An owl hooted nearby, probably just waking up for his nightly hunt. An animal’s tracks, those of a wolf, perhaps, were visible in the snow a few feet away as Elyce strolled this particularly flat expanse. It was almost as if they had left the mountains completely, so flat was this plain.
Just then, Elyce thought she heard a trickle of water. Was there a stream nearby? Even in this snowy land, running water often did not freeze.
“Princess,” Ysabeau called in a soft, hushed voice—hushed on account of the possibility of avalanche, a constant threat in this mountainous region of heavy snowfall.
Sighing, Elyce turned to head back. Her private reverie was over for now.
As she turned, she heard a cracking sound, faint but distinct. It was coming from the direction of the trickling she’d heard. Gazing down at her feet, she wondered . . . was this plain so flat and devoid of trees because it was not a plain at all?
She scrubbed the ground with her shoe, moving aside snow to find ice like glass. She was standing on frozen water.
A crack appeared where she’d scraped her foot. She started to run. But the ground gave way beneath her and she sank straight down.
Icy water closed over her head before she could take a breath. She sucked in, filling her lungs with water instead of air.
She hadn’t had time to scream. Would Ysabeau go for help? Had she even seen her fall in? God, don’t let me die.
She didn’t know how to swim.
Nine
She was drowning, her chest burning like fire. Was anyone coming to help her?
She must have been oh-so-slowly rising to the surface, as the light was getting brighter.
Sir Gerard’s face was above her. His arms plunged toward her. He grabbed her and yanked her out of the water.
She drew in a breath—or tried to. It was as if the air would not go in.
Sir Gerard’s hands were still holding her arms, pulling her out onto the ice. As soon as he did, a dreadful cracking sound met her ears and the ice broke again, sending Sir Gerard into the water with her.
They sank into the cold, awful water. O God! I’m going to cause Sir Gerard to die too!
Two strong hands grabbed her hips and shoved her upward. She breached the surface again to see Ysabeau yelling and crying, standing several feet away.
Elyce wanted to tell her to get back, to get farther away so she wouldn’t fall in, but she couldn’t talk, couldn’t even breathe. She gagged and heaved and coughed while struggling to pull herself out of the water. If the ice cracked and broke some more . . .
Where was Sir Gerard?
Over her shoulder she saw his head rise out of the water. With one arm holding on to the ice, he grabbed Elyce’s thigh and pushed her up.
God, please don’t let the ice break again.
“Crawl,” Sir Gerard ordered, himself crawling out onto the ice, staying on his stomach.
They both crawled toward the edge of the frozen lake, where the ground started to slope up, then Sir Gerard turned and pulled Elyce up and into his arms.
“We have to get you warm.” Her face was pressed to his cold, wet shoulder and she was shivering uncontrollably.
Sir Gerard stood, hauling her to her feet. Holding her hard against his side, he half pulled her across the snow.
Her shoes were sodden, her skirts heavy against her legs, and she stumbled. He bent and lifted her into his arms, barely pausing as he hurried them back toward their camp.
Her teeth chattered violently. All she could do was stare up at Sir Gerard’s face, his eyes narrowed, his own teeth clamped together. She could not even tell he was feeling the cold, though his hair dripped and his lips were a dark shade of blue.
Ysabeau was crying and mumbling incoherently as she kept pace with them.
Sir Oswalt appeared ahead.
“Stoke up the fire,” Sir Gerard said in a gruff voice.
Sir Oswalt immediately grabbed a few sticks of the dry wood they had found in this snowy forest, and he and Bertold dropped to their knees to restart the tiny fire they had used to cook the hare they’d caught.
“I’m s-s-so s-sorry,” Elyce mumbled.
“You have to get these clothes off,” Sir Gerard said, setting her down next to a rock outcropping that was taller than he was. He started jerking off her outer cloak, then her shoes.
Ysabeau pulled at her next layer of clothing, then ran away, saying, “I will get some dry clothes.”
Elyce helped Sir Gerard as best she could, but her arms and legs were slow to obey her. Sir Gerard was stripping off her heavy, half-frozen clothing, but he should be taking off his own clothing as well.
“Everything must come off,” he said.
“You need to take off your clothes too,” Elyce said as forcefully as she could with her jaw freezing shut and her lips completely numb. Would he freeze to death after saving her?
When he had stripped her of all her outer clothing, he abruptly turned and moved away, the rock outcropping blocking her from the men’s sight.
She was so cold her skin seemed to burn. Ysabeau helped her get off the wet underdress. She quickly replaced it with a dry underdress and Elyce’s warmest clothes, lastly wrapping her in the bearskin.
Ysabeau embraced her and started crying and talking at the same time. “You were drowning and I didn’t know what to do.” Those were the only words Elyce understood as she continued to cry and talk incoherently.
She patted Ysa’s shoulder and tried not to shiver, though her feet felt like two blocks of ice, her legs barely better, her hands and cheeks burning like bee stings.
“Come to the fire,” Sir Gerard called from around the boulder.
“I’m fully clothed,” Elyce said. “You can come to the fire too.”
“Come.” Ysa sniffed and pulled Elyce forward. “Forgive me for crying. I am composed now.” She sniffed and the tears dried up.
“There is nothing to forgive.” Elyce would probably cry, too, when she was not so numb, outside as well as inside.
If not for Sir Gerard’s selfless bravery, she’d be dead now, drowned at the bottom of the icy mountain lake. Her stomach felt sick and hollow.
She and Sir Gerard both sat as close to the fire as possible while Elyce tried to dry her hair. Ysabeau fussed over her, but there was little she could do besides sit next to her and lend her body heat.
Sir Gerard sat in silence and gazed into the fire. There was no one to sit close to him or dry his hair with a cloth. But he did not seem to suffer as much from the cold. Perhaps men had more body heat than women.
She wanted, needed, to express her thankfulness to him for saving her. But if she started to speak the words, the tears, which were just under the surface, would surely flow.
Bertold and Oswalt were sitting across from them, probably thinking this fire was going to get them found by King Claude’s men. And well it might. Should she say she was sorry for foolishly walking across a lake and falling in and causing them all this trouble? She was sorry, prodigiously sorry. She had not meant to fall, nor to cause Sir Gerard to fall in either, and there was no other way to get warm. Being cold and wet in this kind of weather would kill as surely as a wolf pack attacking a lone man.
She wanted to weep, to pour out her heart—her shame at causing this disaster and possibly getting them all caught, her gratitude at Sir Gerard’s selflessness, her sorrow at being responsible for his getting cold and possibly sick. The unshed tears ached in her chest. But what could she say? Surely these men would look on her with contempt if she had a fit of emotion, just as her aunt always had.