"Well, if there isn't, by God, there damn well should be! And I'll see to it!"
Chapter 19
Coming around the bend, Leebrick saw one of the coachmen lying on the side of the road, holding his head in both hands. Thrown off, apparently. Or perhaps he'd simply jumped, figuring he could claim he was thrown. Under the circumstances, Anthony couldn't blame the man.
There was another bend, perhaps seventy yards farther. To Leebrick's dismay, it looked to be a much sharper one. That matched his memory, also.
His own horse almost went out from under him as he neared the bend. He spent a minute standing still, simply calming the poor beast. He'd been transmitting some of his own anxiety, he realized. Under these conditions, that was utterly perilous. As heavy an animal as it was, with this sort of icy and unsteady surface, all four of a horse's legs would tend to go in separate directions. Left to its own devices, in fact, the horse wouldn't willingly move at all.
The problem was that horses simply weren't very smart; they were herd animals—and they considered their human masters to be the leaders of the herd. So, once let panic seize them, they'd go from unmoving stolidity to a blind and bolting runaway pace. That was dangerous enough on a good dry road in midsummer. On this road on this day in midwinter, it was—
Leebrick's head came up from speaking soothingly to his mount. He thought he'd heard a scream, coming from around the bend.
He set his horse back into motion, not trying for anything faster than a walk. As imperative as it was to find out what had happened, there was no point in adding himself to whatever havoc had occurred.
Before he got to the bend, he heard the sound again, and it was definitely a scream. Not a scream of fear, either, for it came from no human throat. That was the sound of a badly injured horse.
When he came around the bend and could finally see down the next stretch of road, his worst fears materialized. Some thirty yards beyond, the royal carriage was a shattered wreck. He could see a deep rut in the road ten yards ahead of him, and what was left of one of the carriage's wheels.
He was aghast, but not surprised. Having a wheel or axle break on a carriage, especially a heavy one, was a frequent occurrence. Adventuresome young men in taverns would make bets that they could make it from one city to the next without a broken wheel or axle—and the house odds were against them.
That was in midsummer. Nobody laid bets on the matter in wintertime, not even drunken young carousers.
To make things worse, the royal carriage was of the new Cinderella design. They were fancy looking things, but their suspension was even more fragile than that of most carriages. They were particularly prone to having the rear axles break.
Leebrick had no trouble figuring out what had happened. Coming around the bend as fast as it had been going, the carriage must have started to slide on the slick surface. Then, either from panicky movements of the team, or too sharp a correction by the driver, or simply a minor obstruction in the surface—any or all three put together—the axle had broken. That, in turn, had simply splintered the wheel.
Within a few yards, the carriage had spilled on its side—and then, on this surface, it had slid right into the wall of a building. One of the horses had been killed outright, and at least one—the one screaming in agony—had suffered a shattered leg. Two others were lying on the road. One appeared to be just stunned but the other was clearly dead. A great jagged piece of wood had been driven into the creature's belly.
They were the only horses in sight. The harness had come to pieces in the accident. The pole holding the doubletrees must have shattered—that would be the source of the wood that had killed the one horse—and the four lead horses must have continued their panicked race around the next bend in the road. At a distance, Leebrick could see the body of the coachman who'd been riding the near lead horse. He, too, might either be dead or simply stunned.
But he'd have to wait. Anthony needed to find out what had happened to the king and queen. He still had hopes they might have remained uninjured—or simply bruised, at least. They'd had the protection of the carriage body and all the cushions and blankets within.
But as he came nearer, Anthony's hopes started fading. He'd thought at first that the carriage had struck the side of the building and then been upended from the impact. But now he saw that the situation was far worse. There was apparently a sunken stair into which the carriage had plunged. Instead of the weight of the carriage's body protecting the occupants, the body had caved in on them.
He brought the horse to a halt, got off, and clambered onto the carriage. The first thing he saw was the driver. His body, rather, for there was no question whether this man was dead or stunned. He'd been thrown into the stairwell and part of the carriage had landed on top of him. The front axle had crushed the poor man's chest like a great blunt spear. His sightless eyes staring up at the sky were already half-covered with sleet.