The Unicorn Hunt (63 page)

‘Then it has come,’ said the Duke. ‘You see my men at each side, moving forward. They have stones. When we are ready, they will use them to induce the herd to rush forward. As they pass, we shall kill them. You will take your position over there, and you will shoot.’ A sprinkling of flakes, thicker now, drove between them.

‘My lord!’ said the master-huntsman.

‘My lord?’ Nicholas said, cupping his ear. ‘My lord was speaking?’ He left Moriz and made his obedient way to the Duke, hurrying as much as was possible.

He reached the Duke. The Duke said shortly, ‘Shoot this time. Over there.’

‘At the chamois?’ said Nicholas, lifting the crossbow. He sounded surprised. Nevertheless he took aim, steadied, and made to press the release.

‘
No!
’ said the Duke and his chamberlain in unison. The chamberlain, who had begun to hasten over, suddenly stopped. The Duke raised a hand and delivered a blow that almost broke his guest’s wrist. Sigismond said, ‘Do you know what you are doing?’ The man Cavalli had appeared at his side.

Nicholas lowered the bow and stared at his wrist, and the Duke. He still looked surprised. Snow fell. ‘I wondered,’ he said. ‘That is, why you wanted me to fire from the front. It would just have driven them backwards over the –’

‘My lord!’ repeated the huntsman, arriving. ‘We must leave. There has never been seen such a harvest as we have already. Let us collect them and go.’ Already the mounds in the snow were grey and white.

‘And lose the rest? No!’ said the Duke. ‘Make the signal. And you’ – to Nicholas – ‘stand over there.’

The face of Nicholas cleared. ‘Beside the chamberlain?’

The Duke glanced at him. ‘I will speak to you later,’ he said, and lifted his hand, giving an order. The huntsmen, armed, formed two uneven lines. At the sight of the signal, a confusion of shouting broke out in the distance, accompanied by muffled thuds. The feet of the small band of chamois plucked at the snow, and their heads turned like vanes on a steeple. Then the boldest put its nose down and rushed forward, and the others came too. They leaped as they came, soaring over the moraine of their dead. As they came, the huntsmen shot, all except Nicholas. And the Duke, who was a brave man, one saw, did not move from his side. Nor did Cavalli.

Three chamois escaped, floating over the gorge to the pinnacles on its far side. One left blood in its tracks. On the plateau, men were running now, dragging together the kill, roping and lifting it.
There was no way to take it down except over the shoulders, and everyone save the Duke was expected to bear what he could. The bows and spearpoints were bagged, the quivers closed. It was hard now to see from one end of the plateau to the other, and below, the marbled landscape faded and vanished. ‘Faulty alum,’ said Nicholas hoarsely; but no one understood the joke except himself, and he didn’t repeat it. He kept meeting John’s furious eye: the chamberlain avoided him, but Antonio Cavalli kept close and helped him take one of the beasts on his back.

Cavalli said, ‘How is the knee? It will be difficult, going down.’

Nicholas looked round, so far as he could. ‘Well enough. At least I shall be going down at my own speed, not someone else’s. I have to thank you for that.’

‘You wore a stout strap,’ said Cavalli. Their faces were too stiff to smile.

Last, Father Moriz came up and spoke to him. It took the form of a diatribe so vehement that the snow fell off the priest’s eyebrows. Nicholas moved off with the others, still listening. He hoped all the time that Father Moriz was going to swear, but he didn’t. In the course of it, John inserted himself beside them by adroit management of a well-directed haunch and two hooves. He said, ‘What happened? They pushed you.’

‘They pushed him, and then gave him a steel bow,’ said Father Moriz. ‘He didn’t use it. In this cold, it would have snapped when the bolt was released.’

‘It might have hurt someone,’ explained Nicholas.

‘I know what a steel bow does when it splinters,’ John le Grant said. ‘It might have gone through your skull. It might just as well have killed the man standing next to you.’ His voice suddenly faded.

‘That’s why I was standing next to him,’ Nicholas said. ‘Luckily, I think he guessed that I knew. What have you got on your back? I’ve got an ox on my back and you’re carrying an overgrown rabbit. I wish I hadn’t come. I’m going to spend the rest of my life like a horseshoe.’

He went on talking, because he felt like it.

It was not a descent for weaklings, but neither was it beyond a band of strong and experienced men. The guides led, prodding the snow with their spear-butts and shearing the rounded ledges to reveal their true dimensions. In some ways it was easier because the soft snow provided a grip. In others it was terrible because the wind thrust the snow into their noses and eyes, and twice obliterated
everything in a dense white haze in which particles seemed to rise and fall from every direction at once. Then they halted and crouched until it was over.

Along with them in the searing pure air they carried a miasma of blood and perspiration and dung. They also carried, wrapped about them, the beneficent warmth of strong pelt and powerful bodies still hot from the kill. To rest was not entirely a hardship except, in the case of Nicholas, when he came to stand up with the weight on his back. The second time, Father Moriz gave him his spear and a hand under the elbow.

Since it occurred to no one, least of all Nicholas, to be concerned for an animal, there was a subterranean cheerfulness under the strain. When, halfway down, the snowfall stopped and they were able to halt at a platform to make a fire, and release their burdens and eat, men began to smile suddenly and call to one another. Nicholas stretched his legs beside Father Moriz and John. The Duke had turned his back on him, so no one risked greeting him – yet. Nicholas didn’t mind.

He felt happy. He had only recently realised that he felt happy. For a considerable time – for a day – he had been released from everything but physical danger. His difficult gift had not been required, nor had the interminable exercises by which he kept himself sane. He had thought of nothing but each moment as it came.

It would end soon. But, his feet lacerated, his knee on fire, his face cracked and every muscle screaming in protest, he was content.

They were met an hour after that by men battling up from below, who took the beasts from them and led them down cleared ways to the bottom, where the great sledges had been brought, each pulled by eight plumed and iron-shod horses, and covered with velvet fringed awnings with the Duke’s crest in gold. The carts for the chamois came after.

There were braziers fitted inside each sledge, and a place for spiced wine and fresh meat and cushions. They moved off as the last of the light left the sky. Then the torches were lit and, under the canopies, faces glowed red round the braziers. The runners hissed over the snow; the moon rose; they ate and drank and laughed, and became sleepy; and woke, and drank and laughed and argued again. At some point the Duke, in the leading sledge, broke into hearty song, and the roar of a bawdy hunting chorus surged down the chain, and was followed by others. When the lights of the castle appeared, the cheer that rose was not at all sober. The
sledges entered the gates and stopped, and men staggered out, Nicholas stumbling among them. Two or three fell. The others waited, respectfully swaying, for their Duke to emerge.

Duke Sigismond of the Tyrol left his sledge on a chair carried by two liveried men who, with twenty others, had run from the building to serve them. The Duke’s hat, fallen awry, showed his fair hair puffed over his face, which was rosy and swollen and lay to one side, on his shoulder. Experiencing a jolt, he opened one large shallow eye and uttered a thick but not unamiable obscenity. A short, bulky shadow at the top of the stairs suddenly moved and walked briskly indoors.

The Duchess. Her expression, Nicholas saw, had not been one of disgust, or impatience. What she had felt was relief.

One day her husband, who shared his favours with so many others, would fail to come back, or would come back to her dying or crippled. She hunted: she knew what the risks were. Hazily, Nicholas wondered if the absences helped: if the times they were living apart were easier than the times like these, when she was aware of every folly and danger. He wondered if she would leave the Tyrol if Sigismond died; or stay, as her sister had stayed to become permanent Dowager Duchess of Brittany. He thought she would stay. She would be better in the Tyrol, he thought.

The darkness was back: the weight lay again on his temples. ‘You should have stuck to water,’ Father Moriz remarked.

‘There wasn’t any,’ Nicholas said.

Father Moriz had him under the arm, and was supporting John le Grant on his other side. For a gnome, he was strong. He said, ‘Nicholas, I can understand a few tongues, but not that one. Never mind. I can recognise an excuse in any language. Come along. You will need some wits about you, I think, in the morning.’

The Duke’s wits being in the same state as his own, it was afternoon the next day before the summons came: the illustrious and powerful prince lord Sigismond, Duke of Austria and Styria and Count of the Tyrol, requested the presence of Nicholas de Fleury, Knight of the Order of the Scottish Unicorn, resident of Venice and Burgundy.

‘Ouch,’ said John le Grant. ‘Neither of them the happiest of attributes just at the moment. Are we coming too?’

‘No. You both drank too much,’ Nicholas said. He didn’t want them with him. If he was right, the Duke didn’t either. In the event, he went to the Duke’s chamber alone.

Sigismond looked unchanged, except perhaps for a little extra fleshiness under the eyes. In the short time he had known him,
Nicholas had seen him make some extraordinary recoveries. Sitting now in his chair of state with his brimmed beaver hat banded with pearls, his quilted coat shawled with fur, his rings, his chains, his belt, his pendant and brooches, this was Sigismond, Duke of the Tyrol, in his princely persona. Nicholas – who had gone to some pains as well – did the right thing and knelt, and was allowed to rise. There was no one else in the room except Antonio Cavalli.

The Duke said, ‘Your knee pains you?’

‘Yes, your grace,’ Nicholas said.

The Duke paused. ‘You deserved it. You could have killed me. You would not have lived very long after that.’

‘No, my lord,’ Nicholas said. ‘I regret it. Unfortunately, my alternative was immediate death.’

There was another pause. Cavalli looked down. The Duke said, ‘There is another matter.’

Nicholas bowed. He had not been asked to sit. Cavalli was sitting. He was wearing a neat doublet and a round cap and he was dark as the men from between Trent and Venice were dark. He had a relative in the German fondaco in Venice. Nicholas said, ‘Yes, my lord Duke?’

‘The bow,’ Sigismond said. ‘The steel bow.’

‘I was given it, your grace,’ Nicholas said. ‘To use it would have been suicide. I knew it was not by your will.’

Once, the Duke must have been a ravishing child. When he asked the future Pope, for example, to write him those love letters. Now the two lines deepened at the root of the tip-tilted nose and the pink arched lips drooped. ‘I have mentioned,’ said the Duke heavily, ‘the man who calls himself Martin, of the company called Vatachino?’

Spring came. Summer flowered. His headache disappeared. Nicholas said, ‘You mentioned, my lord, that you had decided to allot him the right to mine silver. It is not for me to censure a rival.’

‘In that case, you must be unique,’ said the Duke tartly. ‘Are you too high-minded, also, to present any case of your own? You appear to be a remarkably poor envoy.’

‘Certainly,’ Nicholas said, ‘I am a representative of my lord of Burgundy in so far as I bring his goodwill and letters. In the matters of alum and silver, I represent only myself and my Bank, and am as free as Herr Martin to bring wealth to the Tyrol from both.’ He paused respectfully. ‘The mountainside did not seem the appropriate place for debate.’

The Duke’s hand tapped on his knee. He said, ‘Wine, man!’
without turning his head. Cavalli got up. The Duke said, ‘How, free? You have a business in Bruges. Whoever finances me will offend Charles of Burgundy. I should instantly redeem my pawned land. I should be strong enough to make war on the Switzers, who in turn will blame him. You didn’t think of that?’ Cavalli brought him a great cup of wine which he seized and drank off. Then he tossed the cup on the floor, where it cracked a tile. ‘You didn’t think of that?’ he repeated. ‘Or you plan to make so much profit from me that you don’t care?’ Cavalli picked up the cup and retreated with it. He cast a glance at Nicholas as he passed.

Nicholas said, ‘My lord, none could have put the problem better. May I speak?’

‘That is what you are here for,’ said the Duke. He was still angry.

Nicholas shifted, but only a little, on his damaged leg. He said, ‘In my opinion, my lord, Burgundy will never permit you to redeem the land you have lost, no matter what money you raise. On the other hand, she would appreciate a rich neighbour, able to recruit its own armies against the Switzers, provided only that the cantons did not turn their anger, in turn, against Burgundy.’

‘You are repeating my point. They will, if I license a Fleming.’ He had another cup in his hand. He said, ‘You tire me. Sit down.’

‘I am sorry, your grace.’

Nicholas sat, without looking at Cavalli. Cavalli said, ‘Perhaps Ser Niccolò would take some wine?’

He clearly knew the Duke well. A wave of one hand indicated permission. Nicholas said, ‘Water, for preference. But thank you.’

‘We don’t keep water,’ said the Duke. ‘You don’t answer.’

‘I feared to tire your grace,’ Nicholas said. ‘There are ways to prevent the cantons from blaming Burgundy, and even ways of preventing Burgundy from blaming me. Just as there are ways of selling alum without depriving Bartolomeo Zorzi of his papal profit. And if such ways met with your grace’s approval, I can offer you, at the end of it all, a contract markedly better than any the Vatachino put forward.’

‘You don’t know what that was,’ the Duke said.