The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [80]
For an instant, Simon experienced the power of heavy young muscle; heavier than his own, and more violent. For an instant, for the first time in their lives, the two were implexed flesh to flesh; stamped together body to wet, heated body. Then, like a brand-iron lifting, the younger man abruptly started away.
It was what Simon needed. The weight gone, he could breathe. He used his experience, twisting and kicking. And although de Fleury counter-attacked as one who had remembered quite distinctly what he was doing and why, the lapse had given Simon his chance; he fought himself free, disregarding blisters, bruises, the agony in his elbow. The glint of the other man’s axe caught his eye and as he scrambled up, he snatched at it.
He barely touched it, but it was enough to divert its owner’s gaze for an instant. Then Simon had the firebox bar concealed in his hand, and locked in the door of the furnace so that, when he sprang back and the other man followed him, the iron door, red with heat, caught his antagonist’s shin and the fire leaped out, brilliant in the dim light. Simon’s captor stumbled and swerved, his hair brushing the cones, and a mesh of shadows swayed over the ground as the single torch streamed. By then, Simon was where he wanted to be, with his back to the wall where the tools hung. He snatched down the shears and held them before him.
‘Again!’ the other man said. Since that bitter Thank you he had not spoken. Nine years ago they had fought, and Claes had survived because of Marian de Charetty. But Marian de Charetty was dead.
So what now would he do? Step back, it seemed, to recover. Step back, always watching, feeling his way past the tubs. Simon followed, then stopped. It was too crude an invitation altogether. Claes might, but Nicholas de Fleury wouldn’t back himself into a trap. Now he was against the far wall.
The other man said, ‘You were right not to come,’ and pressed the wall with one shoulder. It gave. A broad door had been made in what now appeared to be only a partition between this and a third and last room in the pan-house. Inside the third room it was dark, but he could glimpse another bench, and a pile of pale cones and rectangular tablets, bedded on straw. The room was filled with pale smoke, and at the far end Simon perceived two small windows, very high, through which fresh snow was blowing. A drying chamber, and a vent from the furnace. The windows were too small to squeeze through.
If he had dashed forward, he would have been pushed through and cut down. For there, of course, must be hidden the sword and dagger de Fleury had worn in the Great Hall at Linlithgow.
He could still prevent him from lifting them. Clearing the tubs, Simon landed in front of the door, shears in one hand, iron bar in the other. The axe glittered in the other man’s grasp and for a moment his one weapon parried Simon’s two in a blaze of blue light. Then, still fighting, Simon’s foe slammed the door shut behind him and stretched up a hand.
There was no sword in his grasp, nor a dagger. Instead, he held a faggot of straw: held it pressed to the single poor tallow candle until it burst into flame. Simon backed. The young man laughed, his face bright as a lamp. Then lifting himself to the edge of the tub, he reached up and touched the first hanging basket.
Light bloomed. Simon jumped forward, and the axe glittered, and the fire flamed in his face. Then the Fleming touched off the second, the third. The straw, brittle and old, dashed into fire, flashing and crackling and hazing the air with sparks and needles of flame. The cords above glowed. The pan-room, once sombre, became a blaze of carnival lamps, whirling and dancing; the salt hissed, naked and dry in the pan; the blood-glazed floor shifted and glittered.
The pan was iron, the furnace salt and clay, the walls