Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [245]
He must have checked each boat as he passed. Margaret Erskine, her light sleeves flying with their own gathered speed, realized it as she saw him poised on the eighth, the burning galley before him. He was standing on the barge of state. The cloth of gold draping the top castle had caught. Lymond ripped it off in passing, flinging it to hiss in the lake. The painted windows of the stateroom whirled and glowed, eye to eye with the spitting feux de joie in the rear. Then he jumped on to the blistered deck and, blazing prow and port rails bright at his back, cut the lashing to set all the boats he had just traversed free.
It was just possible to pass to the foreship with the deckhouse giving shelter between. Lymond stopped once, to glance in the well. Then he was gone, darting like a dragonfly down, up, along, regardless of caution, crossing three boats to where Abernaci, flying turbaned through the water, was ready with the rope.
The mahout lifted himself up, his scarred face enamelled with light, and raising one thin, powerful arm, sent the hemp flying. Lymond caught it. He had found a belaying place. He lashed the cable to the leading prow, raised an arm, and as O’LiamRoe kicked and Abernaci called, saw it tighten as thirty-eight hundredweight of elephant took the strain. It was all he waited to see. As the truncated convoy, heavy, squinting, stirred and started to move, Lymond made his way back to the fire.
O’LiamRoe looked back. Bleached as a raisin inside his pulped clothes, clinging to the horny grey loins with numb hands, his legs bumping awash, he could feel the big bull beneath him walking steadily and well, brow, trunk and back breaking the water, obeying the odd sounds of his mahout’s distant voice.
It was a long way to the shore, but the water was empty, and the ground before them was vacant of buildings, or men or even animals to take harm. The musicians’ raft, never very close, was now far away; between the four boats he was pulling and the rest of the flotilla the swirling debris-flecked gap grew and grew. Beyond that, the royal boat had pulled clear at last, skimming out of the shadow with the helmets of the rowers alight in the sun. The children’s gowns showed, red and blue beyond the woman’s encircling arms, and, bobbing and tousled, an excited red head. How much gunpowder was there? Christ.… Well, even if all four boats were full, in another few minutes the children would be safe.
Abernaci, nearer, had seen Lymond scan the leading boat as he passed. He saw something hit the water from the second, and sink gobbling; Lymond had found powder there. He saw, in between the queer cries to Hughie, that Lymond was back now on the burning ship, using his knife to get under canvas, the moving air of their passage fringing every yard and tassel with flame. He also saw that, gathering momentum, the four ships, like four coals in their pall, were beginning to swim free in the water, answering the pull of the rope merrily, skimming the glassy water faster than the elephant could pull. The ships were overtaking their pilot.
O’LiamRoe turned and saw it too. He saw two packets spin from the burning galley, followed by Lymond himself, moving swiftly, passing from ship to ship calling. What he said was not audible to O’LiamRoe, but he saw Francis Crawford raise his knife so that the wreathed sun shone on the blade, and throw it accurately and fast into Abernaci’s outstretched hand. The mahout gripped it and slashed.
The cord tied to Hughie’s harness sank, free. At the same moment Abernaci’s voice, in Gaelic, roared ‘Hold tight!’ and followed with something else bellowed in Urdu. The elephant turned beneath O’LiamRoe’s knees and ducking, started to swim.
Green water hit the Irishman like a scarf across mouth and teeth. Cramped fingers knotted hard in the leather, he hung on, deaf and blinded; it seemed that every box and tube in his guts was stretched and swollen with water, such was the pain. Then he broke surface, took a great, foaming