Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [265]
From the moment Nicholas passed over the drawbridge, the problem of Jaak de Fleury occupied all his thoughts. When he let it go, it was to prepare for the other, more important thing he had to deal with. He rode with his head down because he didn’t want to be accosted, and to answer questions about the war, and about Felix. He didn’t even notice at first that his horse was not being pushed entirely by chance, but by two others, one at each flank.
The riders wore city livery, and were offering, smiling, their escort to the demoiselle’s house. He refused, but tried to be polite when they insisted. It was the degree of insistence which made him glance behind for the first time for Julius, and find that there was no one behind him.
The nightmare of the canal and the barrel oddly returned to his preoccupied mind and he dismissed it. It arose, he thought, from the two cleanshaven faces at his side which bore some likeness to the two bearded, drunken faces he remembered from the mists of that night.
They were the same faces.
He realised it only as he hurtled past them, for his horse had slipped and fallen, inexplicably, throwing him heavily to the ground. He rolled over and found himself in a dark archway, beyond which lay a piece of waste ground and the canal bank. Behind, a strange voice in good Flemish was speaking. Not to him: it was assuring passers-by that the rider had come to no harm, and was being cared for. He rolled over again and two solicitous figures appeared above him, one of them with a knife.
He had not been the dullest pupil of the Duke’s master-at-arms at Milan. By that time his own sword was in his hand, and when the dagger came down he parried it, and twisting, got to his feet. He couldn’t burst past the two men to the street, but he could and did run on through the passage to the unpaved ground beyond it.
By that time he knew perfectly where he was. The tunnel through which he had come belonged to the half-ruined house which had been neighbour to the Charetty dyeshop. He stood in what had been its orchard. Before him was the canal. To one side was a wall with no footholds. He would be dead before he had scaled it. To the other was the broken wall which had once divided this garden from the dyeyard. The wreckage beyond was the range of sheds in which all his fellow-workers had once gathered to hear the news of the demoiselle’s wedding.
The two men in city livery had rather more experience than he had in fighting, but not quite his reach of arm. They didn’t like the sweep of his sword. On the other hand, there were two of them.
His cap had already come off in the fall. He shed his jacket as he ran, which stripped him to shirt and hose and left nothing to hamper his movements. He did it spinning, with his sword cutting the air, so that they had to fall back. He had time to think that what he felt was not fear, but relief. Instead of the burden of responsibility, he was being invited to show his prowess in physical play.
So he did. As he got to the broken wall he feinted. The man nearest him ran into his sword. The other rushed with his knife. Nicholas ducked, found the lowest part of the wall and tumbled over, pursued by one angry assailant. He swiped at him as he went, and sliced his shoulder. He would have made a perfect landing as well, had he not been tripped by the toe of Jaak de Fleury. He sprawled, twisted, and found the sword of the merchant at his throat, and his own weapon gone. The remaining assailant, bleeding, jerked him to his feet.
In front of him was the uneven field that had once held the trestles and tenting-frames. It was patched with seeded plants, red and blue and yellow and violet. Beyond stood the blackened bricks, bushy with grass, of the house where he had worked and slept intermittently since he was ten. Facing him was the man who had been his master in the years before that.