The Unicorn Hunt (47 page)

‘I’m glad you’re feeling up to it,’ Nicholas said. He didn’t quite know what he was saying. It was dark. No one had come to tell him when to fight. Sersanders and the Dane had turned and were racing again.

This time the collision was so great that both stopped. Sersanders jerked backwards. The Dane, losing a stirrup, half fell and was saved by his saddle. In the fist of each was a lance broken in shards. Honours even. An extra course to decide.

‘I can’t look,’ said the girl. Katelijne was hanging over the barrier, her long tight sleeves dangling like lobster claws.

‘Excuse me,’ said a man. The same man.

‘Yes?’ said Nicholas. He brought his mind back. It came readily.

‘I fear,’ said the man, ‘that I must ask your indulgence. My lord of Arran has been further delayed. Rather than hold up the contests,
it has been decided to proceed to the combats by sword. Your bout with the gentleman Anselm Sersanders will therefore precede your match with Thomas Boyd, Earl of Arran. Unless you object?’

‘It is not for me to say,’ Nicholas said. The last gallop had begun. Anselm Sersanders, whoever won, would be tired.

The collision occurred. The stand rose to its feet. Sersanders flung back his visor, a shattered lance in his hand. The Dane had missed. Nicholas said, ‘You must ask Ser Anselm. I shall be fresh, and he will not.’

‘I am sure he will agree,’ said the man.

And, of course, he did. Pride saw to that. When they faced one another ten minutes later, Anselm Sersanders sat, secure and firm in the saddle, sword in hand. His horse was fresh but biddable under the iron hand of its maiden and his face was flushed but composed. The horse of Nicholas, unaccustomed to the smell of fright and to veils, was less manageable. But Nicholas had not galloped four times into battle, or accepted four times, as Sersanders had, the full weight of man, horse and pole against his bruised neck, and shoulder, and chest. Nicholas hadn’t fought anyone yet.

Don’t look bland. Don’t look awed. Don’t look half intoxicated
.

Don’t think
.

It
was
a salt-cellar Sersanders was wearing. The brat. Betha Sinclair had favoured Nicholas with a handkerchief. He didn’t think it was the child’s.
(Don’t smile.)
The trumpets blew, and he and Adorne’s nephew faced one another.

Nicholas had jousted quite often before. Once as Guinevere in a wig, as he remembered. Although no, that was one tourney that didn’t take place. He could handle a lance, but the sword, by now, was much more his weapon, and sport on horseback had given him an Eastern brand of skill in the saddle which Westerners complained was unorthodox. At the same time, the sword was more demanding than courtesy tilting. That is, the weapons for this kind of fight were not only rebated, they were quite different, and longer than usual.

Thirty-one blows had to be exchanged. The winner was the man adjudged to gain the most points, or the man who unhorsed his opponent. It was hard, skilful work. Nicholas always preferred to be fresh for a sword-fight. As now.

He had taken some other precautions. For this fight only, he wore an open sallet, exposing his face. It could be dangerous. But the jousting-helmet, as still worn by Sersanders, gave limited vision and, bolted to the breastplate and back, was always heavy. And Sersanders was tired.

Now the barricade had been dismantled. The trumpets blew. Sersanders and he rode to the King’s stand together and bowed. The Sinclair girl, stiffened by competition, managed her veil, her sleeves and, nearly, her train. Katelijne unobtrusively helped her. Katelijne said out of the side of her mouth, ‘The
Sterner
versus the
Psitticher
.’

Stars and Parrots. She knew a lot about jousting. The ladies retired. Sersanders gazed at him for a moment, his eyes unusually wide, and then lowered his visor and, turning, trotted to one end of the field. Nicholas took the other, and spurred forward the moment the trumpets blew.

Their horses looked the same. The rules said they had to be matched. There was no advantage, therefore, in ramming together and hoping to unsettle the other man so that a blow might unseat him. So they each took their time, cantering evenly, closing the gap. They had almost reached the space before the King’s stand when Sersanders suddenly drove his spurs in and came hard towards Nicholas, his sword ready to strike from the flank.

Behind the visor, his eyes were unreadable, whereas Nicholas knew the glow from the stand lit his own face. He took measure, fast, with his eyes. Sersanders watched him and struck. In a dazzle of sparks, his blade met that of Nicholas, in a direct counter that nothing had signalled. Nicholas felt the other sword momentarily yield: with luck it might even have fallen. Then they were apart, and the dance could begin.

It
was
a dance. Combat was the deployment of ruses. Sersanders knew some, Nicholas others. Tellingly, the bay he was riding knew most. It was an old way of gaining ascendancy: to use a horse trained on the sports field. Not in battle, of course, but for this kind of fight, which depended on speed and lightness and agility.

Not that Sersanders was anyone’s dupe. After the first moments, circling, stretching, striking, he could see well enough how Nicholas was using his weight to guide and instruct the horse, and how sensitively the horse was responding. It meant he had to change his own strategy. That, or be made to look less than professional, here, before the cream of a nation.

And that was not what Nicholas wanted. This was not merely an event in a tournament: it was an encounter of honour for Sersanders. Sersanders shamed would arouse the whole Adorne faction in Scotland. At the same time, Nicholas had his own plans. He was performing, as Sersanders was, for the King and for Albany. And he didn’t intend to get hurt.

It made a good fight. He liked the feel of the sword, five feet of
it, in his hand, and liked to open his shoulders, using his extra reach, his extra height. Sersanders had never fought, as Nicholas had, with mercenaries, or been trained by a mercenary leader, despite his years of careful teaching by Adorne and his father, and the perpetual practice offered by the societies.

Simon was one of the few men Nicholas knew who had done both: practised the art of chivalric warfare and also fought in the field for his own country against foreign knights and their followers. He himself had not, of course, met Simon in formal combat with weapons of chivalry. Or not yet. Or not unless you counted a few moments in Venice.

The thoughts were fragmented, and sprang from what was immediately happening – from the type of blow, of parry, of feint which recalled something else. Tzani-bey had been short. Tzani-bey had compensated in ways forbidden in chivalry. It was not permitted to injure the other man’s horse, or strike a weaponless man, or change weapons. Nicholas reached the conclusion, wheeling, striking, tapping, that jousting was not really interesting. Sixteen blows. Seventeen. (
When?
)

On the other hand, Sersanders was making it interesting. Being fit, he had recovered well from the earlier fight. He had also, by now, assessed what he was facing. He had further assessed, Nicholas saw with pleasure, that the blows he faced had no malice behind them, and that he was being offered a chance, to his surprise, to engage in a bout of lively and high-quality swordsmanship.

Which did not make it easy. The swift turns, the bending, the swoops which drew roars from the crowd were not maypole dances, and each exchange of blows, single or multiple, was the result sometimes of a long sequence of movements. By now – twenty-four, twenty-five – they were both slowing a little and losing precision. Of the three metal hasps securing Sersanders’s helmet in front, one had broken. Nicholas tried to keep his swordpoint from catching, and so far had succeeded. They had each, on occasion, inadvertently struck the horse-cloth of the other. His horse wore leather below, Sersanders’s plate. Being accidental, the blows did not count.

Twenty-seven. Now full dark had fallen, and they trampled upon their own streaming shadows. The rectangle within which they struggled was outlined in light: lamps, candles, high-flaring torches. High on the Rock, window-light sprinkled the darkness and here and there exposed an expanse of broad wall. A flush in the air told of the stair-lamps of the Horse Market.

The news would have to come up the Wynd and into the Canongate. Then up the High Street and down through the market and here … 
Pay attention!

Light exploded into his face: disastrous light this time. The dazzle of Sersanders’s sword, deflected up from his shoulder-plate. And the flash of his own helm, struck from below and torn backwards from his bare head.

His horse stopped. Sersanders, still in violent motion, saw what had happened and reined his horse hard, dragging his sword-arm up and back. The horse, alarmed and nervous, suddenly reared and Sersanders, unbalanced, found that one hand would not hold it.

Nicholas saw his opponent’s mount rear above him, black on the stars, and the hooves begin to come down. A single roar from the stands filled his head. He saw Sersanders hurl his sword to the ground and, seizing the reins in both hands, use his weight and the rigour of the bit to try to drag the horse sideways.

He had no hope of keeping balance. The animal twisted. Its hooves clattered down, missing Nicholas. Its knees buckled. Then it fell, big as a wagon, arid the crash of its steel shook the ground.

Nicholas, dismounting, hit the ground at the same time. He fled under the flailing hooves and round to where Sersanders had fallen. Sersanders lay free, on his back. As Nicholas reached him, he slowly raised one plated arm and put back his vizor. He said, ‘We only got to twenty-nine points.’ He sounded winded. He looked unharmed. He
was
unharmed.

Nicholas gave him a hand to sit up, and then stand. Men were running towards them. He said, ‘We could both get on my horse and hit one another.’

‘That nag?’ said Sersanders. ‘It wouldn’t stand for it. I don’t know what knacker sells you his horses.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t ever trust you with a good one. Look what you do to them,’ Nicholas said. They were walking slowly across to the stand. As boys, ten years ago, they had talked to each other like that. Nicholas stopped. He said, ‘You could have cut my throat. No one would have known.’

‘I should,’ said Sersanders. Then the marshal of the lists arrived, panting.

Nicholas stood, while procedures were swiftly discussed, and one horse was being killed, and the other led away. The two maidens, skirts clutched, arrived and clung to the group. The Sinclair girl had been weeping and Katelijne gave her a handkerchief. Anselm Sersanders and Nicholas de Fleury were invited to approach the royal stand, and informed that honours
were even, and their fair ladies would present them with what they had won at the banquet that night. A flower fell at Sersanders’s feet, tossed by Margaret. The trumpets, defeating all speech, called for attention, and an announcement was made. The next bout would be the last of the evening.

‘But what about ours?’ said the Sinclair girl against a sonorous recital of honours. He saw Katelijne had overheard and was struggling.

Nicholas said, ‘I think we hold that in private. No, of course I know what you mean. I suppose it’s been cancelled.’ He watched Sersanders walk away with his sister. They had exchanged a sort of salute. Whatever had happened, Sersanders had undoubtedly come off the better. He looked up at the stand, preparing to leave the field, and heard someone calling his name.

The voice came from the stand. As he hesitated, a page in royal livery came running, important with the command. It sounded like a summons to heaven. Perhaps it was.

He had to go as he was, bare-headed, his sallet under his arm. The steps to the royal enclosure were covered with velvet, the rails gilded and carved. He had provided the craftsman himself. And the central chair with its emblazoned awning, from which James the King had just risen. The regal face was unevenly flushed, and a man in riding clothes stood, head bowed in deference behind him.

The news had come.

You made three obeisances, as in Trebizond. Then this King, seventeen years old, said in his uneven voice, ‘It has been in our mind to send for you before this. We are pleased with what you have arranged for our nuptials. So is the lady Margaret, our future consort. The lady Margaret also wishes to thank you.’

Above the belt and collar of jewels, the ermine fichu, the stuffed, golden sleeves thick with embroidery, the lady Margaret’s hairless face regarded him winsomely. He bowed and, when she held out her hand, kissed it and spoke to her. All merchants knew the Hanse languages. She smiled, her eyes widening.

The King said, ‘She thanks you. Master de Fleury?’

Out in the field the last pair of combatants were meeting. They had already made several strikes. No one in the royal stand was watching them. Nicholas said, ‘Yes, my lord King?’

‘I owe you for more than that,’ said the youth. He wore a magnificence of ruby satin. They all did. The colour, burning under the lamps, strove against the rows of fiery Stewart polls and eyebrows, and lost.

The King said, ‘The traitor has fled. You warned us. You were
right. We have uncovered the plots of his father. And now the man has proclaimed his guilt. He will never come back. If he comes back, his head will be forfeit.’

‘Your grace?’ Nicholas said.

‘Thomas Boyd, Earl of Arran,’ said the King. ‘He entered the town, saying nothing. He took to his chamber, feigning sickness. Now we learn he has sailed. He returned to the harbour last night and took ship. For where we do not know.’

‘And took Mary with him,’ said an accusing voice. Nicholas turned. Margaret, the King’s red-headed sister from Haddington. Her lip stuck out.

The King said, ‘So it appears. She, too, was said to be unwell. Her husband has overthrown her proper judgement.’

‘My lord,’ said Nicholas de Fleury. ‘Had we known, your friends should have tried to detain them both.’

‘No! No! It is his flight which has proclaimed his guilt! Had he remained, who knows what lying witness he might have produced to try and save himself! That we are spared. We had a canker at the heart of the kingdom, and now it is gone.’