Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [207]
Then it came again, a violent boom, shaking the bell-tower. And again. And again.
Someone shouted. A light bloomed in a window, and another. A door banged. The bell tolled and tolled. And over it now, a magnified voice proclaiming what appeared to be an injunction of the Almighty from the top of the bell-tower. A man, gabbling through the great trumpet. The great bell for fire. And the speaking trumpet telling the place: the dyeworks and house of the Charetty family.
Of course, at one time every building was timber and thatch, and a fire could reduce a town in an hour. Now brick and stone and tiles and slate might resist, but stairs and penthouses were of timber, and inside beams and panelling.
The city had proper regard for its responsibilities. In every quarter you would find a deposit of buckets and brooms. On the call of the speaking trumpet, men knew what to do. For Bruges was a city which made its living from cloth; which sat day and night upon the canvas bales wedged in its cellars, with all the other stuffs a merchant needed to store.
A pawnbroker’s stockrooms would be full of cloth, in the way of pawned clothes. And a dyeshop of course would have more than bolts of cloth and bundles of yarn. It would have the dyes themselves. The kegs of yellow crocus. The sacks of dried gall-nuts for fine, costly blacks, and the sacks of brazil wood blocks for crimson. The parcels of herbs: bunches of weld hanging from rafters. The trays of powdered woad and caking granules. The bladders of buckthorn and sap green and mulberry. The barrels of lakes and gums and resins. The sheds full of ashes, and empty wine-casks for scraping and burning. And scattered through the yards, the wooden vats and tools and stretching-frames; the teasel bats piled high for napping. And the lines of strung skeins and stretched coloured cloths joining house to dyeshop to warehouse in one endless pattern, like some magical puzzle in wool.
Simon of Kilmirren turned and made his way to where, now, the distant noise was more distinct, despite the sharp sounds increasing all about him. And where, now, you could see by a colouring in the sky that there was indeed a fire, and a growing one.
People began to run past him, half-dressed, with racketing buckets. He stood for a moment and then moved in their wake, without hurrying. Whatever was going to happen would have happened before he could get there.
Which was true, of course. When he got there the fire had just gained control of the house and was advancing through the yard. The street, as he turned into it, was a mass of moving, shouting, half-naked people.
The gateway to the yard and the yard beyond were thronged with jostling men. Horses were being led out. Buckets flashed. Silver arches and cascades of water crossed the air and dissolved in white, fizzing steam. As the line of fire advanced, the bucket-line and the beaters began to fall back. Blazing stuff from the house began to spring through the air, alighting on sacks and boxes dragged into the yard. Pushing further in, Simon passed a middle-aged man in a night cap, struggling out with a sack of insect-dye, his great naked belly blotched scarlet. Simon said to someone, “What about the folk in the house?”
The man he spoke to was collecting ledgers, tumbled over the ground as they must have fallen from an upstairs window. He said, “The dogs wakened us. I think we got everyone out.” He wore a black doublet, open over his small-clothes. His scoop-nosed face was black, too, and hollow with effort.
Simon said, “Look. I’ll see to that. Go and see what else you can save.”
He waited until the man had turned away, and then tossed the ledgers one by one, carefully, into the heart of the fire. After that, the heat drove everyone back and he was content to stand in the road with the rest and watch the Charetty business burn, while the shouting and thumping moved to either side, where the nearest houses were being soaked and emptied.
Around