Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [58]
Arnaud said, ‘It seemed possible that this might happen. Father helped us move all the arms yesterday. We are to pretend we don’t understand, and hold the doors as long as we can. Father says that it will buy time until someone can rescue us.’
The Adorne courage was not, then, truly lacking. Gelis said, ‘How can I help?’
Soon enough, she had to maintain her own courage, when the torches were massed outside the door, and stones were cracking against the speckled brick and the elderly, exquisite carvings and the canopies of the small, adhesive shrines. That was when they were still parleying, and someone of sensibility had shouted crossly for the stone-throwers to cease. Then Arnaud, from his upper window, had reiterated his plea, on behalf of the sick, to be left in quietness, and had conveyed, for the second or third time, his incomprehension over what he was hearing. An arsenal? But that was long ago. Handguns and crossbows and culverin? Surely not.
‘Then let us in. Let us see for ourselves, and we’ll go!’
Then the Almoner took his place at the window, and a physician, and the crowd were told sternly to disperse. They didn’t, of course. They sent men round the back, who got in over the walls and ran between the ranges of buildings and smashed in the big door at the back, and came racing through all the dormitories, opening doors and flinging back the lids of the chests.
There were not so many patients to suffer the noise: Adorne had evacuated all but the dying, and those lay at the end of one hall, where one or two monks held them close, and a priest, on his knees, intoned softly. Gelis remained with the weeping maids in the kitchen, listening as the place was ransacked; hearing the shout of triumph as the underground storehouse was found; the roar as it proved to be empty. She wondered what rescue Arnaud expected. Any men his father could spare would certainly have been sent to the Gate, and to protect the arsenals that had not been evacuated.
This store was empty. Having been made free of the place, the attackers were not likely, surely, to endanger their souls by harming holy men and innocent people. They could only vent their disappointment on wood and stone and glass.
So she thought until, the noise receding, she was tempted to leave the kitchens and go seeking Arnaud. She found him on the floor of the dispensary with a doctor bending over him. The floor was spattered with blood and strewn with shards of smashed jars. She exclaimed.
The doctor said, ‘They wanted to know where the arms were. Then some horsemen came up the road, and they left him and ran. He’s taken a beating. He’ll be all right.’
Arnaud looked up and grimaced. He had lost a tooth, and everything about him looked painful and battered. Gelis said, ‘If you knew, you should have told them. By the time they find it, Louis will surely be here. Do you know how near he is?’
The physician looked round. ‘At least two hours away, these men were saying. They have better spies than you’d think. And whether they trace Master Arnaud’s arsenal or not, the mob have found some artillery somewhere, they say, and are going to use it at the Ghent Gate. I’m afraid your cousin is going to have a fine welcome.’
Gelis got up. Arnaud rose on one elbow. His mouth was bleeding. ‘Gelis, you can’t do anything.’ It emerged as a lisp.
She said, ‘I can try. That’s what I was going to do. Get out through the Gate somehow and go to meet Louis. Mobs are often divided. Not all of them may want violence. The Gate may be open.’
Someone said, ‘The spokesmen may want to be civilised, but the rest don’t. The portcullis is down,