Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [292]
He failed. The bird set off up the street, kicking bales as it went and stabbing grilles with its beak. Two quilts, hung out for airing, started to fall in a cloudburst of feathers. Nicholas caught one of them and, single-handed, attempted to stuff it between the cut quills and his bottom. Julius, crying with laughter, raced behind him. Towards the Tonlieu. The weigh-houses. The market.
The bird checked now and then: for a stall loaded with berries; when, twice, groups of determined men barred the street or attempted to corner it. The delays were only brief. Two swipes of those powerful legs, and everyone scattered. The Crane went by, and the Hall and the belfry. The bird darted over the bridge to the Steen, with screaming people running before it. Soon it would come to the fields and gardens between the Ghent and Holy Cross bridges where it would be free to run as fast as it liked. An ostrich could cover forty miles in an hour, so they said – fast enough to kill any rider it threw off. Nicholas didn’t seem to be worrying. Every now and then he turned upon Julius a wild, ridiculous grin, and once he freed a hand and gestured ahead and to the left. What he meant, Julius couldn’t yet fathom.
Behind, now, other horsemen were coming. They’d halt the creature by converging on it from side streets, and using thrown rope to hamper, then bind it. Except that ahead lay open ground. Julius spurred his horse and slewed round a corner and saw, at last, what Nicholas was trying to tell him.
Ahead was the shallow, turgid water of one of the spoke canals that joined Bruges’ encircling river. Pushing hard, Nicholas was shoving the bird off the road and down one of the slopes in the canal bank. The ostrich galloped into the water and slowed. Its head swung from side to side. A group of swans, busily feeding, came upright with an agitated splash, stared, and then rose to tread water hissing round the intruder. The intruder hissed back, struck, and a swan hurtled into the air. The others, necks outstretched, advanced uproariously. The ostrich, outnumbered, struck twice more and then set off up the canal, wings labouring. Occasionally it dipped and rolled, with a streaming Nicholas so far still adhering.
By now there were half a dozen horsemen with Julius. Ahead, the canal flowed under a bridge to join the circling river. Ahead, also, the ground rose to a broad embankment on which the windmills were planted. Horses could move quicker, now, than the bird in the water. Julius sent two ahead, to cross the bridge and threaten the bird from the east. Then he drew the others carefully back in a half-circle beside the only place it could leave the water, a sloping ramp leading to one of the windmills.
He forgot that the purpose of windmills is to grind, and that the ostrich was hungry. Up to a point, the ruse worked perfectly. The bird, scared by the horsemen on the left bank, turned for the ramp on the right. It emerged, its naked pink body effulgent; its rider a living cascade of canal water. Julius and the rest moved gently forward. The ostrich saw the sacks of corn in the yard, and the grain heaped and strewn all about it, and ran straight under the wheel of the sails to get at it.
Julius yelled a superfluous warning. He expected Nicholas to kick; to drag the bird away by its rope; to abandon it and roll off its back. The sails, creaking and thudding, moved round; missed the bird; threatened it; missed it once more. The ostrich lowered and raised its neck, feeding, looking about it, diving to feed again. It moved a little, one leg and then the other, but always close to the mill, mesmerised by the feast spread before it. And, as all action and all need for action came to a halt, so Nicholas returned to his senses.
Julius had no means of knowing. Filled with alarm, and even anger, he saw Nicholas sit, his face blank, his hands loose on the cord and do nothing.
The horsemen with Julius, staring, hung back. Julius didn