Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [183]
They’d played jokes on each other before. Getting into scrapes and out of them was normal, and so were storms of annoyance and even pangs of fear. But between boys and among boys, not in front of the Poorterslogie. The monstrosity of the social problem was already, as he struggled to deal with it, paralysing Felix, not the most inventive of youths. At Lorenzo’s words, his stomach, glimpsing something quite unmanageable, began to flicker with random pain, like summer lightning. His conscious mind was merely goaded to fury. He pushed, spitting words at them.
This time, they stood their ground, although uncertainly. They let him flail them. Occasionally one would try to speak, and find Felix’s fist at his mouth. It was ridiculous. Lorenzo, first to collect himself, leaned forward and tried, with the best intentions, to grasp Felix’s arm. Felix hit Lorenzo’s hand, painfully. Lorenzo said angrily, “All right. If he doesn’t want to believe it, that’s his affair,” and walked off.
The smaller boys moved closer. John Bonkle, his face flushed said, “Oh, come on. This is just making it worse. You shouldn’t have told him here, Jan.”
Jan Adorne turned and said, “Well, I had to. He wouldn’t come out. He has to know, hasn’t he? Otherwise he’ll go off home and find –”
“– in bed …” said one of the younger boys, the one who had snorted.
“– Felix’s new father!” said another. “Claes!” They staggered, holding one another and laughing. Behind, at the entrance to the White Bear Society, a number of men standing quietly looked at one another, and the noise from inside the club was noticeably less. It was Anselm Sersanders who saw it and leaned forward and, this time successfully, took Felix by the elbow. He said, “The rest of you, get out. John, help me. Jan, you’d better come.”
Felix’s head, which had been very hot, suddenly felt very cold. He said, “What … It isn’t true?”
He was walking, with Jan Adorne on one side and Jan’s cousin Anselm and John Bonkle on the other. His doublet was gaping open, showing a stain on his shirt, and his hose, it turned out, felt clammy. There was a group of men talking on the threshold of the Poorterslogie behind him. His stomach rose. He said desperately, “I need a … It isn’t true?”
It was the very heart of the business section in Bruges, but they found him, ingeniously, a corner to be sick in, and worse, with a group of drunk lightermen to encourage him. Then they took him down one of the canal slopes and sat him at the edge of the water, dipping his kerchief for him. He was trembling. He said, “That was the foulest thing you’ve ever done. That was wicked. That was a dirty, unfair, rotten …” Tears were moving down his cheeks. He said, “You could have thought up some other story.” He saw them looking at one another. The boulder that had been in his stomach had moved into his throat. He said, “I’m going to the tavern. I don’t want to see you again.” Still they didn’t move, and neither did he. His body started to heave. Then he put his face in his hands and sobbed.
John Bonkle put a hand on his shoulder and pulled a face at Jan Adorne and said, “Go on. He’d better hear what you know.”
It was Henninc, his eyes on his mistress’s unusual clothes, who told her that jonkheere Felix had gone to the Poorterslogie. As yet, Henninc and the household knew nothing. Back from the Hôtel Jerusalem, Nicholas had taken the demoiselle directly indoors, and had remained there. The staff could not be told before the son of the house. And the son of the house, Nicholas suggested wryly, might better learn it indoors rather than out.
Felix’s mother was silent, thinking of the news spreading from this morning’s witnesses. But they would go home, surely, first. And although it was not right that Felix should learn of this publicly, he would be prevented from pride from making a scene in a place like the White Bear Society.