Part 134 (1/2)
Unmelted frost crunched under her boots, coming into an open square. Wind brought tears leaking from her eyes. The frozen fountain in the middle of the square bulged with ice.
”We'll go up to the mills,” she announced. ”I want to check the guard on the mill-races, now they're frozen. Animals have been getting in that way; I don't want men doing it. Geraint, you and the provosts see to my orders; Rickard, you come with me and Petro.”
Giovanni Petro's archers, on rota for escort again, muttered under their breaths; she knew them to be comparing the exposed south-west wall of Dijon with the provosts' warm guardroom back at the company tower. A small grin moved the frozen muscles of her face.
As she strode into the maze of alleys leading off the square, she heard Petro's ”Furl that b.l.o.o.d.y banner before we get to the wall!” behind her, and glimpsed a man-at-arms lowering the identifying lion Affronte with its rapidly sewn-on Cross of St Andrew.
She crossed the open end of an alley, to her left.
A flicker of movement punched her across the street.
Jogging footsteps jolted her. Men holding her under the arms, under the crook of her knees: carrying her. Her armour clattered. The world swung dizzily about her.
”What-?”
”She's not dead!”
”Get her to safety! Go, go, go!”
A swelling pain hit her. Her sagging, steel-clad body jarred in their grip. She cannot feel where she hurts. A gasp: another gasp - trying to wrench air into her winded lungs.
”Put her down!”
”I'm okay-” She coughed. Hardly heard her own voice. Was aware of herself supported, of a stench of excrement, of dim light, stairs, flaring torches, and then a room in natural light.
”I'm alive. Just - winded-”
She coughed again, banged her arm-defences against her cuira.s.s, trying to put her arm around her chest; and looked up from where she leaned, supported between Petro and Rickard, and found herself looking at Robert Anselm, at Olivier de la Marche.
”f.u.c.k me.” She tried to wrench herself upright. Pain shot through her body. ”I'm fine. Anybody see me fall? Roberto?”
”There's rumours starting-”
She cut him off: ”You and Olivier, get back out there! They'll know there's nothing much wrong with me if you're out there and visible.”
”Yes, Pucelle.” De la Marche nodded, turning away, with a group of Burgundian knights. Faint ice-bright light leaked in through round-arched windows, showing her concerned faces. The second floor of the company tower. Florian's hospital.
”What 'appened?” Anselm demanded.
”f.u.c.ked if I know - Petro? Who's down?”
”Just you, boss.” The sergeant of archers s.h.i.+fted his grip, easing her upright as she found her body able to move again. Something stung. She looked down at her left hand. The linen glove inside her gauntlet dripped, soaked through with red blood. The cold let her feel no pain.
”Didn't you hear it, boss?” Giovanni Petro asked. At her blank look, he added, ”Trebuchet strike. Took out the west wing of the Viscount-Mayor's palace, off the Square of Flowers - shrapnel come flying down the alleys, you copped it.”
”Trebuchet-”
”b.l.o.o.d.y big chunk of limestone.”
”f.u.c.king Christ!” Ash swore.
Someone, behind her, shoved as she tried to regain her feet, and she found herself standing, swaying. A sharp pain went through her body. She put her bloodied fingers to her cuira.s.s. The pages removed her sallet: she turned her head and saw Florian.
Half-d.u.c.h.ess, half-surgeon, Ash thought dizzily. Florian wore a cloth-of-gold kirtle, with a vair-lined gown thrown over it; belted up any old how with a dagger and herb-sack hanging from her waist. The rich garments trailed, dirt-draggled, black for eighteen inches up from the hem. Under her kirtle, Ash could see she was still wearing doublet and hose.
She wore neither coif nor begemmed headdress, but she was not bareheaded. Carved and s.h.i.+ning, the white oval of a crown enclosed her brows.
It was neither gold, nor silver, nor regular. White-brown spikes jutted up in a rough coronet. Skilled hands had carved white antler into a circlet, fastening the polished pieces with gold fittings, forming the horns of the hart into an oval crown. It pressed down on her straw-gold hair.
”Let's get the armour off you.” Business-like and brusque, Floria del Guiz took a firm grip under Ash's left arm, and nodded to Rickard. The young man, with two of the pages helping, rapidly cut the points, unbuckled the straps, and lifted her pauldrons off her shoulders. She looked dizzily down at his bowed head as he unbuckled the straps down the right-hand side of her breastplate, plackart and ta.s.sets, undid the waist-strap, and let one ta.s.set swing as he unbuckled the fauld.
”Okay-” He popped the cuira.s.s open, hinging open and removing the metal sh.e.l.l all in one go, steel plates clattering. She swayed again, struck by the freezing air, feeling naked in nothing but arming doublet and hose, leg- and arm-defences. Her teeth chattered, ”f.u.c.king h.e.l.l!”
Still holding the armour, he demanded, ”Are you all right, boss? Boss, are you all right?”
His adolescent voice squeaked; going high for the first time in weeks.
”s.h.i.+t - I'm fine. Fine!” Ash held her arms out from her sides. Her hands shook. The little brush-haired page slit the points of her arming doublet. ”Where'd it get me?”
Rickard laid the body-armour down in a clatter of steel, staring at it. ”Right in the chest, boss.”
Florian blocked her view, reaching down to her arming doublet, and carefully pulling the sweaty, filthy garment open.
”Rickard, I'm fine; the rest of you, I'm okay. Now f.u.c.k off, will you? Florian, what's the damage?”
Robert Anselm still hovered in the doorway. ”Boss ...”
”What part of 'f.u.c.k off' didn't you understand?” Ash inquired acidly; and when the Englishman had vanished, yelped under her breath: ”s.h.i.+t, that hurts!”
Floria knotted her fists in Ash's arming doublet again, yanked it wide open, got her hand in to the ribs on Ash's left-hand side, and felt with remarkably gentle fingers under her breast. Ash had not been wearing a s.h.i.+rt under the arming doublet, and her flesh shrank from the bitingly cold air, from Floria's chill flesh, and from the prodding fingers on her bruised skin.
”Easy!” Ash winced again; grinned shakily. ”Hey. It's not like they were aiming at me!”
”It's not like that will matter,” Floria mimicked, sardonically. She peered at Ash's side, face all but inside the open arming doublet. Her breath steamed in the cold air. Ash felt it s.h.i.+very-warm against her skin, and momentarily stiffened.
”Haven't you got something better to do than mess about in hospitals, d.u.c.h.ess?”
There were women with Florian who were not from the company, she realised as she said it. The d.u.c.h.ess's maids and Jeanne Chalon sniffed, and looked much as if they agreed with Ash.
”No. I've got patients here. I've got patients up at St Stephen's, and in the two other abbey hospices . . .” Florian grinned. ”I'd left Blanche in charge here; you're lucky to have me.”
”Oh, sure I- f.u.c.k! Don't do that!”
”I'm checking your ribs.”
Peering down, Ash could see her open doublet, bare breast, and a raised, reddened area of skin perhaps the size of a dinner plate below her left breast. She s.h.i.+fted a little, feeling now the separate aches from hipbone, armpit, pectoral muscle, and - now she realised it - the base of her throat.
”That's going to go all sorts of pretty colours,” she observed.
Floria straightened up, sat down on the medical chest that was doing duty for a bench (tables and chairs long since gone for firewood), and tapped her dirty finger thoughtfully against her teeth. ”Your lung's okay. You might have sprung a rib.”