The Unicorn Hunt

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Least of all, Katelijne enjoyed the days when the Prioress herself chose to teach, although the lady Elizabeth was a powerful woman, trading in her own right with Bruges, and equally ready, if she had to, to man and command the fortalice she was building as a precaution. As a precaution against England, their presently amiable neighbour over the Border.

  Most of all, Katelijne relished her lessons with the musician, Will Roger. It was best when Margaret wasn’t present, and there were only one or two boys and herself, with her maidservant Emmelot chaperoning them, asleep (despite the noise) in the corner. It was after one such hilarious afternoon that she glanced out to the courtyard, Master Willie chatting beside her, and saw what new arrival had emerged from the gatehouse.

  He seemed to be expected. She saw the porter ushering him across; the steward coming out to direct his men; the stablemen hurrying to lead off the horses. The newcomer had two servants with him and ten mounted men, all in black, and a burly companion of unknown provenance, who remained at his side.

  ‘Balls!’ said Katelijne Sersanders.

  ‘What?’ said her tutor.

  ‘Remember? Balls,’ said the Princess’s companion. ‘And I still have his ballocks knife. Tell him. I’ll get it.’ She whirled, colliding with the collected person of Mistress Phemie, upon which she had the grace to blush.

  Mistress Phemie, in her habitual dress of high-necked gown and neat wimple, gave no sign of alarm, her attention being diverted, in her turn, to the visitor. She said, ‘What a beautiful man.’

  Unlike her taste in poetry, Mistress Phemie’s grasp of secular matters was shaky. Katelijne corrected her. ‘He isn’t. He just walks as if he is. It’s my uncle’s friend M. de Fleury. Did you know he was coming?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Mistress Phemie. Above her chastely bound jaw, her round copper eyes followed the newcomer. ‘He brings godly news of the evangelisation of Africa; setting up the truth, as Athanasius says, as a light upon its miraculous candlestick. Also he knows how to value our wool in the boll compared with the heathenish throw-away prices offered for Catalan.’

  ‘I thought,’ said Will Roger, puzzled, ‘that Catalan wool came from other Cistercian houses?’

  Mistress Phemie’s jaw prodded its wimple. ‘I pray you,’ she said, ‘refrain from reminding our holy mother, the Prioress. She is a great lady, but details escape her.’

  Will Roger was among those who, an hour-glass after that, gathered with nuns, prioress and household, guests and officers, to learn about the Land of the Blacks through the equally unreliable memory of Nicholas de Fleury. The music master, a virtuoso entertainer himself, admired the performance. Here was not a beautiful man, by God no. But here was a skilful one.

  At the end, he joined in the applause. It was merited. ‘Poor Father Godscalc!’ they exclaimed. ‘How terrible! How sad! And what can be done for the heathen?’

  To which their visitor answered by shaking his head. ‘Nothing. Indeed, I am told the tribes have since rebelled, and Timbuktu and its sinners destroyed within sight of redemption. One must weep. One must weep, even for blacks.’

  Then he answered their questions until, after a while, the discussion insensibly had departed from the Joliba to matters of deep concern to thinking people, such as the margin for pricing their leeks and the means of obtaining better terms for their fells and even how to make a profit from coal. One of the nuns, subject to sudden enthusiasms, exclaimed, ‘But we know, don’t we, who could help there?’ and subsided, eyes lowered, before the Prioress’s quick frown. De Fleury, who had excellent manners, paid no attention.

  To one or two, his manners perhaps were too striking. Will Roger, a silent spectator, was not surprised when Dame Betha crossed to sit beside him and, for once, lowered her voice. ‘That man. What do you know of him?’

  She knew, better than he, who de Fleury was. He knew what she was asking, but preferred to hedge. ‘He can swim,’ Roger said. ‘And sing. And act, I suspect. Katelijne?’

  She thought. She always thought. She said, ‘He tells lies very well. He is angry. He is rich, and married to Gelis van Borselen, who is related to the young Scottish King and to other great families by marriage. He used to be an apprentice. He is not nice, but I like him.’

  ‘You like everybody,’ said Will Roger. She was right. It was anger. He said, ‘Mistress Phemie, what about you?’

  The round, copper eyes had become canopied. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Why is he here?’

  Her charge had been listening. The lady Margaret made her red hair flounce with impatience. ‘You’ve just heard. About sailing to Africa. About taking Christ to the black men. Ask him yourself.’

  He was touring the room with the Prioress. He was meeting even the cooks. He was talking to Emmelot, who came from Liège, as he would find out to his cost. When he reached the King’s fiery-haired little sister, the lady Margaret didn’t ask about black men. She said, ‘You haven’t taught me or Sandy to swim.’

  His doublet velvet was cut in two heights. He said, ‘No, your grace, it’s too cold. I’ll teach you both football instead. Mistress Katelijne, I want my ballocks knife back.’

  ‘Where?’ said Katelijne, producing it point first in a considering way. Girls with brothers, Will Roger had noticed, were seldom easily flustered.

  ‘After dark, in the dairy? No? Thank you.’ He received the knife from her and turned. ‘And Master Roger. I thought you wore green. Viva Savoia.’

  ‘It was only a loan,’ said Will Roger. ‘You’re not very inventive yourself. The same scent, even. I enjoyed the story of Barbaria in Afric. It would curdle milk.’

  ‘That was the scent,’ de Fleury said. ‘I hear you’re teaching music to everybody: pigs, bell-ringers, ploughmen. Crackbene here wants to learn. And who is the good maidservant Ada, whom, they tell me, you are training to sing to the pots?’

  Roger considered the question. The good maidservant Ada was here; he could see her at the back of the room. She had got the baby out, and the wherewithal to feed it, and was applying one to the other with gusto. The child had a large round yellow head and so had Ada. She also had a remarkable chest-voice.

  De Fleury, following his gaze, drew a melodious breath. It was, one had to admit, an impressive picture. Roger said, ‘You’re in luck: she usually has a head either side. The lady Mary sent her over, I’m told. Warm your bed in a trice, if you’re staying.’

  The breath emerged all at once as a snort. ‘Why not?’ said the other. ‘I’ve been asked to stop overnight. With my former shipmaster: you know him? Crackbene, do you want your bed warmed? No, leave the subject: we’ve been summoned to Dame Elizabeth’s parlour. What shall we talk about there?’

  ‘Well, sir,’ someone said. ‘What about your precious wife, Gelis van Borselen?’

  De Fleury wheeled. Dame Betha, adroitly risen, fell into step alongside him. She said, ‘The lady de Fleury? I hear delightful news, Master Nicholas.’

  The Fleming walked on. ‘You know my wife Gelis?’ he said.

  She was passably young, for the mother of three and a widow. She was nosy. She said, ‘Do I ken my own wean? Your lady served the King’s sister Mary; I reared her. The Countess of Arran, that is.’

  ‘And the Earl your father tutored the King. What finer mentors,’ said Nicholas de Fleury, ‘could any man desire for his wife!’ He quickened his pace into the parlour.

  If he thought the topic closed, he was wrong. The Prioress sat, and waved de Fleury to a place at her side. Dame Betha leaned over. ‘Prioress, here is the husband of Gelis, and you and I have something to tell him.’ She had small, well-shaped teeth of various colours, and a shrewd eye which she turned on Will Roger.

  The musician looked at the ceiling. Warm your bed in a trice. He should have kept his mouth shut, or horn in it.

  The Prioress said, ‘Family news perhaps deserves better privacy.’

  ‘But such exciting news,’ urged Dame Betha. Short and bright-eyed and muscular, she wore the alert look of an exc
ellent badger-hound. Roger assumed the badger had noticed it.

  ‘Well. I have to congratulate you, M. de Fleury,’ said the Prioress, giving way. ‘The blessed outcome is, of course, in God’s hands, but the news came today, and bears a date in early October. You will rejoice to know that your marriage is fruitful. In March or April next year, the lady de Fleury, God willing, will bear to you.’

  Will Roger brought his gaze down. Impassioned faces surrounded him. The exceptions were, perhaps, the child Margaret who scowled, and the girl Katelijne who appeared merely thoughtful. The third exception was the prospective father himself whose face had lost life for a moment, as it had when he caught sight of Ada. It came to Will Roger, with shame, that he might have mistaken that look.

  Then Nicholas de Fleury smiled, the crimson flooding down to his throat. He said, ‘Shall I confess that I knew of her hopes? And now I know it is true: she is carrying. What can I say? I am speechless.’

  ‘You knew!’ said Katelijne, delighted. ‘That is why she didn’t come!’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, the dimples round as two nutshells. The nuns, exclaiming, were bringing fresh wine. The man called Michael Crackbene stared into his cup as if navigating.

  Roger wondered why the detachment. Himself, he felt a sudden deep affection for the man-with-keys-in-his-head. He said, ‘Well, you don’t drink to this news in your wretched water. Here’s to you, Nicholas de Fleury of Bruges, and to your first-born son or daughter to come!’

  He watched de Fleury set his lips to the wine, unsure whether well-water might have been kinder. But the man emptied that cup and the next, and matched the best of them for the rest of the evening. And even leaving, he only stumbled a little.

  Having a hard Scandinavian head, Michael Crackbene steered vander Poele to his bed in the guest-quarters.

  He thought of him as vander Poele because he couldn’t remember to call him de Fleury. He had no interest in using his first name. He recognised that this was why he, Crackbene, was here: because he was a practical man who took employment from whomever might offer it, and could sail from Newcastle to Leith with his eyes shut.

  People called him a renegade, but he was not. He was always meticulous in ending one contract before he went to take up another. Vander Poele had laid hands on him once as a warning, but had still employed him again when it suited him. He respected the man. He also knew – it was nothing to him – that vander Poele had not heard from his wife since he set out for Scotland.

  They had been given a room to themselves in the guest-wing. Crackbene got rid of the pages as ordered, and debated how far to undress his companion. Of the two of them, he himself had had far more to drink. But vander Poele, perched on the bed, unclasped his doublet and dragged off and dropped his own boots before thudding back on the pillow and staring up at the crucifix on the canopy. He said, ‘What about Ada?’

  Crackbene said, ‘They all sleep over the kitchen. She has to get up to suckle the children. There’s a shed with straw by the kiln where she’d meet you. Or here. She doesn’t charge much.’

  ‘Children?’ vander Poele said. He turned his head.

  ‘You’re going to spew,’ Crackbene said. There was a bowl by the window.

  ‘Maybe. Shellfish,’ said the other inexplicably.

  ‘Shellfish? We didn’t have any,’ said Crackbene. ‘Children. She wet-nurses. Sometimes it stops the next child from coming and sometimes it doesn’t. One of the babies is hers. She’d be quite lively, I think, if you don’t mind milk all over the place. Do you think you are up to it?’

  ‘No. But I think you are,’ vander Poele said.

  Crackbene gave a rare laugh. He supposed it was obvious. He said, ‘And you’d pay for it?’

  ‘I’m generous. But I’ll not pay for aborting a Viking. Find out before you start which child is hers, and how old it is, and take precautions accordingly. If she comes from Dean Castle, she’s got friends.’

  Crackbene had already lifted the latch of the door. He said, ‘That’s why she charges. You’ll manage?’

  ‘I’m sure both of us will,’ vander Poele said.

  It was just before dawn when Crackbene returned. He was not done, but the girl had to get back by sunrise. By then she’d fed the two gasping brats twice, regardless of anything he might be doing. The first time, she’d squealed out that she wasn’t a pourceau. The second, he’d found a way of driving her gradually crazy. There was no doubt she needed a man. He had to stop at the door, he wanted so much to go back.

  Vander Poele said, ‘Don’t light it. So, what?’ He sounded as tired as if he had done it himself, after all.

  Crackbene said, ‘Worth every farthing. She’s sworn to say she’s no claim if she breeds. And by God, you were right. She’d have tried to blame her last child on me if it wasn’t eighteen months old and black-headed. The father’s the pig-man at Dean, but won’t own it. Did you speak?’

  ‘An accident of the soul. Of the wine. I left a ducat. Consider it doubled.’

  ‘Why?’ said Crackbene. ‘Listen, I need a light. You don’t know what state I’m in.’

  He struck flint and relit the lamp on the way to the corner. When he got back vander Poele had rolled over to sleep, head on arms, like a stone; like a corpse on a beach. Crackbene crashed down beside him, and sighed, and opened his mouth to the first, glorious snore.

  Chapter 5

  NEXT DAY, NATURALLY, a packet from Bruges arrived in the Canongate, and M. de Fleury, having left Haddington at dawn, received it with no delay whatever. He opened and spread out all the pages, both those which were written in clear, and those in trading code, which Julius and Jannekin could read just as easily. Gregorio – who else? – had set down the news he had already gathered in Haddington. That is, the theme was the same. He read it for the variations.

  Visited by the petty ills of first breeding, the lady Gelis van Borselen, dame de Fleury, had withdrawn for convenience to a convent. Her doctors had advised against visitors, and M. de Fleury should not hasten home. Indeed, wrote Gregorio, it was felt that the extra excitement might harm her.

  M. de Fleury framed soundless praise for Gregorio. His head turned, from lack of sleep, and then settled immediately.

  ‘I know what he means,’ Julius said. ‘My God, you had enough premarital excitement between you, rumour said, to last you the first ten years of official matrimony.’ Julius, the perpetual bachelor, had received this dynastic news with some lack of enthusiasm. Jannekin Bonkle, on the contrary, had wrung his old playmate’s hand and assured him that his father would preside at the christening. Mick Crackbene, as Nicholas had cause to know, was quite indifferent both to the event and to its implications.

  Julius now leaned over the paper. ‘My God, what did you pay for that ring? Is that all Gregorio says?’

  ‘Look,’ said Nicholas de Fleury, showing the papers. It was all that was personal. It preceded many pages of financial detail from Venice and Bruges, plus the latest of the Signoria’s demands that he should either pay them or fight for them. The smith was on his way, which was good. Of other family news there was nothing. Gregorio could not use a closed code, or Julius would instantly have suspected collusion.

  Julius said, ‘He’s put four extra words on the back. For God’s sake, write. We replied to all his last letters? Are the answers going astray?’

  ‘Send the last one again,’ Nicholas said. Gregorio’s words were dug into the paper, in the way that happened when he was especially angry. Nicholas had no intention of writing. He said, ‘Come on. I’ll deal with this later. We have this tournament to arrange. And I want to see the Berecrofts family and settle this licence. And what about Simon, membrum diaboli?’

  ‘He’s coming to the tournament,’ Julius said.

  ‘Nobody has told him I’m not taking part?’

  ‘You’re really not?’ Julius said. ‘You aren’t at all bad.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll give you a little fight all of your own one of these days, when you’re not feel
ing too well. I didn’t leave Bruges, bloated with temporal possessions, to receive my final accounting in Scotland.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Julius. ‘You won’t want to risk anything now, with a family. It’s a shame, in a way.’

  The news of the family spread to Kilmirren.

  It came to Lucia first, in her comfortable Vasquez hall by the park of the tower. She sat and screamed until Matten came rushing, and then showed her the letter from Diniz which, of course, Matten could not read. Then, without even accepting the restoring drink Matten had brought her, she ordered her hooded cloak and hurried across to Kilmirren Castle.

  The rain was cold. The rain had never been cold in Madeira, or in Portugal where her late husband came from. Diniz, only half Portuguese, never seemed to notice the rain. Diniz had married a burgher’s daughter in Bruges, and seemed enchanted with her. Diniz had been enchanted by Nicholas ever since the African voyage. And now this letter, with news that Diniz plainly thought wonderful.

  ‘It is appalling,’ said Lucia de St Pol, thrusting her father’s chamberlain aside and bursting into her father’s parlour. ‘I am going to faint. What shall we do? I cannot believe it!’

  From his great cushioned chair her great cushioned father surveyed her with astonishment. He said, ‘You have my permission to faint. Indeed, you may throw a fit, provided you do it on the other side of that door. You may not have observed. I am occupied.’

  He wasn’t. He was as good as alone. The short, stout woman (who did rise to her feet) was that neighbour who was well-enough bred to act as Lucia’s companion from time to time when she travelled. Bel of Cuthilgurdy had accompanied Lucia to her husband’s villa in Portugal. The widow Bel, of sturdy constitution, had even travelled to Africa with Diniz, and Gelis, and vander Poele. Now she said, ‘Monseigneur de Ribérac, the lassie’s distracted. Mistress Lucia, come away in and sit down. What’s to do?’

  Lucia sat, her son’s letter clenched in one hand. She said, ‘Diniz says they’re both pregnant.’

  Her father stared at her. ‘Now that,’ he said, ‘is indeed a matter for swooning with all imaginable diligence. Diniz and his wife?’