Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [125]
‘That sounds like sense,’ said Anna in German. Her cloak and hat gone, she was in the grip of Nicholas, who was successfully propelling her towards her own wagon. She saw he had a grasp of Brygidy also. She heard him swearing, with some presence of mind, in the same language.
‘It’s you they want, not your spoons,’ Nicholas said. ‘It’s a trap. The house belongs to the ambushers. Get into the wagon.’
‘Me?’ Anna said. She rose in the air and landed, hard, in the wagon. Brygidy also arrived, with a crash.
‘You,’ Nicholas said. He was lashing their horses and his own to the wagon. ‘Listen to the men at the barriers. They’re Russians.’ He made a grab for his bow.
‘Holy Mary!’ said Anna piously, and disappeared under the canopy.
‘And throw me a tinder-box,’ Nicholas added.
Afterwards, there was disagreement about what next happened. The ambushers, bearded men in tunics and trousers, raced up and encircled their victims but at first did nothing more than demand that the soldiers disarm and hand over the woman. When the soldiers refused, surrounding the little convoy with drawn swords, the leader of the ambushers, stepping forward, asked in a reasonable voice if they wanted to die, as they were five against twenty, and they couldn’t suppose their horses were immune to arrows? There followed some threats, which the soldiers appeared to understand, for one of them suddenly drew back his arm and threw a knife. There was a grating scream and a furious roar, followed by a squeal and a thud as the knife-thrower’s horse staggered and fell with a spear in its throat. The leading soldier yelled to the others. ‘That’s enough. Get the women across to that house and barricade it. Don’t let the Mameluke stop you. Where is he?’
No one replied, for just then the wooden house began to crackle and smoke at a place to one side of the door, where suddenly flames began to appear. A flare sailed through the sky, and another spot started to glow, then another. Shouting came from inside the house, and from outside, as the ambuscaders hurried towards it. Then the front barricade burst into flame and the smoke, rising into the shimmering sky, finally told the soldiers at the gate tower that something was wrong.
Bursting through the first barrier in their way, the men from the tower found themselves in a circle of fire within which a group of blistered, smoke-blackened Russians appeared to be trapped. They rounded them up, while the fire-drum hammered its warning. There was no sign of the German Contessa, or her servant, or her Mameluke. There was no sign, either, of her baggage-train. That, as it happened, had arrived already, seared and blackened, at the gates of the Franciscan monastery, where the Abbot, summoned at once, found a group of terrified animals and a lady in a still-smoking wagon whose driver, a bearded Egyptian, or perhaps Circassian, addressed him politely in French.
‘Lord, receive the peerless Gräfin Onna von Hanseyck,’ said the heathen humbly. ‘Esteemed friend of the lord Ludovico, prince of the Faithful, who, scattering joy, gifts and alms, will generously condescend to join us, I believe, almost at once, may Allah treasure him for his zeal.’
‘Oh, be quiet,’ said the Lady. ‘Father, may we come in?’
TO LUDOVICO DA BOLOGNA, later, she said, ‘It was frightening at the time. Nicholas says that they wouldn’t have harmed me, only used me to bargain with. They haven’t much money, and they’re afraid the Genoese will ruin them over this claim for compensation unless I agree to give it up and go home. They come from the Russian states that Moscow claims sovereignty over, but Moscow changes its mind every week about whom it supports — Venice and the Golden Horde,