Niccolo Rising (10 page)

Up to now, horses and dogs had claimed all Felix’s deepest emotions. But at any moment, there would be girls. So far, girls either tantalised Felix or neglected him, for he treated them roughly, the way he treated his own little sisters. But that would change. Julius hoped that it would be Claes, and not himself, who had to handle that bit of coaching. And that it would take place back in Louvain, where people understood students. But that said, there was no harm in Felix, kneeling there like any good horse-owner helping to doctor Claes’ muscular back, and doing more harm than good, especially as he kept stopping to argue with everything Claes was saying.

Claes, the colour returning a little to his good-natured face, was engaged in describing in five different accents what it was like on the lowest floor of the Steen, where there was no food and no light, and you had to beg as best you could with a bag on a pole through the window-bars. Someone had given him a turn of the begging-pole because he was bleeding, and when he drew it back in, it had a poke of butter inside.

Felix stopped. “Butter?”

“From the wool vats. For my back. Someone took it before I could use it. I wish I had it now. Have you got your jousting-gloves on? You’ve got hands on you like thorn bushes. It came, the butter, from Mabelie.”

“Mabelie.” It stopped Felix again.

“Standing outside the prison window. Didn’t you see her at Damme? The girl with the big plait of hair and a bucket. I didn’t know her name either. It’s Mabelie, and she works at Jehan Metteneye’s.”

“And she brought you butter.” Julius found he had stopped attending to Claes’ back as well.

“Well, she was sorry for us. Everyone’s sorry for us. There was quite a crowd out there in the Burgh. The hatters’ men, I meant to tell you, Meester Julius. I told them where to go for their rabbits, but they weren’t too pleased. I reckon if Meester Cambier is raising the cannon, he would lift the rabbit-bag too for a favour, and maybe even my lord Simon’s money. Two of your clients were there, Meester Julius, wanting to know if the contracts were still legal if they hanged you. And Henninc from the shop, saying he was sending to Louvain, and anything you had promised to pay would come out of your wages. And all the boys from the yard, with beer. You should have left me in the Dark Chamber,” said Claes nostalgically. “I would have had the butter and beer and all before they hang us.”

“They won’t hang us,” said Felix confidently. “We did nothing wrong. It wasn’t our barge. We weren’t in charge of it: the lightermen were. The lock-keeper got his beer back. And we’ve got you, Julius. You know more law than any of them.”

Julius said, “Felix, the Bishop was angry. He’s the Scottish king’s cousin. The Scottish queen is Duke Philip’s niece. The Scottish king’s sister is married to Wolfaert van Borselen. Something has to be done to convince all these people that the offence was an accident.”

Claes smiled at Felix over his shoulder. “So someone’s got to be punished. You see? If it wasn’t an accident, they wouldn’t dare punish anybody.”

Claes, for whom no tangled issues ever existed, often depressed Julius, particularly when he knew what he meant. Felix was merely incensed. “That’s crazy,” said Felix. “They’ll punish
us
? For doing nothing?”

“They punished me,” said Claes the apprentice. He turned round cautiously to let them fasten the cloths over his front, and settled crosslegged with his shirt over his shoulders. His hose had dried in folds and wrinkles all over his thighs, and his hair had dried too until it was thick and flat and frizzed a little just at the edges, as if someone had singed it.

“Of course they punished you. You broke that gentleman’s leg,” said Felix with justice. “And you weren’t respectful. And you certainly made a fool of the girl this lord Simon was making up to, and he’s a Scotsman as well. That Katelina. She didn’t want her stupid hat returned once it got into the water, you fool. She could buy twenty others.”

“Your hair’s come out of curl,” said Claes sympathetically. It was not surprising, Julius thought, that Claes got beaten so often. He remembered something important. A girl called Mabelie worked for Jehan Metteneye, and the Metteneyes of Bruges had been innkeepers and brokers for incoming Scottish merchants for five generations.

“The girl Mabelie,” Julius began.

“A great thick plait of hair down to here, brown as a fox. A full mouth of teeth as good as your horse, and cheeks pink as paint and a nose like a plum and a great white neck with muscles in it going down to – down to –”

At the wrong moment comprehension came to Claes, and he stopped before the terminus. “She says the Scots are out for our blood. They needed the gun to make war on England. She says the Duke will blame Bruges, and the Burgomaster will have to protect himself. She wants to meet me under the Crane at eleven tomorrow.”

Julius closed his eyes. You would say it was fantasy, if you didn’t know Claes. You would say that even Claes couldn’t receive an invitation through prison bars from a girl he’d never spoken to in his life. On
the other hand, when you knew Claes, you knew what his smile did. All the same –

“In two pieces?” said Julius. “With your face blue and your tongue hanging out? Or are they going to arrest all the lightermen and let you and me and Felix walk home to the dyeshop tomorrow?”

“That’s what I meant to tell you,” said Claes. “If you hadn’t jabbed at my back. I couldn’t think while you jabbed at my back. All the boys from the shop were there outside the prison.”

“You told us that,” said Felix.

“Yes. Well, all the Dyers’ Guild members came there as well, and the dean and the chaplain. They said they’d sent to the écoutète and the échevins and the counsellors and the deputy controller and of course Meester Anselm with a very big complaint and talk of outrage and even talk of ceasing to do trade with Scotland, and all the officials had put together their heads and agreed that, provided we satisfied Meester Anselm of our innocence, there would be no further action apart from a significant fine from the Charetty family –”

“Oh,” said Felix.

“– which the Dyers’ Guild and the Lightermen’s Guild would each assist them to pay. They’re letting us out in the morning. Under the Crane at eleven, she said.”

Meester Julius stared at the family apprentice. “You knew that when you came in.”

Claes gave his generous smile.

“And,” said Julius, “the bailiff knew that, and probably the gaoler and both the turnkeys who took all my money.” He could feel himself sickening for a cold, so he contented himself with delivering a cutting, well-phrased and annihilating diatribe, which Claes received with proper humility, even if Felix giggled all the way through. Then he rolled over and submitted himself and his cold to an uncomfortable, but not a doom-laden night.

The three children were brought before Anselm Adorne in his handsome house next to the church of Jerusalem the following morning. His remit was to make an enquiry, and to give them a fright.

Children? Two were youths, and one was a highly trained notary only seven years younger than Anselm himself. But they were still children in terms of diplomacy. The family Adorne had had nearly two hundred years of regional power in Flanders since they came from Italy to settle in Flanders with the Count of the day, who had married a daughter to the King of Scotland. A long, long sequence of Adornes, with their well-bred faces and quizzical eyebrows and fair, curling hair, had served the town of Bruges and the Dukes of Flanders, in that order. They never forgot, either, the other branch of their wandering family, which had served the republic of Genoa in Italy for even longer, as men
of business and men of money and, very often in the highest post of all, as Genoa’s rulers, her Doges.

To a man of family and of property like Anselm Adorne, trained in knightly skills and in letters, Latinist, fluent in Flemish and French, German and English and in the dialects of the country of Scotland, the three foolish young men who had overturned the Bishop’s new cannon were simply children. He did not rise when they were brought into the great room of his house, nor did his wife of sixteen years move from the far end of the hall, where she had placed herself with her visitors, her serving-woman and the older of their many children.

The gothic chair in which Anselm sat, like the beams over his head, bore the entwined crests of his mother and father, Bradericx and Adorne, and the blazon appeared again, in coloured glass, in the tall Gothic windows. The notary had been here before. On the quayside at Damme, Adorne had recognised the slanting eyes and taking, blunt features at once. Meester Julius was a good deal more subdued now, in his proper collared black gown, with his hat-scarf over his shoulder, and the tools of his profession slung at his belt. But his soft-shod feet had a firm enough grip of the ground, and the inkhorn and pencase hung steady and still. The young man had the pride of the convent-bred clerk and the scholar. But escapades were for students.

The others were common material. The boy Felix had bid fair to run wild after Cornelis de Charetty died, but he had a sensible mother. Whether he had the shrewdness of his father was another matter. It had been Cornelis who had kept his head in the panic two years ago when the Lombard pawnshops all failed, and had rescued his wife Marian’s father by taking over his trade.

It was recognised as being good business, mixing pawning with dyestuffs. The Lou vain shop had flourished, and de Charetty had several houses there, it was said, as well as his Blauw verweij, his woad-dyeing workshop and house here in Bruges, and his excellent bodyguard. He must have had small enough time for his children. But a man like Cornelis should have been wiser: should have looked to the future; should have considered who was to follow if he died before his time. Now there was only his wife Marian, and the managers who were as reliable as managers usually were, and that maniac of a mercenary and the boy. This boy Felix, who enjoyed pranking with his apprentice friend Claes, and had no thought of the business at all.

Anselm Adorne looked at the apprentice then, last of all, and made an observation. He said, turning, “I will not ask you to sit down, Meester Julius, for you are here to be sentenced. But tell me first. Has this fellow been chastised?” He spoke in Flemish.

The youth Felix opened his mouth and, receiving a look from the notary, shut it again. The notary said in the same language, “Minen heere, Claes was beaten for the injury to the Bishop’s friend. He was
also beaten for what was taken to be an impertinence. Both were unintentional.”

“He was impertinent,” said Anselm calmly. “And he did cause harm to Messer de’ Acciajuoli. He was beaten for no reason concerned with the cannon? No proof or confession of guilt has attached to him?”

“No, minen heere,” said the notary. He spoke with firmness. “Claes had no designs on the cannon. It was an accident. Nor was he steering when the mishap occurred. If minen heere will allow, there are many who could confirm.”

“There are, by now, many who might think it in their interest to confirm,” Adorne said. “I see no purpose in widening this enquiry, which to my mind has become too public already. Whether or not I accept that the affair was an accident, it is a fact that an ally of the Duke and the Duke himself have been much offended against. Meester Julius, as notary to the family de Charetty, you were responsible for these two youths yesterday afternoon?”

“I am answerable to the demoiselle de Charetty,” Julius said.

“I shall then leave it to the demoiselle de Charetty to deal with you as she thinks such an employee deserves. You, my good youth, are heir to your father’s business?”

The boy Felix said, “Minen heere, Meester Julius wasn’t at fault. We made him take us shooting. We all decided to climb on the – in the –”

“You had all drunk rather much, and decided you would enjoy a ride in the Duke of Burgundy’s bath. It is understandable, in very young children. You are no longer very young children. You are servants, as I am, of my lord Duke, and must respect his property and the dignity of his rank and that of all his friends. Would your father have disregarded such things? Does your mother? What have you done to her name and her pocket, you her son, you her notary, and you her apprentice?”

The boy Felix had gone red. The notary said, “We will have care in the future. We did nothing with malice, nor ever will.”

A barb? No, he thought not. Meester Julius had sense, and was making the best of it. The boy Felix saw only the injustice: there were tears in his eyes. It was time he learned about injustice. The apprentice Claes stood with perfect stoicism; the stuff of which good workmen and good soldiers were made.

Adorne spoke to the notary. “You have been told of the fine, and of its conditions. My judgment is that the payment laid upon your employer and your guild is punishment enough for what you have done. You are excused further detention. To mark it, I offer you wine in my house. Meester Julius, there is a stool for you, and one for your scholar. Margriet!” He had left the boy Claes where he was, standing before him.

There had been no real need to call. His wife knew his ways, and had caught his eye long before, and sent for his steward. Now she rose smiling. Adorne rose too, as she came forward, though she pressed the
boy and the notary back to their stools. “My lady,” said Anselm Adorne. “We have a young fellow here who performed a service yesterday for our friend Florence’s daughter, and who has not yet been rewarded. Have her come over.” He watched the three men as he spoke. None of them, he was well aware, had noticed Katelina van Borselen at the end of the room. Two of them turned, reddening. The apprentice just stood where he was, waiting patiently.

Anselm Adorne was amused by people, but never acted from mischief alone. He was not satisfied that he had plumbed the apprentice. He also wanted to find out the mood of the girl, first cousin to Wolfaert van Borselen, at the end of these three (unmarried) years abroad as maid of honour to the Scots Queen.

It didn’t take long. Today, instead of a hennin, she had bundled her hair into one of those nets, with a screw of curled hair at each ear. It made the best of her neck, which was long, and she wore her gowns narrow and plain, in the Scottish court fashion. She had the Borselen eyebrows, at present drawn closely together. The apprentice turned, and the eyebrows separated.