Chapter 8
The air had no kindness in July. It pressed upon skin and cloth until both felt damp and heavy, and every breath brought with it the taste of salt and iron.
Bennet crossed the yard with his hat in hand and his coat thrown over his arm; his shirt clung at the back, and the neckcloth he had tied with care at noon was dark at the edge.
The sentry at the angle of the wall shifted his musket and touched the brim; his face shone in the falling light.
“Any trouble?” Bennet said.
“No, sir. Only the thunder walking round the horizon.”
Bennet looked beyond the palisade where the harbour lay, a scatter of masts set close like reeds, and the water dull beneath them.
A low bank of cloud as hard as slate had gathered to the west; from within it there came, at intervals, a blade of light with no heat yet, only the promise.
Farther off, the church bell tolled once.
“The magazine is shut?” Bennet asked.
“Aye, sir. I saw the padlock set myself when the men carried in the last cask.”
Bennet nodded, moved on, and drew his coat on as he passed beneath the eave.
The smell here was not the harbour’s tar and fish, but saltpetre and oil and new-hewn timber.
One of the labourers had left a barrow by the door.
He put a finger to the barrow’s rim, lifted, and let it fall an inch, feeling the weight as much in his arm as his back.
They had stored too much close. Too much, and too near the wall.
A corporal came towards him at a run that could not be quickened in the heat.
“Sir—Major asks that the night detail be doubled. The town is restless, he says.”
“Very well. Place two at the outer gate, two along the quay, and one at the magazine until the storm has spent itself. Then come to me.”
The corporal saluted and went. Bennet stood a moment longer with his hand upon the lintel, as if the wood might tell him whether all within lay as it should; he heard only the click of a beetle somewhere, and the shallow scrape of his own breath. He moved away.
When the first drop came, it was large enough to be seen upon the dust like a coin.
A second, then a slender, slanting veil from the west that became at once a sheet driven by a wind that had risen without warning.
The smell of rain carried a sweetness that had a bitter end in it.
Bennet felt, rather than saw, the flash; the thunder that followed had no distance to it, no room for breath between the light and the sound.
The ground gave a little roll as if the yard were a deck, and the men scattered to shelter with that low cry men give when they are startled but cannot name fear.
He had taken a step—only one—towards the barrack when the magazine door struck outward as if some giant within had put his shoulder to it.
Smoke pushed after, not grey but a brown with yellow in it, a breath that would not be taken.
For an instant the yard seemed to shrink and grow still, as if all sound had gone to ground; then a voice from within, thin but sharp.
“Help—sir—God’s sake—”
Bennet was moving before he knew he had.
“Alarm bell,” he said, though he saw no one to hear it; “water there; bring the tubs.” The rain struck his face like thrown gravel.
At the door, heat met him like a wall. He tore the coat from his shoulders and cast it aside, caught the latch with a wet hand, and pushed.
Within, the air had weight. It lay close so that breath came as if drawn through cloth.
He saw at once the line of casks stacked along the left-hand wall, dark under their waxed seams, and at their feet, like a small snake, a thread of bright that ran and hissed as it fed itself.
Another sound lay beneath it, a low burning as steady as a man’s whisper.
The first man was by the casks, half-hidden by smoke; the second had fallen near the door, though not near enough to be reached without stepping inside.
Bennet wrapped his right hand in his neckcloth, drew his knife with the other, and went three paces.
The floor had a slickness to it; a skin of oil or damp had formed on the boards.
He took the nearer man by the collar and dragged him towards the light.
At the threshold, two figures appeared, shapes rather than faces.
“Take him,” Bennet said. “Take him and go clear.”
He turned back. The hiss along the floor seemed closer now; the small bright thread leapt where it found stray dust and made more of itself.
The second man’s foot was caught between two staves of a split cask; the wood had opened like a mouth and would not give him up.
Bennet knelt, put the knife to the edge of the plank, and prised.
His palm slid on the wet wood. The plank lifted an inch and dropped; the man gave a small sound, not quite a word.
“Sir—leave me—”
“Be silent,” Bennet said, not unkindly. He set the knife again, braced his knee, and heaved.
The plank came, and with it a splinter that scored his wrist. He took the man by the heels, drew him back, then by the shoulders, and pushed him towards the door.
Something across the room flared; heat lifted as if a bellows had been set to the coals.
A flake of fire, no larger than a fingernail, fell upon his shirt and winked out.
“The fuse,” someone shouted from the doorway, “the fuse is lit—”
The word did not finish.