To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [87]
This time, John of Mar was followed by his sister and Robin, and the three scrambled about in the darkness, spurred on by the shouts from above and below, their faces, hands, elbows caught here and there by the torchlight. Then Robin, his face incandescent, appeared balancing himself on a roof-ridge, the ball at his feet, and kicked it straight towards M. de Fleury, even as Meg hurled herself at his side. Then the ball was in play again on the wall-walk, bouncing between foot and hand, wall and ground as the lot of them ran, this time streaming forward towards David’s Tower.
Kathi ran and hopped in the front, looking over her shoulder. Robin joined her, soot on his face, hardly breathless. If the ball went over again, she would jump down as well. She was lighter than Robin. She was seventeen, the same age as Sandy. Robin was fourteen years old and Meg, pounding behind was eleven, and John beside her was only thirteen. Even the King, crouched and waiting for them ahead, was not yet twenty. They were all light and supple as acrobats: six youngsters at home on these heights compared with six grown men who were not. Kathi had been up on the roof-tops before: they all had. Childhood was climbing.
Childhood was also temper, especially as they got near to their goal. She could laugh at Meg, delirious with excitement, attempting to wrap her arms round Will Roger’s ankles so that he nearly toppled headlong down the steps. She found it harder to forgive John of Mar the jab in the stomach that made Robin double up, and the kick to the back of Crackbene’s knee that made the big shipmaster stagger, exclaiming. She saw the set face of the Scandinavian, prevented by protocol – as Mar well knew – from retaliating. Just as M. de Fleury had to sustain the hard knocks he repeatedly received from his grace the King and almost as often from Sandy his brother.
She was happy to see that M. de Fleury, although thirty, could look after himself. If Martin cannoned into him more than once, he failed to fall. On two separate occasions at least, as the play flowed one way or the other, he swerved in such a way that an intended blow fell upon stone, to painful effect. This did nothing, unfortunately, to cool the ardour of the King’s team, which took further umbrage when M. de Fleury’s elbow carelessly implanted itself in Mar’s eye the next time they met in a pack. Mar, staggering back palm to face, groped for his knife-sheath and turned like a being demented. The ball, appearing in front of his nose, abruptly took his attention. He jumped aside and, trapping it, staggered off.
‘Well done,’ said someone to Kathi. It was one of the other team’s spoilers. Wodman, the Archer who had killed a man once.
‘That’s all right,’ Kathi said. ‘Your side could do with some help.’ She dodged round him while he was speaking, treading on his foot as she went, in case he thought she really meant it.
Robin joined her, brightly purposeful. He said, ‘I’ll keep an eye on the Earl if you’ll watch Master Martin.’
The ball, hopping about, was moving towards the belvedere again and she could see Martin in front of the door, braced to resist. M. de Fleury was just in front, and Martin was watching him. So was