Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [181]
By the time his bride was ready to leave there was no flaw, Adorne saw, in the bearing of her new partner. Nicholas offered well-considered and, he thought, genuine thanks to himself and to Margriet. With practical ease he lifted the demoiselle’s cloak and laid it round the demoiselle’s shoulders. She looked up at him, her colour returned, you could see, with her courage.
Dear God, what a marriage. What a marriage.
Adorne stood with Margriet and bade the demoiselle and her husband Godspeed as their barge left for home. Thus occupied, Anselm Adorne didn’t observe that his student son Jan had strolled into the house. Ravenous as all student sons, he quizzed the servants while filling his mouth from the ruined feast on the table, and received an unbelievable answer. An answer which wild horses could not have forced him to keep to himself.
Chapter 27
THE CLANG OF the noonday work bell didn’t even penetrate the hearing of Felix de Charetty who; smarting from the double loss of a lot of money and a girl, had salved his pride by inviting himself into the Poorterslogie, the club house of the White Bear Society. The Society whose emblem, perched in the outside coign of the building, had once been embraced by that silly fool Claes, so the story ran, just after he had swum the canal and hacked to death Simon of Kilmirren’s expensive dog.
That was when Claes, though a fool, had been amusing to be with. Before he started telling him what he could or couldn’t do with girls like Mabelie. To be truthful, Felix hadn’t been sorry to get rid of the Mabelie embarrassment. As it turned out, she hadn’t wanted to leave John Bonkle anyway, and John Bonkle hadn’t wanted to get rid of her. He and Jannekin had both been a bit drunk.
Felix was trying today to keep off beer, in order to give a proper impression. The White Bear Society, whose great joust opened the post-Easter tournament, was extremely exclusive, restricting its members to noblemen and the upper bourgeoisie. Drapers and mercers and furriers just managed to get in and, of course, real estate owners. Guild members were not approved of, although the Brotherhood made exceptions for the larger brokers and innkeepers. As a son of a broker, Felix just qualified. He didn’t talk about dyeing or fulling. It was a little alarming, therefore, to walk into this handsome building by the canal bridge and greet men he had seen in his mother’s company, and accept their invitation to take a cup of wine.
It came to him that, if he were to come often, he would need more money. He needed more money as it was, if he were going to practise every day the way he needed to practise for the jousting. He had the armour all right, and some of the weapons. But he needed more lances, and he should have a spare shield. And what mattered most of all, of course, were the horses.
He should have two, and heavy ones. There was one in the stable which had belonged to his father, although his father had hardly seen any fighting and used it more to ride up and down and impress people when it was his turn to be captain of one of the companies on the walls. He had meant to get a loan of another. One of the de Walles had half offered. But a lot of the families he knew were going in for the thing themselves. The Breydels and the Metteneyes and the Bradericx and the Halewyns and the Themsekes. It went down from father to son, attempting the joust and trying to carry off the horn or the lance or the Bear. In the great days, the best of the Burgundian Court would come to Bruges to take part. People like Jacques de Lalain and the Bastard of Burgundy.
A tremor ran through Felix but he refused, valiantly, the offer of another cup. He had to get a better horse. And another shield. He couldn’t fight great knights, could he, with rubbish? He plunged, avidly, into discussions about the tournaments, and absorbed all