The Unicorn Hunt (5 page)

‘Of course you meant it,’ said his widowed daughter, rubbing her arm as she entered. ‘I know you. You told Henry to bring that wench to my room, I know you did. You probably meant him to come back and listen. And if he heard what I heard, what is that wretched child going to believe of his mother and Gelis?’ She turned to her brother. ‘
Gelis!
How could you?’

She had been beautiful once. She was still brilliantly blonde, with not a chain, a cuff, a sleeve, a fold of her veil out of place. She had cradled her arm and was glaring at them.

‘Oh, come,’ the vicomte said. ‘It wasn’t a shot from a bombard. Sit down. Simon will get you some wine. And why the fuss? The woman Gelis was eager, I hear. And Henry is no sheltered innocent: I give you my word as of today. I have to suppose that you know what was under discussion?’

He had returned to his chair. She sat on a chest-cushion while Simon, not unamused, found a pitcher. She snapped at him. ‘Gelis van Borselen eager? After what you tried to do to us all in Madeira? I don’t believe it. She loathed you.’

‘That was the fascination,’ her brother said. ‘Really, you have no imagination. We quite astonished each other. But now I’m not supposed to bait vander Poele with it. I might as well not have taken the trouble.’

‘For once,’ his father said, ‘I share your regret. Since it is too late for restraint, let me repeat myself. No one will learn from you what has happened. Lucia will forget what she has heard. As for vander Poele, his Bank is in Venice, and he and his bride are no doubt safely out of your way.’

‘No. He’s here,’ Lucia said.

Her father’s head turned. Even Simon forgot his grievance and looked at her. The vicomte said, ‘Who is where? Be explicit.’

‘Nicholas vander Poele is in Scotland,’ his daughter said spitefully. ‘He’s been here for weeks. The King’s sister got news at Dean Castle.’

‘Here?’
said de Ribérac.

One word was enough. In that tone, it always had been enough. She said, her voice high, ‘Not in these parts. On the east coast. At Edinburgh. He has a bodyguard of armed men, but no wife.’

‘Indeed? And why should that be?’ her father remarked. ‘Rich, newly wed, with a palatial banking house, a busy fleet, a small army, why should vander Poele choose to travel to Edinburgh by himself? Or no, with some strength, we are told. Simon, what do you think?’

‘He can’t have found out about Gelis and me?’ Simon said.

‘You sound less than pleased. I thought that was all you desired, that Nicholas should appreciate your singular – or was it your multiple coup?’

‘Yes. Yes it is. But,’ said Simon, ‘I wanted to tell him myself.’

‘Then in that case,’ said the vicomte de Ribérac, ‘let us take time, my dear impetuous boy, to find out what vander Poele may know, and what he may suspect, and of what he is ignorant, so that we may act as befits our best interests. You will remain at Kilmirren. I shall launch some enquiries. I may even, in time, visit Edinburgh.’

‘If he knows –’ Simon began.

His father regarded him with calm. ‘If I meet him, and he knows, I should beware of his temper?’

Simon said, ‘No. If he knows, don’t tell him too much. I want to tell him myself.’

‘I have that point, I think,’ said his father.

Chapter 2

O
N THE EAST COAST
, naturally enough, everyone knew where Nicholas vander Poele was, except his acquaintance the Burgundian Envoy, who on that same afternoon in October 1468 was methodically sailing into the river-haven at Leith, the port of the King’s great town of Edinburgh. As with the owner of Kilmirren Castle, Anselm Adorne arrived before he was expected.

The sail from Flanders had been achieved without incident, which had saddened the children – the young people – hoping for pirates. The autumn sun, resting on the broad waters of the Firth of Forth estuary, was acceptably warm for a region so barbarically northern, and the view to the south was famous from drawing and plan, and familiar even to Adorne, who had never seen it before.

The town of Edinburgh stood on its ridge, with the Castle Rock at the top and the houses of its inhabitants outlined on the inferior slope. Behind the Rock was a range of green treeless hills. Other outcrops, more abrupt, reared themselves between the shore and the town.

Close at hand was the mouth of the river Leith, timber-shored on each side, with some coasting vessels and a quantity of fishing-boats within a breakwater made of rough stobs and boulders. To left and right of the river stood a smoky collection of thatched cabins, kailyards, wood and stone warehouses, and a number of tallish houses of a more ambitious sort, with kilns and bakehouses and wooden sheds round about them.

Among them was a single church spire, a well-head in a puddle, and a circular wall with an assortment of new stone and timber buildings inside. The King’s Wark, Anselm Adorne had been told. A royal enclave, in which the King’s ordnance could be stored, and where the Court could stay when travelling. For this was the haven of Edinburgh. This was the greatest port in the kingdom.

The greatest port in the kingdom. Anselm Adorne thought of Sluys, the harbour of Bruges, with its well-equipped quays, its scores of tall masts, the fine buildings where princes might stay. He thought of the celebration when the Venetian galleys arrived: the flags, the music, the fireworks. Then he dismissed it all firmly from his mind. Sluys was one of the richest ports in the world, along with Venice and Genoa and Alexandria. It would be hard enough to prevent the children – the young people – from drawing comparisons. Scottish trade mattered to Bruges, and to Burgundy. The rulers of Scotland and Burgundy were related. One must not offend.

At the same time, one should not allow oneself to be ignored. It was known that he was coming, yet despite the great flag of Burgundy that floated over his head, bright with fine silks and bullion, no boat had put off to guide them up the estuary. The navigator taken aboard at Newcastle was familiar enough with the coast, but might well have balked at attempting the haven, with its notorious sandbar, condemning them to a day or even more in the roads.

As it was, he brought them in on the dregs of the tide, but the anchor came down without direction or guidance in a river-mouth as devoid of activity as a port with the plague. He wondered, fleetingly, if that were the explanation, although Dr Andreas, his physician, thought not. A great ship arriving was an event which, anywhere in the civilised world, commanded a crowded jetty, a customs boat, a fleet of business-seeking skiffs. And this was not merely a great ship, but an embassy from Burgundy. The royal officials should have appeared there on the jetty at the first sound of his trumpets, and should be aboard, with the fellow Lamb, his host, amongst them.

Instead, as the sails were stowed and the ship swung to her anchor, he could see nothing but a few old men watching him over their fishing-lines, and some curious faces peering out of the boats. He sent his chamberlain, who spoke Scots, to hail one of them. A calm man, Anselm Adorne showed no alarm, but wished, not for the first time, that all his companions were mature like himself, like his officers, like Andreas and Metteneye.

Twenty-four, of course, was not so youthful, except to an ambassador who was twenty years older. Anselm Sersanders his nephew (who was exactly that age) said, ‘It can’t be the plague, or they’d have warned us. And they wouldn’t be sitting there.’ Sersanders was intelligent, and reliable, and five feet six inches in height.

Katelijne his niece said, ‘I expect it’s dinner-time.’ She too was
small in the way that gadflies are small, with the hazel eyes and bark-coloured Sersanders hair mixed (her uncle was vain enough to know) with the comely looks of the Adorne doges of Genoa. Katelijne was fourteen and here to stay, because her parents were worn out with trying to keep pace with her. Anselm Adorne knew how they felt.

And Maarten, the last child in his company, although twenty and his own second son, was more of a child than the other two, because he had the sturdy good looks and the brains of Margriet, Anselm’s dear wife, which would ensure him a plain, decent living in some branch of the Church, but never more. Anselm Adorne was a good father to all of his many children, but did not bestow his dearest love on this child. Who doubtless knew it.

‘You always think it’s dinner-time,’ said his nephew, answering his sister.

‘It would account for it, though,’ said Adorne, returning to the present. ‘I imagine our hosts went to eat, thinking we should be held in the roads till next tide. We
are
staying with Lamb, isn’t that so?’

It was the case, of course. Lamb had the biggest house. He was a merchant, and used to putting up travellers, in the same way that Jehan Metteneye’s own home in Bruges acted as hostelry for incoming traders; as Adorne’s own palatial mansion did for others more princely. They would stay with Lamb, who would see they got to Edinburgh safely tomorrow. Meanwhile, they were stuck.

Or perhaps not. ‘They’re coming for us,’ said Maarten, Adorne’s son. ‘Look, they’re running.’

Three or four men of unprosperous appearance were hurrying down the bank of the river, intoning. A moment later, a boat had put off from the shore. A remarkably short time after that, the Burgundian embassy, its young and its officers were climbing the forestair to a large stone-built house whose owner was absent, and where the honours had been launched in his place by a courageously dignified wife with her head wrapped in Flemish-style linen.

Maister Lamb, she said, was
doun on the strand with the childer
. With the rest of his household.
They didna expect his lordship sae soon
. But she prayed that their lordships would enter, and the
burd would be spread so soon as the ovens were fired and the laddie came back frae the cook-house
.

Anyone living in Bruges was familiar with the Scots language. Born of generations of Bruges burgomasters and ducal officials, Anselm Adorne also knew all about civic disasters. Provided no insult was intended, it was always best to be lenient.

He said, ‘There is no haste. We ate well on board, and need exercise rather than rest. Where is the strand? Perhaps your husband is on his way back? The young people and I might go to meet him?’

Surprisingly, the eyes of two of their host’s kinsmen met. Their hostess herself seemed to hesitate. Then she said, ‘Aweel now, I’m no certain sure.’

‘Why?’ said Anselm Adorne. He kept any sharpness out of his voice.

The woman looked at her household again, and seemed to make up her mind. ‘Because …’ she began. ‘Because the King is there, that’s the truth o’ it. It’s horse-sport and suchlike. Him and his siblings, they like to race on the sand, and you’ll not keep a Leither at home while there’s something to wager about, so all the port-folk are there, instead of minding their wark, and what’s rightly due tae a guest. And John himself was commandit, and couldna say nay, or he’d have been here when ye came. Otherwise, I wouldna have tellt ye.’

‘The King and his brothers are here? On the shore?’

She flushed. ‘I hear they keep mair state in Burgundy. It’s not that way with our King.’

‘No,’ said Anselm Adorne, smiling at her. ‘I knew his brother in Flanders. But tell me: do you think we may go and watch him without causing offence?’

She bit her lip. She said, ‘It’s a rough crowd, Maister Adorne. John wad never forgie me gin ye came to ony hairm. And the King, forbye, would tak nae tent, or his gentlemen. When they’re gone to their sport, commoners are meant tae turn a blind eye.’

Adorne said, ‘He need not know we were there. You don’t tell me that a crowd of Leith burghers and porters would cause harm to a group of visiting Flemings? But of course, if you think so …’

‘Are you coming?’ said his niece Katelijne from the doorway. ‘See, Master Lamb’s cousin is going to take Anselm and Maarten and me, and I expect you could come. He says there are lots of women there, and children, and a cook with a fire. I’m going.’

They went. Not with Andreas, who preferred to stay, or the other officers of the household, whom he left to see to the boxes. But Metteneye and Adorne went with the children – with the young people – picking their way east through the cabins, the poultry and fish-creels to the rough grazing that ran down to the sea, where cattle browsed through the whin, and geese hissed, and half a dozen middle-aged burghers in decent serge doublets swished through the grass with thick sticks, as if beating for hares. A ball
rose in the air, and fell at Metteneye’s feet. He bent to lift it, and was deterred by a shout.

Adorne said, ‘They are playing a game. We are disturbing it.’

‘I know the game. I have played it. They each hold a kolf, and are hitting a ball with it,’ said his niece. ‘But where is the target?’

‘Us,’ said her brother. ‘Don’t be silly: there isn’t a target, they hit the ball into holes. Come on. You can’t play. I thought you wanted to see the races.’ And taking her by the arm, he dashed down the links to the beach, Maarten following, while Adorne and Metteneye followed at their own pace, looking about them.

The crowds on the edge of the beach were not like the burghers of Bruges. The men who, touched on the shoulder, gave way readily enough to the foreigners, were dressed in plain canvas or fustian, with their leather aprons on top, as if they had just left their boats or their spades or their workshops. By contrast, the inner circle of spectators wore the swords, the leather jerkins, the fine wool doublets and light cloaks of officers of the Crown, of guards, and of landed men of the Court, and even Katelijne did not thrust between them, but stood with the others and tried to see what they and the crowd were all watching. After a bit, she dropped on her knees and looked between their legs, lifting her hair out of the sand. Her brother said,
‘Katelijne!’
but she was used to that.

She saw the beach, dry near at hand, and further away firm and shining and pocked like a ploughed field with hoof-marks. Beyond was the grey sea, and far beyond that, the pale shores and blue hills of the land on the other side of the estuary. Near at hand from the right came the sound of low drumming. She put her weight on her hands and peered forward, pushing someone’s scabbard out of the way.