To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [93]
So was the boy. The child Robin, his hair white with lime-wash and blackened with sweat, was clinging to the wall by the King, and the King had gripped him by the wrist, immobilising him, while he sought a hold for his feet. The boy’s face, bearing the other man’s shifting weight, was fierce with determination and pain. He said something. It sounded like, ‘Sir!’
Nicholas said, ‘I’m all right. The King will be all right in a moment. He’ll lose the wager if he gets any more help. Monseigneur? You’ll lose the –’
He ducked, missing the King’s kicking foot by an inch. The King’s other foot was firmly set in a crack, and the kicking foot withdrew and found another crack almost immediately. The boy’s wrist was released, and the hand that had gripped him stretched up. James was climbing again.
Nicholas watched him with some admiration. He probably deserved the throne. He shifted his own insecure grip, and prepared to climb again. The boy said, ‘No.’
He was above, and in his way. Nicholas said, ‘Don’t be tiresome. If I have to climb round you, I’ll fall.’ James was reaching the top storey, and the roaring had started again. The boy said nothing. Swearing, Nicholas pulled himself up beside him, his eyes searching above for new holds. He said, ‘I ought to kick you, too, as I go.’ He had almost passed when he glanced back and saw that the boy’s face, half hidden, was itself as white as the paint, and that he was holding by only one hand. The hand slackened.
Nicholas swore, crossly, in Greek. He took one step down and, holding one-handed himself, gripped the boy’s nearer arm. The boy gave a half-stifled scream, and Nicholas shifted his grip to his belt. There was rope there. Nicholas said, ‘If you faint like a cowardly turd, I will forbid you my house. Dig your feet in. Use your right hand.’
‘I can’t,’ said the boy. Sweat was glistening on his temples.
‘Yes you can,’ said Nicholas, knotting the rope. ‘Do you suppose that idiot girl … Katelijne!’
The voice that answered him came from above, accompanied by the squealing of pulleys. She had been waiting. She must have run up inside, as any intelligent person would, of course, do. Nicholas was so busy manoeuvring the boy to the edge of the tower face that he hardly heard the violence of the noise from below, or the final concerted shriek as the whitened figure of James, King of Scotland, clambered triumphantly on to his roof, accompanied by the hysterical barking of dogs.
Dangling against the unpainted wall, when Nicholas finally reached it, was the object that very few people would have noticed, he supposed, unless they were fatally inquisitive to begin with, like himself. Like Katelijne.
He said, ‘She had some sense, after all. She’s sent down the plasterers’ hurdle. Come on. Your carriage awaits.’
They were halfway down when everything became illuminated: roofs and towers, men and women and dogs; when the Castle’s great inky shadow spread its skirts over a countryside and a town suddenly bathed in red light, as if a false dawn had broken forth from the coping of David’s Tower, or Hell had opened its gates. The basket fire on the roof had been lit by the winner, as sworn.
The great fire took hold, its flames leaping. Moments passed. Then, one by one, all round the spaces of night, dulled by distance to moth-colours, other fires appeared and hung burning, part of the great unseen constellation that waited, day and night, to be summoned to fire: Haddington and Dunbar; Eggerhope and Dalkeith and Hume, Fife to Stirling and the north; Tantallon to Berwick and the south. The balefires of Scotland, wakened to summon the lieges.
‘Why did I think …’ Roger said as, the cradle lowered, the boy was lifted out of the hurdle. ‘What made me think that whatever you said, you weren’t going to be first at the top of that tower?’
‘I was cheated,’ said Nicholas. ‘It’s all right: his arm got a crack in the fighting and the King’s grip finally did for it. Anyway, what to me are