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The fire lashed out with a roar, its long tentacles of flame reaching for the hysterical woman trapped in the window, grasping her.
Lucy stood alone under the window, the heat singeing her eyebrows and lashes. She had no idea how to help the poor woman. The hotel entry was impassable, its doors blasted out by the flames, the marble lobby melting in the inferno. She looked around wildly for a ladder, a rope, anything.
The woman’s screaming spiked to a shrill peal of hysteria. Her dress or nightgown had caught fire. A second later, the screaming stopped. Then something fell from the window.
Simple reflex caused Lucy to hold out her arms. The impact knocked her to the pavement, and once again the air rushed from her lungs. A cracking sound, like the report of a shotgun, split the air. The walls of the hotel shook, and the roof caved in, sucking down the big glass dome, and then the flaming rubble of the building itself. The woman disappeared, swallowed like a pagan sacrifice into the devouring flames.
Lucy sensed a movement in the bundle she held, but there was no time to check. She forced herself to scramble to her feet. Still clutching the bedding, she ran for her life, hearing the swish of raining glass and the boom of gas lines igniting. With a glance over her shoulder, she saw a geyser of smoke and sparks where the hotel used to be. Racing to the river, she hurtled down the bank toward the water. She slipped in the mud, landed on her backside and slid downward into darkness. Firelight glimmered on the churning surface of the water, but the immediate area was sheltered from the flames.
Something buried within the bundle of bedding moved again.
Lucy shrieked and set it down. Planting her hands behind her, she crab-walked away.
Then she heard a sound, the mewing of a kitten.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said, disgusted with herself. “The poor woman was trying to save her cat.” What a noble deed, she thought. The woman must have known she could not survive the fire, and as her last act on earth she’d bundled up her pet and tossed it to a stranger for safekeeping.
Hurrying now, Lucy knelt down beside the untidy parcel. The least she could do for the doomed woman was look after the cat. Firelight fell over her, and she felt a fresh stab of panic, knowing she’d best get over the bridge to safety.
The bulky parcel had been tied with satin ribbons of good quality, a man’s leather belt and a long organdy sash. A lady’s robe or peignoir formed the outer wrapping, and inside that were two pillows, a quilt and what appeared to be an infant’s receiving blanket.
With more urgency than a child on Christmas morning, Lucy removed the wrappings, hoping the cat wouldn’t bolt once she freed it.
It didn’t bolt. It wasn’t a cat.
Lucy shrieked again, this time with surprise, not fear.
Her shriek caused the little creature to wail in terror, round mouth open like the maw of a hatchling wanting to be fed.
Except it wasn’t a hatchling, either. It was a baby. No, a toddler.
Lucy couldn’t speak, couldn’t even think. The firelight winked over the child, who kept wailing and pedaling chubby legs under a long pale gown.
“Oh, God,” Lucy whispered. “Oh, Lord above.” She could think of nothing more to say, and had no idea what to do. A baby. She’d saved somebody’s baby.
She couldn’t tell if it was male or female, though she saw with some relief that it was moving and bawling with great vigor. The fall from the window hadn’t hurt it in the least. It must be hardier than it looked, then.
“Who…what on earth am I going to do with you?” Lucy asked, looking the child in the eye.
Something in her tone or her look must have caught the baby’s attention, for it stopped crying and simply stared at her.
“Well?” she asked, encouraged.
The baby took a deep breath. Lucy actually thought it might speak to her, though she realized it was a very young child. Then it let loose with another wail. As she watched, it rolled over and crawled away, trailing the little blanket in the mud.
Lucy was completely at a loss. She’d never seen a baby up close before, but the sight of it, so helpless and lost, sparked a powerful instinct in her. She reached out and touched it, then tried to gather it up in her arms.
It was awkward, like trying to hold a wriggling litter of puppies, all waving limbs, surprisingly powerful.
“Come now,” Lucy said. “There, there.”
The baby quieted when she spoke, and stilled its flailing for a moment. The heated sky glowed ominously, and she knew she had to get them both to safety. When she stood, the child clung to her, its tiny hands clutching at her and its legs circling her waist.
“You poor thing,” she said, eyeing the burning sky. “We have to go. Once you’re safe, we’ll find out who you belong to.”
But in her heart of hearts, she already knew that the child’s mother had perished in the collapsing hotel. Somehow she would have to find its surviving family. Not now, though. Now, her challenge was to make her way to her parents’ home.
“Come along,” she said. Her hand curved around the baby’s head. The curly, fair hair was soft as down. “I’ll take care of you.” Keeping up a patter of encouraging words, she struggled with the ungainly burden of the child, climbing the riverbank toward the bridge. “You’ll be safe with me.”
“Oh, thank the Heavenly Father above, you’re safe.” Patience Gloriana Washington opened the door of the huge mansion on North Avenue to let Lucy in. Patience wore her plain preacher’s garb, a habit she’d adopted when she’d embraced poverty, but no somber robe could mask her naturally regal air. Though she had never set foot outside Chicago, she resembled an African princess. Famous for her magnetic preaching in Chicago’s largest Negro church, Patience was a close friend of the Hathaway family. Her older sister, Willa Jean, had been the Hathaways’ housekeeper since the war ended, and Lucy and Patience had practically grown up together.
“Land a-mercy, what you got there, girl?” she asked, regarding the muddy, bedraggled bundle in Lucy’s arms.
Lucy sagged against the door, exhausted, her arms shaking from carrying the baby all the way from the bridge. About ten blocks ago, it had fallen dead asleep, its head heavy on her shoulder, and now it rested there, ungainly as a sack of potatoes.
“It’s a baby,” she whispered, pushing aside the blanket to reveal a head of wispy golden curls. “Its mother bundled it up and dropped it from a window while the building burned and I—I caught it.” She took a long, shuddering breath. “Then the building collapsed, and I fear the woman died.”
“I swear, that’s a miracle for sure.” A soft glow suffused Patience’s face. “It purely is. Especially since—” She broke off. “Boy or girl?”
Lucy blinked. “I don’t know. There wasn’t time to check.”
“Land sakes, let’s take a look.” With expert hands, Patience took the sleeping baby into the parlor and gently laid it on an ottoman. The child stirred and whimpered, but didn’t fully awaken. She unpinned its diaper. “A girl,” she said. “A precious baby girl. Looks to be about a year old, more or less.”
Lucy stared in awe as Patience swaddled the child. A baby girl. She couldn’t believe she’d rescued a baby girl. The child stretched and yawned, then blinked. When she saw Patience’s face, she let out a thin wail.
“Oh, please,” Lucy said. “Please don’t cry, baby.”
When she spoke, the baby turned to her, and an amazing thing happened. Something like recognition shone in the little round face, and she reached up with chubby hands. The deep, fierce instinct swept over Lucy again, and she picked the little girl up. “There now,” she said. “There, there.” Nonsense words, but they made the crying stop.
Patience watched them both, her eyes filled with a sad sort of knowing. “The Almighty is at work tonight,” she murmured. “Sure enough, he is.”
For the first time, Lucy noticed streaks of hastily dried tears on Patience’s face. A chill slid through her, and she stood up, still holding the tiny girl. “What’s happened?”
Patience touched her cheek, her warm, dry hand trembling a little. “You best go see your mama, honey. Your daddy was bad hurt fighting the fire.”
Lucy felt the rhythm of dread pounding in her chest like a dirge.
“I’ll take the baby,” Patience offered.
“I’ve got her.” Lucy led the way up the stairs and rushed to her father’s bedroom, adjoined by double doors to his wife’s suite of rooms. Dr. Hauptmann was bent over the four-poster bed, and Viola Hathaway sat in a chair beside it. Patience’s sister, Willa Jean, knelt on the floor, crooning a soft spiritual.
Lucy had never seen her mother in such a disheveled state. She wore a dressing gown and her hair hung loose around her face. Holding her arms clasped across her middle, she rocked rhythmically back and forth, taking in little sobs of air with the motion.
“Mama!” Lucy hurried over to her. “Are you all right? What happened to the Colonel?”
The doctor stood up, pinching the bridge of his nose as if trying to hold in emotion. “I’m so sorry,” he murmured. “So very sorry.”
“Lucy, my dear Lucy,” her mother said, never taking her eyes off her husband. “He’s gone. Our dear dear Colonel is gone.”
Lucy’s arms tightened around the child, who had stopped crying and was making soft cooing sounds. She pressed close to the bed.
Colonel Hiram Hathaway lay like a marble effigy, as handsome and commanding in death as he’d been in life. In flashes of remembrance, she saw that face lit with laughter, those big hands holding hers. How could he be gone? How could someone as strong and powerful as the Colonel be dead?
“He went out to fight the fire,” Patience said. “You know your daddy. He’d never sit still while the whole city was on fire. He was with a crew of military men, knocking down buildings with dynamite. They brought him home an hour ago. Said he got hit on the head. He was unconscious, never even woke up, and right after we put him to bed he just…just went to glory.”
A choking, devastating disbelief surged through Lucy as she sank to her knees. “Oh, Colonel.” She used the name she’d called him since she was old enough to speak. “Why did you have to be a hero? Why couldn’t you have stayed safe at home?” She freed one hand from the baby’s blanket and gently touched the pale, cool cheek with its bushy side-whiskers. “Oh, Colonel. Were you scared?” she asked, her hand starting to shake. “Did it hurt?” She couldn’t find any more words. What had they said to each other last time they were together?
She couldn’t remember, she realized with rising panic. “Patience,” she whispered. “I can’t remember the last time I told my father I loved him.”
“He knew, honey,” Patience said. “Don’t you worry about that. He just knew.”
Lucy wanted to throw herself upon him, to weep out her heartbreak, but a curious calm took hold of her. Resolution settled like a rock in her chest. She would not cry. The Colonel had taught her never to weep for something that couldn’t be changed. No tears, then, to dishonor his teachings.
“Good night, Colonel,” she whispered, pressing a kiss to his cold hand. He still smelled of gunpowder.
Her mother sat devastated by shock, rocking in her chair. “What shall I do?” she said. “Whatever shall I do without him?”
“We’ll manage,” Lucy heard herself say. “We’ll find a way.”
“I shall die without him,” her mother said as if she hadn’t heard. “I shall simply lie down and die.”
“Now, don’t you take on like that, Miss Viola,” Willa Jean said. She had a deep voice, compelling as a song. But it was a small, bleating whimper from the baby that caught Viola’s attention.
Lucy’s mother stopped rocking and stared at the bundle in Lucy’s arms. “What on earth—Who is that?” she asked.
Lucy turned so she could see. “It’s a baby, Mama. A little lost girl. I rescued her from the fire.”
“Heavenly days, so it is. Oh, Hiram,” she said, addressing her dead husband while still staring at the child, who stared back. “Oh, Hiram, look. Our Lucy has brought us a baby.”
Part Three
A woman’s ability to earn money is better protection against the tyranny and brutality of men than her ability to vote.
—Victoria Claflin Woodhull
Chapter Six
Chicago
May 1876
“Where do babies come from, Mama? Really.”
Lucy looked across the breakfast table at her daughter and smiled at the little face that greeted her each morning. Having breakfast together was part of their daily routine in the small apartment over the shop. Usually she read the Chicago Tribune while Maggie looked at a picture book, sounding out the words. But her daughter’s question was much more intriguing than the daily report from the Board of Trade.
“I know where you came from,” Lucy said. “You fell from the sky, right into my arms. Just like an angel from heaven.” It was Maggie’s favorite story, one she never tired of hearing—or repeating for anyone who would listen.
The little girl stirred her graham gems and frowned. She was stubbornly left-handed, a trait that often reminded Lucy of the mystery surrounding her. “Sally Saltonstall says that’s an old wives’ tale.”
“I’m not an old wife.” Lucy gave a bemused chuckle. “I’m not even a young wife. I’m not anyone’s wife.”
“Sally says you can’t be my mama if you’re not nobody’s wife.”
“Anybody’s wife. And Sally is full of duck fluff for telling you that.”
Maggie passed Lucy the stereoscope she’d received for her birthday last fall. They didn’t know her exact birthday, of course, so they had chosen October 8, the date of the Great Fire that had changed so many lives. Each year, Lucy gave a party for Margaret Sterling Hathaway, commemorating the night they had found each other.
“Look at the picture in there,” Maggie said. “It shows a family, and the mama has a husband called the papa.”
Lucy obliged her daughter by peering into the two lenses of the stereoscope. The shadowy, three-dimensional image depicted an idealized family—the mother in her demure dress, the upright, proper, bewhiskered father in boiled collar and cuffs and two perfectly groomed children, a boy and a girl.
“These are just strangers dressed up to look like a family,” she said, ignoring a nameless chill that swept through her. “We are a proper family. I’m your mother, you are my daughter, forever and ever. Isn’t that what a family is?”
“But the papa’s missing.” Maggie thoughtfully wiggled her top front tooth, which was very loose now and about to come out. “Could Willa Jean be the papa?”
Willa Jean Washington, the Hathaways’ former maid, now worked as the bookkeeper of Lucy’s shop.
Lucy shook her head. “Traditionally the papa is a man, darling.”
“But you always say you’re rearing me in a nontraditional way.”
Lucy couldn’t help laughing at the sound of such a sophisticated phrase coming from her young, precocious daughter. “You know, you’re right. Maybe we’ll ask Willa Jean if she’ll be the papa.”
“Do you think she knows how?” Maggie asked. “What does a papa do, anyway?”
With a gentle bruise of remembrance, Lucy thought of her own father. The Colonel had issued directives. He’d demanded obedience. Insisted upon excellence. And in his own commanding way, he’d loved her with every bit of his heart.
“I suppose,” she said, “that a papa teaches things to his children, and loves and protects and provides for them.”
“Just like you do,” Maggie said.
Lucy felt a surge of pride. What had she ever done to deserve such a wonderful child? Maggie truly was an angel from heaven. Lucy set down the stereoscope. “Come here, you. I have to get down to the shop, and you and Grammy Vi have sums to do this morning.”
“Sums!” Her face fell comically.
“Yes, sums. If you get them all correct, we can go riding on our bicycles later.”
“Hurrah!” Maggie scrambled into her lap and wrapped her arms around Lucy’s neck.
Lucy savored the sweet weight of her and inhaled the fragrance of her tousled hair, which had darkened from blond to brown as she grew. It was hard to imagine that there had been a time, five years before, when Lucy hadn’t known how to hold a child in her arms. Now it was as natural to her as breathing.
The Great Fire had raged for days, though it had spared the block of elegant houses in the Hathaways’ neighborhood. Hundreds of people had shown up for the Colonel’s funeral, and Viola had received a telegram of condolence from President Grant. The day after they had buried the Colonel, Lucy had taken the baby to the Half-Orphan Asylum.
She shuddered, remembering the bilious smell of the institution, the pandemonium in the rickety old building, the cries of lost children and frantic parents searching for one another, the stern wardens taking charge of those without families. She’d hurried away from the asylum, vowing to find a more humane way to look after the child.
In the weeks following the fire, Lucy and her mother had been forced to flee the city to escape an epidemic of typhoid brought on by the lack of good drinking water. Even from a distance, Lucy kept sending out notices to find the child’s family, to no avail. No trace was found of the woman who had perished after dropping her bundled child from the window. Despite advertisements Lucy had placed in the papers and frequent inquiries at the asylum and all the churches and hospitals in town, she’d found no clue to the orphaned baby’s identity.
As she straightened the kitchen and took off her apron, she reflected on how much their lives had changed since the fire. Every aspect of their world was different. It was as if the hand of God had swept down and, with a fist of flame, wiped out their former lives.
