The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [305]
He began to move slowly, in which direction she could not tell. Then she heard the sound of his footsteps receding. Pebbles tumbled below. He had no stave, but it was day. She had managed without one. Canst thou bind the Unicorn with his band in the furrow? Ludovico da Bologna had joked. She knew that she could. And she had.
In time, her shuddering ceased, and she made her own way down from Gebel Musa. By sunset, when Anselm Adorne arrived, she had long left the monastery.
Chapter 42
THIS TIME, Jan Adorne gave the orders; beating the camel-drivers; shouting down Brother Lorenzo; berating the monks when they began to emerge from the door. His father was sick.
Tobias Beventini, who had his own reasons for feeling sick, ran down from staircase to staircase and met the party struggling through the third iron door: the priest; a middle-aged man bowed with weariness and two young men supporting an older one who was trying to walk. A child exclaimed, ‘Dr Tobias!’
She made a believable boy, booted and slight, with half the length of her hair gone. The doctor in him wanted to respond to the note in her voice, but instead he clapped her shoulder and said, ‘Well, well. Can I help?’ And turning to the travel-stained monk who seemed to have been their guide: ‘I know the Baron. Let me give him a hand.’
There was only one other guest-dormitory, adjacent to theirs and, like theirs, mud-floored and empty. He bundled up his own mattress and carried it next door for Adorne as a temporary measure. With a certain ruthlessness, he took John’s as well. John was elsewhere, having expressed a violent antipathy to Anselm Adorne and all his friends except young Katelijne. Nicholas, of course, was also absent, but his mattress still showed all the blood. Tobie, swearing under his breath, got his medicine box and some basins and towels and started getting things into order next door.
‘It’s the flux,’ said Katelijne. ‘He had water with worms in it. We all had, but he used up his strength quicker than we did. And the last mountain, we all had to climb down but he couldn’t, and the camel stumbled and everything came over its head and Jan and Father John saved his life. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. We should have camped, but we came on instead. We haven’t stopped since just after midnight. Friar Lorenzo wants to help, but he’s exhausted as well. Can you give Jan something?’
‘What?’ said Tobie. As the boxes and baskets arrived, she was stacking them in a far corner, unpacking some quickly, handing others to the boy Lambert and the merchant Pieter Reyphin, telling them what to do. John of Kinloch was praying.
Jan was outside, shouting at Friar Lorenzo. The sound reverberated through the silence of the evening and his father’s face, sunk in the pillow, turned uneasily. Katelijne said, ‘He nearly killed one of the guides in a temper. He needs to break down and cry.’
Tobie rose to his feet, a full cup in his hand. He said, ‘I’ll see to it. Do you think you can give this to your uncle? Then I think you should go next door while I look at him. It’s my room, but it’s empty.’
She was kneeling already, her hand lifting her uncle’s head. She said, ‘Is M. de Fleury with you? Is he all right?’
Tobie said, ‘They’re both here. John and Nicholas. I’ll be back in a moment.’
Outside, he sent the monks away, to Jan’s fury, and there was no witness to what he did next. But it solved the problem of Jan Adorne. He thought, sourly, that Jan Adorne was lucky.
John came back after Compline. Nicholas, as usual, did not come back at all. Tobie explained the situation in a murmur.
John turned and looked at the blankets screening the end of the room. ‘She’s in here?’
‘She’s had enough. They’re all sleeping. I’m going to spend the night by Adorne. We’ll see better what to do in the morning.’
He was treated to one of John’s pregnant silences. Then John said, ‘Did you tell them? That Gelis had been here?’
‘No,’ said Tobie. ‘I didn’t even tell them that Ludovico da Bologna