Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [158]
Claes kissed the hard fingers and rose, and backed, and bumped into Raymond du Lyon who turned him round by the elbow and walked a dozen paces from the clearing. His horse was waiting there with his saddle, mended, upon it. The man at arms said, “You were stunned by the fall, and a field-worker cared for you. The hunt is not far away. You know where to recover your arms?”
“Under the hoe,” said Claes. “Unless someone has stolen the hoe. It’s late to start back.”
Raymond du Lyon showed his three broken teeth. “Your young Monsieur Felix has had a message already from the Dauphin’s steward, regretting that his lord has changed his plans and a meeting cannot now be expected. But a room has been arranged for you both on your way back at Wavre. There will be nothing to pay.”
“That will please Monsieur Felix,” said Claes. His arms were soon found. He took leave of Gaston’s brother and rode off. He felt slightly breathless, as he had in February, climbing out of the frozen water. Somewhere under the shock, a feeling of pleasure was struggling with a very sensible apprehension.
Chapter 24
WEARING COURT dress, including a hennin, Katelina van Borselen rode through the streets of Ghent with her parents and a handsome retinue, below the Veere banner. With her, she carried her liege lord Duke Philip’s permission to visit Brittany, there to take up her post as maid of honour to the widowed Scots Duchess. Tomorrow she and her party were passing to Zeeland. Tonight they had rooms in one of the great inns of Ghent. They were turning into the courtyard when her father stopped yet again to greet someone he knew, and his wife and daughter and servants halted once more obediently.
Then Katelina saw that the person he was greeting was the son of Marian de Charetty, and that behind him were two grooms and Claes. Claes, whom she had not seen since the morning after the Carnival. Claes, who had taken, very courteously, what she had enjoined upon him, and then had taken it again, she was rather pleased to remember, purely for his own enjoyment. Unless he was rather cleverer even than she had thought.
At no time, either next morning nor later, had she felt ashamed of what had happened. She had chosen well. She had not been roughly treated. Her initiation, she was ready to believe, had, from its circumstances, been more careful than she could have expected at the wedded hands of the seigneur’s son from Courtrai, or even Guildolf de Gruuthuse, never mind Jordan de Ribérac and his nasty son. She was grateful to Claes, although he had made one miscalculation. He had, as he had said, wakened her too far.
You would think, then, that she would have been eager, for the first time, to study the renewed lists of suitors, young and old, which her mother was pressing upon her. That she would, with this curious ache which now visited her, have sought the company of the young men who came to her house, and escorted her family and tried to please her. It was ridiculous that she did not. They said that a duckling, born out of sight of its mother, would follow the first form it set eyes on. Heaven forfend that she was to spend the rest of her life looking for someone who, put in a bathtub, spoke like … looked like … handled her like the boy Claes.
She thought particularly about their next meeting. Despite their difference in rank, Claes and she were bound to encounter one another in the weeks to come. She could trust him, she believed, not to be familiar. But the circumstances demanded some acknowledgement – some change of attitude, a special friendliness, even in public. She had to deal with that, and so had he.
She found, in any case, that she was curious to know what became of him. She discovered that, as courier, his status had risen a little; that his employer was giving him experience about the various forms of her business. Claes was permitted to escort Marian de Charetty nowadays to business meetings and was not treated entirely as a servant, but was allowed to sit quietly behind