Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [138]
Like heifers pouring, knee on shoulder, through the Martinmas hurdle, like dolphins soaring, back under belly, in a jubilant pack, like Aztecs, like Muslems, like rich and wanton young men, the horsemen choked the wide gateway and rushed over the lip, manes, hair, cloaks flying, to drop down the steep slope of the ramp.
Crushed by flank, saddle and stirrup, rough-dragged by the stone wall, jamming the broad spiral from wrenched arras to arras, the riders flowed down, skidding, struggling in a sluggish miasma of damp and ordure and sweat. And as the open night flashed behind them, and the thick walls curled, and the high, groined roof whirled twisting from their feet to their heads, the noise deadened all thought.
Unknowing, every man shouted. Bits clinked, harness jangled, horses neighed; hooves, striking out, clashed on stone or metal or flesh and rattled fiery on the cobbles below, knitting with their own echoes a mesh of unendurable sound to drive the mind mad. In the lead was an Archer, followed by Condé and de Genstan. Thady Boy came next, riding by instinct in the tumbling avalanche; and d’Enghien, who had been watching him, pressed to his side. The Vidame and St. André followed, and a dozen others. D’Aubigny, his handsome face concentrated, flew with the remainder behind.
Already, stumbling, slipping, thrust over-violently from the way, some riders were down. As the staircase unwound, yellow, hazy with fog and smoke, steeper and steeper, faster and faster, impelled by the loosening fabric of their numbers, by the ramrod of impetus, the wild young blood of France on its splendid horseflesh flew like peacocks, short-reined, teeth bared, saddleback hard on the spine, the thick air swirling at their backs.
The rope was stretched across before the last bend. Laurens de Genstan, leading, could never have known why he fell. His hands spread, he was hurled sideways, one foot still trapped; and hit the wall with an impact whose violence, in that inferno of sound, was all in mime. He died, his powdered face shining with blood; but his horse lived to kill the next man who hurtled downhill into his great, threshing shoulders and his iron foot. Then, like a torrent lipping a rock, the oncoming horses smashed uprearing against the heaving barrier of the fallen, and fell broken and sliding down the ramp.
Among them, his reins running hot through d’Enghien’s snatching hands, was Francis Crawford of Lymond: crashing, rolling, sliding to lie broken-slack, a mess of scarlet-stained feathers, like a week-old kill in some queer, spiral mews.
In the falling douche of horse and humanity, the torches in one entire volute of the stair had gone out, abandoning it to night and the white fog. Piled like marionettes, splintered men on broken horse, the last were luckiest except for those, rushing down in the dark, who somersaulted over the thick and struggling mass and slid below, ricocheting and crumbling at each bend. The debris, human and material, stretched downhill a long way.
Richard was among those who, in the flickering hazed light of new torches, began the heart-stopping work of rescue from above and from below. Richard saw them all taken up, one by one; dragged, carried, laid on improvised stretchers. St. André, the precious St. André, had fallen soft, cushioned by a rival’s green feathers and the dead rump of a horse, and had a gashed leg; that was all. The Vidame, groaning, was taken off half-unconscious with a broken collarbone and a wrenched knee. De Genstan was dead. D’Aubigny was unconscious, his clothes bloodstained, but his pulse was steady; d’Enghien also was badly bruised, but otherwise safe. The Prince of Condé had fallen nimbly enough, but had been crushed twice, once by his horse and then by St. Andre’s. His hip was broken, and one of his arms; whatever else could not be learned, as he fought off any effort to help him, half-unconscious and screaming. Two more men were taken out, their faces covered. Richard bent over them both, and lifted