The Unicorn Hunt (25 page)

He did, first, what his opponent had done, and threw the axe. He made it appear a mistake, so that instead of striking to kill, it flew towards the glowing cross-timbers of the pan and slid between them, its blade in the salt. It shone, satin-red.

And de Fleury, as he hoped, went after it. They met at the bench-step in collision, the side-plates of the pan searing their ankles and calves. Simon by then already had his grip on the other. He levered and threw. The man crashed on his side on the poles over the salt-pan, arms and legs thrusting. Their purpose was not to save himself, Simon found, but to bring Simon with him.

Wrestling was leverage. And this Fleming was an expert in leverage. So instead of one, both men struggled there, the red-hot
pan full of salt just below them, the hook-heads searing into their bodies, their ripped shirts and hose darkening in the heat, the air burning its way to their lungs. And this time, neither would give way.

The handle of the axe was scorched and smoking. The Fleming reached it first and had grasped it when Simon stopped him, his hands round his waist, and began to draw him away. Perspiration poured down his body and face and turned to steam underneath him: only the leather of the other man’s belt gave him the purchase he needed. Then, within the thickness of the belt, he felt something hard under his fingers. The key.

If he sought for it, he released his opponent to draw out the axe. He hesitated. The other man spoke: it emerged between a gasp and a cry. Somewhere else, the impasse would have merited laughter. The pain increased and Simon wanted to move, but wouldn’t. The other man spoke again. He demanded a rebuttal to do with someone called Umar. He held the axe-handle still, his hand blistering.

Simon remembered that Umar was Loppe. He said, ‘I don’t need to give promises to a corpse. I’ll tell the world about Loppe when you’re dead.’

His attention must have lapsed from the pain. The other man ripped his belt free. Taking proper grip of the axe, the other man swept it out of the salt and held it, radiant, above Simon’s head. Then Nicholas de Fleury brought it down, twice.

It burned through the air, as the sword had. As before, it didn’t touch Simon. Instead, it sliced through the two timbers upon which the end of the salt-pan was carried. De Fleury cut them both short of the traverse beam below which they passed, and then himself gripped the traverse beam hard. Behind him, under the hood, the shortened beams dropped, carrying the pan-supports with them. And the end of the pan, supported on nothing, dropped with a crash into the coals. Something bright followed: the blade of the axe, its handle charred through and snapped with the impact.

De Fleury ignored it. He clung to the beam, his head down, his body sloping, his feet almost touching the flames. Simon, grasping nothing, began to roll down the slope to the trough and caught at his adversary. For a moment he half dragged him loose, and then redoubled his grasp as the other resisted. The blood drummed in Simon’s ears. Neither spoke.

He heard another noise, separate from them both. He saw his captor open his eyes and knew he had heard it as well. Outside, someone beat on the door. Someone shouted. His throat parched and burning, Simon made to answer and stopped. He saw de Fleury lower his head. He was frowning.

Anselm Adorne’s voice said, ‘Nicholas. Open the door.’

This time, the other man didn’t move. It was Simon who pushed, grimly levering himself up the grid, and then preparing for the sudden fast turn that would end it. The other man let him get within six inches of the belt before he seized his wrist and wrung it. Simon swore and flung himself back, so that he almost broke the man’s remaining one-handed grip and saw him fight to retain it. Adorne’s voice said, ‘Simon?’ and this time, it seemed best to answer.

‘He has the key,’ Simon said. It was an excuse, not a complaint. It was far from being a complaint. He did not, at this moment, want Anselm Adorne. He wanted time in which to kill the brute he was fighting. Otherwise he would be hostage to this man for life.

He heard Adorne say, ‘Nicholas, stop. One of you, open the door. You cannot go on, now I am here.’ His voice, without emotion, proclaimed a truth. The other man was a burgess of Bruges; Simon a Scot of reputation. It further proclaimed that he knew, or guessed, what was happening.

Nicholas de Fleury opened his hand. Simon, released, heaved himself painfully to the edge of the grid and let himself crash down in the red gloom to the bench, where he crouched. De Fleury had lifted a hand to his belt.

Simon said, ‘Give me the key.’ The smoke from the disturbed coals made him cough. He didn’t want the key. He wanted a moment’s respite, and then a throwing hold on the other man’s arm.

You could see he, too, was tired. He dragged himself up and, freeing raw fingers, tunnelled down and drew out the key. It lay in the palm of his hand, and he looked at it. Then he tossed it into the heart of the fire.

‘Does that suit you?’ he said; and came, a dark figure, heeling over the edge as Simon had done, to collide with him on the bench and then, grimly, drag him again to the floor.

It was Simon’s intention that only one of them would survive. He had made it clear enough; he knew the other recognised as much, as they locked limbs and wrestled, cheek to cheek and arm to arm, breathing in sobs. This time, the other didn’t slacken or check. This time, their concentration was such that they had no space to notice the eddy of cold air that touched their inferno, or hear the door from the third room pushed wide, or realise who, smaller than either, had managed to squeeze through the high window. Then Katelijne’s voice spoke, a quarter-octave higher than usual, and cutting. ‘The Ambassador my uncle says, if one of
you kills, he will see the other hang.’ She stood, red-lit, her wet feet planted beside them. To move was to hit her.

Beaten by pulses, Simon stopped. The other, too, ceased to move, but did not free Simon; nor did Simon disengage. The agony of the lock continued for seconds. It came to Simon that he was not going to prevail. His strength, deliberately sapped at the beginning, was not enough to break the other man’s grip in this bout. He could not kill; yet he must. Well, to begin with, he could maim; and the girl would have to look out or shift. He drew on all his powers and thrust.

A panful of warm foetid water slapped full into his face and another drenched his opponent. Unable to breathe, Simon relaxed his grasp, retching and choking, and felt his body released as the other man, too, caught his breath. The girl, grim-faced, had another scoop almost ready. Simon, gasping, rolled aside and rose on his good elbow. Beside him, the Fleming did the opposite, dropping his head on his arm. He was shaking with what might have started as laughter.

‘The key,’ said the girl.

De Fleury said, ‘It is in the fire.’ Simon found he was trembling too.

The girl threw down the scoop and stepped back into the firelight. Barefoot and stripped to her soot-besmeared small-clothes, she appeared as voluptuous as the wick of a lamp. She gave them both one searching look and then, scrambling about in the dark, found the tongs and the rake, and sprang with them up to the bench where she began, cricket-elbowed, to rummage into the fire.

Where the rake had been, the blades of the shears flickered once, red in the new flames.

Simon sat up by degrees. The other man lay on his face, breathing fast as if spent. The low fire, reflected from the roof, showed the pale triangle of shoulder and waist, scrawled over by dirt and scorchmarks and blood and patterned with fissures through which the flesh showed merely black. His own was the same. They were well matched. But the other had taken care to create his advantage. No one else had ever had Simon dragged running and tied between two horses, or hounded by dogs. For that alone, he deserved death.

Simon turned and, flinging himself full length, seized the shears and brought them round in a single red murderous swing.

The girl shrieked. The other man, obeying some instinct, threw himself over and away and then turned, crouching, his fingers touching the ground as the shearpoints sank thudding down where
he had been. Simon tugged them out and then stopped, for the girl was standing between them again, and in her two hands was the door-key held fast in the claws of the tongs. Claws and door-key glowed red. She said, ‘Give me the shears.’

Behind her, the younger man stood. He said, ‘Give her them.’

Simon hesitated. The key was darkening. She was only a girl.

She was Adorne’s niece, and a witness.

He said, ‘There are other ways,’ and flung the shears to the back of the room. The girl was so short that he and de Fleury stood eye to eye, even though she was placed between them. Then she had gone, running, to open the door.

The other man said, ‘There are no other ways.’

‘You have partners,’ Simon said. ‘And possessions. Berecrofts will regret sheltering you, my friend, before this night is over.’

‘The night is over, for you,’ the other man said, his voice strange, and stepped forward.

It was the last vindictive flare of their battle, and brief though it was, it lasted in its fury until fresh, cold, powerful hands pulled them apart and held them, still struggling, like beasts. Then Simon stood still and Anselm Adorne, slackening his grip, transformed it into one of light support. Opposite, young Sersanders kept a strong arm round de Fleury until he too was still. Then Adorne’s nephew shifted his grasp, with no tenderness, to his arms. His eyes, scanning Simon, were bright with horrified anger, and his dress caked and glistening with snow. Behind, the open door was a luminous rectangle of swirling, feathery white. Nicholas de Fleury said, ‘You wouldn’t care to give us five more minutes alone? For the price of a ship?’

Adorne said, ‘You are barking-drunk, both of you. So is half the Court. St Pol, take my cloak and go while I hold him. There are horses waiting outside. Can you manage to ride to Linlithgow?’

Simon said, ‘He had me dragged here roped to two riders.’ He had not meant to blurt it out. But the alternative, now, was to have the other man walk out scatheless to Berecrofts.

Nicholas de Fleury said, ‘I felt he deserved it. Should we not tell the whole story? Should we not go back and complain to the parasol of authority together?’ The girl had brought in a torch, quick as a firefly, and was lighting others. They made a sunken glare of de Fleury’s face, the dimples black as charcoal, or scorchmarks. The cool response had come from a furnace.

Adorne spoke to Simon. ‘Pay no attention. You can’t. Go. I shall take care of this.’

‘No,’ the Fleming said.

‘Do I need to explain?’ Adorne said. He stood, cloakless now, experienced and, of course, admirable, as he had stood victor in the lists against Simon himself. He said, ‘So far, no one knows of this but we five. Do you want the world to witness this feud? St Pol, go!’ The girl, running about, was raking together all the lethal debris under their feet and throwing it, with efficiency, into the third room, where the snow was melting under the window.

‘Let us go together,’ de Fleury said. The girl looked at him, and shut the door.

Adorne said, ‘So that you can attack him again?’

‘Would you let me?’ said de Fleury. ‘I won’t harm him.’

‘I don’t propose to let you try,’ Adorne said.

‘Then you’ll have to follow us,’ Nicholas de Fleury said; and, flinging Sersanders off, took a first step towards Simon. Adorne exclaimed and sprang forward. Someone – the girl – dragged at Simon’s arm, pulling him towards the door, and thrusting her uncle’s cloak into his arms. Simon looked back.

Adorne shouted ‘Go!’ The word ended in a gasp. From the door, Simon saw the three men struggling together. There was nothing he could do. Just now, there was no way he could get rid of this man. But there would be other times. And meanwhile, there was Berecrofts, where the Bank of Niccolò kept more than one ledger whose loss would be felt.

He took the cloak and found himself outside the door, in a blue-white world of thick falling snow. He found the three Adorne horses, drooping in a bare withy shelter, and mounting one stiffly, turned its face to the west. The place must have been full of people but he saw no one: only the night, and the white veils of snow, hung with the rose-coloured blooms of the salt-fires.

He would have seen, had he remained, a struggle as bitter as any that had taken place within the last hour, as two fresh men tried to contain a third for whom, at the moment, exhaustion did not exist, as he tried to enforce his will, without weapons.

Adorne and Sersanders, in turn, did not draw their swords. At first, after overcoming the disadvantage of surprise, it was enough to bring de Fleury down, and then block his way to the door. But after that, the ferocity of the fighting took them both by surprise, and twice he nearly escaped them. Once, breathless, Adorne tried to reason. ‘Nicholas, why? You can do nothing. You’ll be hanged if you kill him.’

And then Nicholas said, ‘He’s going to set fire to Berecrofts.’

‘Simon?’ Sersanders said. And he laughed.

Adorne would have known better. As it was, de Fleury kicked,
and kicked again, and when he got to his knees, he had Adorne’s sword in his hand, and the point of it at Adorne’s throat. He said, ‘Let me go, or come with me.’ And Sersanders, crazily, took out his own sword and slashed.

De Fleury engaged it. He played with him, moving backwards all the way to the door. It was half open. De Fleury glanced once behind him; and then again, fighting still, at Adorne leaping towards him. The girl was almost on him as well. She was carrying something.

Adorne reached him. Sersanders, striking wildly, found his steel locked and wrenched out of his grasp. He staggered back. De Fleury took one step through the door and Adorne grasped him. De Fleury said, ‘
No!
’

It was apparent then that against three, he would lose. The girl was close; Sersanders had already scooped up his sword; Adorne’s grip was unexpectedly fierce. Adorne’s eyes, magistrate’s eyes, seized and held his. Nicholas de Fleury said, ‘I have a sword. I will use it.’

‘Then you will have to,’ said Anselm Adorne.