Niccolo Rising (24 page)

She had learned from Margriet Adorne (but not from her father) that the Scotsmen had closed ranks round Simon of Kilmirren after his excess of high spirits at Sluys, when he had given a beating to that impertinent lad. It had been a fair fight, they said, although marred at the end by some accident. Since then the victor, however mutinous, had been constrained to stay decorously at Jehan Metteneye’s, or Stephen Angus’s, or in the company of the Bishop or his factor. Once he had called on her cousin, because the Scottish king’s brother was staying there. She knew, because apparently my lord Simon had asked Wolfaert about her.

That was something her father had not forgotten to mention. She understood that she was still in his town house at Bruges and not yet dispatched to Zeeland or Brussels because he was displeased with her,
and hoped, while Simon was still in Flanders, that she would repent and repair matters between them. Oddly, she was in two minds about that. For a man gently reared, Simon’s behaviour in the garden had been crass (she told herself). He was spoiled with easy conquests – but who wouldn’t be, with such looks? She had been … She had been aware of his power herself.

If, as was rumoured, the girl found in Metteneye’s cellar had been his property, then at least he had handled the matter with style. And as for the business at Sluys – the Charetty’s rollicking labourer had by all accounts been the first to draw blood, and deserved whatever had happened thereafter.

She had noted the faint reserve with which men spoke of Simon. He was well over thirty. He had a long record of dalliance and only a short one of practical stewardship. She recalled, certainly, that she had met his unwelcome attentions on their last meeting with an insult which had sent him off in a temper. Afterwards, she wished she had managed it better. But it was marriage … marriage she had to engineer, not what threatened to swamp her that night.

Now, if she wished it, she had a second chance. Now, for example, he could not so well afford to reduce his circle of well-wishers. If she met him tonight, she would be amiable.

She had nothing to lose. She had no desire to enter a convent. She had served the Queen of Scotland without gaining a husband. The Duchess of Burgundy lived at Nieppe apart from her husband and surrounded by handsome Portuguese. Simon’s sister had married one of them. But there was no guarantee that the Duchess’s entourage would bring her a husband: it was just as likely to bring her the Duke.

She wondered if in that event her father would be shocked, and realised that he was probably hoping against hope that such a thing would happen. He had no heirs apart from Gelis and herself. He had borrowed heavily, she knew, to raise even the small dowry which would have gone with her hand to the objectionable – the abominable Scottish lord she had rejected. She had costly gowns. She had family jewels of some value, and some even rarer, presented by the princesses she had served. She had been allowed to keep these. They enhanced her value.

She wished she were a widow; independent; in control of her life and her intelligence.

She looked about. Soon, according to custom, the Controller’s trumpeters would announce the principal guests, and a procession would form which would lead them to the banqueting-room. The commander of the Flanders galleys would, one assumed, accompany the Controller. The Dauphin Louis, they said, had also consented to be present.

She had met him once in Brussels, a sharp-featured man in his thirties. She had been about to leave on her three-year exile to Scotland. He had just fled to Burgundy to escape the court of his father in France.
One day he would be king of that country. He was welcome to it. Meanwhile …

Ah. Dyers did not, then, ostracise the antagonists of other dyers. There, on the other side of the hall, was Simon of Kilmirren.

Steering her father discreetly from group to group, Katelina van Borselen made her way across Controller Bladelin’s crowded hall to where gleamed the remarkable hair of Simon of Kilmirren under a leafy concoction of taffeta. Trailing leaves feathered his oversleeves, and his jacket was buttoned with acorns. He had his back to her.

His stance was unwontedly stiff, as if in the presence of royalty. Yet he was one of a casual circle. It included Giovanni Arnolfini, the silk merchant. The short dark man was her father’s friend Joao Vasquez, the Duchess’s secretary and a kinsman by marriage to Simon’s sister. The two wearing damask with hat-jewels of vegetable proportions were without doubt Venetians. Conversing in halting French, they would now and then turn to Arnolfini for help, or to the seventh of the group, whom she could not see, but whose Italian sounded like Tommaso Portinari’s efforts at French. Her lips twitched.

Then her father entered the circle and Simon turned and saw her. He frowned.
Frowned!

“My lord Simon! How delightful,” said Katelina, “to see they have released you. Were you in prison for long?”

She spoke in French. Even the Venetians, she hoped, would manage to translate most of that. To her gratification, the volatile face of her suitor went white with anger. Her father, gripping her arm, said, “Katelina, what are you thinking of? Monsieur of Kilmirren has not been imprisoned!”

She looked puzzled. “For killing that youth? Oh, forgive me! As a foreigner, of course you would be exempt from our laws. What am I thinking of?”

A sonorous voice at her ear said, “Madame, whatever your thoughts, they cannot fail to enchant by virtue of their delectable instrument, your noble person. Perhaps I might beg to be presented?”

The speaker could only be the seventh man, he of the Italian-French. She turned, amused, and felt her confidence dwindle.

The florid words had not come from a smiling gallant, but from a man in his early to middle fifties, whose substantial height was only matched by his stoutness. The fur-trimmed velvet which fell to the ground would have made the sails for a good-sized cargo-vessel, except that few fleet-owners could have afforded its price. The jewelled chain round his shoulders was worth a castle and the fur on his plain hat was sable. Below it, his clean-shaven face was many-chinned like some fat friar’s, but unlike the traditional fat friar, held no geniality. The lips which had paid her the compliment were politely smiling, but the eyes were wintry.

“Ah, your pardon.” The Duchess’s secretary. “Madama Katelina,
may I present le sire Jordan, vicomte de Ribérac? Monseigneur lives in France, and is here on business to do with the galleys. Monseigneur, Der Florence van Borselen and his elder daughter Katelina. And Madama, may I make known Messer Orlando and Messer Piero of the Flanders galleys?”

A slight movement of the fat man’s broad shoulders appeared to constitute a bow. “Then continue, Madame Katelina, with your lively history,” said the vicomte. “A Scottish war has broken out, here in Bruges?”

Someone laughed – the Lucchese Arnolfini. “Not quite, monseigneur. An episode involving an apprentice with no harm done on either side. Madame Katelina has clearly heard some false rumour.”

“I am afraid she has,” said Simon clearly. His face was still rather pale, with its frown firmly imprinted. He said, “Indeed, I see friends I must rejoin. Will you excuse me?”

He turned without waiting for leave. “Friends?” said Katelina as he passed her. And in a voice pitched to carry no further, “Female friends, perhaps? The other kind seem to be lacking.”

He paused. His back to the company, he kept his voice low, as hers was. He said, “Your apprentice friend has them too, you know. Indeed, you might well blame yourself for what happened to him. It was you, after all, who passed on his good opinion of me in the first place.” Then she was left, frowning in her turn, gazing after him.

“Madame can tell us,” said the mellow voice of the vicomte de Ribérac, again in her ear. She turned round resentfully. She understood, she thought, why Simon had looked so ruffled when she arrived. His anger had not been directed at her. And yet – he did have a temper. How had he discovered that it was the apprentice who had spoken those disparaging words in her hearing? It worried her. Because it made her responsible, too, for what had happened.

The fat man said, “Madame Katelina, you cannot leave us in suspense. Messer Orlando relates a wonderful tale of an apprentice attacked at shear-point by none other than our absent friend Simon. Can it be true?”

The tone was jocular. The eyes were not. Katelina said, “Messer Arnolfini is right. I know only by hearsay. My lord Simon conceived a dislike for an apprentice, and their paths crossed. There was a fight, which the apprentice lost. The stabbing was an accident, I am sure.”

The vicomte de Ribérac’s lips moved in a smile. “A feud between a nobleman and an apprentice! It would hardly happen in France. A youth is impertinent: he is beaten, not fought.”

“Oh, Claes was beaten,” said Katelina. “He replaced my lord Simon in the bed of a serving-girl and was responsible for the death of his dog. For both these things he was thoroughly beaten. And imprisoned.”

“As is, surely, natural?” said the fat man. “Then the apprentice in turn, I deduce, tried to kill monsieur Simon? Messer Orlando?”

The Venetian in black damask put a finger to his beard, striving to understand. He said, “The fight? But it was the labourer, I am told, who wounded Messer the Scotsman with his shears. Messer the Scotsman, instead of having him killed, chose to fight him with staves, a weapon of the people. I consider this a mistake. A nobleman does not meddle with peasants. In the event, the youth received what he deserved.”

“He was killed?” said the fat man.

“Nearly,” said Katelina. “Because your noble Scotsman stabbed him with the same shears after beating him nearly to death.”

The fat man smiled, and then turned to Vasquez, Arnolfini and Florence van Borselen. “The customs of Burgundy! Well,” he said. “Is this rumour or fact? Monsieur Simon, who could have told us, has unfortunately left. But perhaps he is merely being modest. To best a brutish child of the people with his own chosen weapon is something, surely?”

“And to stab him is something else,” said Katelina coldly.

Her father said, “Katelina. You know that isn’t true. The shears became entangled between them. And the apprentice stabbed Simon in the first place.”

“Did he?” said Katelina. “The
rumour
I heard said that it was an accident.”

The cold eyes remained on her face. “You sound, madame,” said the vicomte de Ribérac, “as if you were no friend to our noble young Scotsman.”

She stared him back. “Then you are right,” said Katelina. “I happen to think him – to know him – to be a self-indulgent, vindictive rake.”

“So I thought. What a pity it all is,” said the fat French nobleman, and heaved a deep sigh. “When you, my dear madame, comprise in all your magnificent parts my perfect ideal of a daughter-in-law.”

Somewhere, trumpets sounded. The conversation in the great hall began to lessen. People moved, to make way for the Controller, for the Dauphin, for the brother of the King of Scots. People began to take their places to walk, two by two to the banquet. Only around one small group did complete silence fall; did no one move.

As if alone, Katelina van Borselen and the gross man called Jordan de Ribérac gazed at one another.

“What a pity,” repeated the fat man, with no emphasis. “For – perhaps I should have told you? Forgive me if I did not think to tell you – your self-indulgent, vindictive rake … really? How very sad! – is my son.”

It was Katelina’s father, she realised afterwards, who, apologising with chilly courtesy, extracted her and led her to take her place in the movement to table. It was her father who, after conversing as duty demanded with his dinner partners, turned to her during the elaborate
meal and said, “You were at fault, as you well know, in expressing immoderate opinions of absent persons in such company. But the greater fault lay with the Frenchman, in allowing such a discussion to take place without revealing his interest.”

Then Katelina, who had thought of nothing else, said, “How could he be his father?”

Florence van Borselen said, “I have enquired. I, too, feel I have been misled. I was informed quite clearly that Simon of Kilmirren was nephew and heir of Alan, lord of that property, and that his own father, Alan’s younger brother long living in France, was either dead or incompetent.”

Katelina shivered. “Incompetent,” she said, “is not the word I would have chosen.”

Her father moved angrily. “I can certainly think of a better,” he said. “There is a man over there, Andro Wodman, a Scot living in France who is here in Jordan de Ribérac’s retinue. The vicomte, he tells me, was landless and of small fortune as a young man. He made his way then to France, fought for the King, gained a favoured place in the Scots Guard and, with advancing years, was given the estate of Ribérac by his grateful monarch. There he has invested his newly made fortune in trade and shipping and other such interests.

“He is a wealthy man now. King Charles leans on him as his adviser. When the Flanders galleys come in from Venice, or the Florentine, or the carracks from Cyprus, M. le vicomte sends his factor to Flanders, but rarely comes himself. He and his son, Wodman says, have not met for many years, but de Ribérac keeps himself informed of all Simon does. His good name, as you see, is of importance to him.”

“And Simon resents him,” said Katelina.

“He would do well to hide it,” said her father dryly. “From what I can see, he has in his father a powerful and unquestioning ally whom he may one day come to need. For instance, you had the vicomte’s favour, it seems.”

“And have forfeited it, it seems,” said Katelina. “Are you as grateful as I am? Or would you have enjoyed including Jordan de Ribérac in the family circle?”

As it sometimes did, honesty overcame expediency in Florence van Borselen. “No,” he said at length. “No. I cannot see myself or your mother, in truth, entertaining that man under my roof now or at any time in the future. There is something unnatural there.”

“Then –” said Katelina; and did not need to finish, for her father put his hand over hers.

“Then,” he said, “if you dislike Simon so much, I shall not force you. There is time. We shall find you a better husband, and one suitable yet.”