Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [108]
Then, at last, heart-bursting minutes later, they saw ahead the corner bastion and the high, dark outer wall leading to the main gate of the citadel. Ears straining, eyes aching, Jerott and his fellow knights crossed the open square to the big doors like beings demented and, cursing the guard for their questions, burst through into the castle. Then Jerott cried out.
Ahead, towers, walls, battlements sprang black across the sudden, burning orange of the night sky. A second later there was a roar; then another, and another, while the flaming air shook and writhed. For a moment, none of the little band moved or spoke. Then de Herrera beside him drew in a breath like a sob, and gripping Jerott’s shoulder, launched forward again.
What they saw was gunfire. The Turkish battery had opened up again.
Afterwards, Jerott remembered bumping into a number of people without explanation; passing de Vallier himself standing looking oddly after them, and running very fast through a number of courtyards, up and down stairs and then through an endless series of connecting rooms and down a stair, which led to more stairs, until they were in the long series of chambers and passages belonging to the Roman bath-house.
They were then, Jerott knew, in precisely no less and no more danger than they had been up above in the open air. It only felt, if possible, worse. In any case they had now no chance at all, for he reckoned, and guessed that the others knew also, that the time was up. Henceforward, every second of life was won from chance. And every door, every vast iron hatch between themselves and the burning fuse was closed and barred.
It was that discovery which nearly defeated their courage. Their strength, though they hardly knew it, was already spent. Then de Herrera said sharply in a high, exhausted voice, ‘Will you let one heathen destroy the Religion in Tripoli?’ and flung himself like a maniac on the heavy bolts of the next door. After that, they wrenched each open between them, silent but for their sobbing breath, and the slowest was left behind to slam them shut, to bring no transfusion of air to the speed of the fuse.
At the last door even Jerott hesitated. The lit match must now be so near the powder that a breath would dispatch it. The opening of this door in his hand was his entrance card, at twenty-five, to heaven or hell. The bolts were drawn. He remembered to pray for the first time, briefly and even with shame, and drew the door open.
In the quiet space before the great door of the arsenal the yellow lamps shone peacefully on the obliterated, weaving wall-dancers who in a thousand years had seen and suffered worse than this. The oak door unlocked by the Calabrians was ajar, unguarded: what need of a guard when the massive grille door inside was shut and its key at the bottom of Tripoli Bay?
But before it, two men were working; working feverishly, their movements surging in lamplit rings through the water spreading slowly across the tiled floor. Above the trample of soldiers’ feet at his back, above the rampaging screech of a file, a familiar voice unfamiliarly crisp said, ‘Blyth. I want a locksmith, a crossbow and bolts, some cloths and a lot more water. We have perhaps five minutes. Axes are causing too much vibration, and the file won’t be in time.’ And as de Herrera, behind, relayed the orders, Lymond added over his shoulder, ‘Two of you come in. The rest stand by for orders. The corridor doors can remain open. We have tried drenching the floor, but the slope of the arsenal has sent it back to us. We have failed to reach the fuse with damp cloths on a rod: it is at the far side of the cellars and the other stores are in the way. I am about to try shooting soaked cotton.…’
And Francis Crawford, wasting no further time or words on them, finished binding