Microsoft Word - Sherwood, Valerie - Nightsong

by kps

  Cook, who was caught by the shock while just in the act of turning, lost her footing and staggered painfully against the heavy table in the center of the room. Instead of holding her weight as it would normally have done, it glided away from her, letting her fall heavily to the floor.

  The big silver bowls and platters on the sideboard were dancing a jig, the unlit candles of the overhead chandelier fell out upon Cook's prone body as the chandelier swung wildly, and suddenly the big stack of plates which Betts had set a little while ago on the edge of the dining room table slid off with a crash, sending broken blue and white delftware all around the room.

  "It's an earthquake!" shrieked Betts, who had staggered against the wall and now ricocheted from it and leaped toward the door.

  "Right you are!" gasped Cook and scrambled to her feet.

  They both rushed into the hall and through the front door, which would have been jammed by the quake had not the buccaneer who guarded it just opened it as he was passing outward. The shock had thrown him forward on his face into the street, where he was promptly run over by a yowling Moonbeam, who streaked out into the street and took off running toward High Street.

  A moment later Cook and Betts nearly ran over him as well.

  "It's an earthquake," he gasped, gaining his feet just as Cook's solid form collided with him. And Betts fell to her knees in the street, wringing her hands and praying loudly. Her prayers were punctuated by screams as roof tiles came crashing down and a house up the street collapsed with a thunderous roar.

  All over town at that moment, people were praying or running or trying to extricate themselves from whatever had fallen on them. The air was rent by screams and shouts and indignant wails.

  Across the street from them came a tremendous pounding as Louis Deauville tried to open his front door which had jammed. In the excitement of overturned carts and falling masonry, nobody noticed him, and finally with a violent kick he catapulted into the street and looked around him wildly, sword drawn.

  It was his first earthquake.

  Behind the house it was the whittling young buccaneer's last earthquake. He had looked up in alarm at the noise, been thrown sidewise by the shock-and had fallen, impaled upon the sharp knife held stiffly in his hand. The blade had pierced his heart.

  In the kitchen the stew pot went over, throwing boiling broth and steaming beef and turtle meat over everything-and sparks and sticks from the fireplace skittered across the stone flooring. In Littleton's Tavern the stew went over, too----only there it scalded three of the kitchen helpers and sent burning brands from the fireplace against the staggering cook, setting the terrified woman's skirts afire.

  All across Port Royal at that moment, such scenes were being repeated.

  Crouched inside the trunk in Carolina's bedroom, Gilly never guessed it was an earthquake that was rocking the house. First she felt the trunk lurch and then there was a tremendous thump. In panic Gilly tried to raise the lid-and found she could not budge it. Trapped there among fans and chemises and gloves and with the diamond and ruby necklace wrapped around her wrist and tangled in her stubby fingers, she began to wail. The top of the trunk seemed to her to have

  jammed-but how could it be jammed so tight she couldn't open it? She could not know that Carolina's heavy cedar wardrobe had fallen atop the trunk and it would have taken two strong men to remove it. Inside, wailing in terror, it seemed to her that some devil's hand was shaking the trunk.

  On the other side of town, Hawks, thrown to the ground by the first violent shock, was almost run over by a careening cart before he could rise. He rolled to the side-and just in time, for a hail of broken masonry and plaster thundered to the ground where he had just stood, burying the cart and its owner. He gave thought to making his way back to see how Carolina and the house were faring, but found his way blocked by buildings that had collapsed into the street. With Port Royal shaking down about his ears he took what he considered the only sensible course: He betook himself to the widest open space in all the town-those fortifications along the sea named for the famous buccaneer Henry Morgan and known as Morgan's Line.

  On waterfront Thames Street, in Sadie's bawdy house, Gilly's Jarvis, in bed with a waterfront whore, leaped from the mattress at the first rumble from the hills that grew to a torrent of sound beneath and around them. The whore, spilled from her bed by Jarvis and tumbled end over end by the quake, gave a squeal of fright entirely masked by the howls that rose from the rest of the house.

  Sadie's place was tucked in between big warehouses, and as Jarvis, reaching for his drawers, leaped out the window on the sea side, Sadie, thinking to do the same thing, leaned out a nearby window.

  Sadie screamed as she saw the beachfront and wharves that Thames Street faced on begin to writhe and buckle, saw long crevasses suddenly open-and it was into one of those crevasses sliced suddenly into Port Royal's sandy face that Jarvis tumbled, head first.

  Not only Sadie's scream but many others followed him down.

  Jarvis had not made the right move.

  Not that it would have mattered. Other crevasses, long rents in what had seemed to be solid earth, were opening up in roughly parallel lines, and Port Royal's foundations were sliding into, falling into the sea.

  On either side of Sadie's place big warehouses were the first to collapse, their massive walls cracking, their roofs giving first under the strain of the shifting sand beneath. They and their goods now rumbled into that sand, and Sadie felt her house tugged downward even as the roof fell in. Her wild scream was lost as her head was plunged brutally into the sand, and she was pummeled to death by falling bricks even before she could drown, for the ground now gave way and she and her bawdy house slid into the sea.

  In moments, it seemed, Thames Street was no more, and the street just behind it had become waterfront property.

  That street, unfortunately, was Queen's Street, where Carolina lived.

  Chapter 12

  Carolina was perched on top of her house, studying the sea rapturously through Kells's long spyglass, when the first great shock struck Port Royal. Even as she gave a cry of joy when she recognized the Sea Wolfs rakish hull, there was a thunderous rumble from deep within the earth, seeming to come from the Blue Mountains far behind her, and all Port Royal shuddered. The first violent jolt tore the glass from her hand and sent it spinning over the roof. Carolina lost her balance and toppled over to slide along the now slanted captain's walk.

  Around her the world seemed to spin about sickeningly. She struck her head as she fell and sat up, dazed and disoriented, to find her house rocking beneath her.

  Behind her the white limestone underlying that distant line of blue hills cracked so that the spine of the island was ripped apart and the mountains crumbled, sending down torrents of earth that plummeted into the rivers. A flood of muddy clay was already pouring down the Cobre River like an avalanche-but Port Royal did not know that yet. Port Royal was having troubles of its own.

  All about was the rumble of falling masonry. The air was full of shrieks and screams as Carolina stumbled to her feet, clinging to the railing to haul herself upright. The earth was rumbling savagely, the whole town wavered, all the bells were ringing.

  There were tremendous grinding thumps and crashes everywhere. The market bell plunged heavily to earth.

  Before Carolina's horrified eyes, giant cracks appeared in the earth along the waterfront-eracks that heaved and twisted like a boa constrictor swallowing its prey-open, gaping crevasses that swallowed up people and carts and buildings.Screams and howls rent the air, and there was frenzy all about as people poured out of their houses, jumped or tumbled through windows, leaving the less lucky trapped inside under fallen ceilings and scrambled dancing furniture. Most of those the earthquake knocked down in the street struggled up and began to run. Others fell to their knees and prayed.

  Now Thames Street was buckling and swaying, the houses cracking and toppling, the great roofs of the warehouses sliding off or crashing down
, the goods beneath shifting, sliding. All Port Royal seemed to be dancing and sliding merrily downhill-into the water.

  Hard put to keep her grip on the railing of the captain's walk as the very house beneath her shimmied with the vibrations of an earthquake so violent it had all but brought the mountains down, Carolina screamed a warning to someone below who even as she spoke was buried under a falling chimney.

  Simultaneously there was an enormous crash as the bell tower of St. Paul's Church crashed down-and a hollow clanging of the fallen bell. From the mountains came a background noise even more ominous-a distant thunder rumbling up from below-and to that Devil's chorus the entire waterfront convulsed and began to slide into the sea.

  Port Royal had been built not on bedrock but on sixty feet of sand. Some of the buildings jutted out on pilings. They went first as their foundations were shaken out from under them. Beneath the heavy buildings, most of them of brick or plaster construction, that unsteady foundation billowed and pitched, broke apart and closed again, pulling the unwary and their goods forever downward to be crushed and broken. The whole city shook and trembled. Although the houses built on pilings in the sand had collapsed first, they were swiftly followed by other buildings. The thick masonry walls of Fort Carlisle and Fort James cracked, and with a deafening roar both forts collapsed into the harbor. Thames Street followed, warehouses and wharves and waterfront dives crashing in upon each other as their foundations gave way . .. tons of sand slithered away from beneath them and tumbled the works of man into the sea.

  Carolina, holding on for dear life to her precarious perch atop her house, never heard the muffled screams of Gilly, caught in the dark confines of the curved-top trunk. She never saw Moonbeam streak down the street to disappear around the comer into a cloud of fallen plaster dust.

  But from her high vantage point atop her vibrating house, she saw Thames Street shake itself to pieces and, demolished, drop into the sea.

  She saw other things as well: Betts on her knees in the sandy street, praying. Cook and one of the burly buccaneers who guarded the place under Hawks's supervision, urging her up "to save herself." Louis Deauville, white-faced and appalled, trying to keep his footing as his house came down behind him, showering him with bricks which miraculously did him no harm save to knock him to his knees. He remained there, crouched and staring at his vanished house and vanished Thames Street, as if it could not be.

  Even as she watched, the earth below yawned suddenly and opened up. Carolina was looking down into a long crevasse that zigzagged through the street below her. It opened directly below Betts, who was on her knees, and Cook and the buccaneer, who were urging her to rise-and they all disappeared into its depths. It swallowed up Louis Deauville, too, for the second violent shock that opened it up catapulted him back-ward into it.

  Carolina might have fainted then, but the horrendous noise and the earth's violent waggle kept her too alive to her own danger.

  Beneath her the sturdy brick building seemed to slant more violently and at the same time to sink, to lurch downward. The front of the house was breaking forward, and trunks and furniture hurtled through the opening.

  Gilly was in one of those trunks, trying to scream through a scarf and a burst of chemise lace that had got sucked into her mouth with her violently indrawn breath as she prepared to scream again. With the forgotten necklace wrapped around her wrist and clutched forgotten in her hand, Gilly, the trunk and the huge cedar wardrobe atop it slid downward across the steeply slanting floor as the building buckled. They crashed into the house wall at a forty-five-degree angle and burst through even as the building disintegrated. The great weight of the wardrobe poked through the collapsing wall, and trunk and wardrobe shot forward through the falling bricks to catapult into the sea.

  Around Carolina, on either end of the captain's walk, the chimneys broke, their bricks and mortar scattered into rubble in the street below. But still the roof, though inclined at a crazy angle, held. For Kells-more used to ship-building than house construction-had first had built, while his neighbors scoffed, a wooden framework composed of great timbers that were anchored together as solidly as a box. And those beams and timbers held for a time even while the brick walls around them collapsed away and crashed into the street.

  Hers was the last house to fall and so gave Carolina a sight that would be with her always.

  Stunned by her descent into the street by trunk-even though her fall had been somewhat broken by a pile of sand-Gilly· still pounded and clawed and shrieked unheard. So sturdy that it had survived even this rough treatment, the trunk ricocheted off the slippery sand into the rising sea and so escaped being buried by the falling bricks of the house. End over end it tumbled, terrifying Gilly, who was bumped bruisingly about. It landed in a few feet of water, but its top had been stove in, wedging the lid on so tightly that Gilly could not push it open even though the monstrous wardrobe had been removed.

  But the worst was yet to come for Gilly.

  A falling pillar shot spearlike through the water, striking the trunk's curved top and shearing it off. And Gilly, breaking free at last, arms flailing as the contents of the trunk rose about her in the water, swirling chemises, scarves and petticoats, seemed about to rise to the surface. But just as her hand-still locked around the necklace like a vise-broke the water and her hair floated free upon the surface, another heavy pillar surged forward to crash against the first-and to imprison Gilly's ankle as it did so.

  Gilly struggled and tried to wrest herself free. She was screaming silently in her head as she fought the water in frenzy. But the fallen pillars held her fast, and only her streaming hair and her hand, still tangled in the necklace that had lured her to her death, showed above the water.

  That was the sight Carolina saw as the building toppled. And that sight was graven more deeply upon her memory than any other single impression of the earthquake: Gilly's hair rising and streaming from the water, and Gilly's hand holding her necklace.

  Time seemed to spin out for Carolina then. The swaying, cracking buildings, the awesome rumbles from out of the earth, the rending sound of breaking timbers, the clouds of plaster dust, the screams of the injured and dying-all seemed separate and aloof.

  What was hideously real was Gilly-drowning.

  It seemed to her in that moment that her terrible dream was coming true-and that the hand in that dream clutching the necklace had been Gilly's.

  For Carolina on the roof, the trip down seemed endless for the heavy timbers refused to break as the entire structure settled into the shifting sand. She kept her grip on the railing of the captain's walk and the roof settled down slowly and spilled Carolina out gently upon the ruins of her home.

  By the time she reached there, Gilly and the necklace had disappeared, sucked down into the water.

  It was Gilly's sudden disappearance-as if she had been snatched away-that galvanized Carolina into action. Suddenly she was scrambling over the roof and she began to run-even as the roof disappeared into the sea behind her.

  Trying to escape death in a city that was falling, tier by tier, into the sea, driven on mindlessly by terror like everybody else, she clambered over the fast-sinking rubble and ducked into an alley which would lead her to High Street. Here everything was confusion as people struggled and shouted and whimpered their way from fallen St.

  Paul's Church and the ruined Market up to Lime Street, which was as warm with fishmongers from Fisher's Rowand terrified people running away from the waterfront.

  Up Lime Street Carolina stumbled, with houses collapsing all about, then down Cannon, dodging falling masonry, across Yorke-e-and she would have crossed Tower Street, too, heading for the sea wall fortifications known as Morgan's Line, for she believed -like Hawks, who had dashed there ahead of her-that she would find there the most open place in this crowded city and therefore less likelihood that she would be crushed by falling masonry.

  Many others had had the same idea and there was already a crowd of people huddled in
the shadow of the fortifications when she reached Tower Street. Among them she saw Hawks, and she called to him and waved as she ran-it was her undoing, for a rolling brick from a falling building tripped her up and she sprawled headlong into the dusty street.

  As she lifted her head she saw that Hawks had seen her. He was trying to make his way through the crowd toward her. But before he could do that the earth opened up suddenly beneath him and the whole close-packed crowd disappeared with what seemed one long piercing human shriek into the yawning crevasse.

  A sob rose in Carolina's throat and she scrambled to her feet and would have run forward in an attempt to somehow drag him out before the earth could close in on him like a vise and snuff out his life. But even as she rose, she was confronted by a new menace.

  The ocean, forced back by the collapsing land and buildings, had piled itself up into a great wave and was even now pouring over the fortifications.

  Carolina looked up dizzily into that wall of water arching toward her. Then she whirled, dazed and terrified, and ran away from that oncoming wave. Choking on clouds of dust from the broken plaster and with no care now for where she was going, she headed blindly into the center of town.

  But the water caught up with her before she could reach it. She was tumbled end over end by it. She choked-and then she was swimming, or trying to, impeded by her wet skirts. Something brushed her arm and she caught at it-it turned out to be a dangling rope. As she clutched it, it was pulled upward, and through the spray she saw that the rope was attached to a sailor's hands and that the sailor was on some kind of a large ship which was wildly riding the wave, carrying her irresistibly over the collapsing housetops of Port Royal.

  The flying deck beneath the sailor's feet belonged to the frigate Swan, which had been turned over on its side for careening. The ocean, backed up by earth and buildings falling into the sea, had risen into a wave and overwhelmed the ship, lifting it, righting it, and sending it inland to rest upon the rooftops in the center of Port Royal.