“Where’s the Queen?” the archbishop demanded. “Get her, and put her to death.”
What Du Corse might have hesitated to do an hour before now seemed to make better sense. He blew his horn three more times, and more and more of his men-at-arms began to rally. His standard bearer appeared, and his squire, and he mounted. The smoke troubled his war horse-he got a dozen lances behind him.
“Follow me,” he said.
They only had to ride a hundred paces for him to see they were far too late. The Queen was gone-her guard massacred.
Du Corse’s men-at-arms-Etruscans and Galles and a few Iberians-crossed themselves and muttered.
At his elbow, l’Isle d’Adam was standing in his stirrups. “Where did the arrows come from? The arrows that killed the King?”
A desire to protect the archbishop-the kingdom’s chancellor, after all-had kept Du Corse from acting. Now, though, he realized that no one had gone for the King’s killer.
“North,” he said. “My impression is that the arrows came from the north.” He caught l’Isle d’Adam’s bridle. “No-time for that later. They have the Queen.”
“Who has the Queen?” l’Isle d’Adam asked.
Du Corse wrinkled his nose. “This Red Knight, I assume.”
L’Isle d’Adam tugged his beard. “And where is de Vrailly?”
Du Corse shook his helmeted head. “I haven’t seen him since the marshal dismissed him,” he said.
Jean de Vrailly knelt in his pavilion, before his triptych of the Virgin flanked by Saint George and Saint Eustachios.
“You lied,” he shouted. “You are no angel of God!”
And then he hung his head and wept.
Blanche wasn’t lost, but the collapse of the stands took her by surprise, and she was so close that a splinter went into her thigh-she shrieked, and then she was down-in a long moment of clarity she realized that it was not as bad as it felt; more the shock of the appearance of a dagger-like piece of wood in her leg than real pain. Carefully, she pulled the wicked splinter out.
Blood soaked her grey kirtle instantly.
The sight of the blood made her vision tunnel, and she tasted salt and bile.
I will not throw up.
Rough hands caught her under her shoulders.
“All right now, mistress. You’ll be all right now,” said a male voice.
She started to scream.
Another pair of hands caught her legs. “Quiet, now, mistress,” said the other man. He was a priest, and seemed an unlikely assailant.
She protested, and they ignored her, grunting as they carried her. They took her past the fire, around the eastern end of the wreckage where the smoke was clear.
There was a woman-a very pretty woman-there in a stained yellow kirtle. She had flowers in her hair. There were a dozen men and women on the ground around her, and the two men carried Blanche closer and put her down gently on the packed dirt.
The priest bowed. “Another for you, lady,” he said.
The woman in yellow knelt by Blanche and said a prayer. She pulled Blanche’s kirtle and her shift up to her thigh, put a hand on the bleeding hole ripped by the splinter, and closed it.
Blanche moaned, not in pain, but the expectation of pain. But there was none.
The woman in yellow smiled at her.
“You healed me!” Blanche said. Of course she’d heard of such things. The reality was-beautiful, somehow, despite the screams and the clawing of smoke at the back of her throat and the running feet.
“Two children, lady-under a beam,” begged a smoke-blackened man.
The lady rose, made the sign of the cross, and followed the man into the fire.
The dust of the collapse of the stands was beginning to settle, but the smoke was now everywhere, and the mild breeze seemed to push all the smoke to their end of the lists but despite the smoke and his anguish, Gabriel made himself run. He had reserves, and he burned them, running for the place most likely to find his horse. And perhaps his brother.
And against all odds, Gavin was there, and so was Ataelus.
“You are a fucking idiot,” Gavin said, and then wasted twenty heartbeats crushing him in an embrace. “What would you have done if I’d ridden away? Grown wings and flown?”
Gabriel felt like crying-he’d never been so glad to see Gavin in his life.
“Tom’s long gone. Five minutes or more. We need to get clear before the archbishop gets his head together and has us taken. Their constable has gathered twenty men-at-arms and he’ll have more, no doubt.” Gavin was fussing with his mount’s girth.
“Gavin, I have totally misplayed this.” Gabriel found himself staring at Nell, who was handing him his reins.
“Tell me another time. In the name of God, get on the horse.” Gavin suited action to word and got his armoured leg across. “Have I mentioned what an idiot you are?”
Nell grinned, and vaulted onto her own rouncy. “Toby rode with the knights,” she said.
The box-barriers on three sides-protected them from view, at least for a moment.
“Come on!” shouted Gavin.
“Amicia’s-”
Gavin put the spurs to his horse and rode out of the box, headed east into the smoke.
Gabriel turned to his page. “I’m going for Sister Amicia,” he said.
She nodded-and drew her sword.
Gabriel smiled. “God bless you,” he said. He didn’t even think about it.
Nell followed him as he turned south, towards the stands. The archbishop was in the middle of a knot of armoured men, and being moved-quickly-to the north, out of the smoke. Thousands of men and women and children were running, but the space of the lists themselves, because of the barriers, was mostly clear, and Gabriel rode along the lists, over his fallen enemy’s forgotten corpse, and towards where he could feel the pulse of Amicia’s working.
There was shouting behind them. Armoured men on horseback had noticed them.
Nell pointed. “Black and yellow coat armour,” she shouted.
Gabriel wished he was not in harness, or on a war horse. But Ataelus was the best big horse he’d ever known, and he put on a pretty burst of speed-a tremendous spurt for a heavy horse-and they rode around the end of the wreckage of the stands. There was a crowd-a thick crowd, perhaps a thousand people. Bodies lay on blankets, and there were men-and women and children-in blood-soaked bandages, a long line leading to a small circle-
“She went into the fire!” said an old woman. “She’s a living saint, sent by God himself!”
A hundred people were on their knees. Others collected the injured-and the dead.
They were not just the dead of the collapse of the wooden stands, either. Here was a young boy with a heavy war arrow that had ripped his soft flesh, and there, a toddler trampled to death by panicked people. Her mother had her in her arms and raised her to Gabriel.
“I stepped on her-oh, Jesus save me, I stepped on her, and she’s dead.” She had the misery in her voice of the inconsolable.
A man shouted, “Soldiers coming!”
A woman screamed.
“Hold the horses,” Gabriel snapped and dismounted, cursing the deep pinprick in his left underarm and all the pain in his hand-and head.
He went into his palace and determined that he had little more than his reserves of ops and that his wounds were nothing-and that Amicia was indeed deep in the burning wreckage.
He set his feet and cast-a wind
water-
and a cloud of bees.
He wove gold and green into a net, and cast all three at once.
Then he followed Amicia into the smoke.
The two children were the two Amicia had slipped past when first she climbed the stands-days ago, it seemed. The beam was the structure’s main supporting beam, and it pinned them across their broken legs-massive fractures.
The fire was an inferno, hell come to earth.