Dorothy Dunnett - [House of Niccolo 01]

by Niccolo Rising

  “Everyone fights,” said the captain irritably. “He’s twice the width of this pretty fellow, and younger. Anyway, he dropped my goblet.”

  So Astorre wasn’t going to help. And there was no one else to stop it. The noblemen and chief officers of the galleys had long since prudently absented themselves; the bowmen had no orders and therefore only the avid interest of any layman in a forthcoming fight. There were no officials remaining from Sluys or Damme or Bruges to see justice done, and only Julius to keep badgering Astorre, and Felix to harangue Lionetto in an unavailing effort to dissuade them.

  For Lionetto and Astorre, being professional soldiers, had every wish to kill, injure or otherwise dispose of a rival, but not in single combat, like schoolboys. For that, one became a laughing-stock. There were other, more adult ways of attaining that object.

  So it suited each to perfection to seat himself, Astorre on the landward side and Lionetto by the wharf edge with their côteries, while a space between them was cleared of sacks and boxes, and two broken oars found, and made equal in length, to serve as quarterstaffs in the Picardy fashion.

  It was not the sort of match worth a wager, but good enough to pass an afternoon, such as men in camp were well used to. Lionetto had no particular interest in the Scotsman, whom he thought too stuck up about his own looks, especially when, as now, he was stripped to hose and under-doublet and thin, fancy shirt, and made a finer figure, Lionetto was aware, than Lionetto himself.

  However, there was no doubt he, Lionetto, had a better champion than that pig Astorre, whose man was this paint-spreading artisan with his toes sticking out of his leg-covers. The fellow was nothing but eyes. He reminded you of an owl in a tree, with five men with longbows beneath it.

  Someone yelled, “Go to!” and they started, with no special ceremony. Their weapons were six feet long, and heavy. The Scotsman wore an amused smile.

  He had cause. With no advantage of reach or of height, and with a build infinitely more slender, he had all the trained skills of the fighting-man which the labourer lacked. It was as it had been in the canal water. One performed like a thoroughbred, and one like a boor. Claes would open his powerful shoulders, but before the pole had swung through its arc, the other man would have slipped through his guard to buffet his thigh or crack the hard wood against shoulder or elbow.

  These, indeed, were Simon’s first targets: the means by which Claes gripped and guided the pole. Those and the calloused blue hands, grasping it.

  Perfectly fed, perfectly exercised, the nobleman Simon was fit as a lion. The muscles of his shoulders and back rose and sank beneath the fine cloth. His sleeves, loosely rolled, showed the developed forearms of a swordsman, and beneath the whipping cords of his hose, the contours of thigh and calf were firm and swelling and classical. His hose, soled in leather, gave him a footing on the uneven cobbles as he swayed and side-stepped and swung, double-handed: cracking the vibrating pole with precision against his opponent’s; but not quite hard enough to knock it out of the other’s broad fists.

  He took his time. To Julius, who had held a sword, it was painfully apparent that every blow of the apprentice’s was being anticipated. At leisure, smiling, even talking cuttingly as he circled, the man Simon was watching the youth with practised eyes: noting the smallest change in Claes’ breathing, his footwork, his shoulders, the flickering glance of his eyes.

  Then Claes would thrust, or swing, and Simon’s club, cracking, would deflect the other and then, driving on, would hit where Simon designed. On the joints. Across the knuckles. Once, full in the chest so that the breath momentarily left the other man. Once, glancing off the side of the head so that Claes staggered back, frowning, and only, by some bemused instinct, managed to dodge the swift return blow which ought to have felled him.

  He had a hard head. You had to give him that. When he straightened, he had his senses again, and this time, you saw that he had learned something. Instead of relying on schoolboy whacking, turn about like a game of palm-tennis, he too was trying to watch, to guess his opponent’s next move.

  Sometimes he was successful. Twice Simon was careless, and Claes’ heavy pole struck him; once on the shoulder and once on the wrist, in a blow which made the nobleman draw in his breath and swing fast out of range, until the strength came back to his grip.

  An experienced man would have given him no time for recovery, but Claes had neither the skill nor the energy. Instead, he stood and shook himself, reviewing his muscles, thought Julius, like a general reviewing his troops and recalling them to the standard. But all the time, his eyes were scanning Simon, and when Simon lunged, for the first time Claes was there before him, and their poles crashed together, and dropped, and disengaged.

  But after that, Simon was careful, and whatever Claes might have learned, it was not enough to protect him from the buffets which reached him, over and over, out of the scuffling dust of their engagement. And Simon was still fresh. His face, when you saw it, was smiling, and between clenched teeth he was still, now and then, throwing out some tempting jibe.

  Claes, on the other hand said nothing. The ebullient, talkative henchman, the clown who could imitate anybody, was shuffling now instead of dancing, and stumbling when he swerved. Where he had been struck on the knuckles, one hand had begun to swell and blacken, and there was scarcely a patch of unmarked skin on the blue-stained fluff of his arms, or above the torn hose at his thighs, or on the half-bare feet stubbed by the cobbles. As they watched, Simon contemptuously leaned forward, feinted, and driving the broken end of his pole down the wall of Claes’ chest, tore the youth’s sodden shirt to the waist, leaving behind a track of red gashes.

  The conduct of an oaf and the talents of a girl. And a mortification to your father.

  Felix said, “Stop it. Astorre, I order you. Stop the fight, or I will.”

  The crowd didn’t want it stopped. They liked Claes well enough, and they had no particular love for the Scotsman, but one man baiting another was always good value, and this was better than Carnival time, when the Duke set a batch of blind men to round up wild pigs in the market-place. “Kill him!” some woman was yelling to Simon.

  Julius said, “Astorre, you heard him. Stand up and admit defeat, for God’s sake. Do you want that fellow Simon to kill Claes?”

  Astorre’s beard had an obstinate set. He said, “If someone else wasn’t giving him a drubbing, I would. Anyway, he’s a powerful lad. And it’s for the Charetty honour, isn’t it? Would you want the Widow to have the name of employing nothing but cowards? After what that animal Lionetto said about her back there?”

  Felix lifted his fist. Envisaging, for a frightful moment, a parallel brawl developing between his employer’s son and his employer’s mercenary, Julius thrust forward and grabbed Felix, who struggled. Then they both became still, watching what was happening before them, on the quayside.

  His face and limbs swollen, his lungs labouring, his legs without strength, Claes could not even pretend, now, to study his enemy, or predict where the next blow might come from. He merely fought defensively, his pole held between his two hands, protecting his face and his body.

  And this, of course, allowed Simon to do what he wished. He made no attempt to hook the other man’s pole or otherwise disarm him, which would have finished the fight. Instead, sometimes swinging his pole, sometimes using it as a battering ram, he proceeded methodically, but without haste, to reduce his opponent.

  You would say Claes was beyond thought. Indeed, from the beginning he had used his brains, Julius thought, little more than one of Astorre’s pensioned soldiers, stupefied by too many blows on his helmet.

  But one spark of an idea must have entered Claes’ head. He waited until, after a succession of glancing blows, Simon swung his pole to the horizontal like his and prepared, spanning it with his hands, to attack in a different way. Claes hardly signalled what he meant to do next. Only his eyes flickered, once, and Simon, smiling, lunged in that direction.

  Even then, he clear
ly could not believe that the flicker had been a deception. But there was Claes, on the wrong side, not only still gripping his pole horizontally but rushing at him, with a desperation that told he had gambled on this one movement all the strength he had left.

  There was no time to sidestep. Claes was on him, and his pole was against Simon’s pole, and the impetus of the rush was carrying Simon back, at first for a quick pace or two and then, as he dug in, more slowly. But still back, because the only advantage Claes had was in weight. And for once, Simon had no advantage at all.

  Breathless, the spectators watched. On one side Astorre grunted, with Felix and Julius, still gripping each other beside him. And at the wharf-edge itself stood Lionetto, in a clear space with his cursing friends crowded about him.

  Behind the resisting figure of Simon, men moved out of the way. Behind Simon was a stretch of a dozen paces and the edge of the quay, and the water. Astorre grunted again, with displeasure. “God blast them. Who wins if both dolts fall over?”

  “At least it will stop it,” said Julius. His teeth were sunk in his lip. Surely the Scotsman, with all the fight in him yet, was going to break the deadlock and duck long before he was shoved to the edge? Or would he let himself be run there and twist, sending Claes under his own impetus over the edge, and thus end the battle?

  If that was it, thought Julius, someone had better act quickly. Someone would have to fish out the poor beaten idiot before he drowned from exhaustion.

  Perhaps the touchy Scotsman had intended to throw Claes over. Perhaps he intended to play with him, recovering at the last moment and driving him back to a worse beating than before. Certainly a scuffle of sorts developed as if Simon had changed his position, but was finding it less easy than he had expected. Later, although no one knew for certain, those nearest the quayside swore that Claes threw away his pole and, gripping his opponent by the arms, hurled himself and the other man into the water together.

  Certainly, before they left the quayside, both poles had dropped, cracking and bouncing to the cobbles. Lionetto himself, who was standing quite near, agreed, when pressed, that the Scotsman had been carrying no pole when he passed him.

  What was visible to all was that moment. The moment when, locked together, Claes and his tormentor hurtled off the quayside and into the depths of the harbour.

  The shouting rose to a roar, and died away. On the quay, instead of the duellers was dust, and a scuffed and empty arena. In the water of the harbour was a widening ring, its edges slapping the quay wall.

  Then people, exclaiming, began to mill about at the edge of the wharf. Only Julius, throwing off his notary’s robe and ripping off his purse-belt, thrust both at Felix and, in an extremely good doublet, jumped straight out into the water.

  He saw the yellow head of the Scotsman quite quickly, progressing sedately towards the wharf steps, and in no evident need of retrieval. Claes he could not see at all nor, when he shouted an enquiry, did the other swimmer even turn his face towards him.

  The water still pooled and danced, where the two men had plunged. Julius swam towards it. He was quite near, in fact, when he saw the blood, spiralling up like whelk-red in a dye vat.

  He took a strong breath, and dived, and found the cold, drifting bulk of Claes’ body.

  Because the boy appeared to be dead, which might have been a nuisance, the seigneur commander Duodo made his stately way along his deck to the wharf, followed by the Athenian de’ Acciajuoli and the ship’s surgeon. When they got there everyone else drew back, with the exception of a bald-headed man who continued to kneel, busying himself in a bad-tempered way with the inert, half-naked body of the apprentice. It was grotesquely discoloured.

  Messer Duodo said gently, “This is an unfortunate business.”

  Lionetto and Astorre looked at one another, and Lionetto moved forward a little. “Oh, they’ve got the water out of him,” he said. “They mend quickly, that class. I dare say he’ll be none the worse in a week or two.”

  “Ah, the lad is alive,” said the commander. One would have been deceived. The youth’s eyes were shut, and distressingly sunken. Also, there appeared to be blood. He said, “What are you staunching? Perhaps my surgeon can help?”

  Without looking up, the bald-headed man said, “I am a surgeon. I could do with proper bandages, and some ointment. It’s a stab-wound.”

  It was the Greek who said sharply, “A stab-wound?”

  There was a pause. The ship’s surgeon laid down his box and, kneeling, opened it. The second mercenary, the one they called Astorre, said, “The Scotsman snatched the shears as they went over, and stabbed him.”

  The first mercenary, Lionetto, had flushed. “It was the boy who took the shears. You heard the Scots lord declare it. The boy had stabbed him once already.”

  “There seems to be some confusion,” said the commander mildly. “Did no one see precisely what happened?”

  The answer, as he expected and, indeed, counted on, was in the negative.

  The Scots lord, wet and tired after the combat, had left with his servants. The notary here, who had saved the youth’s life, had seen no more than anyone else. There was no need for the lord commander to trouble himself further over an idle dispute. The good pawnbroker Oudenin had offered to carry the lad to his house until he could be moved back to Bruges. The ship’s surgeon, if the lord commander permitted, could supply immediate medicaments. The bald-headed man, whose name was Tobias Beventini, was also willing to help. Master Tobias was a fully qualified medical officer, already attached for a year to the mercenary army of this Lionetto.

  The commander was mildly surprised that one of the company of Lionetto should care for an employee of his antagonist’s household. Indeed, the man Lionetto objected, but the doctor Tobias continued to work, and paid his captain no heed whatever.

  The commander, it seemed, was expecting a buyer almost immediately to discuss the price of his Candian wine. He murmured a few appropriate comments, gave carte blanche to his surgeon, a langorous person burned by the Levantine sun who called himself Quilico, and paced back on deck, leaving the Greek to watch, since he was interested.

  The Greek said, “The wound. Is it serious?”

  The bald-headed man said, “Yes. He needs warmth and attention quickly. Once we see how matters go, he can be taken back to Bruges by canal.” He looked up, his drinkers eyes narrowed. He had a small flexible mouth like a fish, and a pallid face with a fuzz of pale hair round his cranium. He said, “And if you are going to ask, I didn’t see what happened.”

  “I am more concerned,” said the Greek, “with the young man’s recovery. He may need constant medical attention.”

  “He will have it,” said the bald-headed man shortly. “I have nothing to do. Messer Quilico will be about. The pawnbroker is helpful, and I will stay with the boy through the night. It may be possible to move him tomorrow.”

  Around them, the crowds had thinned. Lionetto, after lingering, had turned abruptly and walked off, with his friends but without this man he called Tobie. One or two crewmen from the galleys stood about, and nearest of all, of course, the Charetty boy and the factor Julius, his black gown flung round his shoulders over his soaking doublet.

  The mercenary Astorre, who had caused all the trouble, said, “Well, my lord, if you mean that, I can tell you that the widow – that the demoiselle de Charetty, who employs him, won’t see you out of pocket at the end of it. Send the accounting to her. Or to Meester Julius here. Meanwhile, we ought to be going. Jonkheere Felix? Meester Julius?”

  “You go,” said the notary briefly. “We’re staying.”

  Nicholai de’ Acciajuoli looked at him. He said, “I think perhaps, if you will forgive me, that the demoiselle de Charetty might be more reassured to hear the tale from your lips or her son’s than from – anyone else. No doubt the surgeon here would appreciate your help in taking the boy to the pawnbroker’s you speak of. But I am sure Messer Quilico and Messer Tobias will engage to give you any news of a change
in his condition. Indeed, I am myself staying here in the castle, and will see to it.”

  An autocratic bastard, concluded the surgeon Tobie, when he had time to think of anything but the task of transferring the bleeding carcass of his patient from the quay to the house of the pawnbroker.

  The man Oudenin, who seemed eager to help, settled him comfortably enough on a pallet in a room full, so far as Tobie could see, of kitchen utensils and seamen’s clothing. Then, after a fairly useless consultation with Quilico, they left him alone with the boy, and the medical provisions the galley doctor had supplied him with.

  The apprentice was still unconscious. A hell-raiser in his own little way, so they said, but a long way from being able to deal with the nobility when bent on raising their particular hell. All right. To work, before the youth woke, so that the worst of it was out of the way. His hands this morning were steady.

  Devil take Lionetto. Tobias Beventini of Grado knew very well, looking at the passive, marked face below him, that he was only doing this to score off the captain. If he didn’t watch, he’d be reduced like a child to taking umbrage. Since the day of the flooded tavern, Lionetto had never insulted him in public again and wouldn’t, when he was sober. Nor would he let him, when he was sober. Lionetto needed a good medical officer, and he had been the best of his year in Pavia. And it was his choice to work with mercenaries. It was still his choice. The Dauphin’s piles and the Pope’s feet were for sycophantic men like his uncle.

  He preferred to sharpen his skills on common men, like this one. Yellow bubbles. He remembered laughing over it at the Crane, while he was tending the cranemen’s burst noses. By God, he had been drunk. But there was no doubt, this lad caused his elders a lot of trouble, and it was not surprising if they levelled the score now and then.

  But not like this. Not the way that Scotsman had done.

  Much later, during the night, the youth – Claes, was it? – stirred and opened his eyes, and the surgeon lifted over the soup he had ready, and prepared to give it him. For quite a while, as was natural, the apprentice didn’t seem to understand where he was, or what had happened, and said nothing when Tobie put the necessary questions about his condition. Then suddenly he seemed to gather his thoughts together, and answered quite sensibly, in a low voice. In return, without being asked, the surgeon described where he was, and what had happened to his companions. He didn’t mention the man Simon, or ask questions about the source of the wound.