The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [126]
At the time, he was hardly aware of it. His body ached, from the battering wood and porcelain and alabaster into which he slammed in the dark, cursing the blood and feathers which betrayed his bare feet, and the spray which made his hands slippery. Then he obtained the grip he wanted on the splendid Alconosts on the Voevoda’s silk robe and was able for the first time to throw him. He must have twisted and risen like the marine eel of the Lithuanian’s taunt, because he came back through the spray while Vishnevetsky crouched, hands apart and panting, listening for him. The change in the sound of the water gave him his warning, but when he touched the Voevoda, his hands slid from bare, dripping skin. The Alconosts had been discarded. With no regret, Prince Vishnevetsky abandoned a finicky programme of leverage and settled down to some straightforward dirty fighting of a nastiness quite unparalleled.
He had not then seen the brand on Francis Crawford’s bruised back. There is no foul trick in Europe or out of it which is not known to a chained galley slave. As the Lithuanian’s teeth closed on his arm, Lymond drew a long, aching breath and used, in quick succession, the flat of his hand, his knee and his foot. Then, as Vishnevetsky’s grip slackened, he began, very fast, all the unpleasant strokes. He stopped short of irreparable injury, and he collected some extremely painful cuffs and twists and punches himself. But he halted for nothing until, with the Lithuanian limp in his hands, he lifted him high over his head and cast him, with a flounce of water that reached to the ceiling, among the dashing carp in the swirling, invisible pond.
The Voevoda Bolshoia waited a moment, breathing quickly, until there was a movement in the lapping water and a dim blur in the whirling darkness, from which he judged that the Governor of Cherkassy had lifted his head and was sitting, sluggishly, at the foot of the pond. Then Lymond himself slipped into the stormy waves at the pool edge and, with a few long, lazy strokes, drove himself under and up from the cool, flowered water, until in turn he half sat, half lay, head thrown back, in the pool at the other man’s side. ‘You were saying?’ he said.
Prince Dmitri Vishnevetsky moved his stiff lips. ‘I was saying,’ he said, ‘that I believed my Cossacks would follow you.’
The Voevoda’s eyes, unseen in the darkness, were wide and calm and smiling. ‘I don’t want them to follow me,’ he said. ‘They will follow you, as always. My hope is that you and I may find ourselves yokefellows. It seems to me our whims are well matched.’
There was a moment’s silence. Then Vishnevetsky said gravely, ‘I fear the winter garden has suffered.’
Somewhere at the side of the pool was a tinder box. Lymond made his way groping towards it, and found a candle, and turned in a moment, the golden flame high in his hand. Ghostly as ruined Atlantis about them hung the shreds of Güzel’s winter garden. With equal gravity, the Voevoda looked at Vishnevetsky, his battered body supine in the water.
‘Even doves,’ Lymond said, ‘sometimes quarrel.’
Prince Dmitri Vishnevetsky began to laugh. He was still laughing, holding his aching ribs, when Lymond pulled him out.
*
The Governor of Cherkassy was in bed and the house was totally silent when Lymond was free at last to walk down the stairs, the key of the winter garden in the pocket of his stained caftan, and make his way to his room.
The wall-sconces were burning low, their glow falling like water-light on the fine tapestries hung throughout