The Unicorn Hunt (38 page)

‘It should be wine; I’ll get some later. Gentlemen: I give you Nicholas de Fleury, Knight of some God-forsaken Order of Cyprus, and his wife and his son. What’ve you called the brat? James, I wager.’

‘I’m working on it,’ Nicholas said. ‘I’ll cut you in, if you like. The first man with a ten-figure order gets to choose his own name for the child.’

‘Then there’s your man!’ exclaimed Whistle Willie. His calloused forefinger appeared to point through the window. ‘You don’t mind a combine? A ten-figure order among the whole castle? Hey!
Lancelot!
Would you like to christen a vander Poele?’

A passer-by, puzzled, turned round. Nicholas, breathless, was pulling, one after another, a series of pitiful faces. ‘Lancelot vander Lacu!’ Whistle Willie bellowed, elaborating his point. The farce played itself strenuously out.

Gregorio listened in silence. You thought that, for a while, he had forgotten the bitch. But, of course, he had not.

*

Later, someone sent out for food, and the talk lurched about between topics of high and low interest, such as women, and horses, and arrows, and women and plate gauntlets and women. Then Whistle Willie began to sing under his breath, and someone else took him up, and soon they were chorusing away in unexpurgated versions of a number of ditties Gregorio had heard, at night, in Jehan Metteneye’s house after a supper.

In the course of it, someone near the door scrambled up saying, ‘My lord Duke!’

But the red-headed youth, slipping in, said, ‘No, it’s Sandy. Go on.’

They broke up half an hour later, royalty being an inhibiting guest, and Nicholas accompanied the King’s brother of Albany into the courtyard. When he came back to collect Gregorio, they had all gone save for the man they called Whistle Willie who was sprawled in a settle, a broad smile on his earthy face. He said, ‘Well, Nicol. You got what you wanted?’

The malice was friendly. Nicholas pulled another of his comfortable faces and sat down, pushing a litter of ale-mugs out of his sight. Gregorio, heavily relaxed, brought a cushion and sat on it. What Nicholas had wanted and got from this meeting was gossip.

To wit: that Hugo van der Goes and the rest of his imported craftsmen were going to be worth what he had advanced them, because the Danish dowry money seemed likely to come, and the royal wedding would take place this summer at Holyrood Abbey next door to Nicholas.

That one of the results of the royal wedding was Sandy Albany’s new crop of pimples; due, it was said, to the marriage he was going to have to make with an elderly half-sister of Betha Sinclair’s.
There
was a prince, Willie Roger had said earlier, and now repeated, who would be glad if Nicol de Fleury’s good friend dropped dead in the next week or two.

Gregorio lifted his lids. ‘Not you,’ Will Roger said. ‘Although I might as well tell you that you can’t get through bottles like Julius. No, not you. The hairy Franciscan who’s trying to bring the Pope’s peace to Denmark and Sweden.’

‘Called?’ said Nicholas. His dimples, for once, looked involuntary.

‘Called Ludovico da Bologna. He’s been in Sweden for weeks. And if he settles the war, Denmark won’t need to worry too much about Scotland, and Sandy won’t have to go to the altar. Which reminds me. I have a note for you from the Hamiltons. They heard you were here. So, what English gossip have you got?’

‘What kind do you want?’ said Nicholas, taking the paper and reading it. ‘There’s been a rising in Yorkshire. It may not come to anything. On the other hand it might, and the York-Lancaster fight for the throne break out all over again. Which side do you support?’

‘The winning one,’ said Whistle Willie. ‘I left England because there didn’t seem to be one at the time. What are the merchants saying in London?’

‘Keep in with everybody, send away your ships, and invest your money in cannon. The Queen has just had her third child, another daughter. Edward isn’t as secure on the throne as he thinks he is. You’ll lose your English pension.’

‘Don’t try it,’ said Roger. ‘I haven’t got one. I could name a few Scotsmen who have, and so no doubt could you. You saw Mr Secretary Whitelaw, you were saying.’

‘Do you think he has one? No. I’ve shipped him some dogs and some jousting-horses, that’s all. I brought you a book.’

Will Roger frowned. He said, ‘I want a really good bribe. A book?’

‘It
is
a really good bribe,’ Nicholas said. He stretched to his satchel and fished in it. The book he drew out was a strange shape, and cheaply boarded.

Will Roger crimsoned. He said, ‘What you promised? Burgundian?’

‘The whole thing, and three other pieces. Plus.’

‘Plus?’

‘Plus what they’re going to play at Lorenzo de’ Medici’s wedding in Florence. Do you want it?’

‘Christ, I could marry you,’ said Whistle Willie. ‘God-awful dimples and all. Do I want it? Do I want perfect pitch, and perpetual reeds, and a harp that doesn’t mind draughts, and boys that stay boys for ever?’

‘Well, you’ve got that one,’ Nicholas said. ‘You were born one. We must go. What was that about Sersanders earlier?’

‘I think he wants to kill you. Don’t worry. He’s in Aberdeen. When he comes back, Katelijne’ll protect you. She’s off to Edinburgh too, with the King’s fearful sister. Have you got to go? Oh yes, you have.’

He ushered them out, having answered his own question. Outside waited one of their men with a lantern. Stumbling down to their lodging, Gregorio attempted to solve one of many puzzles. He said, ‘What are you bribing him for?’ He added, ‘Where are you going?’

Nicholas, who had come to a halt, said, ‘Over that way. I might be late. Govaerts will see you back safely.’

‘What …?’ said Gregorio.

‘That’s what I’m bribing him for,’ Nicholas said. ‘He hands me notes, and doesn’t tell you what’s in them. Edinburgh tomorrow. I’ll have you called early. Good night, Goro.’

He was back before dawn, but not much before. Gregorio, contending with other afflictions, attempted no comment.

Of the two parties leaving Stirling that morning, the first to assemble was that of the King’s sister Margaret with her attendants. The second, inadvertently meeting the first, was that of Nicholas.

‘You look disgusting,’ said Katelijne Sersanders, calling from one side of the street to the other. ‘I know why, as well. You took Master Gregorio to Whistle Willie’s last night.’

‘We looked disgusting when we arrived,’ said Nicholas de Fleury, leaving his companions and riding slowly across. He was still dressed in black.

‘No, you didn’t. I saw you when we came back from hunting with Sandy. With – Sandy. I expect you celebrated the baby. How is it?’

‘Celebrated,’ said de Fleury. As the two parties rode on, he kept pace with her. ‘I have made peace with your uncle. Have I made peace with you?’

‘And my aunt?’ she said. She could see poor Master Gregorio trying to place her. She turned and said, ‘Anselm Adorne’s niece. Sister of Anselm Sersanders.’

Master Gregorio bowed, carefully, in the saddle. De Fleury said, ‘Your aunt belongs to that glorious sisterhood who revere the first-born of a marriage. For the sake of mine, she forgave me.’

‘My brother doesn’t like babies,’ said Katelijne. ‘We didn’t think you’d come back.’

‘So what should I do about Sersanders?’ he said. He sounded interested. He was again the careless rider of Leith strand, not the bright-eyed man, soaked in blood, who had tried to drive the life out of St Pol, and had taken cold steel to her uncle.

‘Apologise to him,’ she said. ‘He knows what it is to get battle-silly. Then agree to meet him in a fight. That will salvage his honour, for those people who suspect what happened.’

De Fleury frowned, riding beside her. He said, ‘But he’s good.’

‘That’s the idea,’ she said.

‘It wouldn’t be enough to apologise? You would accept an apology.’

‘No, I shouldn’t. You’d have to do something else.’

‘Katelijne?’ said a gentle voice. Phemie Dunbar, come to spoil the game with tranquil good sense.

De Fleury said, as she hoped, ‘Well, we have a day’s ride before us. We should be able to work something out.’ Then he turned and introduced Phemie to Master Gregorio, which was an excellent idea, since they should have much in common. And then, when he had presented himself to the lady Margaret, and renewed his acquaintance with the other attendants in her train, de Fleury was free to ride at her side, as the two parties blended. Dropping back, they devised between them his punishment.

She had not meant, at the outset, that it should be quite so disruptive, nor that it should gradually involve the Princess’s whole party, not excluding Margaret herself. It restricted itself to the route, since the ride along the estuary was as long as anyone should wish to make in one day. But it made use of every sporting facility they could muster between them, from bow to lance to falcon, and even to one of those long-stemmed clubs which, used from horseback, could send a ball from man to man along the flats, earning points for each target.

By dinner-time they were hot and exhausted with laughter as much as with exercise. But even during the meal, which they took in the fresh air, Out of baskets, de Fleury snatched up her viol and commanded her to perform, adding new rules and new contests, until she stopped eating, as he had, to compete, and the others clamoured to take part. Then the lawyer Gregorio, who had been sitting apart, came over and knelt beside de Fleury and spoke.

She knew what he was saying. He had been talking to Phemie. She watched de Fleury’s profile, eyes downcast, as he listened. When he finally rose and came over, she knew what he was going to say, because they all said it: her parents, her brother, her uncle.

De Fleury said, ‘They want us to stop. Have I apologised enough?’

‘No,’ she said.

‘I didn’t think so. What might we do that would convince them we’ve stopped?’

As it happened, she had already thought of something: a word-game. He had never heard of it before, but she taught it to him, and he invented a number of variants as they paced side by side at the end of the column. As they entered Edinburgh, he allowed her to win. It made her so angry that he reversed the last moves and beat her soundly. Shortly after, the two groups of travellers parted. Last of all, he applied to her and she absolved him.

She wondered why he had wasted a day on such trivia. She
concluded that there was no one in either party whom he regarded as interesting or useful, and that he had found some kind of repose in exertion. In the lawyer Gregorio’s face she thought she recognised a trace of the same look that Phemie wore sometimes. Towards de Fleury himself she felt curiosity, and a degree of affinity, and a sensible wariness mixed with something she would not call fear.

Gregorio experienced fear. In spite of all that Julius had said, he had not been prepared for the reality: for the tall, secretive house in the Canongate which Nicholas had fitted into the enclave of ecclesiastics and merchants and from which his business was run.

He was not prepared for the scale of the banquet given for Nicholas by his landlord, who happened to be Abbot of Holyrood, and who invited to it all the men of business Gregorio had ever heard of, including Berecrofts Older and Younger in whose country-house Lucia had lain dead.

He was not prepared for an invitation to the other house the Bank owned in the High Street, nor to find that Nicholas had lent it to the convent of Haddington for the use of its Prioress and nuns. He was not even prepared (although he was content enough) to find there Mistress Phemie Dunbar, the sedate unmarried daughter of the late Earl of March, who had brought some order into the headlong, tumultuous ride from Stirling to Edinburgh instigated by Adorne’s crazy scrap of a niece.

However, he had not been surprised, except initially, by the part Nicholas had played in that, or by the intensity of his activities since. It matched what he remembered of the more extraordinary undertakings of the past: the revitalising of the Charetty company through the cunning of the alum monopoly; the trading and fighting at Trebizond; the setting up of the Bank; the fitting-out and execution of the African expedition. Of Cyprus his knowledge was second-hand, but he had read the accounts, and knew when the payments had stopped for their land and their farms and the army. They said there had been a famine there recently. He had sent the reports to Nicholas, as he sent everything, but it was Nicholas who decided what to act on.

Gregorio was not alarmed, therefore, at the scale of the activity, but he was critical of its content. The major investments were good: the Banco di Niccolò had property and land, and had expended money on loans in the right quarters. There was a foreign wedding afoot, and the King and his lords required all the jewels, clothes and furnishings that implied. Julius had been right
in identifying a fine profit there, and insisting that the padrone should return in person to realise it.

To a degree, the Bank had been right, too, in placing money where it would encourage business. The
San Niccolò
was already carrying timber: there was room for a cart-building workshop to supplement the familiar skills of the monasteries. Draining experts could bring fields and salt-pans and coal layers into better profit – that was why John le Grant had been sent for. There were other schemes, not yet in place. Alum, brought direct from their own special contacts, would profit the Bank and still sell cheaply to the dyers and curers. Dyeing itself could be properly taught, and good weaving. And as the country grew wealthier, the demand for luxuries would increase.

At that point, drowned in calculations, Gregorio called a halt.

‘Nicholas? This is a small country, and remote. It can use some of your schemes – or could, when you first thought of them. But soap-making? Gunpowder? Paper? Cabinet-making? A workshop for embroidery looms? The demand for all those things is limited and will soon be satisfied. And almost none can be exported without meeting far greater competition in the south. You will be wasting the Bank’s money.’

They were meeting in the Casa di Niccolò in the Canongate where the uses to which the Bank’s money had already been put were very obvious. Travelling through the last weeks, Gregorio had visited many merchant-lairds in their castles as well as the ecclesiastics who kept house in town. He had walked with Forrester of Corstorphine to hear the new choristers in his church, and climbed the hill to Haliburton’s fine keep at Dirleton where his wife Cornelia kept a painting-room for Hugo vander Goes her kinsman, already full of coloured shields for the wedding.