A scene from my first novel, The Fall of the Sparrow
The sound was like the snapping of a bent sapling in a gale. The King twisted in his saddle, under the force of the blow, his head and neck seeming to contort in the opposite direction from his
massive torso. His own lance fell loose from his limp hand, and he released his hold on the reins, the
better to reach for his head in screeching agony. Then, in an instant, he slumped and fell to the ground
like a heavy sack of grain, motionless and bleeding profusely through the gap in his helmet, from which splintered shafts of wood still protruded.
Howard was conscious of an almost total cessation of sound. No one seemed even to be breathing, as figures moved with mime like steps from the reviewing stand to where their sovereign lord and master lay still and bleeding on the ground. A squire seized the reins of the King’s charger to keep the panicking animal away from his master. Montgomery dismounted and fairly tore his helmet and armour from his body as he threw himself to his knees before the King’s motionless form. Then the King was seen to stir and the Captain began to weep, like a child.
At that point, the pantomime was over and someone was heard to cry: “Physician…Bring a physician! Clear the way for the King!” Someone came with a litter, but the King waved him away. Outstretched arms lifted him to his feet while others held his head and supported him with their shoulders under his arm pits.
Half on his own power, the King hobbled from the field amidst cries and prayers. The golden crowned helmet was tossed to the ground, as they approached the steps of the residence at La Tournelle, and Howard caught a glimpse of the King’s face, a puffy mask of blood and splinters.
Then, chaos erupted. No one knew what to do next. The Duke of Guise’s mounted soldiers poured out from the recesses of the grounds and began shepherding the crowd like cattle. Someone said that the King was surely going to die. The milling lost souls began to resemble a depiction of the end of the world, and someone said they had seen Montgomery running like Judas Iscariot from the Garden of Gethsemane. Someone else said that they had seen Doctor Michel and his dark clad disciples moving away on the outside of the crowd like a dark jelly fish, as far from the soldiers of Guise as they could get.
“Disperse…Disperse,” was the terse command that sent them running and pushing into surrounding streets and alleys. Howard had long since lost sight of Dormoy, as he was swept by the swift human current in which he, himself, was trapped, down past the Celestines and closer and closer to the river. Everyone seemed to want to get out of Paris, as if the earth were about to open up and swallow the city, but Howard was sure that safety lay on the other side of the Seine. He moved with the crowds as it rolled and coursed through the city like flood water, moving ever down, down toward the river.
The amorphous mob pushed past the bridge that led back to the Isle de la Cité. Like a body of water out of control they rushed away, following the serpentine river to the south and west, away from La Tournelle. They were stepping over people who had fallen or had been pushed down in their path: the elderly, young children separated from their mothers and screaming hysterically for someone who was no longer there. Howard wanted to stop to at least pick up the children and bring them to safety on the side, but the crowd kept pushing him inexorably forward through strange and twisted streets he had never visited before. This wasn’t the way home; it was just the way out.
A bridge…they saw a bridge and knew with the uncanny instinct of a hunted animal that it was the way to safety on the other side. Would it hold the weight of all of these people trying to cross? Would he be shoved into the river, so that other people might pass him?
He wasn’t given any choice. He was part of the animal, and the animal was crossing that bridge.
Safety…safety was in sight, but not yet under foot, and Howard moved, his feet sometimes lifted off the ground, until he was deposited, like a sack of flour, on the other side.
Then, and only then, did the crowd begin to disperse, and Howard suddenly noticed that it was
beginning to get dark. He darted into a narrow network of alleys that led more or less eastward, back
toward the University and the rue St Victor.
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