The Unicorn Hunt (46 page)

All the lords were in town. The town houses of Fleming and Semple would be occupied, but not that of St Pol of Kilmirren, which was shuttered and closed. Nicholas glanced at it once, as he turned downhill towards the Horse Market and lists, joining with people he knew from the Castle. Simon, Henry, and Jordan were gone, and Bel had not ridden across to save anyone this time. This time, no one needed saving: far from it.

The freshness was turning to warmth. He stripped to white shirt and black pourpoint, his doublet slung on one shoulder, his cap in his hand. People called, crossing to join him. By the time he reached the massed flags of the lists he was part of a group. Entering the lists, the exchange of gossip gave place to technical problems and questions of protocol. He established discreetly that his own two courses, as he wanted, were separated: the tilting with Boyd near the start, and the sword-fight with Sersanders close to the end.

In between, Sersanders too was tilting, with a Danish nobleman. Nicholas wondered, outwardly grave, if Gregorio had contrived to match poor Anselm with a giant. He didn’t think, for Katelijne’s sake, that the ladies of Haddington would be helpful, even if bribed. He was reminded that Katelijne would be leading the horse of her brother, and that Betha Sinclair, when approached, had briskly offered him one of her daughters. ‘For the one specific purpose,’ she had added, ‘of leading your horse, Master Nicol; and handing your prize, gin ye win one.’

The girls were all very young: he doubted if any could keep a large courser steady. Perhaps Dame Betha would help her.

Later, he returned to the Canongate. The day’s events unrolled: no work was done, as clerks and servants rushed to the windows at every thunderous clatter of hooves. The Danish procession passed twice. At one point a cannon went off, and the sky was blackened with birds. The men he had sent to the Castle Rock came back and reported. Gregorio returned from some errand, and agreed reluctantly to share a working dinner with the padrone in the garden.

The flies kept getting into the wine but paid no attention to water. After a while, Nicholas said, ‘Let me guess. Phemie doesn’t like fighting?’

Gregorio lifted his gaze from his food. He said, ‘Mistress Phemie Dunbar is in the Castle. I haven’t seen her.’

‘That’s no answer. What’s the trouble?’ said Nicholas.

‘I should say that to you,’ Gregorio said.

‘Why?’

Gregorio said, ‘I don’t know. I’m not afraid of the jousts. You won’t be so stupid as to damage Sersanders or Boyd, and I don’t think either would hurt you. I’d forgotten about Cyprus and – the rest of it.’

Very few people knew about Cyprus – and the rest of it. Julius. Julius and Katelijne. Nicholas said, ‘So what else?’

Gregorio said, ‘What about Ochoa de Marchena and the gold?’

‘Explain,’ said Nicholas. It used up time.

Gregorio said, ‘You’ve bought land. You’re building a castle. You talk of farming. You’re in the middle of developing dozens of projects and have run up debts which may not be paid, as the projects will have to be nursed at least until the King attains his majority, if not later. You have announced, indeed, that you intend to stay some length of time, and when I objected, you said it wasn’t your job to polish door-knobs. Neither it is. But you can’t run a Venetian bank from a castle at Beltrees.’

He looked warm. It was a warm day. Nicholas said, ‘I also said that if something needed attention, you could handle it. Are you asking me to send you home or not to send you home?’

‘Neither,’ said Gregorio, and then looked both angry and bothered. He said, ‘I’ve run the Bank for you before. I can do it again. But I can’t handle the gold. Maybe the whole thing is a hoax. Maybe we’re imagining things. But if that was a message from Ochoa, it deserves some very fast action. And it was directed to you, not to me.’

‘Why? You know Ochoa’s voice,’ Nicholas said. There was, as he expected, a silence. Who knew Greek? No, who would recognise the sound of Greek and be intrigued enough to listen? He went on easily, ‘But in fact you are right. I did question Crackbene. The cage was consigned to me: it was on the lading-note but with no indication of the sender. He had it taken ashore when the
Ghost
was unloaded, but didn’t bother to tell me when he realised he and I were both leaving. The Countess saw it, and got it.’

Gregorio said, ‘You thought it was important enough to buy back.’

‘I still do. But you’ve just described, haven’t you, all the reasons why I can’t do much about it?’

Gregorio looked at him. He said, ‘You are saying that to withdraw now from Scotland would do more damage than the gold itself could repair, if we found it?’

Nicholas said, ‘I’d put it the other way round. I really think it’s worth losing the gold to stay on and develop all that I’ve started. If the gold exists. If the message is genuine. If the person who sent it isn’t dead by now.’

‘You offered Diniz half of it if he found it,’ Gregorio said. He had a legal mind, had Gregorio.

Nicholas said, ‘But as you said, the message was personal. Are we going to go on talking about this for ever? You don’t give a damn for the gold. You are only, as always, trying to find ways to force me out of the country. I have said this already. If you want to go, go. I am not disturbing my plans in order to deliver you from temptation and your mistress from her self-imposed child-nursing. Solve that problem yourself.’

Gregorio got up and walked back to the house. Bravo, Gregorio. Bravo, Palamedes, who invented this manner of living. Nicholas got up, too, after a moment, and went off to reduce the work of three days to three hours. Or however long it was between then and his joust, his
jocundus adventus
.

Chapter 22

I
T BEGAN TWO
hours before sunset, so that most of the courses were run before darkness fell, and there were only the single jousts left to take place. In case of wind, they had three hundred coloured lanterns, such as they had in Bruges and Venice in carnival-time. But, in fact, the warm, breathless weather persisted, and they were able to use the standing candelabra as well, mounted with candles so large that a single man could hardly carry a dozen.

The stands this time were two-tiered, built to face one another across the width of the lists, so that the royal party gazed at the Rock and its lesser guests sat with their backs to it. The royal pavilion was hung with cloth of gold and lined with velvet and tassels; and the knights’ tents at one end were all stitched in silk with the banners crowded around them, catching the afterglow from the west. As the lamps were lit inside, you could see the shadows of combatants arming, with their pages and bodyservants about them.

The lamps had been lit first of all in the upper stand containing the musicians, where lutes and recorders and viols had been attempting to make themselves heard over the clatter, the pounding, the roars of the early encounters. The conductor was Will Roger, with the wild demeanour of a man who has embarked, at last, on a voyage which will probably kill him, superimposed on the vainglorious smirk of the same man who has managed to beg, borrow or bribe sixty trumpets and fit them out to a man in pink taffeta.

The faces of the children in the royal stand were eager and flushed: they enjoyed jousting. The children? Waiting his turn, Nicholas caught himself thinking like Adorne, like Gregorio, and was amused. James was seventeen, but a King. His bride was twelve, but would be his consort next month. Albany might be the
King’s younger brother, but he had experience of the Burgundian court, the richest in Europe, and his brothers must envy him. Mar would be a force to be reckoned with, one day, and so would Bleezie Meg, today without her attendant Katelijne, who was here, of course, in her brother’s pavilion.

In the gloom, he could not pick out the others, although he thought he saw Dr Andreas, and he did see the well-tailored dark robe of the Secretary. Archibald Whitelaw had studied law at Cologne. He had wondered if Gregorio knew that, but it seemed that he didn’t.

It was nearly time for his first bout. To tilt against Thomas Boyd with a lance, he wore the armour he had brought with him, neither etched nor gilded but cut and jointed and pinned so that he could move almost as if he wore kidskin. Lined and polished, it clung like an animal’s skin to its flesh. He had had it made not because he intended to take up a career in the lists but because there were things he wanted to do, and he preferred to survive to do them. It made it all the more ironic that he had nearly lost his life in the lists to the knife of a child, in December.

The child he had been given as his queen for the day was very young, but older than Henry. Blind with maternal solicitude, Betha had fitted her out with a cone hat with a veil, dangling oversleeves and a gown with a train. Grasping his horse-ribbon was going to be the least of it. He went to sit beside her on the bench and talked while they waited for his announcement. She had been amused by the fantastic helms in the procession – wolfheads and eagles, lyres and boars. He had told her of Marx Walther of Augsburg who wore three sausages on a spike.

His own banner, motto, badge were simple: it was not the place, although he wished it were, for something more witty. He did belong to an order of knighthood, a Cypriot one, and it was the Order of the Sword which was proclaimed, silver on blue, by the cross-hilted blade on his flag, and its motto which was inscribed on his surcoat, and round the blue and white plumes of his helm.
C’est pour loïauté maintenir
, it said. You couldn’t really appreciate the joke, unless you knew both Zacco and his royal half-sister.

The fight before his began to run its three courses: Liddell against a short Dane. The Dane was skilled, but his horse was either unfamiliar or still unsteady from the voyage. And Liddell was uncommonly good: he held the lance, all twelve feet of it, as if it grew out of his wrist. They didn’t even run the third course: Jamie struck the other each time full on the breastplate, and each time the lance splintered and flew.

It did no harm when it struck, with the coronel set in its tip. And these were poplar lances, made to break. You could hardly unseat a man with one of these, not unless he was an extremely bad rider, or you were especially lucky.

Cheers; applause; the Dane retiring glumly and Liddell riding forward to the stand to make his bow before the King. He was Albany’s steward, and the face of Albany shone. The girl leading the horse was obviously used to it. A sister, perhaps. Nicholas turned and smiled at his little lady, and made a joke that he thought a Sinclair might understand. There was a pause.

His page had come, with his helmet and gloves. The lances stood, ready stacked, and his groom waited a little apart, holding one of his thoroughbreds. There was a spare horse, in case. He could afford it. He walked to the bay, which was fidgeting, and spoke to it.

A fanfare deadened his hearing, overwhelming all other sound. Despite its training the horse jerked its head, shivering. Then it calmed and he mounted, settling into the deep jousting-saddle. He had had it covered with blue velvet and studded with silver. One of the sets of reins also was silver-studded in a pattern of azure enamel, and his horse wore a gem on its browband. After the black of the past year, it felt like a costume of masquerade. He closed his visor. The girl looked up, her headgear stabbing his arm, her veil catching his spurs. Her lip was trembling. His page, who was prettier than she was, smiled at her too, and helped pick off the veil. It had torn a little. He touched his horse forward.

A man barred his way. In the distance, someone was speaking. The trumpets blared again, and the girl squeaked with fright: he held the horse firmly. The man in front of him said, ‘Sir knight, your match has given way to another. Be so good as to wait.’

‘Why?’ said Nicholas. His horse, balked, tried to sidle and he held it hard. The man repeated, ‘Later,’ and walked away without answering. His groom came up and Nicholas dismounted with care, and allowed himself to be divested again of his gauntlets and helm. The girl gazed at him, her eyes large as eggs. He spoke to her, smiling. ‘I don’t know what it’s all about. Perhaps Govaerts can find out.’ Govaerts disappeared.

The next courses were run, and then the next, in which Anselm Sersanders took part. His little sister strode out beside him, pony-tail swinging. She had seized hold of both ribbon and reins, and when the horse attempted to shy appeared to shove it bodily forward. You could hear her talking testily and her brother responding, booming inside his helm. They presented themselves, and the
lady Margaret threw down a flower, which Katelijne picked up and gave him. He had a fox’s crest pinned with his sister’s favour. The favour looked like, but could not be, a salt-cellar. Then she retired, and the tilting began.

The Dane he opposed was not a giant, but he was well trained and sturdy and bold. He flew from the far end as from a catapult, without diverting except to adjust his lance as he neared. They collided. He struck, and so did Sersanders. The Dane’s lance splintered, but that of Sersanders, a shade less direct, skidded and glanced off the other man’s armour and remained in his grasp, still unbroken. First mark to the Dane. They rode on and turned.

The Sinclair girl said, ‘They’re very poor-grown, the Sersanders family. If I were her, I’d wear pattens.’

‘Or a tall hat,’ said her knight. He glanced down at the eggs. They looked soulful. Govaerts came back, shaking his head, and resumed his place with the rest of his household. Gregorio had left the tent at the beginning. To take up his stance, Nicholas guessed, with the minstrels.

They had started the run. It was true, Sersanders was short. So was his sister. But he had the family temper, and seemed to have lost it. He swept up to the barrier this time in an explosion of rage, and the crash was such that the whole structure shuddered and the Dane rocked to one side. Then he recovered and they passed. This time Sersanders held the smashed lance, and the other had missed.

One each. With or without pattens, Katelijne Sersanders had both fists on the barrier and was jumping. The royal stands seethed. The public, massed in the dark, roared without cease. The Sinclair girl said, ‘That’s not a good fight. Ours will be better than that.’