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 Racket 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 Tucek. 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 Tucek.’
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 of 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. Tucek 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.’
There was a sudden shifting of masonry and a cloud of dust swirled through the broken gap where Maxwell’s head was. ‘I’ve got one leg free,’ he hissed. ‘The other one’s broken, but I think I’ll—’ He screamed then and suddenly slumped over the sill of the window, his face running with sweat that dripped down on to us. It was only a momentary black-out for a second later he was hauling himself forward.
He fell head first on top of us, tumbling us in a heap. We scrambled up and dragged him clear of the wall. ‘We must get him to the car,’ Zina said.
We were on a path and I could see gates wide open leading to the street. ‘I’ll get the car,’ I said. ‘Hilda. Give me the rotor arm.’
She stared at me. Then her mouth fell open. ‘It — it was in my bag. I put it in my bag — the one you filled with petrol.’
I stared at her blankly. I felt dazed and sick with tiredness and the reaction.
‘You don’t need to worry about the cars,’ Hacket said. ‘There aren’t any cars. Come on. Help me get him up. We got to get away from the lava.’
‘No cars?’ Zina exclaimed. ‘But we’ve two cars here. We parked them—’ Then her eyes widened as she realised that the courtyard was now buried under the lava. She began to cry. ‘Get me out of here. Get me out of here can’t you. You brought me here. You made me come. Get me out—’ Hilda slapped her twice across the face with the flat of her hand. ‘You’re alive and you’re not hurt,’ she snapped. ‘Pull yourself together.’
Zina gulped and then her face suddenly seemed to smooth out. ‘Thank you — for doing that. I’m not frightened. It’s just my nerves. I’m a — a drug addict, and I haven’t—’ She turned away quickly. She was crying again.
‘Only a nurse would have known what to do, Miss Tucek,’ Hacket said. ‘You have been a nurse, haven’t you?’
Hilda turned to him. ‘Yes. During the war.’
‘Then see what you can do for this poor fellow.’ He nodded to Maxwell, who lay writhing in agony on the ground. ‘We’ll get him down to the street, clear of the lava first. Then you go to work on him while we rig up some sort of a stretcher.’