The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [183]
“For whom?” Nicholas said. “Who employs you? Where am I?”
“I cannot say,” said the man. “There is a rule. You will be silent.”
Nicholas said, “I have a friend. A friend called Julius—”
He felt the cut as the boy made it. The man hissed and again the boy desisted, his face mutinous. The man said, “The next time, we leave. You may lie in your dung.”
He obliged with silence. He hoped they would thank him when they found that matters were not quite as bad as they assumed. All the same, it was a tearing, unpleasant business unpeeling his clothes, even though done with professional skill. Then his body was sponged and examined. It looked like something Colard and Henninc might have dreamed up together: blotched with indigo bruising and cross-hatched with incisions in Imperial crimson. Some of the gashes were bone-deep, but the bones themselves were unbroken. In any case no single pain mattered beside the corporate agony of his muscles. He wondered how long the journey had actually lasted, and if they had drugged him. He thought so. They might be afraid that he was going to leap to his feet and kill them with a blow to each chin but he found lifting a hand too much trouble. They half-carried him, in the end, to the tub.
He fell asleep while he was there, something he was prone to do. You always get cramped in a barrel. He was aware when they dried him, and wrapped his wounds in old soft linen with balm, and brought to replace his groundcloth a fresh pallet covered with ticking, and sheets, and a blanket, and a pillow. They gave him something to drink, thickened with sops, and then let him sleep.
He wakened stiff as a plank, with his mind clear. The tent was mellow with candlelight: two stands had been brought while he slept. The tub had gone, but the brazier remained and most of the other things, including the roses. On a carpet at his side were some clothes.
They were not, thank God, his own. He sat up, swearing, and examined them with some pleasure. Soft shoes without fastenings. Leggings with laces, and drawers. A shirt which would reach to his thighs. A short-sleeved tunic with a light embroidered belt, buckled in what looked like silver. No side-arms, no purse, no possessions. No headgear, for which he was grateful. Today the air weighed on his head. Nevertheless, in a moment, he rose slowly and carefully and started to dress. He had nearly finished when the tent flap stirred but was not opened. He had just finished when he heard the tramp of marching feet and steel clashing. The sound ceased in front of his tent; a man’s voice spoke his name, and the door cloth was flung wide. In the darkness outside he could see only the glitter of spired helmets and strange armour and beyond that, a medley of tents like his own but much larger, all handsome, all brilliantly lit.
He was led a short distance among them, his silent escort surrounding him closely so that he could see little else. The reflected glow showed them to be of middle height only, each being dressed in mail shirt and quilted tunic, its skirts kilted up over heeled riding boots. Their helmets had damascened edges and earguards, within which their faces were ovals of expressionless fawn, each marked with black brows and a glossy bracket of short ink-black moustaches. At the mouth of the largest tent they were challenged, and halted.
He waited, smelling strange cooking and unguents; listening to chattering voices; absorbing curious sounds. Some of these came from inside the big tent he was facing. He could hear a stringed instrument playing, and sometimes a man would speak softly. Beside him, the slender chains binding the tent to its pegs also shivered and strummed. When firelight caught them, they glinted like gold.
A man stood in the tent doorway, frowning. Between his hands stretched a fragment of fur. This he held out and, after waiting a moment, rapped the air with it angrily. Nicholas took it. It was a hat, made of felt banded by fur. The man facing him wore one