Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [129]
She had missed his arrival. He was already waiting under the eaves of the opposite houses. He was cloakless. From the neck up, there was nothing of him to be seen but the pelt, eyeholes and fangs of a magnificent leopard-head. From the neck down, the lamplight displayed a brief, fur-hemmed tunic and the negligent line of his hose, exposed from mid-thigh to the soles of his feet. One gloved hand rested at his hip. In the other, exposed to the light, was a masquerade scroll. And behind him, with the Gruuthuse cannon on every shoulder, were six liveried servants. One of them held a ribboned lute like a cat by the tail.
He had just, she thought, taken up his stance, because the group he had come with were still in sight, calling and laughing. As she watched, others passed, and there were exchanges of some hilarity. This was normal. The moment she appeared, he would revert to the usage of chivalry. She ought to go down. She ought to make quite sure, first, that there were no other contenders (was it likely?). Katelina, with the greatest discretion, peered from the window.
There was another contender. A man both taller and broader than Guildolf, waiting serenely, scroll in hand, beside her own gatepost. He was alone, with no servants or device to distinguish him. Of his shape she could see nothing either, for he was cloaked from his mask to his boots. And of the mask itself she could make little in the uncertain light. It seemed to be made up of feathers.
She hesitated. Then she took up her cloak and descended the stairs of her father’s house slowly. She crossed the yard, and spoke to one of the porters, who opened the gates. She stepped through them.
The big man with the cloak was, of course, nearest, but she must acknowledge them both. Katelina faced the distant leopard and dropped him a solicitous curtsey, but turned to deal first, as was natural, with the nameless suitor beside her. She dipped her skirts again, with marked refinement, and held out her hand for his paper.
He knelt, presenting it. The headdress, catching the light, proved to be the mask of an owl. The name on the scroll was that of the suitor from Courtrai, which was odd, as she’d believed him a short man. On the other side of the road Guildolf de Gruuthuse had set out to join her, and was crossing the cobbles with elegance.
So. There were no other claimants. She had to choose between the beast and the bird. Beside her the bird, who had risen, chuckled under his breath. Suitors were not supposed to speak. In mellow Flemish with an undertone somewhere of French, this one made a short statement. “Pick him if you like, but he plays the lute like a butcher, and squeezes his boils every morning at table. That’s the idea of the leopard. By the time he takes the mask off, you’ve got used to them. He’s keeping the rest of the skin for his bridal night.”
She choked. Controlling herself made her eyes water. The handsome legs and the leopard-head arrived before her. The wealth of the Gruuthuses. Twenty years of child-bearing. Boils.
Katelina van Borselen curtseyed again to Guildolf de Gruuthuse, but laid his scroll gently back in the hands which had offered it. “My lord, I am honoured, but you have been forestalled by another. God give you a happy evening and night, and may we drink together one day in friendship.”
He was disconcerted in the extreme. It was, she saw, rather unlikely that he would drink with her or any member of her family again. She hoped that her mother, who had created this fiasco, could repair it with equal facility, and rather thought that she could. After all, it was her mother who had issued, as it were, three invitations. Someone was bound to be disappointed. The idea that three people might be disappointed was not, of course, something that her mother had contemplated.
Katelina was not greatly concerned. In her view, what mattered was whether or not the evening was likely