Free Ellis Peters - George Felse 12 - City Of Gold and Shadows by Ellis Peters Page A

which she recovered strongly, and kept her balance.
    The block, whatever it was, lay still before her, lipped by the faintly phosphorescent rim of shallow water. All she saw was a rippling edge of pallor, but she felt the barrier as a solid ridge barricading the path. She fumbled for the torch, and thumbed over the button with a chilly hand, and the cone of light spilled over a man’s body, face-down in the shallow water, glistening under the abrupt brightness in violent projections of black and white.
    She turned and lunged into the crumbling bank with the torch until it lodged and held still, focussed upon the motionless bulk below. Then she plunged forward with both hands, took fast hold of the thick tweed jacket, and dragged the inert body out of the river. He was a dead, limp weight, but the smooth mud greasing the path made her task easier. Clear of the encroaching water of the Comer, she collapsed across her salvaged man, and crouching on her knees beside him, turned up to the tight circle of light the wet, white face of Gus Hambro.

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CHAPTER FOUR
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    She stooped with her ear against his lips, and could detect no sound of breathing, spread her fingers against his chest under the sodden jacket, and felt no faint rise and fall. Yet he could not have been long in the water. She had not been far behind him, and yet had heard no sound to prepare her for this. She felt nothing now but the urgency of her own role, and acted without thought or need for thought. She wound her arms about his knees and dragged him laboriously across the gravel into the safe, thick grass; his right cheek suffered, but he was hardly going to hold that against her if he survived. In the soft turf she turned his face to lie upon that grazed right cheek, and spread his arms above his head. Somewhere in the depths of her mind the fact was recorded, and later recalled, that from the shoulders down his back was dry, and even in front, from the knees down he was merely damp and muddy from the slime of the river bank. His head and his chest were soaked, and streaming water into the grass.
    But at the time she had no awareness of any such details, though her senses missed none of them. She was entirely concentrated on the curved grip of her hands on his loins, and the rhythmic swing of her body as she leaned and relaxed, forcing the water out of him and dragging the air into him, and waited, holding her own breath, for the first rasping response out of his misused lungs. At first it was like leaning into a thick, inert sponge, and that seemed to go on for an age. Actually it was only a matter of perhaps fifty seconds before the first convulsive rattle of protest shook his ribs, and then she felt the first thread of breath drawn out long and fine under her coaxing fingers as she sat back from him. She dared not halt upon so tenuous a promise. She went on industriously compressing and releasing, but now she felt the breath of life responding to her touch, following the pressure of her hands in and out, lifting the body under her, until she was only orchestrating the performance, and signalling its progression by the measured touch of her palms and undulation of her body.
    She ventured at last to sit back on her heels, let her hands lie in her lap, and listen. And palpably, audibly, he breathed. She heard him catch at air, and cough up the last slime of the river. Then he heaved in a breath that must have gone right down to his toes, and his whole body arched and stiffened, and then relaxed on as prolonged an exhalation. She waited, for a time renewing the light, guiding pressure on his back, afraid to leave all the labour to him. By then he was breathing so strongly and normally that she was able to extend her consciousness to details, every one of which was stunningly unexpected and astonishing, even the flickering yellow eye of the torch still beaming upon the recumbent body. She looked up, and became aware of the vault of faintly luminous sky