The Unicorn Hunt (7 page)

He sat up with a jerk as his own horse also entered the sea, ridden with frightening vehemence by a minute brown-haired girl. And then he scrambled to his feet as a horse more crudely powerful than either plunged into the water and followed, kicking up sand and water, spray and foam and finally sinking, like the rest, to swim into the pull of deep water. Three people, chasing a ball.

The tide was receding. It was the first thing anyone brought up in Flanders would notice. Adorne did so, and the silent group of his fellows: Sersanders had long since left them to race down to the shore. Had it not been so, one would simply have waited, and ball and child would both have come in.

As it was, the broad head of the pony and the bared red hair of the King’s sister forging outwards rose and fell among the great waves of the estuary while the ball, the evil ball, lilted ahead, clearly visible but always retreating. For eight, she was an excellent rider, and full of Stewart valour – or obstinacy.

Pursuing, Katelijne bestowed frothing curses on both. They were now well out from the shore. The only advantage of that was the silence. As the shouting and the crash of the land-waves receded, she began to call at the head of each surge. ‘Margaret! Hey!’ cried Katelijne. ‘They’ve found a ball! You’re missing the game!’

One did not address princesses as ‘Hey.’ One did not allow one’s future employer to drown. Katelijne said, ‘All right, run away. You knew you couldn’t win, anyway.’

She wasn’t heard. Or perhaps she was: the round cheek bulged, as if a Stewart jaw had been set. The russet hair, too wet to whip in the wind, lay like leaves on the leaden pall of spoiled velvet. The girl didn’t look round.

A voice in languid French said, ‘Leave it to me.’ The black rider, his horse swimming beside Katelijne’s. Passing, he caught the mare’s eye and hissed at her provocatively.

Katelijne said, ‘Can you capture the ball?’

‘If I must,’ he remarked. ‘I doubt if the dear creature can swim.’

‘I can,’ she said. He was already in front, the black velvet and the embroidery drenched; his hair, hatless now, cut curling and smart on the nape of his neck; his eyes, his pale, densely focused eyes on the child.

‘I offer candles,’ he said, without turning. The words barely reached her. Whatever he offered, he had given her no advice and no orders. She followed.

It was more difficult now, further out from the shore. The wind sliced the tops from the waves, and the waves themselves, curling high, sometimes bore her horse up and over in safety, but sometimes broke in her face while the horse struggled and snorted beneath her. Ahead, Margaret’s mount was hardly swimming. The lady Margaret, whom she had come from Flanders to serve, and who was going to be served, whether they had been introduced to one another or not.

The wind brought a gust of sound from behind. Help belatedly on the way, it was to be supposed. A number of big men on big horses. Or a boat, even.

And they would be too late, for ahead there had come the wave which the pony was too slight and too scared to survive. The poor beast was no more, except as a turmoil three deep waves from the spot where the black rider’s powerful gelding was swimming.

Katelijne saw the pony’s head break water and sink. And saw, to one side, a red head rise and sink also. The pony was drowning. The child had left the saddle and was drowning as well.

Katelijne dragged her feet out of the stirrups and stopped. In a surge of water, the black rider had abandoned his horse. Freed, it began to swim back to the shore.

Katelijne wasted no time on trying to catch it, but concentrated on driving her own mount to the spot. It would have helped if it hadn’t been an Arab and somewhat unused to water. She wondered what fool had brought it to Scotland. The man in black appeared, vanished and suddenly reappeared quite close beside her, a limp red head over his shoulder. He could swim. A billow of velvet
floated up and then vanished, leaving a brief scrap of white in its place. A hand reached up to her, offering a knife.

‘Cut your skirts off and take her. I’ll lead Epyaxa.’ His own doublet and pourpoint were gone, leaving him in black hose and shirt, like a tennis-player. He paddled, holding the reins, while she ripped off her half-gown and some of her linen. (
Epyaxa?
) The child, pulled up before her, was alive, but retching and weeping and calling for one Mariota.

Katelijne set about turning the mare and found the task taken from her, almost at once, by the swimmer. After that, he stayed by her side, his hand by the Arab’s cheek-harness, his voice in its ear. The mare’s ears were stark upright, as if she understood what she was being told. The language was Greek. Ahead, and approaching fast, was a splashing line of frantic chevaliers, the man in scarlet in front.

‘Dear Julius,’ said the swimmer below her. He rolled on his side and glanced up. ‘Well, come on, sweetheart; use your knees and let’s get to the shore. We did all the work. We might as well get all the credit.’

‘Who did all the work?’ said Katelijne.

‘I, the irreproachable Knight Highmount, loved and feared by many. I did,’ he said; and, reaching into his shirt, produced something and lobbed it towards her. She freed a hand and just caught it. It was the wooden ball. The child, who had stopped choking and was just howling, abruptly ceased doing either and took it.

‘I offer candles,’ said Katelijne.

‘I’d prefer a percentage of your contract,’ he said. ‘But I dare say I shall get some good of it all. Here they are. Look exhausted.’

‘I
am
exhausted,’ she said tentatively. She had stopped trembling, she found.

‘You couldn’t do it again?’

Willing hands, reaching her, had taken the child and found a cloak for her shoulders. Soon, she was able to dismount and wade, the other riders splashing and shouting beside them. Someone took her arm, and she removed it.

‘You’d need two other idiots,’ she said. ‘One to hit the ball out to sea, and the other to try to ride after it.’

The child was already on shore, and set at the feet of a square, kneeling nurse and a gentlewoman in the robes of a prioress. The child, struggling free, looked back and called to Katelijne. She said, ‘I wasn’t running away.’ She was hugging the ball. Someone was trying to give her another one.

‘You know, I saw that,’ said Katelijne in answer. ‘But there are easier ways of getting a ball.’ She smiled, and the child, hoisted again, returned the smile over a retreating manservant’s shoulder.

She had missed something: a gesture. The man beside her put up his hand and the spare ball, flung from nowhere, smacked into it. ‘Well?’ he said, and glanced suggestively out to sea.

She said, ‘Well, why not? But shouldn’t it be something more exciting? And I’m hungry. I’ll race you to Master Lamb’s house, if you like.’

He said, ‘And that would be exciting? Once you wouldn’t have thought so.’

She looked up. ‘Upside down on our
hands
?’ He was scanning the crowds, without listening.

Now that nothing but streaming cambric was left, she could see that, within his considerable frame, he was spare as a man in severe training might be. His hair, tamped down with water, was an indeterminate brown, but cut so well that it was already lifting round his temples and neck. His brow and cheekbones were broader than those of the men of her family, and his eyes wider set on either side of the slender bridge of his nose. Below that, his lips were as rounded and full as a woman’s.

He said, ‘You will know me again,’ and she said quickly, ‘I was afraid I might need to, Ser Niccolò.’ She added, ‘You think I’m Anselm Adorne’s daughter.’

He said, ‘Of course you are. But if you’re not, how do you know who I am?’

‘Doesn’t everybody, even the horse?’ said Katelijne. ‘You’re Nicholas vander Poele, and I’m Anselm Sersanders’s sister. If I had a lisp, I couldn’t say that.’

‘Deserts would hire you. By my God and Creator … I saw your revered uncle, and Maarten and Metteneye. But what is your brother doing here? He isn’t working in Scotland as well?
Julius!
Anselm Sersanders is here!’

‘I know,’ said the man in red. ‘And the windmills. And the water-wheels, I have no doubt. If the rest of Bruges is coming over, we’d better tell the magistrates to board up the markets. Nicholas, you know you’ve caused mayhem and that poor lad is standing there, waiting to thank you?’

Indeed, on the shore, backed by his courtiers, the Duke of Albany was waiting to greet them; his blackened doublet and hose caked with sand; his braid and buttons protruding like baitworm.

Nevertheless, his chin high, his auburn hair blowing, the Prince knew the duty due to his blood. He allowed Katelijne to kiss his
hand first. Although they were of the same age and he was praising her, there was no doubt that he was the King’s brother, and she was merely the Flemish demoiselle appointed to his young sister’s household. Then he turned to Nicholas vander Poele.

The words of gratitude he used were almost the same, but the tone was subtly different. Of course, a youth of fourteen spoke to a man of twenty-seven. Also, they knew one another. More: there was a relationship there, or one just beginning.

And now Katelijne’s own family were around her, asking questions, hugging her anxiously. Her brother said, ‘You’re an imbecile, and Nicholas is even worse. I should have warned you. What was he trying to do just now? Get you to swim out again?’

There had been no relationship at all in the water: that was what she had found so agreeable. She said, ‘Maybe. It was strenuous. You know. You feel, stopping, you could strangle a lion. He is restless.’

‘He was born restless,’ said her brother. ‘He doesn’t need any more stirring-up, and neither do you. Come on. We’re promised hot malmsey and ginger, spices by courtesy of Nicholas. Aren’t you cold?’

‘I’m hungry,’ she said. ‘Race you back to the house on your hands?’

Then she said, ‘Listen.’

‘It’s only the young gentlefolk,’ said their host, Master Lamb, coming up. ‘Whistle Willie – Master Roger, that is, and Master Jamie and the trumpet, that’s Albany’s pursuivant. You’ll hear them later, gin my lord Duke has his way. Ye ken my young lord Alexander has elected to sup with us, of his own free motive will, sic an honour? You won’t mislike an entertainment of seemly-like music?’

‘It depends,’ said Katelijne.

‘A purist,’ said her uncle, on her other side. ‘But at least, my dear, you have, I think, decided not to go straight back to Flanders?’

Chapter 3

T
HE QUESTION WAS
asked that night at Master Lamb’s table: the question about Gelis van Borselen which, this time, would have to be answered. And it was Anselm Adorne once more who asked it, but this time directly of the girl’s husband.

‘So where, you fortunate man, is your charming wife Gelis?’ asked Anselm Adorne, seating himself two places from Nicholas at Master Lamb’s table shortly afterwards. Behind them, Albany’s trumpeter let off a blast, and Julius, in the middle, began cheerfully to cut up his meat.

Julius, who had supervised (he felt) the upbringing of Nicholas, always enjoyed overhearing personal questions and especially this one, because of the slight variations in the answers Nicholas gave.

Nicholas was, naturally, wearing black. They were all freshly dressed – Adorne and his party from their sea-coffers, the Duke of Albany and his officers from the wardrobe at the King’s Wark and Nicholas and himself from the clothes they kept over the river, where Nicholas had leased some convenient rooms in North Leith.

Since his departure from Bruges, Nicholas had elected to dress only in black, the most expensive dye in the world. And not only himself, but his page, his groom, his cook and his menservants had been put into black livery, and the select company of his men at arms wore black hats and black sleeves. Jannekin Bonkle, related to half the merchant colony of Bruges and Edinburgh, had organised it. It was, in its way, a gesture of unutterable flamboyance. Julius loved it.

Julius, of course, loved all that had happened since they left Bruges for Scotland. His wealth, the reputation of the Bank, and the respected name of the van Borselen family had ensured an honourable welcome from the young King’s advisers for Gelis van
Borselen’s husband. In return, Nicholas had not sought unreasonable privileges, and had not gone out of his way to court the child King or his brother. If Albany (sitting beyond Nicholas now) was seeking his company more and more, it was not Nicholas’s fault. And the absence of a wife had proved no disadvantage.

As to that, Julius had not encouraged Nicholas to make this latest marriage, although the rest of the Bank had approved. Nicholas unshackled was thought to represent a challenge to normal society. Himself, he preferred Nicholas free. The happiest time of any lawyer’s career could not offer more than the years Julius had spent managing the Banco di Niccolò in Venice. Gregorio, who had preceded him, would agree.

When Nicholas, back from Africa, had taken Gelis van Borselen to wife, the union had not been unexpected. She had followed him overseas; she had been compromised; she had powerful relatives. Nevertheless it had been a surprise when, the bridal night over, Gelis had dutifully followed the Duchess of Burgundy, while her husband had attached himself, after an unexplained absence, to the train of the Duke.

Then he had reappeared in Bruges with an entourage of new and highly trained followers, and had commanded Julius to come with him to Scotland.

The merits of such an expedition were reasonably obvious. The master of the Banco di Niccolò had not, as yet, visited the agency opened for him in Scotland, or studied how to exploit and protect it. Added to which, the fair Gelis van Borselen had once been an attendant of Mary, the King’s married sister, and a bridal visit to Scotland should please her. Except, of course, that Nicholas had come to Scotland and Gelis had stayed at home.

‘A pity,’ explained vander Poele cordially now, between the laden dishes at Master Lamb’s table in Leith. ‘Did I not threaten her with divorce? But the Duchess had commanded her presence, and you don’t have to remind a van Borselen how important the English may be to a Bank. Gelis went with the Duchess, for my sake. But I expect her to join me.’