Bracing the Hatch Plate

Water was barking through the rivet holes of the bilge hatch before Garret Vane reached the bottom of the spiral stairs. The heavy wrought-iron plate, four feet square and anchored into the limestone floor of the Level 2 guardroom, lifted three inches off its stone rebate with every hammer-blow of the surge below. A spray of lukewarm, yellowish foam shot to the ceiling beams, raining down over the weapon racks and pooling across the flags. If the four forged iron dogs sheared under the next swell, seventy tons of river flood would blast straight up into the dry heart of Callow Arch.

Garret dropped down the final three steps, his boots sliding through two inches of greasy silt. His left ankle flared with sharp heat as his weight drove into the uneven stone, but he kept his footing by grabbing the corner of the heavy oak muster table.

"Norris!" he yelled toward the tool alcove. "Gable! Get down here with the pry-bars!"

Norris Claver emerged from the dry store with a hemp rope coiled over his thin shoulder and spectacles fogged with spray. Behind him came Corporal Gable, hair plastered to his forehead, dragging an eight-foot ash handspike across the flagstones. Gable's mouth was set in a tight, sullen line, his fingers white on the timber. He had spent three hours grumbling over the keys Garret had stripped from him, but the violent shudder through the floor had shaken the pride right out of his spine.

"The hydraulic head in the well shaft has risen eighteen feet since nightfall," Norris shouted over the thudding metal. He wiped his spectacles on a greasy flannel hem, only smearing the grey silt across the glass. "That plate was never laid to take positive upward thrust. It was seated in year three hundred to keep dry stores from falling down into the chain sump, not to hold back a boiling gorge!"

"I don't need a calendar from you, Norris," Garret barked. He kicked an iron dog with his boot heel. The drop-latch groaned, metal grinding on metal under forty pounds of twisting strain. "I need the bridge stringers. The two white-oak six-by-sixes stacked against the forge wall. Move them now, or we swim before the half-hour."

Gable hesitated, his eyes fixed on the center of the plate. The iron groaned like an ox in a slaughter pen. "The wood won't hold that, Vane. If the river wants the room, the river takes the room."

Garret caught Gable by the front of his buff jerkin and shoved him toward the forge recess. "The wall brackets are anchored three feet deep into the foundation granite. The brackets hold if the oak sits flat. Move your boots, Corporal, or I will drop the deadweight line from the fifth floor and pin you to the flags."

Gable cursed under his breath, but he turned and lunged for the timber stack.

Garret knelt beside the plate. The water spitting through the perimeter gap was not the icy, mineral-sharp spray of the autumn cataracts. It ran warm against his palms, slick as lard, carrying the thick stench of silt and rotted watercress. Beneath the iron, something dense struck the underside with a heavy, hollow boom. It sounded less like water than a waterlogged tree trunk ramming a gate. The entire plate jumped half an inch in its bed, shearing one of the corner rivets clean off. The iron head ricocheted off the vaulted ceiling and clattered into the dark.

"White oak has twenty percent higher shear resistance along the grain than red oak," Norris shouted, struggling under the leading end of the first balk. "Provided the heartwood isn't green! If this is swamp timber from the lower bottoms, the grain will delaminate under thirty pounds of transverse load!"

"Set it down!" Garret roared.

Together, the three of them dragged the eight-foot timber across the sloshing floorflags. The balk weighed near two hundred pounds, rough-sawn and black with coal tar from the winter repair depot. Garret jammed the tapered nose of the beam into the western wall bracket, a massive stirrup of forged iron leaded into the ashlar sixty years ago.

"Gable, get the pry-bar under the heel!" Garret ordered. "Lift when the surge drops. When the plate falls into the rebate, drop the beam into the notch!"

The corporal dropped his weight onto the handspike. The iron tip bit into the wet flags with a harsh scrape. "Now?"

"Wait for the suck," Garret said, his eyes glued to the weeping gap.

A pulse of brown water rose through the perimeter, drowning his boots to the laces. The plate lifted, the four dogs screaming in agony. Then the river below caught its breath, a great subterranean gurgle dragging the water back down the flue. The plate dropped into its seat with an ear-splitting crack.

"Drop it!" Garret shouted.

Gable slipped on the slick silt. The handspike jumped from his grip, the timber tipping toward the floor.

Garret threw his entire upper body across the beam, taking the raw, splintered oak against his ribs. The impact knocked the wind from his chest in a ragged gasp, but his right boot hooked beneath the muster table leg, anchoring his frame against the slide. With a ferocious heave of his shoulders, he shoved the timber forward four inches, slamming the butt straight into the eastern wall saddle.

The beam fell into place with a dull, solid thud.

"Drift pin!" Garret wheezed, spit flecking his chin. "Norris, the iron drift pin!"

The mason dropped to his knees in the brown water, his fingers groping frantically along the floor. He surfaced with a heavy square-shanked iron wedge, ramming it down through the pre-drilled eye of the bracket. Garret seized an eight-pound sledge from the tool chest and brought it down with a two-handed swing.

The hammer struck true. Sparks showered into the spray as the wedge drove three inches into the timber, locking the first beam immovable across the southern half of the hatch.

Before they could draw breath, the shaft below detonated with a second impact.

The floorflags vibrated so violently that Gable was tossed flat on his back into the foul bilge. The iron plate buckled upward, its northern half lifting six inches into the air. The two northern dogs sheared simultaneously with a sound like snapping whipcord, the iron heads whistling through the dark and lodging into the plaster partition. Green, curdled river water boiled out from the open throat, flooding the guardroom to mid-shin in three heartbeats.

"Second balk!" Garret bellowed, his voice tearing raw. "Grab the second balk!"

Norris was already hauling at the second timber, his spectacles hanging from one ear by their hemp cord. His thin arms shook with absolute exhaustion, veins standing out like cords on his neck. Gable scrambled up from the water, coughing violently, and threw his weight into the middle of the beam.

They hauled the heavy oak over the spurting gap. Warm river water washed over Garret's thighs, thick and sweet, smelling overpoweringly of stagnant lily roots and sun-baked mud. He positioned his iron pinch-bar under the northern wall bracket, using the rim of the masonry as a fulcrum.

"One heave!" Garret yelled, his teeth grinding on grit. "On three! One! Two! Three!"

They threw the beam down. The timber caught the edge of the rising iron, forcing the warped plate downward by sheer mechanical leverage. Garret threw his hip into the pry-bar, driving the butt into the iron stirrup just as another subterranean hammer-blow struck the iron from beneath. The shock ran through the bar and shattered the skin across Garret's knuckles, but he refused to let go. He kicked the second drift pin into the bracket hole with his heel, then brought the sledgehammer down once, twice, three times.

The wedge bit deep into the oak. The timber groaned, sap weeping from the compressed grain, but it held.

The room fell into an abrupt, unnatural silence, broken only by the slosh of knee-deep water against the walls.

Garret leaned against the muster table, his chest heaving, blood dripping from his torn knuckles into the grey flood. Both oak stringers sat locked solid into the wall stirrups, pinning the hatch plate against the stone rebate. The upward surge was curbed for now, held fast by four hundred pounds of seasoned white oak and forged drift pins.

Between the two timbers, the iron plate had warped into a high blister, stretched thin by the pressure beneath. From a hairline fracture along the central seam, a thin hiss of pale vapor vented into the chilled room.

Norris crouched beside the beam, holding a hand out toward the crack before jerking his fingers back with a sharp hiss. "That isn't cold spate from the gorge," the mason whispered, staring at his reddened skin. "River water does not scald without a furnace beneath it."

Garret wiped the bloody grit from his palms onto his leather apron, his gaze turning to the dark curve of the spiral stair leading up to Level 3.

"Go tell Tamsin to clear the lower larder shelves," Garret said. "We aren't holding this floor till dawn."