Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [208]
The beauty of the fire was now at its height. The fusion of strange and precious substances created a red and yellow pyre of extraordinary brilliance, shot through with salt greens and acid yellows and an unsettling violet. Now and then, above the crackling roar, a report or a hiss would herald a ribbon of silver or a plume of gamboge or an arrowhead of crimson, spitting sparks. The yard, pooled with water, reflected it.
Then the wind turned, and the black pall of the cloth smoke found its way, with the stench, to the roadway. As if awakened, the crowd started to move. The house, half ash, half fire, offered no threat now, with the altered wind. The nearby houses were safe, and the swarming figures began to leave them one by one. The woman who must be Marian de Charetty stood still, looking towards them. Simon saw the man in the black doublet speak to her gently and then, moving away, begin to look about him. Soon he was surrounded. He would have shelter to find, of course, for all the Widow’s people.
But of course, she was a widow no longer; and it was perfectly plain what she was waiting for. Something more important than the mere distress of her employees and their losses. And, sure enough, a figure separated from the last group of soot-blackened men coming back from their labours, and trod with strong, bare feet towards the woman and her two daughters. This immortal young bastard; this Nicholas.
Whatever expression he wore, a gum of soot and sweat concealed it. There was burned skin as well as dirt on his body where the untied shirt didn’t cover it. Then Simon saw the flash of his teeth and the taller of the two young girls left her mother’s shoulder and ran towards him suddenly. Nicholas put his arm round her tightly and kissed her forehead. Then holding her at his side, he walked forward and, one-handed, drew the woman and the younger child into the same wordless embrace. The mother’s long, ruffled hair blew about them.
What he said after that could not be heard, but the woman’s eyes as she listened spoke for her. Indeed, no one watching could doubt precisely how she had been induced to marry. Then her juvenile husband, breaking carefully away, called to the man in black, who turned and replied, and then looked about him, and then saw Simon, and pointed.
In his black cloak and satin feasting-clothes, slightly ruffled by Betkine, Simon waited while Nicholas walked over and stood before him. Below the dirt, the youth’s face was colourless.
Simon said, “With the world full of fat little businesses, why marry one so ill-smelling when heated? I hear you planned to scurry to safety tomorrow. But see, we’ve met none the less.”
They might call him Nicholas now, but the boy who took all the beatings still stood before him. He said, “Gregorio tells me that he left all our ledgers in your care.”
“Gregorio?” said Simon. He looked about.
“The lawyer in black. He did not, of course, know who you were,” said the youth.
Simon located the man in black and smiled at him. The man began to come over.
“Oh, another gallant employee drenched in urine. Tell him not to come,” Simon said. “If, of course, that’s the man whom you mean. I’ve never seen him before, or your poor ledgers. Are you sure, my dear Nicholas, that your lawyer didn’t find it convenient to throw them back into the fire? It’s been known.”
The man Gregorio had arrived. He turned to the youth who, God save him, he must be forced to regard as his employer. He said, “What did he do with them?”
“Flung them back in the fire, I imagine,” said Nicholas. “This is a gentleman called Simon of Kilmirren. It allows me to repeat what