Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [140]
No one could have entered then and lived. Tosh, after searching fruitlessly in the neighbourhod for any traces of Thady Boy, had sent messages to Abernaci and had set off himself to the Scottish Court at Amboise with the news, bearing the mask as his grim badge.
That night, Erskine used all his powers short of physical force to prevent Richard riding openly to Blois. And he kept vigil at his side as Lord Culter sat, sleepless before the red fire of his fine chamber at Amboise, trying to fathom the truth. Witness after witness among the riders in the Tower had told how Thady Boy had been injured. How then had he found his way from Amboise to the Hôtel Moûtier in Blois? Had he in fact gone there to hide? For if so, it seemed probable that he had died there, in that inexplicable fire.
III
Blois: Distress Is Not Released
For there are residences in which a distress is not released. If carried into concealment, if carried into a wilderness, if carried into a wood, if carried into a dark place; for these are the residences of thieves and outlaws. Until every distress is brought into light and manifestations, it is not released.
A VOICE, somewhere, was speaking. What it said was not easy to follow. Indeed, thought the man in the bed, it would be stupid to try. Beyond the barrier of understanding were wakefulness, frustration, even pain: a world as remote as the remote, unremitting voice which seemed to repeat itself, over and over again.
It was a voice no one could have called soothing, an impatient voice, an acid voice even. ‘Your eyes are open,’ it said sharply. ‘Look at me. You can see. You can have opium again later, if you want.…’
That, thought the man in the bed sardonically, was kind. Memory, pricked into action by pain, recalled vividly just what had happened at the Tour des Minimes. Condé’s horse, he remembered, had plunged towards him as he fell. There had followed a series of memorable impacts and, he had assumed, death.
He did not appear to be dead. His leg was splinted, and it hurt him to breathe however, and there were bandages, he could feel, round his ribs. Through the aftermath of strong drugs he could recognize the irritating torpor of bloodlessness. God. Richard, or Tom Erskine, or whichever waxen-faced nursemaid was going to patch him up this time would have to work hard.… Sheer anger, sudden and life-giving, fought with his weakness and mastered it. Explosively, Francis Crawford of Lymond turned his head.
Above him, misty in a grey daylight, her hair like a veil, her own eyes caught wide, was Oonagh O’Dwyer. Had he looked, he could have seen his own reflection, startlingly, in her mirrored gaze. As it was, the voice had stopped. For a breath or two, there was silence; then she moved, and he saw a painted ceiling in the place where she had been. Then, reflectively, she resumed somewhere out of his sight, her movements sheathing and unsheathing her voice.
‘And are you not the stubborn man to awake?’ she said. ‘And I longing to know how it feels to be feeble, and in my debt?’
Oonagh O’Dwyer. And as she knew, he would meet that kind of challenge in any state short of dissolution itself. Pitching his voice for clarity and not for strength, ‘To be vigorous and in your … debt would be nicer. Did you bring me here?’ he said.
She came back and looked down, her voice crisp. ‘I dislike being coerced. I decided that if you lived, I should bring you away. You were fortunate, lying near the foot of the Tower, and I had a boat waiting in the fog, and two to help me.’
‘How long is it since then?’
‘Have you really no idea?’ She laughed. ‘You have been helpless for five days, Mr. Crawford.’
Five days! His brain recorded the surprise, and then deadened under the thundering onslaught of pain. The room had gone again, and the face above him was queerly detached, the painted leaves filling her hair. But he met her contemptuous stare and held it as long as he could, until