by Clio Gray
If he could have swapped places with the boy he’d have done so in a heartbeat, but there was no possibility, Isaac trapped like a wasp in a bell jar, beating its head repeatedly against the glass to find a non-existent way out. He could maybe try to save the boy or he could maybe try to save the library – for he was in no doubt what those two barrels signified – but he could not do both.
Isaac had blithely assumed the war was over once he and Caro had the Luigi fellow in hand, but they’d been outmanoeuvred with humiliating ease. He’d often wondered how his family, his village, had reacted when the Prussians came stamping down their streets declaring – as they’d done in other Jewish enclaves – that they were vermin, fit only to be swept from life and land. And now he knew. Powerless then, powerless now.
He moved slowly, desperately looking about him for a solution but none was to be found. They were three against two, at least if Joachim was a Brother who would fight and Isaac couldn’t count on that, but even so the enemy held all advantage because he hled Caro. Back in the bad old days Isaac had merely been the goat-herd who’d answered a Prussian officer’s casual request for directions, and the results had been catastrophic.
This time round he swore he would do better. If he died from the consequence of his own actions, of his not seeing to the locking of the library’s doors, then that was fine with him, but not Caro. Absolutely not Caro. The man holding him must have an exit strategy and Isaac had to persuade him to take it without taking Caro with him.
He reached the top of the library, the second barrel, and came to a stop.
‘Get it rolled down here,’ commanded Ricardo. ‘Get it rolled down next to the other one, and be quick about it.’
Ricardo was excited, he had half an erection as he pressed himself up against the young lad at the thought of the fireworks to come. He wasn’t sure where Hendrik Grimalkin was, but no matter. Get rid of the library and get rid of Hendrik’s researches was Ricardo’s reasoning – and Hendrik himself, if he was hidden in here somewhere – putting paid to any further poking about in his family’s private affairs. So all good, as far as he was concerned, and Federigo would surely agree with him and pour on him the money so frequently promised but not yet seen.
Isaac looked with longing at the closed door of the peep-hole room, the place he’d felt safe these last twenty odd years. He still had a heel of bread in there and a corner of really good ham that had been slathered over with molasses and honey, cooked for hours and hours in pastry to keep its juices in: a protector that sealed in the good, kept out the bad, just as Isaac had done for the Athenaeum – apart from tonight, when it really counted.
He took a step behind the barrel, readying himself to push it on down the library, taking one last look at all the shelves, at all the books he loved like family, and had to swallow down his tears. He couldn’t bear that it was all going to be destroyed because of him. His eyes came to rest on Luigi who was, at that moment, levering himself up with difficulty from off his sofa, his head poking out from its depths. Isaac paused, foot on the barrel, ready to get it going, and saw that Luigi was winking – and winking desperately – with his one visible and blood shot eye.
Ruan, Hendrik and Greta got to the library and went up its steps. They didn’t bother knocking, knowing Isaac would be in his peephole room as ordered, ready to let them in. But apparently Isaac was not, because the door did not open. After a couple of minutes they glanced at one another and at the closed doors, wondering what the hold-up was. Possibly Isaac had gone to relieve himself, but surely he would have put Caro or Joachim on guard in his stead. Hendrik frowned, but Ruan did not. He’d been emboldened by his recent encounter in the Golden Globe and keener still to impress Greta, so he took a step forward and began to hammer the flat of his fist upon the wood, shouting out for Isaac and Caro, but no answer came.
‘Not much time,’ Ricardo Ducetti said grimly, hearing the banging on the door – possibly the Grimalkin man at last, who seemed to have seven lives – the point of his knife digging a little deeper into Caro’s neck as he tensed, ready for action.
‘You,’ he commanded,’ meaning Isaac, ‘get that barrel down here now, and I mean now. And Luigi, stop lollygagging about and bleating like a stuck pig. We’ve work to do. Get those barrels opened and let’s be gone.’
Luigi moved slowly, dragging one leg behind him as he moved, the blood from his wound dripping onto the floor with every step. He didn’t want to obey his brother but he knew Ricardo well enough to know he would slit the boy’s throat soon as he would sneeze. He also realised, dullard as Ricardo believed him to be, that Brother Joachim was still hunkered behind the sofa, Luigi having shoved his head down the second Ricardo made himself known.
He didn’t want to be here – Christ, he’d never wanted any of this, not the way it had gone. Unlike his brother or his uncle, or even cousin Cardinal Eduardo de Ducetti, as he styled himself, Luigi was a true believer and dreaded besmirching his soul’s passage to Heaven any more than he’d already had. He’d been a coward, he knew, and needed a miracle to get himself out of the shit he’d been tossed into, but Joachim had given him exactly that: the miracle of forgiveness, maybe not for what he’d actually done but that was alright. It was forgiveness just the same.
He wished he’d been able to stay at the Servants, would gladly have stayed there for the rest of his life for there was peace there: no brother or uncle to drag him under. If he ever got out of this, then that’s where he would go – to the Servants. He winced at the pain of his moving but got to the first barrel, soon had its nozzle opened, the turpentine coming out in a mere trickle because of the angle at which the barrel was leant, an angle Luigi deliberately did not correct.
Then came Isaac, rolling the second barrel down the library, bringing it to rest against the first as Ricardo ordered. Once again Luigi did has he was bid and loosened the tap, the gunpowder flowing out briefly but soon clogging and coming to a stop, Luigi trying to block it from his brother’s sight. Unsuccessfully as it turned out, Ricardo clicking his tongue, seeing exactly what the problem was.
‘You bloody idiot,’ Ricardo growled at his brother. ‘You need to shift them into a better position, get everything flowing properly. Thank Christ one of us has a brain. Here,’ Ricardo added, pulling out his guildsman’s hammer and chisel from his workman’s belt, slamming them down on the table, the knife once more digging another millimetre further into Caro’s neck as he did so, unintentionally nicking Caro’s windpipe, making Caro wriggle, making him release a thin squall that almost broke old Isaac’s not so slowly pumping heart. Ricardo tightened his grip on the boy.
‘Keep still,’ he ordered, and Caro did, although he was crying freely now and having some difficulty breathing. Luigi limped forward to take up his brother’s tools, seeing the wet shine on the boy’s face, knowing he was in serious trouble. The hammering on the doors had not lessened, nor the calls for Isaac and the boy to come and let whoever was out there in.
Luigi had a pain all of his own and maybe because of it, or maybe because of the boy’s unnerving mewling, he had a sudden and immediate awareness of his surroundings and of all the books that were about him and all the knowledge they contained, all the stories they could tell, all the things he might have learned if he’d ever been given the chance; and he also saw the faint figure of Brother Joachim creeping away from the sofa towards the Athenaeum’s kitchen, his face peeping out around the corner of the stairs that led down to the second depth of the library, a face that was round and white and as filled with shadows as a moon half risen.
Vacillation now for Luigi Ducetti, his miracle on the move, his soul getting heavier and dirtier with every step Joachim took away from him. He picked up the hammer. He picked up the chisel. He looked up at Isaac, and saw his chance.
‘Something’s wrong,’ Ruan Peat was saying. ‘Where the hell is Isaac?’
Greta was jittering beside him like a cricket on a hotplate, and soon they were both pounding their combined
fists upon the great wooden doors, trying the huge iron circles it had for handles. Ruan had the sweat of panic on his hands, on his neck, and looked at Hendrik for direction, but Hendrik closed his eyes, hands loose against his chest, unable, Ruan thought, to weather yet another imminent disaster.
‘There must be another way in,’ Ruan said. ‘Hendrik. You have to help us. Is there another way in?’
Hendrik opened his eyes at the question and Ruan saw he was right. Hendrik had given up. Hendrik had done all he was going to do. Hendrik had lost so much he couldn’t contemplate losing any more, was finding it difficult to function, and oddly Ruan understood. The ties binding him to the world were also suddenly dissolving, as they had for Ruan with Golo gone, and Fergus too; no freedom in that loosening, only fright and foreboding. In Ruan’s case, there was an urgent need to kick back against the man or men who had taken them from him. He’d been set adrift in a new world like he’d always wanted but everything in this new world was wrong, excepting Greta, who suddenly brought that world back into focus.
‘There has to be a delivery door round back,’ she said and Ruan knew she was right.
‘Hendrik,’ Ruan pleaded, his throat constricting, the next words hardly more than a whisper. ‘The delivery door. Is there a key? Do you have a key?’
The moment stretched. The moment ran on into infinity, until Hendrik spoke, dull and flat.
‘Around the back down the ginnel, duplicate key beneath the water trough in case of emergency. In case of emergency…’ Hendrik repeated slowly before leaking out something approaching a hysterical laugh, Ruan not hearing, already setting off, Greta just behind him, Ruan gripped by the unfamiliar notion that he had a purpose for the first time in his life.
Luigi put chisel and hammer to first one barrel and then the next, releasing their contents freely out onto the wood of the Athenaeum’s wood-planked floor. The ensuing smell of turpentine was strong, the scent of gunpowder raw and redolent, and Ricardo was momentarily bewitched. Luigi saw it, lurched forward, throwing the hammer and stabbing the chisel at his brother’s chest, all of his years of denigration and insult going into that single thrust which was nevertheless feeble but so unexpected that Ricardo took a step backwards on impact, dragging Caro with him, pushing the knife further into Caro’s throat, the sudden spurt of blood making Ricardo’s hand so slippery that he let go the knife and Caro with it as he struggled to regain his balance.
Caro crumpled to the floor, Isaac moving immediately to the boy’s side. Luigi toppled over beside the two of them, his gesture of defiance having drained what little strength he had left. Ricardo, looming above his brother, recouped in seconds, grabbing the chisel from the floor, stamping on Luigi’s useless out-flung hand, giving his useless brother a hard kick in his useless belly that sent Luigi sprawling.
‘So now we have a development,’ Ricardo said, loud and harsh. ‘One turncoat brother, one ancient handyman, one boy bleeding to death. And so you can all go to hell together in the merry blast, but not I, not I.’
He snatched up a lamp from the nearest table and took a few steps away from them, calculating how far he would need to go before he could chuck it into the vicious mix of barrel spillage and get out alive.
‘Don’t do this, Ricardo!’ Luigi was terrified. His brother’s kick had sent him right into the pool of turpentine and he was soaked in it and Jesus, whatever he’d done in his life and however bad it had been, surely not even Ricardo would let him die like this. But apparently Ricardo would, because his only riposte was to smile and raise his arm, chucking the lamp right into the thin-fingered spreading out of the turpentine as it snaked here and there down the central aisle, following the differing grains of wood and the lengths and knots of the planks.
The lamp landed with a crash and a small whooshing as the edge of escaping turpentine caught, Luigi lying between Ricardo and the barrels that were a few yards further up from him, yelling and rolling, trying to crawl away as it went straightaway to flame. It rushed towards him at such a speed that Luigi knew he could not get out of its way in time; but his brother paid him no mind and didn’t stop to help him. He instead ran on towards the very back of the library and down the short corridor that led to the kitchen area, straight for the door he knew deliveries were always made to, key always this side, heading for escape.
Ruan and Greta were almost there, Hendrik summoning enough gumption to follow them but was slow and uncoordinated, slipping on the wet cobbles, going down hard, cracking his shoulder bone as he went, twisting his spine. Greta heard him go down and turned back but Hendrik Grimalkin held up a hand, didn’t want any help. House burned down, Louisa dead, and now the Athenaeum itself under threat. He couldn’t cope with it. He lay down his head on the wet cobbles and switched himself off. Let life go on without him, because he couldn’t do it anymore.
‘Go,’ he whispered, and Greta nodded and did exactly that.
Isaac’s old heart was torn in two, or maybe three, if that was even figuratively possible. The man who’d thrown the lamp was getting away and the flames from it were racing towards Luigi who’d tried to do the right thing and was now about to go up like a torch because of it. Caro’s blood was pumping between his fingers in a tiny fountain, and then again there was the overriding need to get the barrel of gunpowder out of the way of the oncoming flames so they weren’t all blown to smithereens.
Only one choice. Abandon the dying child in the hope he could save them all and so Isaac threw himself forward and kicked at the barrel of gunpowder, sent it rolling down the library with as much strength as he could muster, a grey streak left behind like a fuse line as it went; then straightaway back to Caro, who might peg at any moment, taking off his coat, wrapping it tight about the boy’s neck to stop the bleeding, no chance to help Luigi, his boots alight, him howling as the fire moved from leather to socks to flesh, tears streaming down his face, heart almost stopping as a terrifying figure appeared out of the gloom, lunging towards them all.
‘Christ save me…’ Luigi whispered, believing this to be the devil come to take him. But it was not the devil. It was Brother Joachim, habit halfway over his head and then off, flinging it fast over Luigi’s legs, wrapping him tight, rolling him over and over. The action put out the immediate flames but not the ones that were surrounding the two of them like a fallen halo as the wax polish on the floorboards gave them sustenance and reason to grow, snaking and curling towards the mother load of the tipped-over cask of turpentine whose contents were seeping slowly and inexorably in all directions, including towards its brother barrel of gunpowder a few yards away, like calling to like, maybe a minute or so left before they were all blown to hell.
Ruan and Greta arrived at the back door of the Athenaeum. Ruan tried the handle but it was locked, Greta going straight to the trough to fetch the second key as Ruan took a couple of steps back, getting ready to kick the door in if it was not found, when the door opened of its own accord and out came a man who went at them like a bull, head lowered, fists out, bowling into Ruan, knocking him over, punching hard at Greta’s face as she tried to intercept him before running for all he was worth into the falling night.
Isaac saw Joachim tumble Luigi over and over and out of the way of the burning pool of spirits. There was a still a creep of flame over Luigi’s upper legs like you got on the top of a plum pudding that has been soaked in brandy and set alight. Worse still was the plight of Caro, blood pumping, face white, lips going blue. Isaac pulled himself and Caro back into the shadows, upturning a desk as he did so, pulling it over them for shelter. It was a bad decision because by doing so he inadvertently let slide off the surface the candle that was on it that joyously joined the mayhem as it fell.
The candle found its own path towards the victims who were not yet alight at which point Isaac folded himself about Caro, bringing up his legs about Caro’s own, likewise shielding his shoulders, body and head with his own in the faint hope that when he burned he might be able to keep Caro at the kernel of it, a
nd somehow safe.
Ruan was up on his feet in a moment, a little dizzy from the knock his head had taken as he tumbled to the ground but he wasn’t going to let that stop him. He grabbed at Greta and missed, couldn’t understand how, and tried again, missed again, unaware that he was seeing double.
‘For God’s sake, get on!’ Greta shouted, seeing Ruan’s flailing arms coming towards her as she hoisted herself up on one elbow, her right eye already swelling and closing from Ricardo’s fist and a knee going the same way from how she had gone down. She saw the confusion in Ruan’s eyes and saw too, in that single second, a determination she’d seen many times in many men’s faces before they went into battle when they were so fired up they were ready to do or die and, God help her, she took advantage of it. She didn’t know what was going on in the library but she figured it was urgent and so she sent him on.
‘Jeez, man. Ruan,’ she urged, ‘never mind me. Get inside. Do what’s needed to be done.’
And Ruan did. He left Greta and he left the yard and he ran through the open kitchen door and up the few step into the library proper and what he saw scoured away everything he thought he knew, his double vision clearing and giving such an immediacy to the scene that it was like stepping into another world. The library was burning. The floor of the main aisle was licked about by flames; Joachim was there, strangely denuded, trying to drag another man up the way, Isaac and Caro hunkered down beneath a table and one of them was bleeding, no doubt about that, the blood beneath them bright and visceral.
