The Unicorn Hunt Read online

  ‘They were not, certainly, sprays of honesty,’ Adorne said. ‘The man in black must be Nicholas. I thought him thicker. And certainly black is far from his usual choice. Or, indeed, his usual pocket. What ball? Katelijne!’

  Katelijne had guessed what ball the riders were going for. Before even her uncle exclaimed, before Anselm her brother had moved, she had set off to scamper back through the sand to the links. The man in black, mounted, arrived just before her, scattering the few grazing heifers and causing the half-dozen foot-players to stumble aside from the hole over which they were poring. Two of them shouted, and one lifted his stick at the horse.

  The man in black plucked it out of his grasp and broke it over his knee. Then, gathering his reins, he swept his own stick in a low, graceful arc, and settling it outside the ball, whipped it showily out of their reach, while the mare between his knees swerved and followed, in visibly perfect control. The ball, chipped into the air, fell ahead and was securely caught, with a smack, between the two open palms of Katelijne.

  For a moment, she stood her ground as the rider swooped to her side and drew rein. She let him begin to lean down, before she lifted her palm and threw the ball back where it had come from, at the feet of the shouting, hurrying golfers.

  They looked down at it, and at her. The man in black said in French, ‘You would like to join in the game?’ He was at least as old as her brother. His sleeve smelled of brine, and horse, and scent, and his doublet was made of plain black silk, sewn, embroidered and pleated. Under the brim of his hat, his eyes were as large as those of swan-seduced Leda in a painting she had not, when a child, comprehended.

  ‘Isn’t it over?’ she said.

  ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘I fear that it is.’ He had hardly shifted his gaze.

  She whirled. Behind her back, the man in rubies, the man Julius in red, had ridden up and, bending, had scooped the ball again from its owners. Feet disputed, and voices. Then Julius, laughing, turned his horse, and with ease punted the ball across to the black rider again.

  This time, she was on the wrong side to catch it. She picked up her skirts and ran forward none the less as the red rider thundered behind her, and the golfers, silent and dogged, pounded after. Ahead, the man with the whistle played a cadenza of notes with one hand and, when the black rider glanced over, beckoned. The black rider, his horse in motion, bent in a mist of cold scent to dispatch the ball in his direction.

  The stick had just connected when his horse pecked, staggered, and all but threw him. The ball, knocked awry, flew instead towards the child Margaret.

  The black rider, with a muted exclamation, righted himself. The golfer who had thrown the stick at his horse ran to his side, hooting with righteous joy, and squealed as Katelijne reached up and thrust her arm in his and held him tight. ‘Long live the game. No quarter!’ she called to the black rider. And ducked like he did as the ball, hit by the child, came hurtling back to the links.

  It was stopped in mid-air by the club of another golfer.

  The youth Albany jerked his stick upwards in rage and then lowered it sulkily. The golfing party, spreading out, lobbed the ball laughing to one another, to the cheers of the spectators. Katelijne chased panting among them, sometimes close enough to touch the ball herself, or even kick it. She glimpsed her brother, not quite taking part, but still grinning. The black rider, arriving without apparent effort, collected the ball, drew back his arm, and hit it sweetly out to the strand, to fall between the Prince and Princess of Scotland, who had not been smiling at all.

  The girl got to it first. The boy said, ‘Stop. You’ll let the fools have it,’ and, when she paid no attention, drove his spur into the flank of her pony, which reared. The child screamed. Ignoring her, the boy rescued the ball and struck it carefully and accurately towards the expert player in black. The girl, still screaming, drove her pony against her brother’s fine-bred, magnificent Arab with such suddenness that, leaning low at the end of his stroke, he was flung from the saddle. His sister then bent down and began hitting him with her stick.

  ‘Well, well,’ said the man in black, and took careful aim. Katelijne, running towards the fallen youth, saw the practised stick hit the ball just as she caught Alexander’s loose, distraught horse by the reins. This time, the ball went nowhere near golfers or riders. It simply flew over the beach and, far, far away, plummeted with a splash into the sea. Where, being made from the very best boxwood, it floated.

  On the beach, there was a single, fierce moment filled with juvenile fury and adult approval. Then the child Margaret screamed, ‘No!’ and whipped her pony straight into the estuary.

  Katelijne was nearest, with Albany’s reins still in her grasp. She forked her skirts with one hand, put a foot in the stirrup and, springing into Albany’s saddle, pushed the priceless mare into the sea. Behind her, she heard another horse following.

  On the links and the beach, the spectators saw it, as did the golfers, leaning panting on their clubs, and the six remaining members of the tzukanion teams, wheeling and calling. Julius, in red, was the first to throw his horse forward, followed by Jamie Liddell of Halkerston, Albany’s officer. The boy, the whistler in green and the young woman followed. The youth Alexander, sprawled on the sand, scowled at the rump of his child-sister’s pony, veiled in spray and clogged with a load of wet velvet.

  He sat up with a jerk as his own horse also entered the sea, ridden with frightening vehemence by a minute brown-haired girl. And then he scrambled to his feet as a horse more crudely powerful than either plunged into the water and followed, kicking up sand and water, spray and foam and finally sinking, like the rest, to swim into the pull of deep water. Three people, chasing a ball.

  The tide was receding. It was the first thing anyone brought up in Flanders would notice. Adorne did so, and the silent group of his fellows: Sersanders had long since left them to race down to the shore. Had it not been so, one would simply have waited, and ball and child would both have come in.

  As it was, the broad head of the pony and the bared red hair of the King’s sister forging outwards rose and fell among the great waves of the estuary while the ball, the evil ball, lilted ahead, clearly visible but always retreating. For eight, she was an excellent rider, and full of Stewart valour – or obstinacy.

  Pursuing, Katelijne bestowed frothing curses on both. They were now well out from the shore. The only advantage of that was the silence. As the shouting and the crash of the land-waves receded, she began to call at the head of each surge. ‘Margaret! Hey!’ cried Katelijne. ‘They’ve found a ball! You’re missing the game!’

  One did not address princesses as ‘Hey.’ One did not allow one’s future employer to drown. Katelijne said, ‘All right, run away. You knew you couldn’t win, anyway.’

  She wasn’t heard. Or perhaps she was: the round cheek bulged, as if a Stewart jaw had been set. The russet hair, too wet to whip in the wind, lay like leaves on the leaden pall of spoiled velvet. The girl didn’t look round.

  A voice in languid French said, ‘Leave it to me.’ The black rider, his horse swimming beside Katelijne’s. Passing, he caught the mare’s eye and hissed at her provocatively.

  Katelijne said, ‘Can you capture the ball?’

  ‘If I must,’ he remarked. ‘I doubt if the dear creature can swim.’

  ‘I can,’ she said. He was already in front, the black velvet and the embroidery drenched; his hair, hatless now, cut curling and smart on the nape of his neck; his eyes, his pale, densely focused eyes on the child.

  ‘I offer candles,’ he said, without turning. The words barely reached her. Whatever he offered, he had given her no advice and no orders. She followed.

  It was more difficult now, further out from the shore. The wind sliced the tops from the waves, and the waves themselves, curling high, sometimes bore her horse up and over in safety, but sometimes broke in her face while the horse struggled and snorted beneath her. Ahead, Margaret’s mount was hardly swimming. The lady Margaret, whom she
had come from Flanders to serve, and who was going to be served, whether they had been introduced to one another or not.

  The wind brought a gust of sound from behind. Help belatedly on the way, it was to be supposed. A number of big men on big horses. Or a boat, even.

  And they would be too late, for ahead there had come the wave which the pony was too slight and too scared to survive. The poor beast was no more, except as a turmoil three deep waves from the spot where the black rider’s powerful gelding was swimming.

  Katelijne saw the pony’s head break water and sink. And saw, to one side, a red head rise and sink also. The pony was drowning. The child had left the saddle and was drowning as well.

  Katelijne dragged her feet out of the stirrups and stopped. In a surge of water, the black rider had abandoned his horse. Freed, it began to swim back to the shore.

  Katelijne wasted no time on trying to catch it, but concentrated on driving her own mount to the spot. It would have helped if it hadn’t been an Arab and somewhat unused to water. She wondered what fool had brought it to Scotland. The man in black appeared, vanished and suddenly reappeared quite close beside her, a limp red head over his shoulder. He could swim. A billow of velvet floated up and then vanished, leaving a brief scrap of white in its place. A hand reached up to her, offering a knife.

  ‘Cut your skirts off and take her. I’ll lead Epyaxa.’ His own doublet and pourpoint were gone, leaving him in black hose and shirt, like a tennis-player. He paddled, holding the reins, while she ripped off her half-gown and some of her linen. (Epyaxa?) The child, pulled up before her, was alive, but retching and weeping and calling for one Mariota.

  Katelijne set about turning the mare and found the task taken from her, almost at once, by the swimmer. After that, he stayed by her side, his hand by the Arab’s cheek-harness, his voice in its ear. The mare’s ears were stark upright, as if she understood what she was being told. The language was Greek. Ahead, and approaching fast, was a splashing line of frantic chevaliers, the man in scarlet in front.

  ‘Dear Julius,’ said the swimmer below her. He rolled on his side and glanced up. ‘Well, come on, sweetheart; use your knees and let’s get to the shore. We did all the work. We might as well get all the credit.’

  ‘Who did all the work?’ said Katelijne.

  ‘I, the irreproachable Knight Highmount, loved and feared by many. I did,’ he said; and, reaching into his shirt, produced something and lobbed it towards her. She freed a hand and just caught it. It was the wooden ball. The child, who had stopped choking and was just howling, abruptly ceased doing either and took it.

  ‘I offer candles,’ said Katelijne.

  ‘I’d prefer a percentage of your contract,’ he said. ‘But I dare say I shall get some good of it all. Here they are. Look exhausted.’

  ‘I am exhausted,’ she said tentatively. She had stopped trembling, she found.

  ‘You couldn’t do it again?’

  Willing hands, reaching her, had taken the child and found a cloak for her shoulders. Soon, she was able to dismount and wade, the other riders splashing and shouting beside them. Someone took her arm, and she removed it.

  ‘You’d need two other idiots,’ she said. ‘One to hit the ball out to sea, and the other to try to ride after it.’

  The child was already on shore, and set at the feet of a square, kneeling nurse and a gentlewoman in the robes of a prioress. The child, struggling free, looked back and called to Katelijne. She said, ‘I wasn’t running away.’ She was hugging the ball. Someone was trying to give her another one.

  ‘You know, I saw that,’ said Katelijne in answer. ‘But there are easier ways of getting a ball.’ She smiled, and the child, hoisted again, returned the smile over a retreating manservant’s shoulder.

  She had missed something: a gesture. The man beside her put up his hand and the spare ball, flung from nowhere, smacked into it. ‘Well?’ he said, and glanced suggestively out to sea.

  She said, ‘Well, why not? But shouldn’t it be something more exciting? And I’m hungry. I’ll race you to Master Lamb’s house, if you like.’

  He said, ‘And that would be exciting? Once you wouldn’t have thought so.’

  She looked up. ‘Upside down on our hands?’ He was scanning the crowds, without listening.

  Now that nothing but streaming cambric was left, she could see that, within his considerable frame, he was spare as a man in severe training might be. His hair, tamped down with water, was an indeterminate brown, but cut so well that it was already lifting round his temples and neck. His brow and cheekbones were broader than those of the men of her family, and his eyes wider set on either side of the slender bridge of his nose. Below that, his lips were as rounded and full as a woman’s.

  He said, ‘You will know me again,’ and she said quickly, ‘I was afraid I might need to, Ser Niccolò.’ She added, ‘You think I’m Anselm Adorne’s daughter.’

  He said, ‘Of course you are. But if you’re not, how do you know who I am?’

  ‘Doesn’t everybody, even the horse?’ said Katelijne. ‘You’re Nicholas vander Poele, and I’m Anselm Sersanders’s sister. If I had a lisp, I couldn’t say that.’

  ‘Deserts would hire you. By my God and Creator … I saw your revered uncle, and Maarten and Metteneye. But what is your brother doing here? He isn’t working in Scotland as well? Julius! Anselm Sersanders is here!’

  ‘I know,’ said the man in red. ‘And the windmills. And the water-wheels, I have no doubt. If the rest of Bruges is coming over, we’d better tell the magistrates to board up the markets. Nicholas, you know you’ve caused mayhem and that poor lad is standing there, waiting to thank you?’

  Indeed, on the shore, backed by his courtiers, the Duke of Albany was waiting to greet them; his blackened doublet and hose caked with sand; his braid and buttons protruding like baitworm.

  Nevertheless, his chin high, his auburn hair blowing, the Prince knew the duty due to his blood. He allowed Katelijne to kiss his hand first. Although they were of the same age and he was praising her, there was no doubt that he was the King’s brother, and she was merely the Flemish demoiselle appointed to his young sister’s household. Then he turned to Nicholas vander Poele.

  The words of gratitude he used were almost the same, but the tone was subtly different. Of course, a youth of fourteen spoke to a man of twenty-seven. Also, they knew one another. More: there was a relationship there, or one just beginning.

  And now Katelijne’s own family were around her, asking questions, hugging her anxiously. Her brother said, ‘You’re an imbecile, and Nicholas is even worse. I should have warned you. What was he trying to do just now? Get you to swim out again?’

  There had been no relationship at all in the water: that was what she had found so agreeable. She said, ‘Maybe. It was strenuous. You know. You feel, stopping, you could strangle a lion. He is restless.’

  ‘He was born restless,’ said her brother. ‘He doesn’t need any more stirring-up, and neither do you. Come on. We’re promised hot malmsey and ginger, spices by courtesy of Nicholas. Aren’t you cold?’

  ‘I’m hungry,’ she said. ‘Race you back to the house on your hands?’

  Then she said, ‘Listen.’

  ‘It’s only the young gentlefolk,’ said their host, Master Lamb, coming up. ‘Whistle Willie – Master Roger, that is, and Master Jamie and the trumpet, that’s Albany’s pursuivant. You’ll hear them later, gin my lord Duke has his way. Ye ken my young lord Alexander has elected to sup with us, of his own free motive will, sic an honour? You won’t mislike an entertainment of seemly-like music?’

  ‘It depends,’ said Katelijne.

  ‘A purist,’ said her uncle, on her other side. ‘But at least, my dear, you have, I think, decided not to go straight back to Flanders?’

  Chapter 3

  THE QUESTION WAS asked that night at Master Lamb’s table: the question about Gelis van Borselen which, this time, would have to be answered. And it was Anselm Adorne once more
who asked it, but this time directly of the girl’s husband.

  ‘So where, you fortunate man, is your charming wife Gelis?’ asked Anselm Adorne, seating himself two places from Nicholas at Master Lamb’s table shortly afterwards. Behind them, Albany’s trumpeter let off a blast, and Julius, in the middle, began cheerfully to cut up his meat.

  Julius, who had supervised (he felt) the upbringing of Nicholas, always enjoyed overhearing personal questions and especially this one, because of the slight variations in the answers Nicholas gave.

  Nicholas was, naturally, wearing black. They were all freshly dressed – Adorne and his party from their sea-coffers, the Duke of Albany and his officers from the wardrobe at the King’s Wark and Nicholas and himself from the clothes they kept over the river, where Nicholas had leased some convenient rooms in North Leith.

  Since his departure from Bruges, Nicholas had elected to dress only in black, the most expensive dye in the world. And not only himself, but his page, his groom, his cook and his menservants had been put into black livery, and the select company of his men at arms wore black hats and black sleeves. Jannekin Bonkle, related to half the merchant colony of Bruges and Edinburgh, had organised it. It was, in its way, a gesture of unutterable flamboyance. Julius loved it.

  Julius, of course, loved all that had happened since they left Bruges for Scotland. His wealth, the reputation of the Bank, and the respected name of the van Borselen family had ensured an honourable welcome from the young King’s advisers for Gelis van Borselen’s husband. In return, Nicholas had not sought unreasonable privileges, and had not gone out of his way to court the child King or his brother. If Albany (sitting beyond Nicholas now) was seeking his company more and more, it was not Nicholas’s fault. And the absence of a wife had proved no disadvantage.

  As to that, Julius had not encouraged Nicholas to make this latest marriage, although the rest of the Bank had approved. Nicholas unshackled was thought to represent a challenge to normal society. Himself, he preferred Nicholas free. The happiest time of any lawyer’s career could not offer more than the years Julius had spent managing the Banco di Niccolò in Venice. Gregorio, who had preceded him, would agree.