The Unicorn Hunt (10 page)

‘You are right,’ said Dr Andreas. ‘There is no need to warn him: he knows.’

The man who, day and night watched Anselm Adorne, slipped down the slope of the High Street and through the fortified gate that divided the burgh of Edinburgh from that of the Canongate. On his left was the road that plunged downhill and northwards to Leith. Ahead was the highway to Holyrood Abbey. Packed between the two was the merchant colony presided over by the family Berecrofts, among which was the house of the Banco di Niccolò; two floors of it finished, the rest in the hands of the masons.

Julius its lawyer was there, as well as its master and patron. ‘Well?’ Julius said when the spy had gone off. ‘You said Jordan would try Adorne first. Now you know Simon will follow.’

‘I am brilliant,’ de Fleury said, being sick, for the moment, of Julius. They had spent the last three weeks on the road with the Court, hunting, shooting, riding, hawking and discussing, among other things, the King’s wedding and the country’s financial wellbeing. In the evenings they had played games and danced.

M. de Fleury had won, without much trouble, a great deal at cards and had achieved, without much trouble, a mild acclaim for inventing new diversions of a socially acceptable kind. He was, it was established, seldom unwilling to sing, and in private displayed a gift for deadly and accurate mime which had come to the ears of the King and his brother. On the other hand, he had not courted royal attention. His business had been with the royal officials. He and Julius had been intermittent guests in a very large household which also held, at intervals, the Burgundian Envoy and his suite. Anselm Adorne had had several exchanges, always pleasant, with Nicholas de Fleury of Bruges.

The evening of licence at Leith had not been repeated. The squires in whom reposed charge of the King and his siblings had been smartly dealt with, and exercise on the shorelands curtailed. It told Nicholas de Fleury what he already knew, that this was a well-conducted court, of such a size that a handful of good men could run it. Of all the other actors of that night, he had interest only in Anselm Adorne. The girl Beth, he rather thought, had gone back to her father.

Since then he had hardly been celibate, but had not as yet managed to coax to his bed, or indeed anywhere, the particular woman he was interested in. The problem pleased him. He found
it entertaining to compound his physical assets: to dress as always in black, with a jewel placed each day on his glove, or his hat, or his breast, all of them set in the heaviest gold like the deeply worked chain which crossed his shoulders. His sword of ceremony was Byzantine and inlaid, and old. The Emperor of Trebizond who had given it to him had been a degenerate and a fool, and his courtiers good for nothing but reclining in shadow, debating.

Nicholas de Fleury was not only far from a fool: he was an artist. Within his dress he moved with a magnificent freedom, as eloquent as if he wore nothing at all. He had been expertly taught and, moreover, had lately spent much of his time in a climate where clothes were an irrelevance. He had no doubt that the one lady he wanted would come to him in the end. By Christmas, perhaps. Certainly before January had ended: he couldn’t wait longer than that. But first, among a thousand delicate tasks, he had to make this visit to Haddington. He thought he would make it soon, before Simon came to town. He supposed he should inform Julius now.

Julius was drinking claret, while waiting to be told what to think. Nicholas poured himself a cup of water and, when the builders’ dirt rose to the surface, threw it, without speaking, at the opposite wall.

Seventeen miles to the east of Edinburgh the priory of Haddington, the fourth largest town in the kingdom of Scotland, lay by its river in autumnal farmlands packed with fat Cistercian sheep, grazed by handsome Cistercian cattle, ploughed into soft, rich furrows for healthy Cistercian grain and thoroughly planted with fruit trees and vegetables. The mill-wheels groaned; the bells chimed; the dogs barked; the carts rumbled away to the tan-pits, the weavers, the markets; and the Prioress and her twenty white-gowned nuns were to be seen as often outside the precinct walls among the vast army of lay workers and servants as inside at their devotions. The priory of Haddington was not only a wealthy landed estate, it was rural lodging, salon and nursery for eminent ladies.

Katelijne Sersanders approved. She had not quite believed that she would escape the kind of convent her cousins inhabited, wrapped in stillness and piety. Haddington, on the contrary, could afford the luxurious appointments of a court because it was a court: Margaret was not the first royal child to be reared there. The nuns were of gentle birth and hand-picked from sister houses. There was one from Waverley, England; and one from Cîteaux itself. And providing companionship for the élite of the kingdom were other ladies and children who, for one reason or another, had retired (or
almost retired) from the world, and could afford to pay for their keep, or were important enough to have it paid for them.

The priory performed other duties as well. The high officers of the kingdom and the burghs had been known to gather in its capacious Great Chamber. Envoys and couriers lodged there; the King would come to see his young kindred while hunting; the finest tutors were paid to visit and give of their wisdom to the royal infants in tutelage. There was therefore no shortage of entertainment or sport or, of course, work.

Katelijne Sersanders, royal attendant, had a buoyant if occasionally menacing relationship with the lady Margaret, aged eight, but shared her tasks with several others, from the body-nurse Mariota to the well-bred nun Alisia, who taught the child her letters and manners, a little Latin and French, and some simple techniques of embroidery.

On the whole, Katelijne preferred the two Sinclair cousins, so unlike each other. Mistress Phemie Dunbar was an unmarried lady of wry demeanour, privately devoted to poetry, and skilled in the art of settling disputes without seeming to try. Her mother’s niece Dame Betha Sinclair had brought up one princess already, and was the widowed mother of three extremely docile young girls who sometimes flinched when she passed them, chiefly because of the volume of her voice. On matters of deportment, Mistress Phemie and Dame Betha were mentors unparalleled, both being the daughters of earls.

Least of all, Katelijne enjoyed the days when the Prioress herself chose to teach, although the lady Elizabeth was a powerful woman, trading in her own right with Bruges, and equally ready, if she had to, to man and command the fortalice she was building as a precaution. As a precaution against England, their presently amiable neighbour over the Border.

Most of all, Katelijne relished her lessons with the musician, Will Roger. It was best when Margaret wasn’t present, and there were only one or two boys and herself, with her maidservant Emmelot chaperoning them, asleep (despite the noise) in the corner. It was after one such hilarious afternoon that she glanced out to the courtyard, Master Willie chatting beside her, and saw what new arrival had emerged from the gatehouse.

He seemed to be expected. She saw the porter ushering him across; the steward coming out to direct his men; the stablemen hurrying to lead off the horses. The newcomer had two servants with him and ten mounted men, all in black, and a burly companion of unknown provenance, who remained at his side.

‘Balls!’ said Katelijne Sersanders.

‘What?’ said her tutor.

‘Remember? Balls,’ said the Princess’s companion. ‘And I still have his ballocks knife. Tell him. I’ll get it.’ She whirled, colliding with the collected person of Mistress Phemie, upon which she had the grace to blush.

Mistress Phemie, in her habitual dress of high-necked gown and neat wimple, gave no sign of alarm, her attention being diverted, in her turn, to the visitor. She said, ‘What a beautiful man.’

Unlike her taste in poetry, Mistress Phemie’s grasp of secular matters was shaky. Katelijne corrected her. ‘He isn’t. He just walks as if he is. It’s my uncle’s friend M. de Fleury. Did you know he was coming?’

‘Of course,’ said Mistress Phemie. Above her chastely bound jaw, her round copper eyes followed the newcomer. ‘He brings godly news of the evangelisation of Africa; setting up the truth, as Athanasius says, as a light upon its miraculous candlestick. Also he knows how to value our wool in the boll compared with the heathenish throw-away prices offered for Catalan.’

‘I thought,’ said Will Roger, puzzled, ‘that Catalan wool came from other Cistercian houses?’

Mistress Phemie’s jaw prodded its wimple. ‘I pray you,’ she said, ‘refrain from reminding our holy mother, the Prioress. She is a great lady, but details escape her.’

Will Roger was among those who, an hour-glass after that, gathered with nuns, prioress and household, guests and officers, to learn about the Land of the Blacks through the equally unreliable memory of Nicholas de Fleury. The music master, a virtuoso entertainer himself, admired the performance. Here was not a beautiful man, by God no. But here was a skilful one.

At the end, he joined in the applause. It was merited. ‘Poor Father Godscalc!’ they exclaimed. ‘How terrible! How sad! And what can be done for the heathen?’

To which their visitor answered by shaking his head. ‘Nothing. Indeed, I am told the tribes have since rebelled, and Timbuktu and its sinners destroyed within sight of redemption. One must weep. One must weep, even for blacks.’

Then he answered their questions until, after a while, the discussion insensibly had departed from the Joliba to matters of deep concern to thinking people, such as the margin for pricing their leeks and the means of obtaining better terms for their fells and even how to make a profit from coal. One of the nuns, subject to sudden enthusiasms, exclaimed, ‘But we know, don’t we, who
could help there?’ and subsided, eyes lowered, before the Prioress’s quick frown. De Fleury, who had excellent manners, paid no attention.

To one or two, his manners perhaps were too striking. Will Roger, a silent spectator, was not surprised when Dame Betha crossed to sit beside him and, for once, lowered her voice. ‘That man. What do you know of him?’

She knew, better than he, who de Fleury was. He knew what she was asking, but preferred to hedge. ‘He can swim,’ Roger said. ‘And sing. And act, I suspect. Katelijne?’

She thought. She always thought. She said, ‘He tells lies very well. He is angry. He is rich, and married to Gelis van Borselen, who is related to the young Scottish King and to other great families by marriage. He used to be an apprentice. He is not nice, but I like him.’

‘You like everybody,’ said Will Roger. She was right. It was anger. He said, ‘Mistress Phemie, what about you?’

The round, copper eyes had become canopied. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Why is he here?’

Her charge had been listening. The lady Margaret made her red hair flounce with impatience. ‘You’ve just heard. About sailing to Africa. About taking Christ to the black men. Ask him yourself.’

He was touring the room with the Prioress. He was meeting even the cooks. He was talking to Emmelot, who came from Liège, as he would find out to his cost. When he reached the King’s fiery-haired little sister, the lady Margaret didn’t ask about black men. She said, ‘You haven’t taught me or Sandy to swim.’

His doublet velvet was cut in two heights. He said, ‘No, your grace, it’s too cold. I’ll teach you both football instead. Mistress Katelijne, I want my ballocks knife back.’

‘Where?’ said Katelijne, producing it point first in a considering way. Girls with brothers, Will Roger had noticed, were seldom easily flustered.

‘After dark, in the dairy? No? Thank you.’ He received the knife from her and turned. ‘And Master Roger. I thought you wore green. Viva Savoia.’

‘It was only a loan,’ said Will Roger. ‘You’re not very inventive yourself. The same scent, even. I enjoyed the story of Barbaria in Afric. It would curdle milk.’

‘That was the scent,’ de Fleury said. ‘I hear you’re teaching music to everybody: pigs, bell-ringers, ploughmen. Crackbene here wants to learn. And who is the good maidservant Ada, whom, they tell me, you are training to sing to the pots?’

Roger considered the question. The good maidservant Ada was here; he could see her at the back of the room. She had got the baby out, and the wherewithal to feed it, and was applying one to the other with gusto. The child had a large round yellow head and so had Ada. She also had a remarkable chest-voice.

De Fleury, following his gaze, drew a melodious breath. It was, one had to admit, an impressive picture. Roger said, ‘You’re in luck: she usually has a head either side. The lady Mary sent her over, I’m told. Warm your bed in a trice, if you’re staying.’

The breath emerged all at once as a snort. ‘Why not?’ said the other. ‘I’ve been asked to stop overnight. With my former shipmaster: you know him? Crackbene, do you want your bed warmed? No, leave the subject: we’ve been summoned to Dame Elizabeth’s parlour. What shall we talk about there?’

‘Well, sir,’ someone said. ‘What about your precious wife, Gelis van Borselen?’

De Fleury wheeled. Dame Betha, adroitly risen, fell into step alongside him. She said, ‘The lady de Fleury? I hear delightful news, Master Nicholas.’

The Fleming walked on. ‘You know my wife Gelis?’ he said.

She was passably young, for the mother of three and a widow. She was nosy. She said, ‘Do I ken my own wean? Your lady served the King’s sister Mary; I reared her. The Countess of Arran, that is.’

‘And the Earl your father tutored the King. What finer mentors,’ said Nicholas de Fleury, ‘could any man desire for his wife!’ He quickened his pace into the parlour.

If he thought the topic closed, he was wrong. The Prioress sat, and waved de Fleury to a place at her side. Dame Betha leaned over. ‘Prioress, here is the husband of Gelis, and you and I have something to tell him.’ She had small, well-shaped teeth of various colours, and a shrewd eye which she turned on Will Roger.

The musician looked at the ceiling.
Warm your bed in a trice
. He should have kept his mouth shut, or horn in it.

The Prioress said, ‘Family news perhaps deserves better privacy.’