Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [510]
Where the hell was it? She’d seen her mother do it in emergencies; faster to find than a wrist pulse, she’d said. She couldn’t find one. How long had it been, how long were the fuses set to burn?
She wiped a fold of her cloak across her clammy face, trying to think. She looked back, judging the distance to the stairs. Jesus, could she risk it, even alone? The thought of popping out into the warehouse above, just as everything went off—She cast one look upward, then bent to her work and tried again, pushing his head far back. There! She could see the damn vein under his skin—that’s where the pulse should be, shouldn’t it?
For a moment, she wasn’t sure she felt it; it might be only the hammering of her own heart, beating in her fingertips. But no, it was—a different rhythm, faint and fluttering. He might be close to dead, but not quite.
“Close,” she muttered, “but no cigar.” She felt too frightened to be greatly relieved; now she’d have to get him out, too. She scrambled to her feet, and reached down to get hold of his arms, to drag him. But then she stopped, a memory of what she had seen a moment before penetrating her panic.
She turned and lumbered hastily back into the cell. Averting her eyes from the sodden red mound on the floor, she snatched up the lantern and brought it back to the corridor. She held it high, casting light on the low brick ceiling. Yes, she’d been right!
The bricks curved up from the floor in groynes, making arches all along both sides of the corridors. Storage alcoves and cells. Above the groynes, though, ran sturdy beams made of eight-inch pine. Over that, thick planking—and above the planks, the layer of bricks that formed the floor of the warehouse.
Going up like a bomb, Bonnet had said—but was he right? Turpentine burned, so did pitch; yes, they’d likely explode if they burned under pressure, but not like a bomb, no. Fuses. Fuses, in the plural. Long fuses, plainly, and likely running to small caches of gunpowder; that was the only true explosive Murchison would have; there were no high explosives now.
So the gunpowder would explode in several places, and ignite the barrels nearby. But the barrels would burn slowly; she’d seen Sinclair make barrels like those; the staves were half an inch thick, watertight. She remembered the reek as they walked through the warehouse; yes, Murchison would likely have opened the bungs of a few barrels, let the turpentine flow out, to help the fire along.
So the barrels would burn, but likely they wouldn’t explode—or if they did, not all at once. Her breathing eased a little, making calculations. Not a bomb; a string of firecrackers, maybe.
So. She took a deep breath—as deep a breath as she could manage, with Osbert in the way. She put her hands across her stomach, feeling her racing heart begin to slow.
Even if some of the barrels did explode, the force of the explosion would be out, and up, through the thin plank walls and the roof. Very little force would be deflected down. And what was—she reached up a hand and pushed against a beam, reassuring herself of its strength.
She sat down quite suddenly on the floor, skirts puffed out around her.
“I think it’ll be all right,” she whispered, not sure if she was talking to John, to the baby, or to herself.
She sat huddled for a moment, shaking with relief, then rolled awkwardly onto her knees again, and began with fumbling fingers to administer first aid.
She was still struggling to tear a strip from the hem of her petticoat when she heard the footsteps. Coming fast, almost running. She turned sharply toward the stairs, but no—the footsteps came from the other way, behind her.
She whirled around, to see the form of Stephen Bonnet looming out of the darkness.
“Run!” he shouted at her. “For Christ’s sweet sake, why have ye not gone?”
“Because it’s safe here,” she said. She had laid the musket down