Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [128]
“I should like to go home,” said Tilde flatly. On Claes’ other side, Catherine’s face appeared, frowning. Beside the priest, the two Adorne girls were whispering. The older, Marie, flushing, murmured something.
“What?” said Father Bertouche.
The van Borselen girl looked at him with impatience. “She says her sister needs to go home,” she said. “Don’t you have a maidservant with you?”
The chaplain removed the kerchief from his nose, and his upper lip glistened ochre in the lamplight. He looked stricken. Claes smiled. “It’s a common problem,” he said. “I don’t mind taking her, if she wants to be comfortable. I know a lot of girls here.”
The Adorne child, poor thing, looked as stricken as the chaplain. She said, “I want to go home,” in a strangled voice.
“All right,” said Gelis van Borselen. “Take my maid. Matten, go with them. Help the demoiselle if she needs it. You needn’t bother to come back.”
Christ. Claes said, “Then we’ll all go back to the Hôtel Jerusalem.”
The fat girl stared at him. “I’m not leaving,” she said. “And I’ve sent my manservant home. I’ll stay by myself if you don’t want to keep your promises. You did promise.”
With undesirable but understandable speed, the group about him was dissolving. Untying Catherine, finding some sort of words to say to Tilde and the retreating chaplain, Claes caught the essential phrase and was in time to plunge after the vanishing manservant and drag him back by the arm. He looked frightened.
With reason. “I told him to go,” said the child. “Or he would hear about it from my father.”
“And I,” said Claes firmly, “am telling him to stay, or your father will hear about this from me. Where did this cloak and mask come from?”
“I borrowed them.” Her chin came up, improving the view slightly.
“I’m sure. And if you take them back in time, perhaps no one will say anything about it. So I shall make you an offer. Ten minutes here at the tightrope. Ten minutes dancing with some of my friends. Ten minutes for the fireworks and the bonfire. And then our friend here and I take you home to your sister.”
Gelis said, “I’m not staying with Katelina. I’m staying at my lord of Veere’s house where Charles is. Do you want to know why?”
She wasn’t a bad child. Ahead of him, unexpectedly, glimmered the promise, at the end of it all, of an hour or two to spend as he pleased. With whom he pleased.
He listened, peaceably, to the item of information she was pressing upon him, and found it, indeed, nearly as interesting as she thought it was.
Chapter 19
AS CHILDREN WERE taken home, masqueraders began to fill the streets. Gradually, among the fustian, there appeared thick cloaks of furred velvet with glimpses of pearled sleeve and gold fringe and silk brocade underneath. And next to the felt caps and decent hoods and white bonnets there would brush past a griffon, a jester, an eagle. A unicorn would turn to look at a pretty ankle, or a ship in full sail pass by laughing, or a goat or a Charlemagne pause to toss a coin and pick up a sweetmeat.
Katelina van Borselen was not yet among them. The cloak she was going to wear lay on the table by the great window in her parents’ house. Every now and then, she paused by the window to see if her mother’s three suitors were waiting yet. The house was empty but for its gatekeepers. They were there to protect it, for the other servants had leave to stay out, or were with her parents at the lord of Veere’s house. They were there to protect her as well, in case her escort failed to come, or proved undesirable. Or in case (as was not entirely unheard of) one cavalier disputed with another, and she was left waiting with none.
Usually, however, there was no unpleasantness. The candidate proffered his scroll and was chosen or excused with courtesy. Unknown in his mask, he lost no face before a waiting rival. Unless,