To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [55]
She was halfway across when someone seized her, dragging her back. For a moment she fought, then saw it was Clémence, and obeyed. As she moved, the bridge broke where she had been, and loosed its planks in the water below. The nurse said, ‘Now. Now you can jump.’
It was possible. It was just possible, running, to launch oneself over that gap and reach the rest of the bridge: the stump that led to the far side of the room and the exit. There was no sign of Nicholas anywhere.
Her skirts were leaden with water. Gelis lifted them in both hands, threw back her soaked hair and, measuring, precipitated herself onwards and upwards and jumped. She landed staggering, clawing the rail. Then she turned, hands outstretched, and caught Clémence. They touched hands for a moment. Next, turning, Gelis slithered down from the bridge and led the way across the short stretch of polished wood to the door.
She didn’t know, then, what warned her. A small sound of some kind, a creak that hardly made itself heard against the relentless crash of the mechanical thunder and the hissing roar of the fall in the pool. She felt a movement. She saw Clémence plunging towards her. Gelis stopped and flung out her arm. She thrust the nurse to one side, following with her shoulder and the whole of her body; occupying the place where the woman had been. Clémence stumbled and knelt by the wall.
Beneath Gelis, a rectangle of floor thudded open. Below was nothing but space. She grasped air. Her arm seared against wood. She touched a bracket, and lost it. Her sleeve caught, then her skirt, and ripped free. Clémence flung out a hand, but it was beyond Gelis’s reach, and already her momentum was too great to check. So she fell.
It was a long way. She called his name, once.
Chapter 7
GELIS WOKE TO a sickening pain in her arm, and the sound of somebody screaming. A man.
She was in the sunlit guest-parlour in Hesdin. Her eyes, moving from her bound shoulder and arm and an unfamiliar robe, came to rest on the concerned, impatient face of the nurse. Mistress Clémence sitting wrapped in a cloak, and a gown beneath it which reached to her calves.
The rain. The rain, the deep pool, and the bridge; and the Master smiling upon it. Then she looked round.
Two strangers, both in armour, both looking angry. A man in court dress, his face pale. And Nicholas, standing half-turned as if stopped in mid-sentence, who made a furious, dismissive gesture and turned fully to her.
The men left. Nicholas stood looking down at her. ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘The mattresses should have been there.’
His eyes were distended, as they had been on the bridge. He sounded childish, or mad. It occurred to her for the first time to wonder if he was mad. She said, ‘I am rather sorry as well.’ Outside, the screaming had started again.
‘You could have been killed, either of you,’ Nicholas said. He spoke as if answering some question. Then he dropped his eyes to her arm. ‘Mistress Clémence tended it for you. It should never have happened.’
Shivering, she tried to make him talk sense. She said, ‘But you meant me to fall.’
‘I explained that,’ he said.
‘So it has all turned out as you wanted. You have been abused. You have abused in return. I am forgiven. May I go now?’ Gelis said. ‘Or was there anything else?’
It was risky, but she wasn’t going to whine, or he would think he had won. Everything ached, and she couldn’t stop trembling. While she talked, she tried to assess the full extent of her hurts. She had fallen a long way, and there had been no mattresses. She wondered if she could run if he said she could go. Or if he didn’t.
‘No. That is, we are all leaving,’ he said. ‘There is a covered cart you can have. Mistress Clémence thinks it will be best for your arm. You think you can travel?’
‘Of course,’ Gelis said.
She felt sick. She was not sure if she could stand. With such coin she had purchased her freedom and, maybe, permission to rejoin her son. She thought, anger piercing the faintness, that,