Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [135]
It had worked. He could breathe. Whatever stackyard he was in, his cask was exposed to the air. He could shout from it; recover strength to burst from it; roll it stupidly to freedom if he had to. All he had to do was get his breath, twist to apply his eye to the hole, identify his whereabouts, and proceed to rescue himself.
His head throbbed with pain but he hardly noticed it. He had only one question for his guardian angel. St Nicholas. St Claikine. Don’t laugh. It’s the wine fumes. Don’t laugh, but tell me. Why is the light from the bung-hole bright red?
Feet up, shoulder down, head down. Eye to the hole. Answer: it is bright red because out there, something is burning.
A fire in a cooper’s, a brewer’s yard? Dangerous, my friend Nicholas. But there are watchmen, and horns and crowds and buckets of water … Crowds? But they’re all in the market place, enjoying the Carnival.
I was in the market place. I was knocked on the head in the market place. There is no way that two men could have carried me through that crowd and got me as far as a brewers’ yard. They didn’t need to. There was a dray in the market place full of barrels. They had only to fling a keg over my head in the dark, like a butterfly net. And hammer on the lid as they carried it to the dray. And toss it aboard.
A dray, in Carnival-time? A dray full of barrels of tar, making for the bonfire. The bonfire which this year, like every year, was not your landsman’s pile of faggots. Not for Bruges. Bruges tied up an old barge to the bridge of St John, filled it with barrels of tar, and set fire to it.
He was on the barge, and in the bonfire, and against the roar of these flames, and the screams of the crowd, the voice of a burning man would reach no one.
You have air. You have wits, you like to think. Use them.
The bung-hole, at his eye, was trained on the new-lit inferno of the front of the barge. The splintered gaps at his shoulder, on the other side, let in light that was dim. That way therefore, and quickly. What had been merely light through the hole was now blistering heat as barrel upon barrel of tar caught, and flared and rose into sheets of flame.
He kicked, this time with full force; but the bottom boards and the staves were immovable. So the lid, perhaps was tacked down in a hurry. He forced one hand over his head and punched upwards. The nails gave. One side opened. There was no time for more. With the hand that was free he thrust out and found a purchase and pushed his barrel away, disconnecting from the intruder; starting, again, a dislodgement that turned him over and all but broke the arm protruding over his head.
He drew it in as the landslide gained momentum. His barrel was rolling and so were others. Through the half-open lid he heard waves of shouting. All Bruges lined the canal, watching the fire and the fireworks …
Christ.…
If the slide went the right way, he and the kegs with him might tumble off the burning barge.
If another cask hit his half-opened lid, it could kill him. When the half-open lid took the water, it could drown him. To stay and burn to death might really be preferable.
This struck him as very amusing. He realised that he was rather drunk. Under the circumstances, that was even funnier. Between laughter and hiccoughs, he thudded from side to side of his barrel as it rolled and bounced with the others. When it hurtled into the canal he had a swinging view of the crowds on the bank, their faces brilliant with light and euphoria; their voices raised in good-natured catcalls as the city’s inept officials lost a dozen badly-packed kegs from the ship-fire. Among them, diamond-bright, were the faces of the drunkards he had met at St Christopher’s. This time, they were sober and he was inebriated.
The canal was