Ten or twelve feet above the spur was a bridge, three ropes strung from this tower to another not far away, one rope to walk upon, two to hold onto, with slender lines woven between. Rillibee could not see it now, but he knew it was there. He had seen it from below and memorized its position. He hoped it was no farther above him than his rope sash could reach.
Balanced upon the spur, legs anchored in the angle of the brace below it, he swung his rolled robe, pendulum fashion, gaining length with each swing, finally throwing the robe up and over as it caught on the bridge above him. He had intended to tie the two ends of the belt together to make a loop and suspend himself under the bridge, lost in the mist where no one would think of looking for him. Now he tugged at the end of the rope, dismayed. It had caught on the bridge. Even as he jerked at it again and again he realized his scheme would not have worked. The rope bridge would have sagged under the weight of his body. Those who climbed these heights every evening would know that someone was out there in midspan. If they could not find that person on the bridge, they would look below it. So. He took a deep breath and stayed as he was, squatted on the spur, the end of the rope still in his hand. Someone was grunting and mumbling below him on the tower, within a few arm’s lengths. “Up here!” shouted Highbone’s voice, cracking in hysterical delight “He’s up here.” Other voices answered, not far below.
Rillibee waited. If they decided to climb out on the spur, he would jump. Getting dead from this height would be almost certain. He hoped he was over bare earth and not over a densely thatched roof which would break his fall. He kept his mind on this, scarcely breathing, still as a stone.
Someone climbed past him on the tower, then someone else. Sudden inspiration struck him, and he tugged at the rope, feeling the motion transmitted to the rope bridge above him.
“He’s on the bridge,” shrieked Highbones. “I can feel him. On the bridge!”
An answering bellow came out of the fog from the far tower where the bridge ended.
The rope in Rillibee’s hands jiggled and danced, transmitting the motion of the bridge as the climbers moved out upon it. He left the rope hanging there, jiggling behind him, as he crawled back toward the tower, hand by hand, harkening to the sound of climbers-by, losing himself in the fog to descend as he had ascended, sometimes standing aside from the climbing shadows and shouting wraiths to let them go by, sometimes slipping down wet ladders, himself invisible in the mist, hidden by cloud, one with the sky. Above him was a discordancy of voices, directions and misdirections, shouts of “Here he is” mixed with cries of “Where is he?”
No one was guarding the bottom of the ladder he had climbed. The rooftop was empty. The fog had sunk almost to the level of the roof, and the door stood open with empty stairs below. From high above still came voices crying, “Here, here,” and the ladder still trembled with the force of the bodies rushing to and fro. He went out silently, down the stairs and through the vacant hall, out into the alleyway and back to his cell in the new dormitory, which was still only partially finished and almost uninhabited. As he entered the dormitory, he heard a dwindling cry, as of someone falling forever from a high place.
Once inside his cell he crawled under his cot and lay there, almost without breathing, tight against the wall. Twice in the night his door opened and a light was thrust inside.
Before dawn he rose and climbed back onto the tower, moving through gray dusk to the bridge where his robe was caught, with the rope girdle still dangling below. A sleeve of the robe had come loose and wound itself around the foot rope of the bridge, only enough to prevent the bundle falling, not enough that anyone had noticed it. Rillibee retrieved his robe and put it on, then sat on a high crossbrace for a long time, looking out over the Friary and the surrounding prairie.