Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [82]
He hardly heard the reception for Julius, who managed two out of the three at quite a spectacular speed. He did hear the shouting for Zeno, for it greeted a performance as good as his own. But the rest of his attention was fixed on the distant figure of de Fleury, who remained, awaiting his turn, with Adorne’s useless bow in his hands. Except that it was useless no longer, for in those few moments aside, he had seen de Fleury begin, with powerful hands, to replace the wet string with the dry one from inside his hat. On horseback. And on a short bow with a hundred-pound pull.
But brute strength and long practice were one thing, and the sober concentration required by a feat such as this, on a thrice-churned field, were another. De Fleury pounded cheerfully across, occasionally sliding, and shooting carelessly and fast into every place on the bank but the white, after which, laughing, he tossed up his bow as Zeno had done, and caught it in cheerful contrition. Arriving, he did not even look at Adorne, and the latter, the borrowed bow outstretched, let his hand drop. He did not understand, but he could not deny he was grateful.
Zeno, accompanying Nicholas to the line for flight shooting, was in a sardonic mood. ‘You should have kept your splendid bow. Where did you get it from? And having acquired it, why give it away?’
‘Well, you saw,’ Nicholas said. ‘Even when I had it, I couldn’t do anything. It was the wine and the beer, I suppose. I think I’d better leave the long distance to you, and save myself for the rest.’
Zeno had laughed, and Julius, overhearing, had punched Nicholas on the side and remarked that he didn’t think he had anything left that was worth saving. Then Julius turned round and joined Zeno and Adorne at the line, and the last of the envoy’s ordeals began: the round in which each man had three chances to shoot as far as he could. It was not a competition, and there were no prizes to be had, but honours between Genoa and Venice were at present even, and Anselm Adorne wished to change that.
He still had the bow. He had, more than the worth of the bow, the furious determination inspired by de Fleury’s inexplicable act. Adorne’s first two shots were both fine, but the last was brilliant, travelling straight and hard for well over four hundred yards. Even Zeno was unable to match it, never mind Julius the lawyer. Anselm Adorne had finished by holding his own, and even by creating a record.
Shaking his fellow performers by the hand, returning to bow to the President and, amid acclaim, to retake his seat, the Burgundian envoy could be satisfied. He had represented his master. He had completed the programme he had set himself, and had emerged unharmed, and with credit, as something better, at least, than a disgraced ambassador.
He was conscious, of course, of his debt. Quitting the field, he had returned the bow to its temporary owner with a curt question. ‘Why?’
And the dark-rimmed, unhealthy grey eyes had glanced at him with something almost like amusement, while Nicholas de Fleury had said, ‘Isn’t it obvious? So that I shan’t be blamed when you die.’
Then the princes left, and there remained only the exhibition of trickery. The Venetian and his pair of Persian-trained acolytes would surely enjoy displaying that.
SEEN FROM THE President’s pavilion, the little extravaganza that followed was pleasant enough. Their anxiety removed, Adorne’s companions could even admire the dexterity with which Caterino Zeno, twisting and turning between the lines of fine wands, would aim and strike each one from one angle or another; how Julius, acrobatic on his high-prancing horse, would run beside it and leap in and out of the saddle and then, racing parallel with de Fleury, would toss over and re-toss his weapon, each man shooting with first one