Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [299]
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SHE AWOKE SEVERAL HOURS LATER in the hold of a boat. This took a while to establish, as her head thudded, her body ached, and the darkness about her was total. She also discerned that the boat was not moving. Although welcome, this deduction was of limited use: Ghent was a major port, possessed of three rivers and a canal leading to Damme. Not all were frozen, and their banks were lined with moored boats. This one smelled of mildewed grain and cooked sausage; a watchman’s fire, somewhere, had softened the worst of the cold.
Before wasting effort on her surroundings, she had established that she was leashed: her hands were shackled together and attached to a chain which rose to a wall-staple. She had further confirmed that her clothing was undisturbed: she had not been undressed or molested or used. The advantage — the only advantage — of eight years of celibacy was the austere witness it supplied to that fact.
Last of all, came the realisation that she was not alone.
Captors gloated; murderers would be brandishing lights. She tried to tell herself that only another prisoner would be lying still in the dark, far across the deck of what must be the hold of a barge, hardly stirring, barely audible except for the stifled sound of his breathing. If it was not David de Salmeton or one of his henchmen, it must be a captive like herself.
Her head cleared then, and she knew. Her body, which had been chilled, began to fill with slow waves of warmth, drowning any sense of amazement, or consternation, or dread. She knew who it was. She had begun to speak his name when a bolt crashed overhead, a lantern waved from the hatch, and an armed man slid down the ladder, to be joined by another. They crossed first to her, grinning, to hang one lantern above her, then took and hung the other above the man whose breathing she had heard, who did not resist when they kicked him and left, but lay bare-headed where he was chained, in his ruined outrider’s dress, his bruised face transfigured, his grey eyes resting only on her.
Nicholas.
She said, ‘I solved your grandfather’s code.’
‘I know. I felt it,’ he said. He spoke like a boy.
The two men had left, and could be heard talking above. They sounded deferential. Someone new began to descend. Gelis did not even look up. She filled her eyes and heart with the sight of him: the low, calm brow and wide bones of his face, the stubborn hair, topiary-trimmed (by Adorne’s barber?) to cling to his throat; the length and bulk of his body, part hunting-cat and part bear. They had torn off his boots and cuirass and greaves, leaving him in a soiled jacket and hose. He had drawn up a knee, and was supporting his weight on one hip and his elbow. His wrists were shackled like hers, with a little slack, and his broad, craftsman’s hands were clasped lightly before him. She wondered, with a deep, lunatic pang of pure love, how he had managed to put the croak into the frog.
Gelis looked up at his face, and said, ‘I would walk over, now.’
The third visitor stepped down into the light and stood, looking down at them both. ‘We must arrange it,’ the newcomer said.
It was not David de Salmeton; the man who had threatened her, who wanted Nicholas dead, and who bore a grudge against all who had slighted him. This was Julius’s wife, Anna von Hanseyck.
Chapter 41
FOR NICHOLAS, the materialisation of Anna von Hanseyck should have been fearful. He had expected de Salmeton, and a long, teasing exchange involving physical discomfort, probably imposed by David himself, artistically supported by henchmen. De Salmeton would, however, have been gallant to Gelis, and might even have spared her, at the end.
Anna was different. She, too, would enjoy playing her fish before killing