Niccolo Rising Read online

  Anselm Adorne turned his head, glanced at Felix and Claes and remained studying Julius. His hollow-boned face, deceptively monkish, was non-committal. He said, “I am acquainted with Meester Julius. Any mistake over money was, I am certain, an oversight. But I must ask. How did you three come to be on this boat?”

  “We were asked,” Julius said. “With so many ships in the basin, crews were pushed to serve everyone.”

  “The Duke cannot command a lighter crew when he wishes?” said the Bishop. He had pushed back his hood. He was not very big, but he had the chin of a fighter.

  The man in the Florentine gown had lost interest. Turning his back on the Bishop he had strolled to the quay, to watch the water lap at the lock. Adorne’s wife was still present, and the girl Katelina, picking her way down from the lock, chose to stand between her and Simon, looking pensive. Then she turned towards Julius, who was pouring water from doublet and jacket and hair, and she smiled. It was not a smile of sympathy; and when the fair Simon murmured something in her ear, she broke into a low laugh that was even less sympathetic. Returned without a husband, they said. With Simon, who had never had a refusal. The rich ones think he’ll marry them, and the poor ones don’t care.

  “My lord, there were enough lightermen,” Julius said. “But none who could care for the bath. An officer asked us …” He heard himself, a well-schooled, responsible notary, stumbling through his explanation. Rolling back from the rabbit-hunt, full of good wine from the grateful dune-herder, ripe for novelty, heading in any case seven weary miles back to Bruges – who would not have taken the chance to travel in the Duke’s bathing basin?

  He ended as best he could. “And indeed, minen heere, neither we nor the lightermen are to blame for the accident. The walls leaked, and the basin became uncontrollable.”

  The man called Simon drifted to the Bishop’s shoulder and stood there smiling. “Uncontrollable! To Bruges lightermen, conveying such property! Who was steering?”

  No one had been steering. Everyone had been steering. One of the lightermen, pressed, admitted suddenly that that apprentice called Claes had been steering.

  All eyes on Claes. My God: goodnatured, randy, innocent Claes, who knew nothing but how to make jokes and mimic his betters. Claes, with the biggest mouth in Flanders. Claes who, standing in a pool of light mud, opened his eyes, large as moons, and said, Of course, minen heere, he had been steering, but not inside the lock. The osprey feather would have been an improvement. His hair, darkened to the colour of gravy, hung in screws over his eyes and coiled over his cheeks and dripped into the frayed neck of his doublet. He shook himself, and they all heard his boots give a loud, sucking sound.

  A liberal smile crossed Claes’ face, and faded a little when no one responded. He said, “Minen heere, we did our best, and got a ducking for it, and lost our day’s sport and our crossbows. And at least the Duke still has his bath.”

  “I think you are insolent,” said the Burgomaster. “And I think you are lying. Do you deny, Meester Julius, that the youth Claes was steering?”

  “He was steering,” said Julius. “But –”

  “We have heard. But he ceased when you entered the lock. That is, you saw him stop. But he may have started again.”

  “He didn’t,” cried Felix.

  “I know he didn’t,” affirmed Julius stoutly. And uselessly. He saw the lightermen exchange glances. And knew, as if he’d been told, that the lightermen would not give the same assurance. They couldn’t afford to. His legal training told him it was all entirely unfair. His experience of courts ducal, regal and churchly told him that fairness had nothing to do with it. He hoped his employer, Felix’s mother, would keep her head. He hoped the Bishop was less vindictive than he looked, and that some god would stain, tear or even drench the taffetas of the exquisite Simon, who was still murmuring to Katelina van Borselen, watched, as they all were, by the devouring gaze of the onlookers.

  The serving-girl with the pail was also still there. She had stopped courting the glance of the taffeta, and there was concern on her round face, not blushes. Perhaps Claes felt her eyes on him. He looked up, and found her, and gave her one of his happiest smiles. Mary Mother, thought Julius. He doesn’t even know what is happening. Should I tell him? That the Duke’s cargo that sank was a gift – a gift from Duke Philip of Burgundy to his dear nephew James, King of Scotland. A fifteen-foot gift of some import. To be plain, a five-ton war cannon, grimly christened Mad Martha.

  Someone cried out. It was, perhaps, thought Julius, himself. Then he saw, to his surprise, a mass of dishevelled brown hair dart past the Bishop, and recognised the athletic figure of the girl Katelina. And behind her, also running, was Claes, followed by an increasing number of soldiers.

  At the lock edge, the bearded man in the long robes had turned. He saw the girl coming. He tried, stepping hastily, to move out of her way. Then he saw what she was after and stretched out a hand. Her hennin, blown off by the wind, rolled and skipped at his feet. He stooped, just as Claes, sprinting, passed the girl and started to pounce in his turn. The two men collided.

  The bearded man fell, with a sickening crack that could be heard all round the basin. Claes, his feet trapped, dived over the body and plummetted, with a fountain of unpleasant water, back into the canal. The girl stopped, threw an annoyed glance at the water, and then stooped with a frown beside the prone, convulsed form of the Florentine.

  The grip on Julius had gone. Felix, also free, said, “Oh my God,” and rushed to the water’s edge. Julius followed him. Between heads, he could see Claes splashing about in the water. When the apprentice glanced up, it was at Katelina van Borselen, now come to the edge, and not at the soldiers lined above him at all.

  “It’s buckled,” said Claes, with regret. He referred, you could see, to a soaked steeple headdress captured firmly in one powerful, blue-fingered hand. He coughed, examining it, and water ran out of his nostrils. He paddled carefully back to the steps and gazed up, with apology, at the hennin’s dishevelled owner.

  Katelina stepped back abruptly. Claes climbed the steps. The soldiers seized him. Claes’ circular eyes opened wide, winking as water ran into them. He gave his attention to the soldiers, and to Katelina, and to the hennin, which was no longer a snowy cone, but a battered scroll mottled with indigo. She accepted it in a dazed manner.

  The generous lips widened in that marvellous smile which had bewitched every servant in Flanders. “I took the weeds out of it,” said Claes to Katelina von Borselen. “And the mud will wash off in no time, and Felix’s mother’s manager will get rid of the indigo. Bring it to the shop. No, send a servant. A dyeshop is no place for a lady.”

  “Thank you,” said Katelina van Borselen, “for troubling yourself. But perhaps you should save your concern for the gentleman whose leg you have smashed? There he is, over there.”

  The way his face changed made it clear that Claes had been unaware of the other’s misfortune. He was a good-hearted boy. He made to move to his victim, but the men at arms stopped him instantly. They buffeted him as they did it, and went on striking him every time he opened his mouth. The biggest mouth in the country, and the best-beaten back. Julius looked at his young master Felix. Felix said, “It’s all Claes’ fault. He never seems to grow up.”

  Echoes of Felix’s mother. If they crucified Claes, would she blame her notary? There was no one else to worry about him. Claes was the sort of unfortunate bastard (Julius sympathised in a way) whose relatives were either dead or indifferent. Julius said, “The man whose leg he broke. Who was that?”

  No one knew. A Florentine. A guest of the Bishop’s, come from Scotland with the Bishop himself, and the beautiful Simon, and Katelina van Borselen who, if God had been kind, would have found a husband in Scotland and stayed there. Whoever he was, they would find out soon enough, when he or his executors demanded Claes’ hide for his injuries.

  They watched as Claes was dragged off. He went unregarded by Anselm Adorne, which was a bad sign. But Ado
rne was occupied, like the rest, in anxious ministration to the man with the beard.

  Like most of the rest. The exquisite Simon, taking off his blue taffeta doublet, had offered it rolled like a bandeau to the lady; and was now binding it round her loose hair. It looked very pretty. He fastened it with the ruby, still talking. After a moment she smiled, in a cursory fashion. If you were interested, you might have wondered what the girl Katelina had against the young lord. Perhaps, on the journey from Scotland, he had ignored her, and had now changed his mind? Or had he once gone too far? Or had she selected a rival, and he was trying to lure her back to his company?

  Julius considered these things, watching Simon. Then he turned his back on him with decision. But for that sportive nobleman, he and Felix and Claes might have escaped without notice. It did not occur to Julius then that the fair Simon’s interventions could have been other than idle. And yet he knew the practices of the city.

  And he knew, as the fair Simon knew, which of the three would suffer for it most, in the end.

  Chapter 2

  WHATEVER PROFOUND legal argument Julius had with the commandant on the way back to Bruges, it was ineffectual. It didn’t save himself and Felix from prison. Before noon, they were locked up.

  By divine intervention his employer, Felix’s mother, was away at Lou vain. Julius sent a soothing message, wrapped in money, to Henninc, her dyeshop factor in Bruges, and three others to people who owed him a favour. Then he hoped for the best. It seemed to him that no one was really interested in himself or in Felix. If one person was going to be blamed for everything, it was going to be Claes.

  It was late afternoon when they got the first news of him. The turnkey, bristling through the bars, mentioned that their young friend had been put to the question. The lad, who wanted a tile or two, had talked for a turn of the hourglass about nothing else but the rabbit hunt. Of course, he had done himself no good, although he was a great comic, everyone said: as good as one of Duke Philip’s dwarves. Maybe Duke Philip would take him on as a jester, if he got over the beating. They’d made a better job of it than they usually did, hoping for a confession. Julius was sorry for Claes. Fortunately, Claes took this sort of setback philosophically; and in any case, he had nothing to confess.

  Then the news came that he had been brought into prison. Naturally, he was lodged in the famous Dark Chamber. Julius (also philosophical) paid for warm water and cloths and wrote a promissory note for the bailiff, stolidly counter-signed by the town notary, to buy Claes the right to the upper floor, where his masters had bedding and sustenance.

  The idiot was dragging irons when he arrived, and Julius had to pay to have these taken off also. He added this to the careful running note of his expenses, which in due course would reappear, neatly itemised, as student equipment for Felix.

  Naturally. Methodically honest himself, Meester Julius had learned which of her son Felix’s experiences Marian de Charetty was prepared to pay for, and which she wasn’t. In the past two years, she had taken the occasion once or twice to refresh her notary’s memory on the subject of his contractual duties, which did not include boisterous exploits with Felix. In point of fact, before the notary came, Felix’s exploits had been more than boisterous. Felix got excited. Felix never knew where to stop. Even Claes, who got into worse trouble than any of them, never went into passions like Felix.

  Up to now, horses and dogs had claimed all Felix’s deepest emotions. But at any moment, there would be girls. So far, girls either tantalised Felix or neglected him, for he treated them roughly, the way he treated his own little sisters. But that would change. Julius hoped that it would be Claes, and not himself, who had to handle that bit of coaching. And that it would take place back in Louvain, where people understood students. But that said, there was no harm in Felix, kneeling there like any good horse-owner helping to doctor Claes’ muscular back, and doing more harm than good, especially as he kept stopping to argue with everything Claes was saying.

  Claes, the colour returning a little to his good-natured face, was engaged in describing in five different accents what it was like on the lowest floor of the Steen, where there was no food and no light, and you had to beg as best you could with a bag on a pole through the window-bars. Someone had given him a turn of the begging-pole because he was bleeding, and when he drew it back in, it had a poke of butter inside.

  Felix stopped. “Butter?”

  “From the wool vats. For my back. Someone took it before I could use it. I wish I had it now. Have you got your jousting-gloves on? You’ve got hands on you like thorn bushes. It came, the butter, from Mabelie.”

  “Mabelie.” It stopped Felix again.

  “Standing outside the prison window. Didn’t you see her at Damme? The girl with the big plait of hair and a bucket. I didn’t know her name either. It’s Mabelie, and she works at Jehan Metteneye’s.”

  “And she brought you butter.” Julius found he had stopped attending to Claes’ back as well.

  “Well, she was sorry for us. Everyone’s sorry for us. There was quite a crowd out there in the Burgh. The hatters’ men, I meant to tell you, Meester Julius. I told them where to go for their rabbits, but they weren’t too pleased. I reckon if Meester Cambier is raising the cannon, he would lift the rabbit-bag too for a favour, and maybe even my lord Simon’s money. Two of your clients were there, Meester Julius, wanting to know if the contracts were still legal if they hanged you. And Henninc from the shop, saying he was sending to Louvain, and anything you had promised to pay would come out of your wages. And all the boys from the yard, with beer. You should have left me in the Dark Chamber,” said Claes nostalgically. “I would have had the butter and beer and all before they hang us.”

  “They won’t hang us,” said Felix confidently. “We did nothing wrong. It wasn’t our barge. We weren’t in charge of it: the lightermen were. The lock-keeper got his beer back. And we’ve got you, Julius. You know more law than any of them.”

  Julius said, “Felix, the Bishop was angry. He’s the Scottish king’s cousin. The Scottish queen is Duke Philip’s niece. The Scottish king’s sister is married to Wolfaert van Borselen. Something has to be done to convince all these people that the offence was an accident.”

  Claes smiled at Felix over his shoulder. “So someone’s got to be punished. You see? If it wasn’t an accident, they wouldn’t dare punish anybody.”

  Claes, for whom no tangled issues ever existed, often depressed Julius, particularly when he knew what he meant. Felix was merely incensed. “That’s crazy,” said Felix. “They’ll punish us? For doing nothing?”

  “They punished me,” said Claes the apprentice. He turned round cautiously to let them fasten the cloths over his front, and settled crosslegged with his shirt over his shoulders. His hose had dried in folds and wrinkles all over his thighs, and his hair had dried too until it was thick and flat and frizzed a little just at the edges, as if someone had singed it.

  “Of course they punished you. You broke that gentleman’s leg,” said Felix with justice. “And you weren’t respectful. And you certainly made a fool of the girl this lord Simon was making up to, and he’s a Scotsman as well. That Katelina. She didn’t want her stupid hat returned once it got into the water, you fool. She could buy twenty others.”

  “Your hair’s come out of curl,” said Claes sympathetically. It was not surprising, Julius thought, that Claes got beaten so often. He remembered something important. A girl called Mabelie worked for Jehan Metteneye, and the Metteneyes of Bruges had been innkeepers and brokers for incoming Scottish merchants for five generations.

  “The girl Mabelie,” Julius began.

  “A great thick plait of hair down to here, brown as a fox. A full mouth of teeth as good as your horse, and cheeks pink as paint and a nose like a plum and a great white neck with muscles in it going down to – down to –”

  At the wrong moment comprehension came to Claes, and he stopped before the terminus. “She says the Scots are out for our blood. Th
ey needed the gun to make war on England. She says the Duke will blame Bruges, and the Burgomaster will have to protect himself. She wants to meet me under the Crane at eleven tomorrow.”

  Julius closed his eyes. You would say it was fantasy, if you didn’t know Claes. You would say that even Claes couldn’t receive an invitation through prison bars from a girl he’d never spoken to in his life. On the other hand, when you knew Claes, you knew what his smile did. All the same –

  “In two pieces?” said Julius. “With your face blue and your tongue hanging out? Or are they going to arrest all the lightermen and let you and me and Felix walk home to the dyeshop tomorrow?”

  “That’s what I meant to tell you,” said Claes. “If you hadn’t jabbed at my back. I couldn’t think while you jabbed at my back. All the boys from the shop were there outside the prison.”

  “You told us that,” said Felix.

  “Yes. Well, all the Dyers’ Guild members came there as well, and the dean and the chaplain. They said they’d sent to the écoutète and the échevins and the counsellors and the deputy controller and of course Meester Anselm with a very big complaint and talk of outrage and even talk of ceasing to do trade with Scotland, and all the officials had put together their heads and agreed that, provided we satisfied Meester Anselm of our innocence, there would be no further action apart from a significant fine from the Charetty family –”

  “Oh,” said Felix.

  “– which the Dyers’ Guild and the Lightermen’s Guild would each assist them to pay. They’re letting us out in the morning. Under the Crane at eleven, she said.”

  Meester Julius stared at the family apprentice. “You knew that when you came in.”

  Claes gave his generous smile.

  “And,” said Julius, “the bailiff knew that, and probably the gaoler and both the turnkeys who took all my money.” He could feel himself sickening for a cold, so he contented himself with delivering a cutting, well-phrased and annihilating diatribe, which Claes received with proper humility, even if Felix giggled all the way through. Then he rolled over and submitted himself and his cold to an uncomfortable, but not a doom-laden night.