. Antonio. The whites of his eyes were shockingly bright in his face; the rest of his skin was black with soot, making him almost unrecognizable.

“Stay low, where the smoke is lightest!” he shouted.

He began worming his way across the floor on his belly, keeping one hand clamped on my father’s wrist so he knew to follow him. They crawled side by side, vanishing from my sight into the smoke. He was saving my father. He hadn’t abandoned him, even though it would have been easier.

Blinking to keep the tears at bay, I slithered after them. Through my dress I could feel the bare wooden floorboards buckling with heat. Beneath the roar of the flames, I heard the wrenching sound of a casement being forced open. My fingertips brushed the back of someone’s shoe; I recognized the battered leather of Antonio’s boot. He was standing. I scrambled up.

Next to us, Farriner jerked a window back and forth in its frame until the wood gave way. The window fell, sliding across the tiled roof to break on the pavement below.

Farriner wriggled through the opening. For an instant he sat hunched on the sill; then he crawled onto the roof, a ghostly figure wavering behind plumes of smoke. He braced his foot against the roof’s gutter, twisting around and reaching out to the burned girl, who stood at the window. “Hannah! Come!”

She climbed on the sill, then hesitated, her form washed black
by smoke. Finally she took Farriner’s hand and scrambled across the roof after him.

The other man, a servant by the look of his much-mended nightgown, slowly climbed out after them. It took all of my strength not to push him out of the way and clamber out myself. I looked at the garret door. Flames curled over its edges. It couldn’t be long before they spread to the walls.

A skinny, gray-haired woman appeared—the maidservant who must live in the garret, I guessed. She moved toward the window, then stopped, shaking her head.

“I can’t!” she cried. “It’s too high!”

“Go!” Antonio yelled. I gripped Father’s hand. It was almost our turn through the window—just another moment more . . .

The servant backed away from the window, her face frozen in terror. Giving up, Antonio nudged Thomasine toward the window, then nodded at me, his meaning obvious: I would be next.

I had to shout in Father’s ear to be heard above the flames: “I’ll climb out of the window first. Then Antonio will guide you through. We’ll have to crawl across the roof to reach the house next door. I will guide you the entire way. You
must
trust me, do you understand?”

He nodded. His face was tight with concentration, his head cocked; he must have been listening to the flames, trying to judge how far away they were from us.

Thomasine scrambled through the opening, pausing in a crouch on the sill as the others had, searching for a secure roof tile to hold on to. Then she climbed onto the roof and vanished from sight.

My turn. Antonio gestured me forward, and I released Father’s hand. I clambered onto the sill, peering out to see the
others crawling like beetles across the slanted roof. They were heading toward the garret of the next house. It hadn’t caught fire yet and stood like a black sentinel. Below, the lane looked far away, a distance of at least forty feet. It was empty. The fire alarm mustn’t have started, for I didn’t hear church bells ringing.

All this I took in at a glance. My hands felt the roof tiles. One of them didn’t shift under my touch. I clung to it as I leaned forward, preparing to slither onto the roof.

I slid off the sill. On my hands and knees, I crawled a few feet. The rough tiles dug into my palms, but I was glad for their uneven surface; if they had been smooth, I might have skidded right off the roof into certain death. I braced myself on my knees, then looked back at the window. Through the opening, I could barely see Antonio and Father, their forms half hidden by swirling smoke. I reached toward them.

“Father!” I screamed. “Take my hand!”

He nodded without hesitation and let Antonio help him onto the sill. Gripping the broken frame with one hand, he stretched out the other, skimming the air wildly in search of mine.

My hand closed around his. “Come toward the sound of my voice!”

Father crawled nearer, staying on his knees, one hand touching the tiles for guidance, the other clasped in mine. His face gleamed with perspiration. Behind him Antonio appeared in the opening.

When Father reached me, I yelled in his ear, “I must let go of your hand! We have to crawl to the garret of the next house. I’ll put your hand on my ankle, so you know which direction to go.”

“No,” he said at once. “That’s too dangerous. If I fall, I’ll take you with me.”

“It’s the only way!” I shouted. His mouth opened, probably to argue, but I clamped his hand around my ankle and started crawling. Ahead, the others were banging on the window of the garret in the neighboring house. A face appeared behind the glass, and the casement was thrown open.

The tiles cut my hands, a dozen stings making me grit my teeth. Father and I inched forward. At last the garret window yawned wide before us. Arms reached through it to grasp my father under the armpits and pull him inside. I clambered onto the ledge, then looked back.

Antonio was crawling a few feet behind me. At some point he had lost his hat, and his hair hung over his face, obscuring it from my view. The elderly maidservant was nowhere to be seen. A thick column of smoke poured through the window we had crept through.

Hands grabbed my arms, yanking me into the garret. I landed hard on my feet, the impact sending vibrations up my legs. A handful of people pressed against me—Farriner and his manservant, the burned girl, and another man, presumably the house’s owner. Father and Thomasine stood a few feet away, coughing and wiping their sweaty brows with the backs of their hands.

“Who are you?” the others demanded. “What happened?”

Ignoring them, I whirled to watch as Antonio climbed through the window and jumped to the floor. He straightened, and then he opened his mouth, but all that streamed forth was a series of wracking coughs. His doublet was ripped in several places, revealing the silk shirt he wore under it, once snowy white, now a faded gray. A welt had already risen on the back of his hand. A line seeping blood marred the smooth skin of his cheek.

He had never looked better to me.

I opened my mouth to thank him for helping my father, but my throat was sealed with smoke. Hacking, I staggered to him, grabbing his hand and interlacing our filthy, bloodstained fingers. He gave me a small smile, then looked away as he started coughing harder, his entire body shaking.

“We have to get out of here!” Farriner shouted. “The fire could jump to this house at any moment.”

My father shook his head. Understanding, I dropped Antonio’s hand and seized my father’s. He wouldn’t agree to leave unless he knew I was with him. I tried to speak again, to reassure him of my presence, but all I could manage was a series of violent coughs. In desperation, I ran my father’s hand over my face. At once his worried expression smoothed into a smile. He had recognized me.

As one, our group raced from the garret. In full blackness we hurtled down the stairs, tripping over uneven steps, trying to keep inside us the screams that wanted to burst out. We bolted into the lane, where lanterns and candles were flaring into life and people leaned out of windows, shouting, “What’s happening?” The bells of nearby St. Margaret’s had started ringing, the signal a fire had broken out.

Flames had burst through the roof of Farriner’s house. Even as we looked, the single shower of sparks widened into a swath of fire that raced across the roof in all directions. The roof tiles turned black, and I realized what was happening—the roof was coming apart, the tiles falling inside into the attic. A black hole started to spread across the roof. With a massive roar, the remaining tiles disappeared, leaving a dark space rimmed with
red to show where the roof had been.

Far above our heads, embers carried by the breeze spun across the lane to land on the roofs of the houses opposite. Men and women, most still dressed in their nightgowns, poured into the lane. Some carried buckets of water. “To Butchers’ Hall!” they yelled. “There should be fire squirts stored there!”