Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [284]
He was careful not to reprimand Katelina when she shifted on the uncomfortable seat. He would, however, be happy when she had given birth to the child and had a body less cumbersome. He remembered her breasts as they used to be. There was a girl, across by the ambulatory, who had smiled at him as they came in, and who had small, heaped breasts like that, separated under the stuff of her gown in the Florentine style. Simon smiled back at her in a kindly way, and patted Katelina’s hand as she shifted again.
As they slowly filed out at the end, he was able to smooth his hair and put on his hat at the proper slant, while Katelina put back her veiling. Then they passed across the yard in the sunshine and, with the other, select guests, entered Gruuthuse’s palace.
Louis, seigneur of Gruuthuse, greeted them on the threshold. The style was ducal, but the lined cheeks, the thick eyelids under the fringe, belonged to a long line of wealthy burghers from Bruges and Brabant. Gruuthuse, courtier, statesman, man of business, was about to leave for Scotland himself, carrying Duke Philip’s greetings to the new child king, James the Third. He knew every Scotsman who entered and so, Simon saw, did most of his family. The boy Guildolf, it seemed, had got married. The bride, curtseying to Katelina, had what he would call an impudent smile. It reminded him of his young sister-in-law Gelis who, blessedly, had lumbered home.
They crossed the tiled hall and walked up a staircase between men in livery. The windows were very fine, and the woodwork, and the fireplaces. He glimpsed what looked like a library. The Gruuthuse motto and cannon were everywhere. So, of course, were the Scots. All the merchants, fat and lean, and their hôteliers. Jehan Metteneye and his wife. That fool John of Kinloch. Wylie, the archdeacon of Brechin. Mick Losschaert, with some of his relatives from the Scottish branch of the family, and the Bonkles also, from both sides of the water. Anselm Adorne, of course, with his wife and older children, and his married sister and her husband Daniel Sersanders of Ghent with their son Anselm. Napier of Merchiston. Stephen Angus. Forrester of Corstorphine. And various Scots just returned from Bourges and the French conference over Denmark, Spain, the Breton dowry: Monypenny, of course; and Flockhart with one or two Volkarts from the Flemish side for good measure.
Attending the requiem for their late master with proper sobriety. And rushing off afterwards, he had no doubt, to plot and plan for the next struggle for power back in Scotland. A Flemish queen dowager, and a crowned king aged eight, and all the battlefield of Lancastrian and Yorkist England to make capital out of, if you played your cards right. All you needed to look for were good card-players.
Simon found he was little interested in his own countrymen. He spent some time with the Duchess’s secretary, his brother-in-law, who complimented the lady Katelina on her appearance but not on her fecundity, which was deftly disguised by a swirl of brocade in her fingers. Senor João introduced the bride to some other ladies, and prepared to fulfil Simon’s wish to meet the commander of the Flanders galley, Piero Zorzi.
Simon brightened. He had some business to do with the commander, a short, personable man in a magnificent outfit of ash colour and silver. He could see him through the crowd, his arm held by the seigneur de Gruuthuse, who was steering him to meet a tall man and his wife on the far side of the room.
The wife Simon couldn’t at once place, except that she must be Scots, in view of the severity of her mourning. The man was in dark clothes as well, but very plainly cut with no jewels, although you could see that his belt was expensive,