Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [110]
The roar, arched back by the vaulted stonework, was as frightening in its context as the roar of bursting dam water might be. For it was followed and accompanied by the crack and crash of splintering woodwork. Over the solemn ranks of nearer ordnance, crates heaved and trotted and threw jagged limbs in the air. Dust, a haze of spilled chemicals, a bursting rain of chipped stone filled the distant air like a tattered curtain; also, there were sparks.
In all the busy, boisterous confusion, the single tell-tale stream of smoke was quite lost. Jerott, clinging to the slippery bars with fists that were white to the bone, was praying with gritted teeth, the vibration of the smith’s work running unfelt through his fingers. Beside him, Lymond was silent: utterly silent, for once.
Slowly, the thunder slackened and subsided. The gigantic, canonning stones collided, rolled, blundered and stopped; the last crate fell; the last wrenched cask gave out its shower of arrowheads or bullets. The wall of gunpowder boxes had rocked with the rest. Two or three had slid jolting from the high tiers to end rakishly on a lower. One was stoved, but not yet spilt. If the fuse had escaped harm, it would be licking the boxes now.
A long second passed. Another. And another.
It was hot. Within the arsenal, silence reigned; peace fell. Whether crushed lifeless or whipped and bent from its path, the fuse had been diverted.
Behind Jerott the Spaniard de Herrera laid shaking hands on Lymond’s shoulders and said something, his voice cracked. It was lost in Jerott’s cry. ‘Wait! Something’s happening!’
Across the cellars, low in the falling veil of dust, to the right of where the live match had been and farther away, by two yards, from the gunpowder, a flush of pink flickered and eddied. As they watched it became more forceful in action and colour; limned itself with a flash of orange and a finger of charcoal mist, and identified itself with a thin crackling, as of ice fussing in the sun.
Except that this was no ice, but fire.
It began, no doubt, when the burning match, thrust by some chance ball back on itself, had been pressed into a wooden crate walling its passage: a crate harmless enough compared to the powder kegs for which it had been headed, but a pyre which could race to the stacked gunpowder as surely as the fuse ever did, and with twice the speed, if chance sent it first in that direction.
And even if chance did not, fed on acres of dry packing wood, the flames would get there in the end. In Jerott’s ear, Lymond’s voice said sharply, ‘Shut the doors!’ and spoke again to the locksmith, ‘How long?’
A ruddy man, the smith’s face was glistening with sweat over a blotched hide of ivory and red, but his hands worked steadily, testing, failing, trying again. He said, ‘Nearly … God in Heaven save us.… Nearly, I think.’
And on that slender promise, they had to prepare. The sheets and hides were already soaked. Now they drenched their own clothes; handed out brooms and axes, sticks and shovels; aware as they did so that the red glow behind the fast door was brightening second by second until, with a rush and a creak, a sheet of fire rose high into their vision and the tops of the furthermost crates between the flames and themselves began, like lichen, to burgeon and run with low scarlet fire. Smoke, yellow and thick, rolled between the vaults and over the sea of boxes towards them and someone cried aloud. ‘God save us! Mary, Mother of God!’
At that second, the iron grille creaked and swung open.
Where their eyes had stared upon the black iron pattern, like some template of hell, overprinting the gathering fire, now there was nothing but space, and thick clouds of yellow-grey