The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [319]
‘I’ve left mine on the mountain,’ said Tobie. ‘Two long skidmarks in the shape of a cross.’
He fell silent. Nicholas de Fleury had said much the same, lightly. I’ve left my soles on Mount Sinai.
It was brutally true: he had walked down the mountain in blood. He had climbed it only hours after the racking seven-day race to steal a march on Adorne, and little more than a week after the cisterns in Cairo. And he had climbed it to meet the person whom – surely – he had once loved, and who had very possibly ordained both the suffering and the attempt on his life.
That night, neither Tobie nor John had tried to follow him up Mount Sinai. Whatever was going to happen will already have happened, the Patriarch of Antioch had said; and they had left him in prayer. Waiting, John had fallen asleep and then Tobie himself. It had been the Patriarch of Antioch who had risen from his knees when, just before Terce, Gelis van Borselen had walked down from the mountain and come to show him that she was back, and had neither caused harm, nor taken any.
She would have expected to hear, of course, that Nicholas had already returned. Perhaps she had already been told at the door that this was not the case. By the time that, disregarding all propriety, she flung open the door of their chamber, rousing John and Tobie from sleep, Ludovico da Bologna was already outside the monastery, harrying servants and saddling camels and a mule.
Standing cloaked and wild-faced in the doorway, the rosy buildings, the sunlit mountains blazing behind her, her man’s hair stuck to her brow, her man’s dress dishevelled and stained, Gelis van Borselen showed her race, and none of her femininity. She said, ‘Where is he?’
Tobie sat up, and John stirred. The mattress beside them was empty. Tobie said, ‘He went to meet you. He hasn’t come back. What has happened?’
She said, ‘Do you care?’ and walked out. He scrambled after, half dressed, flinging on clothes. He caught her arm and she turned. She said, ‘We met on the mountain, and he came down before me. He hasn’t arrived. Go back to sleep: Father Ludovico will find him.’
Then, cursing, Tobie had pulled on the rest of his clothes and his boots, and with John had raced outside, where the Patriarch was already moving off. Gelis had made no effort to come. Looking back, Tobie saw she was standing outside the door, deep in shade, and surrounded, as in an ikon, by the archaic roundels and crosses cut in the wall against which her head rested. As he watched, she sank to the ground, her eyes on him.
She was still there when they came back with the litter. They had set off at speed. When the path at last became too precipitous, it was the Patriarch who had flung himself from his mount and, lifting his skirts, sprang aloft with great strides of his powerful legs, matted with hair thick as fir needles on the swell of his calves and his thighs. It was Ludovico da Bologna, too, who reached the three chapels first and sent the roar down the mountain that brought the servants hurrying up.
Sickened, Tobie and John had stumbled after, and caught the stretcher as it came down with Nicholas lying in it, unconscious. He had left the summit knowing, surely, that he could never walk down, and had found his way aside so that Gelis would pass. His feet were raw flesh, and his body less firm than the manna which hardens at night, and liquefies into dew in the sunshine.
A speck against the monastery door, Gelis rose to her feet as their cavalcade picked its way down from the slopes. The Patriarch gave a halloo to signify rescue, success. She waited until they arrived, and the servants had unshackled the litter and lowered it. Then she walked over. Tobie said, ‘He will be all right.’
For a moment, as the pallet lay on the ground, Gelis van Borselen knelt, one hand on its edge, and studied her