The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [301]
In the dark, now, she could hardly see it. But she had a good memory, and a sense of direction and of levels, and so far she had hardly stumbled. She rested a little, to keep her strength, then crossed the other ravine to the first of the gates. The tall stone archway at which, once, pilgrims were stopped to make their confession. There was no one there now.
After that, she was glad that she was light-footed and strong, for the stiff climb began. From this point there were steps, over three thousand of them, mounting steeply to the night sky between the towering, slabby walls of the mountain, chill on either side in the darkness. There was no resting place, then, until the second arch, which led to the broad grassy slope on which were set the triple chapels of St Marina the Virgin, Elisha, and Elijah. The last place one could stop was a ledge just before the summit, where she remained for a moment, listening.
There was no sound, before or behind. She was alone. She climbed the last hundred steps to the uneven spread of the pinnacle.
In daylight, one made this final step burned by the sun, drenched with sweat, aching and breathless from the climb, from fear of the height, from wonder at what one could see of the world laid below. The Mount inhabited by God and frequented by angels, where trumpets rang, and the Lord spoke unto Moses.
The Mount of the Law, to which men looked for justice.
It was not flat. There were boulders and recesses and an ancient chapel ritually used by the monks but now locked for security against the insults of rambling parties, as Ludovico da Bologna had warned. He had brought her to Sinai, because it suited him. It suited Anselm Adorne, it suited de Salmeton to know what was happening. They all had an interest in Nicholas de Fleury.
She had watched him walk into the monastery. With more patience than any lookout of old, beset by armies, she had crouched by the wall-walk and gazed, hour after hour, when she came back from her climbing. Long before the monastery servants, she saw the approaching dark smudge of the Mamelukes, sparkling with steel. She knew, when he stopped them out of sight, that he did not want St Catherine’s to guess how few they were, in case they refused him. Then she saw him walking up to the door.
She recognised the men with him, whom she had expected. The journey had changed them. His own face at first was unclear, although she watched him intently. When he arrived under her gaze and stood still, she saw, stripped in the light, at last, what the Patriarch saw. And her mind also spoke that single word of misgiving.
Wait.
Wait, before I open this door. This is not the man I expected. This is not the danger I expected. This is something unknown.
Now, the wind shrieked in the darkness, and around her was space, and the presence, unseen, of age-old rock and precipice. If Mount Sinai touched heaven, heaven was desolation. Desolation and anger were what she had brought. In both, she was expert. Gelis van Borselen, dame de Fleury, wrapped her cloak about her, and sat down, and waited.
The sound, when it came, was infinitesimal but she knew that what she had heard, far below her, was a small fall of rock. Presently she saw, in the blackness, a minute comma of fire swaying, bobbing: a brand in the distance. A comma; a sentence. He was coming.
She had a talisman. Nothing tangible: a series of words, a few scenes. Because of them, she had never lost her resolve, and would not lose it now. As the sounds of movement came closer, she stood. One man’s footsteps, irregular because of the irregular rock, and interspersed with the click and thud of a stave. The brighter light of a brand; a burning brand, certainly consumed and therefore several times refreshed, and held