The Angry Mountain
Page 21
I caught her arm as she turned impatiently towards the main archway. “Steady,” I said. “We must decide what we’re going to do. You say you’ve searched the monastery?”
“Yes.”
“Every room?”
“I do not know. I cannot be quite sure. You see it is very confusing inside.”
I hesitated. “Did you go round the outside of the buildings?”
She shook her head. “Why should I? I was searching—”
“Most of the rooms will have windows, or at least gratings. They will have hung something out to attract attention.”
She stared at me, her face suddenly lighting up with hope. “Oh, why did I not think of that for myself. Quick. There is a way through to the back by the entrance they went in.”
I limped after her, the mule following at my heels. But the clip-clop of his hooves ceased just before we reached the archway. I looked back. He was standing in the middle of the road, his ears laid back, sniffing at the smoking cinder-heap of the lava. “You stay there, George,” I said. “We’ll be back later.”
Hilda was running across the courtyard as I passed under the arch of the entrance. The stone square of the courtyard was beautifully cool after the heat of the lava-blocked streets. I glanced up at the windows. They were sightless eyes staring down at me unwinking. No sign of a scarf or handkerchief or anything to show that the others were in any of those rooms.
I entered the monastery buildings. It was almost dark inside and full of the damp coolness of stone. I felt suddenly fresh and full of vigour. Hilda called to me. I crossed a big refectory room with high windows and a long table laid for breakfast. Then I was in a wide stone passage and the walls were echoing the limp of my leg. Hilda was calling to me to hurry and a moment later I passed through a heavy, iron-studded door into the monastery grounds. There was a small flower garden and then vineyards flanked with orange-laden trees. I joined Hilda who was staring up at the monastery.
Parts of the building were very old, especially the section away to our left where a great rounded tower was falling into ruins. The building had been added to at various periods and though it was all constructed of tuftstone it presented a scattered, haphazard appearance which was enhanced by the fact that the stone varied in colour according to the extent to which it was worn. There was a chapel with some fine stained glass and a line of outhouses ran out in a long arm. Smoke still curled up from one of the chimneys here and even in the sulphurous atmosphere I could detect a smell of burnt bread. Evidently the eruption had started whilst they were in the middle of baking.
“I bet Hacket has the full guide-book history of the place,” I said. I had to say something to cover my disappointment, for the windows were all as blank as those in the courtyard. “Better try the side nearest the lava.” I was just turning away when Hilda caught my arm.
“What is that?” She was pointing towards the great rounded tower. There were no windows in this ruined keep, only narrow slits. And from the topmost slit something hung limp. In that unnatural twilight it was impossible to see what it was. It looked like a piece of old rag.
“Did you have a look at that tower when you searched the monastery buildings?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “No. I did not find it.”
I pushed my way through some azaleas, skirted a sewage pond and reached the base of the tower by a footpath that ran through coarse grass. There was a garbage heap there and the flies buzzed and crawled amongst broken bottles, rotting casks and all the refuse thrown out by the monks. Looking up I could just see that the piece of rag was clean and new and bright blue. I remembered then that Hacket had been wearing a blue silk shirt. I cupped my hands round my mouth and called up, “Max! Max! Zina! Hacket!” I called all their names. But when I stood listening, all I could hear was the sifting, spilling sound of the lava, punctuated by the rumbling crash of falling buildings.
“Can you hear anything?”
Hilda shook her head.
I called again. In the silence that followed my shouts I could hear the lava move nearer. I glanced back across the huge, buzzing pile of the rubbish heap to the brown line of the outhouses. Reared up above them was the advancing wall of the lava.
Hilda suddenly gripped my arm. “Look!” She was pointing upwards to the slit. The piece of cloth was moving. It waved gently to and fro and then suddenly seemed to take on life as though the end of it were being violently shaken. Sleeves fell out towards us. “It is Hacket’s shirt,” I cried. Then cupping my hands I shouted up, “How do we get to you?”
The shirt waved. I thought I heard somebody shouting, but the noise of the lava drowned it and I couldn’t be sure. Hilda tightened her grip on my arm, tugging at me. “Quick! We must find a way to reach them.” I loosened her grip on my arm. “Wait,” I said. “Max will try to get a message down to us.”
I was staring up towards the slit. There was a great, rumbling crash and I heard Hilda say, “Oh, my God!” I glanced down at her and saw she was gazing towards the outhouses—or rather where the outhouses had been, for they were gone completely. A rising cloud of dust marked the spot where they had stood and in their place was the shifting, red-shot face of the lava.
Something struck my arm and fluttered to the ground. It was part of the silk lining of a coat, one corner of it weighted. I picked it up and untied the corner. The weight was a silver cigarette case and inside the case was a note. We’re all here. To reach tower enter by arch in courtyard, turn right in refectory room and follow passage to chapel. There is a flagstone with a ring bolt in robing room to right of altar. This leads to passage connecting Chapel to tower. We are in the top cell. Door is wood and can be burned down. Spare can of petrol in my car. Bless you, Max.
I glanced up. The shirt was no longer hanging from the slit. But there was something there that shone dully and I realised that it was a mirror being held out on the end of a piece of wood. They couldn’t look down at us from the slit, but they were watching us through a primitive periscope. I waved my hand in acknowledgment and then turned back along the path. “Run and get the can of petrol,” I told Hilda. “I’ll go straight to the chapel.”
She nodded and with one terrified glance at the lava front ran back into the monastery. There wasn’t even a dust haze now to mark where the outhouses had been and the frightful slag heap had slithered half across the flower garden where we’d stood, blistering the trees with its heat and withering the flowers. The first section of the main monastery building was crumbling as I dived into the coolness of the interior.
I found the passage leading off the refectory room and reached the chapel. There was no difficulty in finding the robing room or the flagstone with the ring bolt. I had lifted it up and thrown it back by the time Hilda arrived with the jerrican. Stone steps led down into a dank, cold passage. I switched on my torch. The walls were solid lava rock, black and metallic-looking. We passed right through the foundations of the Chapel and then we were climbing stone steps worn by the tread of men who’d come this way centuries past.
The tower was clearly a ruin. The wood of the big iron-studded doors was powdery with worm. One we passed had almost no wood at all and was just a lacing of wrought-iron and studs. I shone my torch in as I passed and caught a glimpse of mouldering floorboards and rusty iron chains secured to the wall and what looked like a rack standing beside some rotted iron implements of torture. The tower had evidently been a religious prison.
At last we reached the top of the spiral staircase and my torch showed a new door of plain oak. Beyond it a builder’s ladder led to a square of dim light that was the roof. Here the smell of sulphur was strong again and ash had sifted down on to the stone platform outside the door. I pounded on the wood. “Are you there, Max?”
“Yes.” His voice was muffled by the door, but quite audible. “We’re all here.”
“My father?” Hilda murmured. She couldn’t nerve herself to voice the question aloud. I think she feared the answer might be No.
“Yes. He’s here.”
I heard Hilda give a gasp of relief.
“Get up the ladder to the roof,” I said sharply. I was afraid she was going to faint. “Stand back now,” I called. “I’m sprinkling the door with petrol.” I had tipped the can up and as the petrol ran out I flicked it with my hand on to the woodwork of the door. I put about half a gallon on and around the door. Then I hauled the can up the ladder and passed it through the gap to Hilda. “Are you well back from the door?” I called.
“Yes, you can light the bonfire,” came the answer.
I climbed out on to the roof. “Pull the ladder up, will you, Hilda,” I said. I tipped the can of petrol up, soaking a strip of cloth in the stuff. Then holding one corner of it, I leaned down through the opening, struck a match and lit it. As the handkerchief blazed I tossed it down into the darkness below. There was a whoof of searing flame, a blast of hot blinding air and I flung myself backwards on to the roof of the tower.
“Are you hurt?” I felt Hilda’s hands grip my shoulders, lifting me up. I wiped my hand across my face. It smelt of petrol and burned hair. “The damned stuff had vapourised,” I mumbled. My face felt raw and scorched. Flames were licking out of the square hole in the roof. I crawled to the edge of the roof and leaned over the crumbling battlement above the slit. “Are you all right down there?” I shouted. I was scared I’d put too much of the stuff on the door.
It was Hacket who answered. “We’re fine, thanks.” His voice was faint and muffled. “Quite a fire you started.”
I stood up then and looked down on the stone roof of the monastery. Half the building had gone already. Beyond lay a flat, black plain of lava slanted gently upwards and thinning out to a dark gash in the mountainside. Above the gash the conical top of Vesuvius belched oil-black smoke shot with red lumps of the molten core of the earth which rose and fell, rose and fell like flaming yoyos in the crater mouth. Higher still, faint streaks of forked lightning cut the billowing underbelly of the cloud that hid the sun and blotted out the light of day. Hilda gripped my hand. She, too, was staring up at the mountain and I saw she was scared. “Oh, God! Do you think we shall ever get out?”
“We’ll get out all right,” I said, but my assurance sounded false and hollow. The lava seemed to be advancing faster. Already it had obliterated the flower garden where we’d stood and was pouring across the vineyards beyond in a slow, inevitable wave. Another section of the monastery fell with a crash and an up-thrust blast of dust. Soon it would reach the chapel. We must get out before then or …
I went forward to the opening that led into the tower. The flames had died down now and in the light of my torch I saw the door was charred but still solid. “We need more petrol,” I said. I didn’t dare pour it down. I needed some sort of a container. Hilda still had her handbag looped over her arm. “Give me that,” I said. I opened the bag, filled it with petrol and tossed it down through the opening. There was a sound like an explosion and flames leapt up through the square again.
I stood watching them, praying that the fire would soon burn through the door. Another section of the monastery fell in a blaze of sparks. I glanced across to where I had been imprisoned on that other roof. I could gauge the spot by the position of the monastery. There was nothing there, just the flat desolation of the lava. “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.”
“What do you say?”
I realised then that I had spoken aloud.
She must have read my thoughts for she said, “What happened over there, before I found you? Did you catch that man?”
“No. He caught me.”
“What happened? You looked terribly hurt.”
“Nothing happened,” I said. She wanted to talk—anything to take her mind off the waiting. But I couldn’t tell her what happened. It was too close to our present situation.
At last the flames died down again. I went to the battlements and called down, “Can you break your way out now?”
I could not hear their answer. It was lost in the sound of the lava. “They are kicking at the door now,” Hilda called. She was leaning over the hole. A shower of sparks shot up and she flung back, coughing, her face black with smuts. “I think it breaks down now.”
There was a sudden shout, the sound of splintering wood and more sparks. Then Max’s voice called up: “We’re almost out now.” More sparks and then a crash. “Where are you?”
“Up here,” I answered.
Hilda and I pushed the ladder through the smoking gap. “Go on down the stairs,” I shouted. “We’ll follow.”
The light of a torch flashed in the opening. Then I heard footsteps on the stone stairway. “Quick!” I said to Hilda. “Down you go.”
She stepped into the smoking gap and scrambled down. As I stood there holding the end of the ladder the last section of the monastery before the chapel fell in. The lava was right across the monks’ vineyards now, slithering in towards the base of the tower. I glanced behind me, towards Avin and the way out to safety, and my heart stood still. The lava streams that had swung past Santo Francisco on either side were curving in like pincers. I remembered how I’d seen this pincer movement from that other roof. But now it had developed. The two ends of the pincer were curved in towards Avin. One arm was already eating into the village. The other was only just outside it, following the slope of a valley.
“Dick! Hurry, please.”
I realised suddenly I was sweating with fear. “I’m coming,” I called. I swung myself on to the ladder. The air was choked with smoke, and wood still blazed at the foot of the ladder. I heard someone coughing below me, then my eyes were streaming and I fell suddenly into the charred wood. I put my hand out to break my fall and felt a searing burn on the palm. Then I was clear of the charred debris and on the stairway.
“What happened?”
“One of the rungs had burned through,” I told her. I had my torch on now and we hurried after the others. We caught them up in the passage leading to the chapel. It was with a sense of wonderful relief that I climbed out of the passage into the robing room. I had had an awful feeling of claustrophobia there, picturing the lava slithering over us and imprisoning us for all time underground.
We went through into the dim light of the chapel just as Max came out of the archway leading to the refectory room, his arm upraised and his eyes showing white in his blackened face. “No good,” he gasped. We stood there for a moment staring at him in a daze. I was dimly aware of Zina, her clothes torn and charred, and Hacket with his chest naked under his jacket and matted with singed hair. He was supporting two other figures, whose bodies drooped. Hilda ran forward, clutching one of them and called hysterically, “Co se stalo, tati?” It was Jan Tuček. I barely recognised him.
I think Hacket and I moved forward at the same moment. We came together in the doorway and stopped there, holding our arms up to shield us from the heat and staring in blank hopelessness. There was no passage any longer, no refectory room—no courtyard, no main archway. There was nothing there but a pile of broken stone and beyond it the lava heaped twenty, maybe thirty feet above us.
“The abbot’s room,” Max shouted suddenly. “There’s a window there.”
We scrambled back to the robing room in a body, choking the doorway. The window was high up, narrow, and of stained glass, leaded and barred. Hacket seized hold of a crozier. I saw Zina’s mouth open in horror at the sacrilege. But it was just the thing we wanted and Hacket was essentially a practical man. Max and I dragged chairs in from the chapel and piled them up while the American smashed the glass in. The lead was thin and bent easily. He smashed at the crossbar. The iron gave and broke under his blows. “Up you go, Countess. And you, Miss Tuček.”
They scrambled up. “Feet first,” Max called. Zina was halfway through when she looked down. Then she cried out something and clung frantically to the stone frame o
f the window. “Jump!” Hacket shouted at her.
“I can’t,” she screamed. “It’s a long—” Her voice died in a fluttering scream as Hilda, who had seen more of the lava and realised the urgency, pushed her through. Tuček and Lemlin we got up that crazy scaffolding of chairs somehow. They seemed weak and in pain. Hacket went up with them and helped them through. “They’re drugged,” Max explained. “And the bloody swine had them chained.”
“Chained to the wall?” I asked.
He nodded. “Imprisoned in the fetters they used for heretics. Fortunately they were rusty and we were able to smash some of the links. You go on, Hacket,” he called. “Now you, Dick.” I hesitated. “Go on, man. I’ll give you a hand up, if it’s your leg that’s worrying you.”
I scrambled up, caught hold of the stone of the window and slid my legs through. Max was right behind me. It happened as I clung there, steadying myself for the drop, getting my tin leg under me. There was a crumbling roar. I caught a glimpse of the roof cracking and falling and then I let go. I fell on my good leg and rolled sideways, conscious of a horrible jar on the stump of my left leg and hearing a thin scream that for a second I thought was myself screaming with pain.
But it wasn’t I who had screamed. It was Maxwell. He had his head half out of the window and his face was contorted to a frightening mask of pain. Above the window rose the dust cloud I’d seen so often in the past few hours. We were looking at a wall with nothing behind it. I shouted up to Maxwell. He didn’t say anything. Blood was running down his chin where he was biting through his lower lip as he heaved at the rest of his body. “It’s got my legs,” he hissed down.
“Try and pull ‘em clear,” Hacket shouted. “We’ll catch you.” He signalled to me to join him under the window. “Easy does it, fellow. Come on now. Get out of that and we’ll soon have you safely tucked up and comfortable.”