Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [322]
It was hardly two hours after midday and the light was failing; the skies darkening moment by moment with promise of renewed snow.
There was no word from the bridge. The Duke’s brothers, with a small party, rode off in the gloom to discover why, and did not return. A half-crazed soldier, lunging at the Duke’s horse, caused it to throw its rider and canter back, in its jewelled housings, the way it had come — the famous Il Moro, prize enough to break up the first wave of pursuit. The Duke was pulled to his feet and stood glaring accusingly after it. His surcoat hung in shreds, leaving the bulk of his magnificent armour exposed, and his florid helmet lay burst on the ground, the golden lion knocked from its crest.
The horse that Nicholas was riding was one of Astorre’s best, and he offered it. There was no time to shorten the stirrups. While the Duke was heaved into the saddle, Nicholas strove to catch himself a replacement, using the flat of his sword to fend off competitors. The fear-crazed mare that he stopped would have been hard enough to mount without the encumbrance of half-armour. The pair of strong hands that helped haul him up into place belonged to Robin. Nicholas filled his lungs, and said, ‘Give me the sea and Paúel Benecke any day,’ and saw Robin grin. Then they turned to rejoin the Duke as the snow started to fall, white as a spear-phalanx from the darkness above, white and pink on the terrain below, where it sank upon the last moments of the retreat and the first of the approaching carnage.
Nicholas had almost caught up with the Duke when his fate finally touched him. At first, he was merely intent on forging his way through to Charles. It was possible to see that de Bièvres, the best and most loyal of men, had taken command of the dozen noblemen still surrounding the Duke, with Diniz and the small band of Charetty soldiers beside them. De Chimay had gone. Someone had found a bright yellow sash and knotted it across the Duke’s cuirass: an identification. A man cried, ‘My lord!’
Nicholas knew him. The wounded man on the stumbling horse at his side was a squire of the Bastard’s — the Duke’s half-brother Anthony. The man said, ‘I have to find my lord Duke. Is he there?’
‘In front. What is it?’ said Nicholas. He thought he could guess. He learned the truth as a sick man hears it from his physician. The Duke’s brother Baudouin was captured. The Bastard Anthony was missing, and the son who had been with him was dead. They had been waylaid on the way to the bridge of Bouxières, the Duke’s only safe exit to Metz. And the bridge, they now knew, was not open, or amenable to being occupied and secured by any company, however gallant, however determined, however well trained. The bridge had been blocked and manned for the last twenty-four hours by the Count of Campobasso and his three hundred mercenaries, avid for ransom.
Nicholas let the man spur off to the Duke. Robin said nothing. Around them, the air was white, the struggling figures grey flecked with white, the cries increasingly muffled. Nicholas said, ‘He will have to try to make for the north, over the swamps. I can do no more for him.’
He did not say what he was going to do. He supposed he did not have to.
Robin said, ‘I will come with you.’
The bridge of Bouxières should have been impossible to find, but was not. Nicholas rode as if his pendulum hung in the wild air before him: a pillar of light; the spindle of Necessity, whose daughters release souls to new lives, sending them spinning like stars to rebirth.
It was a certainty denied to the others floundering, plodding, hurrying in the dimness all around them. Many were injured, and destined to die, or to freeze in a swamp. Some of