Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [29]
On both banks the merchants followed him, and the dogs. By their lanterns they saw him master the interfering cross-sway of the water, and follow the darkened head jerking through the water ahead of him, beyond which was the bridge of the Poorterslogie, and the tall latticed bulk of the building itself, the clubhouse of the great White Bear Society.
The lad was no swimmer. He must know how swiftly the lord Simon was gaining on him. The youth would have to land at the Poorterslogie, and if he got there – and he might – before Simon, he wouldn’t get there ahead of the dog-pack. A pity. A pity to let it go so far, poor silly boy. For the water might rinse off the worst of the odour, but plenty would stick. Every brute in the place would be there on the bank with a welcome. And swimming coolly, effortlessly, at his back, the Scots lord Simon wasn’t going to rescue the apprentice. Not after all that had happened.
Simon got to the bridge a little after the dogs. Above the racket of barking, opening shutters rapped one after the other. Squares of light fell from their windows and showed the dogs grouped, growling and yapping at the head of the steps and the apprentice half out of the water, hesitating at the foot.
There were men there as well. They weren’t householders, because the light shone on badges. Drawn by the barking, they were a passing party of hondeslagers, the patrolmen paid by the city to clear the streets of stray dogs. Obligingly, they were cuffing the beasts from the steps; holding them back from young Claes. It annoyed the Scots lord, you could see. Thinking the youth might escape, he drove himself swiftly forward and lunging, seized the boy by the ankle and wrenched. The youth toppled off-balance and hit the steps with his shoulders. He exclaimed. The dogs, driven to frenzy by the redoubled odour, broke loose and pounced on the two men, one fallen, one upright. Claws ripped down the lord’s doublet and he took out his knife. The men, swinging leaden clubs, set about them, and dogs hurtled squealing, and dropped as the apprentice got to his feet, threequarters naked. The Scots lord straightened behind him.
The merchants, running up with their lanterns, didn’t know what Simon was thinking, although they might guess some of it, and Claes might have worked out the rest. The echoes of forgotten, festering hurts. The memories that included Mabelie’s shy, inviting smile and fresh body. The insolence on the quay. The caustic voice (but neither the merchants nor Claes knew about that) of that shameless Borselen woman: “No one you need be afraid of.” And the other, swinish words she had repeated that had come, as Simon now knew, from the spiteful adolescent before him. Who, amusing himself, had used them again just now, to Simon’s face, sure that Simon would be none the wiser.
He had the knife still in his hand, and he intended quite simply to use it.
Claes turned round just as Simon lifted his arm. It was too late to duck, with his legs encumbered with men and dogs. He snatched the only weapon at hand, the leaden club in the hand of the man next to him, and parried the blow as it came, and the next. He went on wildly swinging.
Enclosed in the general fighting, the duel attracted no attention. The hondeslagers, profiting from the mix-up, beat about them with a will, and if a dog got away, it was lucky. The quayside and half the bridge were covered with what, in skin and fat money, would keep them in beer for a fortnight. Lanterns jostling, the merchants stumbled here and there, laughing and calling until the fray started to slacken, the last dogs were being disposed of, and even the fight in the middle was changing. When it stopped altogether the merchants, even then, hardly noticed. When they remembered at last to look for