Niccolo Rising (43 page)

The Adorne child, poor thing, looked as stricken as the chaplain. She said, “I want to go home,” in a strangled voice.

“All right,” said Gelis van Borselen. “Take my maid. Matten, go with them. Help the demoiselle if she needs it. You needn’t bother to come back.”

Christ. Claes said, “Then we’ll all go back to the Hôtel Jerusalem.”

The fat girl stared at him. “I’m not leaving,” she said. “And I’ve sent my manservant home. I’ll stay by myself if you don’t want to keep your promises. You did promise.”

With undesirable but understandable speed, the group about him was dissolving. Untying Catherine, finding some sort of words to say to Tilde and the retreating chaplain, Claes caught the essential phrase and was in time to plunge after the vanishing manservant and drag him back by the arm. He looked frightened.

With reason. “I told him to go,” said the child. “Or he would hear about it from my father.”

“And I,” said Claes firmly, “am telling him to stay, or your father will hear about this from me. Where did this cloak and mask come from?”

“I borrowed them.” Her chin came up, improving the view slightly.

“I’m sure. And if you take them back in time, perhaps no one will say anything about it. So I shall make you an offer. Ten minutes here at the
tightrope. Ten minutes dancing with some of my friends. Ten minutes for the fireworks and the bonfire. And then our friend here and I take you home to your sister.”

Gelis said, “I’m not staying with Katelina. I’m staying at my lord of Veere’s house where Charles is. Do you want to know why?”

She wasn’t a bad child. Ahead of him, unexpectedly, glimmered the promise, at the end of it all, of an hour or two to spend as he pleased. With whom he pleased.

He listened, peaceably, to the item of information she was pressing upon him, and found it, indeed, nearly as interesting as she thought it was.

Chapter 19

A
S CHILDREN WERE
taken home, masqueraders began to fill the streets. Gradually, among the fustian, there appeared thick cloaks of furred velvet with glimpses of pearled sleeve and gold fringe and silk brocade underneath. And next to the felt caps and decent hoods and white bonnets there would brush past a griffon, a jester, an eagle. A unicorn would turn to look at a pretty ankle, or a ship in full sail pass by laughing, or a goat or a Charlemagne pause to toss a coin and pick up a sweetmeat.

Katelina van Borselen was not yet among them. The cloak she was going to wear lay on the table by the great window in her parents’ house. Every now and then, she paused by the window to see if her mother’s three suitors were waiting yet. The house was empty but for its gatekeepers. They were there to protect it, for the other servants had leave to stay out, or were with her parents at the lord of Veere’s house. They were there to protect her as well, in case her escort failed to come, or proved undesirable. Or in case (as was not entirely unheard of) one cavalier disputed with another, and she was left waiting with none.

Usually, however, there was no unpleasantness. The candidate proffered his scroll and was chosen or excused with courtesy. Unknown in his mask, he lost no face before a waiting rival. Unless, of course, he was confident enough to bring his liveried torch-bearers, his pages, his servants. As, glancing out, she saw presently that Guildolf de Gruuthuse had done.

She had missed his arrival. He was already waiting under the eaves of the opposite houses. He was cloakless. From the neck up, there was nothing of him to be seen but the pelt, eyeholes and fangs of a magnificent leopard-head. From the neck down, the lamplight displayed a brief, fur-hemmed tunic and the negligent line of his hose, exposed from mid-thigh to the soles of his feet. One gloved hand rested at his hip. In the other, exposed to the light, was a masquerade scroll. And behind him, with the Gruuthuse cannon on every shoulder, were
six liveried servants. One of them held a ribboned lute like a cat by the tail.

He had just, she thought, taken up his stance, because the group he had come with were still in sight, calling and laughing. As she watched, others passed, and there were exchanges of some hilarity. This was normal. The moment she appeared, he would revert to the usage of chivalry. She ought to go down. She ought to make quite sure, first, that there were no other contenders (was it likely?). Katelina, with the greatest discretion, peered from the window.

There
was
another contender. A man both taller and broader than Guildolf, waiting serenely, scroll in hand, beside her own gatepost. He was alone, with no servants or device to distinguish him. Of his shape she could see nothing either, for he was cloaked from his mask to his boots. And of the mask itself she could make little in the uncertain light. It seemed to be made up of feathers.

She hesitated. Then she took up her cloak and descended the stairs of her father’s house slowly. She crossed the yard, and spoke to one of the porters, who opened the gates. She stepped through them.

The big man with the cloak was, of course, nearest, but she must acknowledge them both. Katelina faced the distant leopard and dropped him a solicitous curtsey, but turned to deal first, as was natural, with the nameless suitor beside her. She dipped her skirts again, with marked refinement, and held out her hand for his paper.

He knelt, presenting it. The headdress, catching the light, proved to be the mask of an owl. The name on the scroll was that of the suitor from Courtrai, which was odd, as she’d believed him a short man. On the other side of the road Guildolf de Gruuthuse had set out to join her, and was crossing the cobbles with elegance.

So. There were no other claimants. She had to choose between the beast and the bird. Beside her the bird, who had risen, chuckled under his breath. Suitors were not supposed to speak. In mellow Flemish with an undertone somewhere of French, this one made a short statement. “Pick him if you like, but he plays the lute like a butcher, and squeezes his boils every morning at table. That’s the idea of the leopard. By the time he takes the mask off, you’ve got used to them. He’s keeping the rest of the skin for his bridal night.”

She choked. Controlling herself made her eyes water. The handsome legs and the leopard-head arrived before her. The wealth of the Gruuthuses. Twenty years of child-bearing. Boils.

Katelina van Borselen curtseyed again to Guildolf de Gruuthuse, but laid his scroll gently back in the hands which had offered it. “My lord, I am honoured, but you have been forestalled by another. God give you a happy evening and night, and may we drink together one day in friendship.”

He was disconcerted in the extreme. It was, she saw, rather unlikely that he would drink with her or any member of her family again. She
hoped that her mother, who had created this fiasco, could repair it with equal facility, and rather thought that she could. After all, it was her mother who had issued, as it were, three invitations. Someone was bound to be disappointed. The idea that three people might be disappointed was not, of course, something that her mother had contemplated.

Katelina was not greatly concerned. In her view, what mattered was whether or not the evening was likely to proceed in such a manner that she, Katelina, would not be disappointed. She curtseyed deeply, and the Gruuthuse boy bowed and marched off, his entourage following raggedly, with all their mouths at different angles. The man carrying the lute made, behind his master’s back, a light-hearted manoeuvre with it that Katelina hoped she didn’t understand. A low booming sound from under her companion’s mask told her that he had noticed it too. She realised that she had chosen a vulgar man and was visited by a strong qualm.

Perhaps he observed it. At any rate, he made her a bow of elaborate and expert dimensions, presented his arm, and laying his hand on top of hers, proceeded to lead her up the street in the wake of the richly dressed courtiers ahead of them.

The first open courtyard they came to was the Controller’s. On Carnival night, their clothes, their masks, their jewels were the only passkey gentlefolk needed. They swept under the archway and into the lantern-lit garden where fire-baskets glowed through the wine they took in their glasses. High in a tower, flutes and fiddles and viols penetrated the chatter, and a small diligent drum paraphrased it.

People moved, and circled, and went. Once, there came winding under the trees an arcade of dancers, linked hands high, sleeves swaying below finials of monstrous and beautiful headgear. In the icy February night, the women’s headdresses bloomed like camellias or lily-spikes; or seemed fit for eating, like gourds and pastry-puffs and heaps of sugared sweet things, bound with angelica.

Tonight, she had left behind the famous hennin, and her maidservant had pleated strands of her hair through a thin goldsmith’s caul, and made the rest into a thick ribboned braid, long enough to be pressed by her cut-velvet skirts when she seated herself. Tonight, her four-stranded gold necklace from Lyons lay upon bare skin instead of the eternal infill of gauze, and she had rings on most of her fingers.

Her companion, she saw, had none; not even a signet. It confirmed what she guessed, although, observing the rules, he did not speak again. He knew what manners required. To begin with, she made few demands on him, but later, as they moved from Bladelin’s to the new-built courtyard of the Ghistelhof and from there to the house of Vasquez; from the palace of Jean de Gros to the Seven Towers or the hall of the Archers’ Guild; when they ventured into the great mansion of Gruuthuse without meeting a leopard, and finished in the gardens of
the Princenhof itself, guests of the absent Count of Charolais – then, tentatively, she ventured to take part in the dances and found that she had no need for concern, because he was skilled in their figures and deft in their execution. When she wished refreshment, he served her punctiliously, and also such of her friends as they met.

Sometimes, at a less formal encounter, he served them in other ways, making them gasp and laugh by the way he tossed and juggled their plates and made knives calmly appear or disappear. He was not vulgar, she found to her relief, but he was amusing. And he neither took off his cloak, nor did he touch her, except by the hand or the elbow. Only she noticed, while she was able to notice, that he so managed that she was offered a great deal to drink.

She was not disturbed. She let the evening go where it would lead her, knowing the pattern. At some point he would take her home – to the house empty but for the porters who, recognising her accredited escort, would allow them both in. She would lead him to her mother’s parlour and, to thank him for his escort, would offer him wine and ask him for the privilege of seeing his face. And he would unmask.

Girls who had told her this much were rarely explicit about what followed. If a conquest had been made, the family of the suitor would pay a call on the family of the prospective bride and an arrangement would be come to.

That was next day. What happened on the evening in question was, evidently, a matter of discretion. But it couldn’t, after all, be very much. The house might be empty, but it wasn’t going to stay empty all night. And under normal circumstances, it didn’t matter much anyway. You asked your approved cavalier to your home, and he came. That meant marriage. Simple, if you brought home the right man. Not so simple, if you didn’t.

It made her tired, thinking about it. Her escort caught her when she stumbled the second time and said, “You must be weary. Shall I take you back to your house?” They were the first words he had spoken after the greeting, and she could not detect in them any accents at all of Courtrai. She said, “I think you’d better.” Then she said, “After you’ve taken the mask off.”

They had stopped facing each other. She waited for him to obey. Instead, the mask with its unblinking owl’s eyes turned from one side to the other in explicit refusal. She stood for a while to see if he would give up, and when he didn’t, she turned and walked off frowning. After a moment he caught up and took her elbow again, for which she was grateful.

At her gate, the duty porter recognised the mask, and being well-trained, merely wished them both a good evening and opened the gates without smiling. He went ahead to unlock the door which led into her hallway, and make sure that the lamps were all burning.

She led the way to her mother’s parlour. She had drunk a great deal,
but thinking of this moment, she had made sure that she was not in any discomfort, and he too, she was aware, had calmly absented himself from time to time. Another, if minor, sign of the adept. So now she could discover from whence all this expertise came.

The fire had burned low. She went to repair it and he said, “Watch your cloak,” in the same level Flemish. She waited, allowing him to unclasp the garment from behind before she knelt: she felt his fingers brush the ruffled rope of her hair. Then, as she mended the fire, he crossed and laid her cloak on a stool.

She expected, when she turned and rose, to find that he had done the same, but he had discarded nothing. She said, “Now you reap your reward for all your gallant service this evening. It is only, I’m afraid, another cup of good wine but at least you may sit, and let me give it to you.” She had reached the cupboard, smiling, but still he had not moved. She lifted two cups and a flask and began to bring them back to the settle before the fireside. She said, “I understand. There is an owl’s face under the owl’s face?”

The cloak was blue in colour, and thick, and fell straight to the ground. He made no effort to remove it. She bent, a little impatient, and set the cups and the flask on a stool and was aware, as she did so, of a lock of released hair swinging close to her shoulder. She tilted her head to collect it, even as she realised what had happened. In removing her cloak, he had released all her hair from its pleat.

She turned, lifting her eyes to question him. She found he was immediately behind her, and the owl mask inches away. He said, “And now the rest of the pretty laces.”

She jerked away from his hands. She moved so sharply indeed, that she left her necklace still in his grip. “Oh no,” said Katelina. “That isn’t part of the bargain.”