Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [268]
Gregorio said, “Take my purse,” and threw it.
Lionetto caught it and stared at him. So did the other two. Lionetto grinned. “Did you a service, did I?” he said. “Well, remember it. Some day I might want a service in return. Demoiselle?”
He bowed to someone walking forward from the crowd that had gathered on the street side of the site. Then, sheathing his sword, he strolled off, hat in hand.
The person walking forward was Marian de Charetty.
Julius said, “Oh, Jesus Christ.”
Gregorio turned from watching Lionetto. He said, “I think she saw who did the killing. I think perhaps Nicholas …?”
Nicholas said, “Could you … Perhaps you could clear the crowd and get hold of the people who have to be told? I’ll bring the demoiselle back to Spangnaerts Street.”
His heart beat heavily after the fighting, and his hands were shaking. He fought to stop the beginning of dizziness. He stood where he was, and collected his wits, so far as he was able. The further she came from the crowd, the more private they would be. She would still have to accept what he had to tell her in public. The spectators couldn’t hear, but they could see her.
The fact that he waited for her, of course, told her what the news was. She was dressed as strictly as he had ever seen her; her gown tight to the wrists and the throat, and voile swathing her ears and her chin below the brim of her hat. The bright blue eyes were set in darkened skin, and her lips and her cheeks were both pallid.
She stood beside him, looking up, and said, “He hurt you?”
There was blood on the grass where he was standing. He remembered the blade in his back. It had been no more than a flesh wound, soon staunched. He said, “No. Julius and I – we bring you bad news.”
“I’ve lost Felix,” she said. There were no tears in her eyes.
“He had grown up,” said Nicholas. “Quite suddenly. He helped with the business at Milan, and wanted to fight at Naples. He did fight, and well. Astorre will tell you. Then instead of coming home, he chose to cross to Urbino’s army. The Count of Urbino and Alessandro Strozzi. They were fighting on the east.”
“I know,” she said. “In the Abruzzi. You were there?”
“He even had the chance to joust in the field,” Nicholas said. “And won. And was very happy. He died just after that, in the field. There was a battle, and he was hit by a crossbolt. It was very quick. We buried him there.”
He could see her flinch. She didn’t want details yet. She looked at the other dead man lying limp on the grass. She said, “He wanted the business.”
Nicholas said, “He hated the Charetty. He hated women, I think. Thibault married twice, and he despised him, and your sister, and my mother. He isn’t worth thinking about.”
“No. Later,” she said, “you’ll tell me more. And about where he is buried. And – oh. The girls. They’re not in the house.”
He said, “We could go for them now.”
The house in Spangnaerts Street, redesigned since the fire, was familiar to them and unfamiliar to him. Tilde and Catherine, sought and brought back, showed none of their mother’s restraint but gave her work to do, soothing them. To Nicholas they behaved as they’d done when he was the familiar companion walking in and out of their lives. His marriage to their mother might never have happened.
Marian de Charetty behaved, too, as if her rôle of widow had never changed. She had known Claes for ten years. She had borne Felix, and bred him, and seen Cornelis melt, at last, in pride over his child, his son.
Nicholas saw it, and without interfering went on with the business of clearing up the day’s wreckage.
The reckoning over Jaak de Fleury he left to the two lawyers, who seemed to think it no trouble in such a case of unprovoked attack. His body was taken elsewhere. Gregorio, with efficiency, began to arrange for the release and disbanding of Jaak’s few servants. What the man had left would go to his brother.
With circumspection, and without troubling the demoiselle or her family, Gregorio and Julius between them removed all the small valuables that had begun to accumulate, bought with the demoiselle