To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [304]
All the terror of Veere had returned. There was no swift way to reassure him; there was no way at all to muffle the little boy’s cries. If he had enemies, now he had been identified. Robin swept him up, vainly consoling. Robin’s father said, ‘We get him out, now. Christ, what is happening?’
The golfers, having barely started their game, had withdrawn. In their place a cavalcade had appeared: a team of four working horses, stud-shod, pulling behind like a fishing line an unreeling column of skaters, shouting, singing, brandishing tankards and torches as, each holding the person in front, they set to skim across the huge crowded pond.
The horses were properly harnessed, with a man on the back of the leader and a structured handgrip behind, which the head of the long train of skaters could grasp. It was the first reassuring thing that Archie saw, after he realised that the way from the pond was cut off. There were town musicians slithering cheerfully too, grasping fiddles and tambours and flutes, setting the rhythm, leading the familiar choruses. The horses, of the sturdy kind that dragged carts, responded gallantly, manes and tails full of cheap ribbons, and the column, always lengthening, began to pick up speed over the ice. Warned by the laughter and music, revellers moved out of the way, or joined in. The cavalcade covered a quarter of the loch.
They couldn’t stay where they were, unable to leave, and with Jodi’s camouflage gone. It was better to join in; and at the end of the loch, they could slip aside. Robin said, ‘Look, Jodi, look. Come and slide with the horses.’
Tear-stained, hiccoughing still, Jodi was lifted and carried by Archie and, embedded in Berecroftses, found himself inserted in the long gliding column. The wind brushed his cheeks. The singing rose all about him. From ahead came the thud of the horses, the horses like his own pony at home. And the click of the kolf far behind had now gone, as if it had never happened. Someone put a sweet in his mouth, and someone told him to sing. His cheek bulging, he did so, and Archie exchanged relieved grins with his son as they held one another and slid. The pace quickened. They had skimmed over a third of the loch. The pace quickened again.
Robin said, ‘Father?’
‘Quite,’ said Archie. ‘It’s getting too fast. Let’s move sideways and take out the little ones. Can you draw up the people behind you?’
It wasn’t easy. It would have been unfair to break the whole column. The mending of the gap required such attention that Robin was free before he realised that something had happened. The merriment continued except far ahead, where the songs had been replaced by shouting, and the rhythmic gallop had changed to a stutter. And as the pace of the horses had changed, so it seemed that the horses themselves were at odds with one another, their heads and bodies jolting apart so that all the smooth gliding column behind shared the disruption. And because they were travelling so fast, disengagement was deadly.
To those who watched, and those who had escaped, it seemed as if the skaters were played on a line, whipped from side to side, undulating and buckling and shedding hurtling figures, unable to stop. The main column itself could no longer control its direction, but brushed past stalls and through tents, throwing spectators sliding out of its way. Cauldrons tipped and braziers tumbled into the glittering grease. Flames sprang up. Screaming, once started, reached a pitch easily heard at the far end of the loch.
Nicholas heard it. He said, ‘Jodi,’ in a voice Gelis thought was quite calm. Then he said, ‘Stay here. I will come back. I promise you.’
Her instinct was to go. She saw that she could only hinder him. In this he was quicker and stronger, and she need never doubt that he would do all he could. What had happened to Henry proved that. Then she thought that at least she could follow,