To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [216]
A man shouted, in German. ‘Are we not lucky, dear maiden? Another moment, and we all might have boiled. As it is, you have come back to succour us.’
Paúel Benecke, who hadn’t crossed over. Paúel Benecke, seated not far away on the snow, his eyes bright, his bandages red with fresh blood.
She plodded up to him, dripping. ‘Do you think so? What happened?’ she said.
He raised his voice. ‘To poor M. de Fleury? It seems that my pony thought he must be a water-horse, and gave him a kicking. I expect he will live.’
She said, ‘The pony kicked you as well?’
‘We all became excited,’ he said. He had to shout over the roar of the water. He was yellow above the black beard, and for some reason, she perceived with satisfaction, he seemed unwilling to walk. She thought she knew what had happened. She also knew which patient most deserved her attention. She turned, ignoring Benecke’s plaintive mock protest, and expecting to see Glímu-Sveinn already helping M. de Fleury to sit.
Instead it was the reverse. The Icelander remained crouched where she had left him; motionless, his fixed gaze on the ground. And it was the injured man who was holding him, murmuring.
She could not hear what he said. The ground drummed under her feet; the air shook with the roar of the river, and the boom and hiss of the rocketing spout. Kathi stumbled down and knelt by the farmer. He looked the way a man looks when his heart has failed. She cried, ‘He carried me over.’
‘You couldn’t have stopped him,’ M. de Fleury said. His face was pale, and there was blood in his hair, but his voice was quite clear. ‘Glímu-Sveinn, what do you feel? Does it hurt?’
The beard lifted. It might have been a nod. His eyes turned up, and he made a sudden, lumbering movement that threatened to tear him out of their grasp, but M. de Fleury held firm, and together they laid him back on the ground. Kathi said, ‘Let me look.’
He was unconscious. She rested her hand at his neck and his wrist as he lay. She said, ‘His heart is beating. A flutter.’ She had seen enough doctors at work. She did what she had seen others do, and M. de Fleury sat back in silence and let her. She wondered, as she worked, whether they had done this for the poor throttled baby, Margriet’s baby. She was reminded, not for the first time, of the bear-cub under the snow and banished the thought, as before, to the recess where it properly ranked. M. de Fleury rose and limped across to the Danziger. Because of the noise, she could not hear what he said. In a while he came back and dropped down with caution beside her, touching the cheek of the fallen man, and then his pulse. The beat was stronger.
He said, against the noise, ‘What do you think?’ There was no need to say more. They had a stricken man on their hands, perhaps a dying one.
She had begun to think, as he had. They had both hardened their voices, to carry. She said, ‘There’s one horse. You take it. I shall stay with him.’
‘No, you won’t,’ said M. de Fleury. ‘There is a cavern back there, in a boulder. I’m packing the bastard into that, with some comforts he doesn’t deserve. Then you and I get on our way.’
She scowled at him. ‘And Paúel Benecke? What happens to him?’
He stared at her in his turn. ‘Who in hell do you think I am talking about? Benecke, the bastard that just tried to kill me. He can’t walk – I can’t think why. He can wait in the cave till he’s rescued. The new geysir makes a fine landmark, and if another breaks out underneath him, they can boil him and serve him with garnishing. You’re riding the horse, and I’m going to strap this fellow on it behind you. All I wanted to know was if he was dying.’
‘And then you would have taken Benecke in his place?’
‘Are you joking?’ said M. de Fleury.
The snow had stopped. Duty sent her to visit Herra Paúel Benecke in his cave before she departed. To her prejudiced eye, he appeared to have many more comforts than he deserved, including a mattress and a garment of M. de Fleury’s own, but not