by AM Kirkby
***
Now Lucius had lost several days, and one man. But they'd reached the great central span, and the immense beams were being swung into place. If we run short of time, he thought, we could always work from the other side of the river as well, working on two spans at the same time; though the bridge hadn't been designed to be built that way. (And why hadn't it? he wondered; in retrospect it was such an obvious thing to do, to have two teams working in towards the middle, instead of the single team throwing a bridge across from one side to the other. Perhaps he'd been so opposed to the two-bridge scheme championed by Faustus that he'd closed his mind to any idea that even slightly resembled it. A mistake.)
The first of the huge beams was swinging into place. They'd learned, after that first near-disaster the day the king had visited them, to rig a trestle up on the pilings, counterweighted at the back, and use it to pull the beam upwards, as well as just along, so that it could be gently lowered on to the piling, instead of hauled up and manhandled into the slot that was ready for it. Though Lucius knew the heaviness of the beam, though he'd seen the two oxen struggling to pull it yesterday, straining their shoulders against its inertia, as it swung now from the ropes it seemed almost weightless, easily moved with the touch of a finger, floating like a leaf on the breeze.
He'd remember that deceptive moment of lightness for ever, or rather the moment that came immediately after, like the moment your stomach lurches and you realise you're about to fall, or about to vomit. It was like the times his father would swing him in the air and pretend he was about to let go, and though he never did let go, the dread of it was always there, the same terror and nausea and lightheadedness and sense of imminent disaster.
Then the men were shouting, and tugging at the fallen beam, and one of them was struggling free of the whipping ends of the rope. Everything turned in one moment to ashes. He couldn't remember having seen it fall.
The beam had turned askew as it crashed on to the pilings; it rested on a single corner, threatening to slip again. The A-frame of the crane had fallen backwards, its feet slipping off the pilings and into the river; the rope dangled loose. One wrong movement and the beam would collapse again, into the water, and there would be no retrieving it.
All this Lucius saw in one moment, but he never saw the man who lay, his head crushed, sprawled away from the beam. He hadn't even had the time to cry out.
It seemed to take hours for the boat to reach the pilings, so he could clamber up and inspect the damage. By then, someone had dragged a cloth over the dead man's face, to hide the shattered bone and brain; but it was worse somehow, seeing the bloody stain on the grey rag, and the shapelessness of what was under it.
Gaius had already secured the ends of the ropes, and the beam had been tied, as well as it could be, at each end, so there was no chance of losing it. But nothing could be done till it was lifted again, and straightened. And that could not be done till the dead man had been moved out of the way, and till the crane had been fished out of the river, and the ropes reattached.
It wasn't till Gaius grabbed his arm that Lucius realised he'd lost track, that his mind had locked up, he was in a daze. It took him a moment to realise what Gaius was telling him. The ropes... the ropes...
Gaius held out a loose end. The fibres were splayed, fanned out, except at the core of the rope where they were torn, rough. Lucius looked without understanding. Gaius was trying to tell him something, but his mind refused to take it in.
Then he realised. Each of the fanned out cords ended neatly, with a flat cut. Each surrounding cord had been severed, leaving only the single strand in the centre to hold the entire weight of the beam.
