The Changes Trilogy (36 page)

“Oh, yes,” said Margaret. “How much have you got to do?”

“Shut the bottom sluice, open the top one, open the top gate when the water's level—it's only got about four foot to come up because the tide's high in the basin—put
Heartsease
in the lock, shut the top gate, shut the top sluice, open the bottom one, let the water go down again, open the bottom gate and we're out. Hurry up, though—I can't move
Heartsease
without Lucy in the engine room.”

The girls trudged up beside the dock, straining sideways under the twenty-pound weight of the petrol cans. The wind bit at the backs of their necks and fingered icily through their clothes in spite of the exercise.

“Fine breeze for a bonfire,” whispered Lucy.

Margaret did most of the timber hauling, but she didn't mind because Lucy seemed happy to handle the petrol. It was hard work, but quick once she'd found a stack of planks light enough for her to run out across the quay in a single movement. At the back of the shed the road and railway ran side by side, making a forty-foot gap before the further sheds. The girls toiled away, one on each side of the road, hauling out planks to make a barrier of fire, until Margaret saw that they were going about the job in an un-Jonathan-like way.

“That's enough,” she said. “We'll never be able to pull out so much that there's fire right across the road. But if the sheds really catch it'll be too hot to get through.”

“Right,” said Lucy. “Shall I start this end, then? Wind's going round a bit, I fancy. Ugh! Wicked stuff, this petrol. You stand back, Miss Margaret, while I see what I can do with it.”

She soaked several rags, scattered half of one can all over Margaret's pile and the wood beside it in the stack, then the other half over her own. In the shelter of the stacks the harsh wind eddied, blowing the weird reek about them. Lucy tied a stone into a soaked rag so clumsily that Margaret was sure it would fall out. She lit it and threw.

Half a second's hesitation, and with a bellowing sigh the spread petrol exploded. In ten seconds the pile was blazing like a hayrick, huge sparks spiraling upward in the draft. One of these must have fallen into the second pile, for it exploded while Lucy was still tying another stone into a rag. Margaret picked up the other can and ran between the stacked planks to the quayside. Already they could hear the coarse roar of fire eating into the piled hills of old pine, dry with five summers, sheltered by the shed roofs from five winters. By the dock Lucy splashed the petrol about as though she were watering a greenhouse. The wind, still shifting around toward the northeast, smothered them with an eddy of smoke from the first fire, and in the gap that followed it Margaret thought she saw through her choking tears a movement far up the canal—a troop of men marching down the towpath; but the same booming whoosh of fire blotted out land and water.

The flames at the far end of the shed were already higher than the roof. Smoke piled skyward like a storm cloud. Timber stacks which they hadn't even touched were alight in a dozen places. Heat poured toward them on the wind, like a flatiron held close to the cheek. They ran back to the lock. The gates at the top were open.

“I thought I saw men coming down the towpath,” gasped Margaret.

“Me too,” said Lucy. “Nigh on a score of them.”

“They won't get through that lot,” said Jonathan, nodding toward the inferno of the timber yard. “Lucy, will you go and be engineer while we get her into the lock? Marge, as soon as she's in will you make Scrub haul on that capstan bar to close the gate? Otto and Tim might as well wait here.”

As the tug nosed through the narrow gap left by the single gate being opened, Margaret studied her next job. The capstan was really a large iron cogwheel in a hole in the ground, protected by an iron lid which Jonathan had opened; below it lay inexplicable machinery; from the cog a stout wooden bar about seven feet long stuck out sideways, shaped so that it rose just clear of the rim of the hole. Scrub was harnessed on awkwardly short traces to the end of this pole: if he pulled hard enough, the cog would turn.

Margaret patted his neck and said, “Come on, boy.” He hated horsecollars but was sensible enough to know that he had to endure them sometimes, so he leaned into the collar, hesitated when he found that the weight behind him was more than he was used to, then flung himself forward. With tiny, labored steps he moved over the cobbles; the moment the gate began to move, its slow momentum made the strain less; Margaret led him round and round, talking to him, telling him how strong and clever he was, but looking all the time over her shoulder to make sure they were pulling at right angles to the capstan bar.

At last Otto gave a shout, and she eased the pony off and untied the rope from the capstan. Jonathan was already down the sluice hole, hauling at a clacking chain which ran over the double pulley. Margaret leaned over and saw the lower hook gradually inching upward, but she still didn't understand how it worked.

“Strong hoss,” said Otto, as she led Scrub toward the lower capstan.

“I don't know if he can do two more,” said Margaret. “It's a horrid strain, and he always gets bored with that sort of thing rather quickly.”

“Only one more, I hope,” said Otto. “The gates out into the river, on the other side of the basin, they float open as the tide comes in. They're open now, see?”

And they were, too. That made the escape seem easier. Jonathan scurried past with his chains and pulleys, and Tim followed with the squat balk of timber from which the pulleys were to hang. Davey came last of all, grabbing frivolously at Tim's heels. The flames gnawed into the timber with a noise like surf among reefs, and a rattling crackle told them that another stack had caught. In the shifting wind long orange tongues of fire flowed clean across the dock, reflected dully by the dull water. Jonathan worked his magic with the block and tackle and the lower sluice.
Heartsease
disappeared down into the lock, until only the top half of the funnel, the windows of the wheelhouse and a few feet of stubby mast were showing. Then she stopped—the lock water was level with the basin.

But this time Scrub couldn't move the capstan, for all Margaret's praise and coaxing. Lucy came up from the engine room to watch; then Jonathan said “Rest him a moment” and ran across the quay to a low office building, on whose side were arranged three shaped pieces of wood, each on its separate pair of hooks. He came back with them and fitted their square ends into the holes in the top of the capstan: they were the other capstan bars, by which the locks had been worked before the Changes if ever the power failed. He led Tim up to one bar, and showed him how to push. He and Lucy strained their backs against the other two, and Margaret led Scrub forward, watching the group around the capstan over her shoulder. Nothing moved.

“Come on, Tim,” gasped Jonathan. “Push, Tim. Push hard. Like this.”

Tim gazed at him, slack-jawed, bubbling. Then he leaned his broad shoulders against the bar and heaved, and they all fell to the ground together as the capstan turned. Jonathan was on his feet in a moment, but Lucy lay where she was, rubbing her head and looking sulkily across to where Otto lay laughing on the quayside.

“It's all right for some,” she hissed, but Otto only laughed the more, while Scrub and Margaret circled slowly around, easing the gate open.

On the other side of the dock a petrol dump exploded like a bomb. Then the wind shifted right around to the true northeast and they were all coughing and weeping in the reeking smoke, dodging desperately toward what looked like clear patches but were only thinner areas of smoke where you still couldn't breathe, and then another onset of fume and darkness rushed down and overwhelmed them. In the middle of it all Scrub, still harnessed to the capstan, panicked. He pranced about the quay trying to rush away from the choking enemy and always being halted with a tearing jerk at the end of the short rope. He was too crazed to notice where his hooves were landing.

“Get down and crawl!” yelled Otto from the ground. “It's okay down here! Crawl to the boat!”

Margaret dropped. He was right. Under the rushing clouds there was a narrow seam of air which could still be breathed, if she chose her moment. In it she could see Jonathan already crawling toward the lock, and Lucy crouching low and trying to drag Tim down. The zany bent at last, then dropped on all fours and immediately scampered with a rapid baboon-like run toward Otto. Otto spoke to him, but Margaret couldn't hear what he said.

She never saw how Tim carried him to the boat, either, for suddenly an eddy of air pushed all the smoke aside so that she could see Scrub, mad with terror of burning, wallowing at the end of his rope. At once she was on her feet. For several seconds Scrub didn't know her and she could do nothing but hold his bridle and dodge the flailing hooves. Then, as she crooned meaninglessly to him, like Tim talking to a sick beast, he found a tiny island of trust in his mind, steadied and stood still. Before the smoke overwhelmed them again she managed to back him to a point where she could loose him from the traces, her fingers moving so fast among the straps and buckles that she didn't have to tell them what to do. As the horrible smoke swept over them she took hold of the bridle and forced Scrub's head down toward the cobbles; bending double she scuttered toward the lock. He saw the patch of calm and smokeless air below him and skipped delicately down to the deck, where he stood snorting and shivering.

“Ship's crew mustered!” cried Otto. “Horse and all! We're away!”

The big engine boomed. The water churned in the lock and the quay slid backward. Then they were out in the wide acre of the tidal basin, with the smoke streaming past a foot or two above their heads. Only the far gates now, and they'd escaped.

But the gates were shut. For the first time Margaret saw Otto look worried.

“Tide must have started to ebb and sucked 'em in,” he said. “They were open quarter of an hour back, weren't they, Marge?”

“Couldn't we pull them open?” called Jonathan from the wheelhouse. “If we got a hawser up there quickly.”

“Worth a go,” said Otto.

“I'll take it up,” said Margaret. “It'll take longer if you do it, Jo. Lucy, make Tim look after Scrub, or he'll think I'm leaving him.”

It was an awkward six-foot scramble, up a rusty projection which supported a screw-topped bar; the heavy hawser tugged at her belt. She had to lie flat on her face on the catwalk at the top of the gate to fasten the hawser to a stanchion below her—the rails on either side of the catwalk didn't look strong enough. Panting, she backed off the top of the gate onto the quay, trying to work out how much the tide had fallen since the gates had closed—barely a couple of inches, she thought. She watched anxiously as the slack of the hawser rose dripping from the basin, became a shallow curve, became a stiff line. Jonathan put his signal lever over and the water under the stern erupted into boiling foam. The bows came up. The rope groaned. The gate moved an inch, three inches, and Margaret could see the creased lines at the gap where the water hunched and poured through. Then everything altered as the gate swung past the pressure line.
Heartsease
backed off with a jerk like a rearing pony and the gate swung fully open with the basin water tearing through. The hawser snapped like wool, but with a deep twang, as the tug reached the end of its tether; but Margaret had already grasped the spare length of hawser which she'd left beyond the place she'd tied it (Jonathan's suggestion, of course) and before the gate could swing shut she'd taken three turns around a bollard on the shore.

The fierce haul of the engine dragged the tug out toward the middle of the basin before Jonathan could halt it and make for the gap again. He headed slowly in, anxious not to spoil his victory at the last minute by charging into the wall or the other gate. The smoke was thinner here, but still rushing past in choking and tear-producing swirls. As Margaret crouched under it, waiting, she heard a hoarse cry. She hopped around, still crouching, and saw a big man galloping toward her through the murk with an ax swung up over his shoulder. He was thirty yards off, but he'd seen her—it was her he was coming for. She scrambled through the two sets of railings on top of the gate, hung for an instant to a stanchion as she leaned out and tensed herself, then leaped for the nearing bows of
Heartsease
. The world reeled and hurtled, and the bulwarks slammed into her knees and she was turning head over heels on the rough iron of the deck. Her ear must have hit something, for it was singing as she started to heave herself up. The ax clanged onto the iron two feet in front of her face, bounced and rocketed overboard. The man was trying to follow it, but
Heartsease
was through the gap before he could disentangle himself from the double railings. He stood and shook his fist, gigantic amid the smoke. Margaret, her head still ringing, walked aft.

“I saw him coming before you did,” said Jonathan through the broken window. “Tell you later—Otto says I must shave this breakwater close as I can.”

They were racing along beside a strange structure of huge beams, all green with seaweed, which stretched out into the estuary. There was another on the far side of the harbor entrance, curving away upriver, and between the two breakwaters the river surface was level and easy; but out beyond them Margaret could see the full Severn tide foaming seaward. She thought Jonathan had misjudged his course, that they were going to ram one of the enormous beams right on the corner, but it whisked by barely a yard from the bulwarks. She wanted to lean out and touch it—the last morsel of England, maybe, that she would ever feel—but it was too far for safety.

Then the whole boat heeled sideways for an instant as the racing waters gripped it, before Jonathan turned the bow downstream and they were moving toward Ireland with the combined speed of a six-knot tide and a ten-knot engine. Margaret looked aft to where the streaming pother of smoke was marked at the actual places where the wood was burning by the orange glow of house-high flames. Just as she was thinking how fast they were moving away from that hideous arena she saw Scrub skitter sideways as the boat lurched in the tide race. He almost went overboard. She ran back to him, staggering along the gangway, took his bridle and tried to gentle and calm him while he found his sea legs. Soon he was standing much more steadily, his legs splayed out and braced, so she tied his reins to a shackle just aft of the engine room roof and poured out a little hill of corn for him to nose at.