Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [168]
That scant luik may on the licht.
The mare they had lent him was playful. She passaged, her ears pricked out of the gateway, and before she had travelled ten yards had called into play, inevitably, all his already overtaxed sinews.
Further on, it was more than a matter of extreme discomfort. The crowds along the Grand’ Rue were much thicker, with a good deal of pushing and jostling. His guard broke ranks, struggling to keep with him. A group of white-capped, red-cheeked girls threw down a spray of evergreen from a window, and as he glanced up, cap in hand, his horse jarred back on her haunches, hooves clattering. He controlled her; and again, when a group of boys ran forward from an arched tunnel stacked high with oyster-boxes. The odour of shellfish clung in the air, with the reek of warm oil and resin and the fumes, sunk into clay and timber and grey, salty stone, of the herring slung, russet-shot, over their beech smoke. It lay thick in his throat as the mare heaved, and sidled beneath him.
His name reverberated. The overhanging storeys, closing off the free air, gave back the squeals and the shouting, the clack of sticks and the beating of hands, the carillons of a bell-truss and the hiccoughing roar, over and over, of iron rods raked up and down shutters.
Full oft at morrow I upryse,
Quhen that my curage sleipeing lyis …
He acknowledged it all, as he was well accustomed to do. He was a professional, and it was part of his performance. If, in the future, he should require the services of these Dieppois burghers, he would depend on their image of him here this morning.
It would not, however, embellish that image if his horse were to kill somebody, or escape his charge or in any other way betray what were, at this moment, his very real weaknesses.
For mirth, for menstrallie and play,
For din nor danceing nor deray …
He had passed the Hôtel de Ville whose doors stood open: the banquet then must be over. Saluting, his eyes sweeping the crowd, he looked for a face he might know and thought he saw one: that of a woman. The next moment, pushed aside by the crowd, it had vanished. The mare curvetted and he did what he could, with his whip and spurs, while the din fluctuated, swimmingly artificial, like the vertigo which ever since Sybilla’s onslaught had assailed him.
It will nocht walkind me no wise.
Since endurance and perserverance are also virtues of the military, he employed them until, sooner than he had expected, it became quite certain that whatever happened, the rest of the ride was beyond him. He said to the captain of his escort, ‘Your pardon, mon capitaine. I wish to pause here at the church of St Jacques.’
A worthy, if unexpected change of plan. It took longer than he had hoped to clear a new route to his left, and a forward surge of the crowd meanwhile broke through the ranks of his escort and brought them, plucking, pulling and calling, to his stirrups.
He felt the mare quiver and knew, if she reared, that he could not hold her. Then from the tower of St Jacques, the voice of the bell called la Catherine pitched through the screams with the first of her summons to worship. At the first clang, his mare ripped the reins from his fingers.
He saw the whites of her eyes, and felt her muscles bunch. She didn’t rear. Nor did she strike with her hooves, or dislodge him. She stood, trembling but still, her reins dangling, with two liveried stablemen holding her.
And at his own knee was their master: a clear-skinned bearded young man in a furred coat who said,