The Unicorn Hunt (33 page)

‘Hymns from the chapel,’ Margot said. She seemed to wait. Then she spoke in a subdued voice. ‘Nicholas? Now we have told you, will you be patient? The baby is young. It isn’t supposed to be born. You can go back reassured. Tell your friends that Gelis is well. You can be certain the baby will thrive.’

‘And then?’ Nicholas said. He did not turn.

‘I dare say you will come again,’ said Gelis’s voice. ‘Then we can discuss what to do.’

‘If you are here,’ Nicholas said. He moved then, and closing the casement, fastened it slowly. ‘And even if you are, the child may not be. Or may have turned into a freak again, or a mistake, or even died of some mysterious illness.’ He turned.

‘It will be here for you,’ Margot said. Gelis said nothing.

‘I intend that he will,’ Nicholas said. ‘And until then, he will be in a place of my choosing. Where is he now?’

‘Not here,’ Gelis said. She had separated from Margot.

‘Where?’ He was looking at Margot.

Gelis said, ‘She doesn’t know. Come again in a month. Come again when he looks more like Simon. Then tell me if you want him.’

Her eyes went past him to the window. Margot said, ‘What is that?’ and came quickly forward. Gelis hesitated and then followed her to the window. He stood aside to let them look out.

The cries were loud by then, and the sound of trampling horses, and of angry voices and blows. The voices were those of the servants, and the blows were struck by the younger grooms, and even by the fist of a nun or two. They were aimed at a troop of forty armed men which had surrounded them and was driving them briskly indoors.

His men were well trained, and obeyed orders. They used their arms in defence; they did their best not to retaliate. The yard emptied. His captain, looking up, nodded.

Gelis said, ‘You broke your word. You weren’t alone.’

He used a dimple, which she could interpret quicker than anyone. ‘You should have had the road better watched. You broke a promise more binding than mine. But for that, I shouldn’t have called them.’

‘What will they do?’ Margot said.

‘Find the child.’

She said, ‘It isn’t here. Gelis sent it away. Don’t distress these good holy people.’

‘I shan’t touch them,’ he said. ‘So long as they tell me where it is.’

‘They don’t know,’ Gelis said.

‘Then I am sorry for them,’ said Nicholas and, walking across, resumed his seat and folded his arms.

‘This has gone too far,’ Margot said. She seized the key and grasping the door, unlocked it and ran from the room. Gelis made no effort to stop her; neither did he.

‘So she doesn’t know about Simon,’ Nicholas said. ‘You wouldn’t care to send her back to Gregorio? This type of campaign is not for the sensitive.’

‘She thinks I need protection,’ said Gelis. ‘What did Simon say about me?’

‘All of it? I stopped him halfway, since there was nothing new in it.’

‘And you fought him.’

‘Over something else, yes. Hand to hand. He was very surprised. Has the child been baptised?’ Below, someone screamed.

‘Yes. I chose a name you would like. What will you do?’ The same person sobbed.

‘I thought I’d mentioned it. You can stay with the child for a month. Then you can present it in Bruges, and come with it to begin family life with me in Scotland.’

‘And Simon?’ she said.

He thought for a moment. ‘I suppose so,’ he said. ‘So long as you are discreet, and he is still there and able. It might be difficult, though. Henry knows all his father’s bedmates, you included. He doesn’t want a brother or sister. In fact, I shouldn’t let Henry too close to – what have you called this son of yours?’

She told him. With all his vaunted percipience, he had never really considered what she might do about that. He was still standing, dumb, when Margot stormed into the room pursued by his complaining captain. Margot strode over to Gelis and, grasping her by the shoulders, pushed her to stand before Nicholas. Margot said, ‘Tell him. Tell him where the child is. Now. And quickly.’

The captain, arriving beside her, was breathless. He said, ‘The Lady’s child isn’t here, my lord. It’s been spirited off to some other estate. But how far away, they won’t say. Sir, have I your leave to persuade them?’

Margot said, ‘Gelis?’ and shook her.

Gelis moved her head from side to side, smiling at Nicholas.

Know your enemy. Know what she will do, and what she will not. Nicholas turned. ‘Persuade them,’ he said.

‘No!’ said Margot, and spun Gelis round by the arm. ‘Tell them what they want to know. Or I shall tell Nicholas everything. And the van Borselen family. I shall break every promise I made you.’

Gelis looked at her. The captain paused, half out of the room. Gelis sighed. Then she said, ‘What a fuss over nothing! What sort of persuasion do you think they would use? And the moment it began to be painful, someone would blurt out the truth. I don’t know why people always will hurry things.’

Involuntarily, Nicholas laughed. He said, ‘Neither do I. But I think that, by any standards, the time has come to concede. Where is the child, Gelis?’

‘Oh, well,’ she said. She turned to the captain. ‘Two hours away. Write it down. I don’t want to be blamed if you lose the way.’ And, calmly, she gave an address.

Margot released her and sat down.

‘You need some food,’ Nicholas said. He walked out and called down the stairs. The captain passed him, running below with the paper. Outdoor noises penetrated almost at once: shouting and the jingle of harness. From inside, below him, there continued a hubbub of voices and crying. No one came to his summons.

Nicholas swore under his breath, but without very much violence. Instead of calling again, he walked down the stairs and into the heart of the uproar. After a while, he got them to listen.
No one had been hurt, and they agreed, after a while, that young women in childbirth had peculiar ideas, and that these were of less importance than the expensive new roof they required for their hospice.

While he was there, he had food sent upstairs, and some ale. He didn’t go upstairs himself, but joined the Abbess in her private parlour, and allowed himself the luxury, all the time she was talking, of one fine glass of wine.

The Abbess said, ‘If you won’t eat, you should sleep. We’ll see the Lady comes to no harm. I shall wake you when the party comes back with the child.’

The chamber he was given was small, and contained only a bed. Gelis was a courtyard away and one floor above him, but he had left men on guard. He expected Margot would sleep. Obviously Gelis would not, nor would he. Not now.

They had to shake him awake. Eventually, he rolled off the bed, and then sat on the edge, slowly dressing. ‘I’m sorry,’ the captain was saying. ‘I’m sorry, we got to the house but they’d gone. It seems like another troop came and took over, and rode away with the babe, none knows where. That’s wicked, sir. Or do you think the mother planned it again?’

‘I expect so,’ he said. ‘And if she’s wise, she probably doesn’t know the real destination herself. Well, I can’t wait. We’ll have to leave it. You’ve done well. I think you’ll find they have some meat and ale here they won’t grudge you, and then a barn where you can sleep for a bit. I’m going back.’

‘I’ll give you a man, sir?’ said the captain. ‘Or more, if the Lady’s going with you?’

He said, ‘No. I’ll go alone. It’s only four hours to Bruges.’ He would have daylight for most if not all of it. The captain, naturally, did not persist.

His horse was already saddled when he went indoors for the last time and ascended the stairs. Margot intercepted him before he could go further. She said painfully, ‘Gelis tricked you. I didn’t know. She let it go so far before she gave in.’ She broke off. She said, ‘Sometimes I think I can’t forgive her. Or you.’

‘No one was hurt,’ Nicholas said. He touched her, and she flinched. ‘The screams were part of the play-acting too.’

‘Simon was hurt,’ she said. ‘You say Lucia is dead, and Henry in some sort of trouble. What kind of play-acting is that? I think you should leave your wife with her child, and give up what you are doing in Scotland.’

He dropped his hand. ‘Do you?’ he said.

‘You can’t want this marriage. Open war, with a child in the middle? And it is escalating. You incite one another.’

‘I expect Gregorio would agree with you,’ Nicholas said. ‘Would you like to come back with me, now that Gelis is well?’

‘You don’t want me with her?’ she said.

Nicholas said, ‘I was thinking of you.’

Once, long ago, Margot had been forced into marriage and fled. Once, long ago, Margot and Gregorio had been unable to marry, but now her husband was dead, and they could. Except that they didn’t.

She shook her head. ‘I don’t want to keep secrets from Goro. I’ll wait until the official birth, and come back. She has to come back then, surely. This is no life.’

He said, ‘He misses you. This is one thing that should not have happened. Come with me and marry him.’

‘Now?’ she said. ‘You think I should marry him now, after all that has been happening? No. It has been so all our lives, and it is not going to change now.’

He said nothing more. He followed her to his wife’s room, and waited outside, and was almost beyond feeling when Margot came out and said, ‘She is sleeping.’

Her eyes were on him. He said, ‘Let her sleep.’ He, too, had been felled.

Margot said, ‘The child. What will you do?’

He said, ‘I am leaving men here. She’ll expect that. She’ll probably find out how to elude them. I don’t think it matters. She’ll announce the birth when the timing is right.’ He stopped. ‘I should have liked to see the boy. Will she let me? Some time?’

Instead of replying, Margot slowly re-opened the door, as if the answer might lie somewhere inside. The bleak afternoon light showed the chair he had sat on and the guttered candles and the brazier choked with grey ash. It showed the uprights of the bed, and the pallid rectangle upon which a girl lay like a stone, like a corpse on a beach; furled in her summer-light, bare-shouldered gown, her roughened hair spilled down her back. Her hand was sunk clenched in the pillow.

Nicholas took off his lined mantle and lowered the furs, soft as snow, till they covered her. Margot started and stopped a small gesture. Outside she spoke. ‘Take your cloak back. We have blankets.’

He smiled. ‘I have a raincloak as well. That will do. No. Leave it. I mean it. She will hate it so.’

She looked at him. Her expression had changed. So far as he
knew, his had not. Goro was a clever man, but transparent: they made a good pair. She said, ‘He has the best nurse that money can buy.’ Then she ran to her room.

Riding back the way he had come, Nicholas was sensible of the difference. It was daylight. His attention, no longer compelled inwards, could play on the country about him: the bustle of birds, the sound of an axe, a fox crossing his path without haste. It was not spring as yet, but overhead the leaf-buds were thickening and the first petals were pale underfoot. He passed hamlets with pigs grunting about, and inquisitive children. There were carts on the road, and other riders, although no one he knew. Finding himself suddenly hungry, he stopped at an inn and took part in a solemn exchange on the subject of foot-rot.

Disencumbered, exposed, the spaces of his mind were touched now and then by vagrant sound; by spangles of music which occasionally coalesced into something he had heard Will Roger devise, or the girl called Katelijne Sersanders. Sometimes the verses were bawdy. He chanted under his breath, knowing he wanted something else, and then knowing what it was. He also knew where to find it: in St Donatien’s, where – orderly, pious and calm – the trained voices uttered praise in the perpetual choir of divine service: hymn and psalm, collect and canticle, grail and anthem, cursed by Colard in ecstasy as he painted them into his missals. For evensong, Magnificat was what they would sing. He would be there very soon, and in time.

He was singing inside his mind when he became aware that he was neither alone nor in casual company, but that the road was lonely, the trees dark, and a group of armed men was blocking his way.

He swung his horse, looking for a way out, his sword in his hand, but it was too late, and there were too many. The attack when it came was peculiarly savage; or perhaps that was because he was so unprepared.

There was nothing much he could do, except inflict what damage he might. He used his sword against other blades and, once, slashed a face; but they killed his horse and dragged him from the saddle, cudgels rising and falling. When the sword was knocked from his grasp, he used his dagger until his arms and shoulders were numbed. He protected his head for as long as he could, but the raincloak was thin.

No one spoke. He didn’t argue, or plead. They were not footpads: they had not saved his horse or cut his belt or opened his purse.
They knew who he was. They were what he had set upon Simon: bullies with clubs. Bullies with orders to frighten, to capture, but forbidden to kill.

After a while he stopped struggling, since he was patently in their power and they might prefer to save their energy, too. They saved it by knocking him efficiently on the head. By then, he had worked out whose they were.

Chapter 16

S
ERVING FRANCE AS
he did, the vicomte de Ribérac was not a man who frequented Bruges, and when he came there, it behooved him to stay with those families such as van Borselen, Gruuthuse or Vasquez with which his son Simon and daughter Lucia were connected. Even then, it did not always suit these gentry, however eminent, to have the French King’s adviser so close, and he would be installed in one of the family’s country manors outside the walls, and the Duke duly informed. The vicomte was generally watched, but had many ways of evading the watchers.

Nicholas did not know the house into which, waking, he found himself being pushed and, since it was now dark and heavily raining, the landscape in which it was set was invisible. He judged, however, from the severity of his headache, that he had not been unconscious for long, and so could not be far distant from Bruges. He was pleased to think that the raincloak, though torn, had come in handy: the rain itself had revived him. Through the soreness, he felt alert, expectant, even elated. The truth was, he wanted an opponent who wasn’t a woman. He wanted someone who would hit hard, and whom he could hit back.