The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [147]
Now, brief as ever, Lymond said, ‘Will your business take long?’ and Chancellor hardly heard him, because he was eyeing the strips of wood, long, snow-spattered and gleaming, which Lymond was carrying; and before he knew it, he said, ‘I should like to try that.’
Lymond said, ‘Would you?’ The impersonal blue eyes, wet-lashed and narrowed with snow glare, surveyed Chancellor’s face and then, briefly and clinically, his body. ‘You would find it small trouble, I’m sure. On the other hand, if you break your neck, Robert Best will have my head cleft to my teeth for a murderer.’
‘… So?’ said Chancellor. The priest was approaching.
‘So I think Aleksandre should teach you. My captain. He is an excellent performer. I shall arrange it.’ And excising both him and the subject, Lymond walked forward, and engaged in the necessary business of organizing feeding and quarters for themselves and his men for the night.
It was a small church, with limited room for the few monks and for passing travellers. Across the yard, there were arcaded sheds where the horses and men both could shelter till nightfall, with wood fires and braziers for company. Inside, Chancellor was given a room, holding no more than a crucifix, a stool and a board for his blanket and bolster. There was no stove, and it was not until he had settled down after the slender evening meal they had shared with the monks in the commonroom that it struck him to wonder, fleetingly, if the men who were to sleep where they ate hadn’t fared rather better.
Waking later, shivering under the pile of his sleigh rugs and coat, he was sure of it. He was still fully dressed. Putting his arms through the sleeves of his heaviest robe and taking his thickest rug with him, he opened the cell door and went to seek the commonroom stove, that great block, three feet by four feet of black searing iron, with winged angels and priests marching hot-foot for all time round its plating.
It was there, surrounded by sleeping heads resting on saddles. The centre board had been drawn, but even so, there was little enough room, on the benches or under them, for sixty men and their captain. Chancellor came in, treading carefully in the near-darkness. For the sake of warmth, he was prepared to lean against a wall until morning, despite the smell and the raucous noises of ungainly slumber. Someone, stirring below his feet, said in a whisper, ‘My lord?’
It was the captain, Aleksandre, who was to instruct him next day, he remembered, in the art of sliding with artach. He answered, whispering also, ‘I am cold.’
He had meant only to solicit help in finding a vacant space in the dark, and was irritated when he saw that the captain, rising, was about to give up to him his place on the floor. He saw himself embarking on a hissing exchange of self-denying courtesies when he was saved by Lymond’s voice speaking softly from somewhere beyond. ‘Chancellor? The chapel is warm.’
The captain subsided. Touching his shoulder, Diccon Chancellor picked his way between the still bodies and through an archway to the narrow passage from which Lymond had spoken. The parvis was empty, but the low, carved door to the chapel stood open, and he could see the glow from the bronze lamps hung before the dark pictures of the iconostasis, and the bending glimmer of a circle of candles to the right of its doors. Somewhere, also, he could feel the gentle warmth of a stove. Lymond’s voice said, ‘If you close the doors, you will find it quite supportable. I shall send someone to cut fuel for them tomorrow.’
He had resumed the place on the floor which he had evidently chosen for himself, seated on a folded rug with his head pressed back against the coarse cloth draping the