Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [3]
For the moment, there was nothing to do. In the peace, a wave of philosophy overcame Julius. “What,” he said, “is happiness?” He opened his eyes.
“A new hound,” said Felix, who was seventeen. His crossbow lay on the points of his pelvis and his ratlike nose was red with the sun. “The kind with big ears.”
Julius curled a lip, without malice. So much for Felix. He turned his gaze towards Claes, who was eighteen and built like an oak tree with dimples.
“A new girl,” offered Claes. He jerked open the wine flask, gripping the neck like the hock of a stallion. “The kind with …”
“That’s enough,” Julius said. Philosophy was wasted on both of them. Everything was wasted on Claes. Julius was sometimes glad that civilization had reached the advanced stage it had, so that it could stand up to Claes. The Greeks would have gone back to tents.
Claes looked at him, pained. He said, “I’ve only had –” Beside him, young Felix was grinning.
Julius said, “Drink! Drink! I said that’s enough about girls. Forget I said anything.”
“All right,” said Claes, surprised. He drank. He inhaled. His nostrils were indigo blue. He said, “This is nice.”
Julius refrained from agreeing. A dyeshop apprentice would find any change nice. Felix (his charge, his employer’s son, his daily burden) had enjoyed the day’s rabbiting, but didn’t deserve to. Only he, Julius, had left his cares in the dyeshop and had a right, for one day, to indulge himself.
The canal banks glided past. The lightermen bickered companionably and dropped into snatches of song as they paddled. The sun-warmed cherubim lodged three indolent heads, cheek by jowl round the bath-rim. Julius found the wine flask in his hand, and eclipsed the whole sun with its bottom. A conscientious youth, yet with a troublesome lightness of character. So they had assessed him, while he was earning his scroll at Bologna.
God take all law schools and dispose of them. This is Flanders, not Italy. You volunteer to unload a bath from a ship. You accept a lift in the bath back to your place of residence and employment. You close your eyes the better to ponder. Where is the lightness in that? Julius, notary to the Charetty family, closed his eyes. Almost at once, so it seemed, he endured a nasty blow to his ribs. Half-awake, he flung out a fist in return. He hit something.
“Hey!” said Felix and, his face flushed, made to kick him again.
Julius rolled over, escaping the foot. The sound of rushing water told him why Felix had wakened him. They were approaching the lock.
Felix’s voice was continuing, monumentally resonant because of the bath. “You’ve knocked my hat off,” boomed Felix. “You’ve broken the feather.”
The lightermen, steering up to the lock, glanced round appreciatively, and so did Claes, who had got up to help them. The truth was, it was hard to hit Felix and avoid hitting his headgear. This one had a peak and a long pointed brim like a paper boat. Its osprey feather curled, broken-backed, on the rabbit-bag. Where the hat had been, Felix’s brown hair was sweaty and flat, and his curls had sagged into corkscrews. He looked furious.
Claes said, “You said you were tired of the feather. It’s time for the beer, Meester Julius.”
Claes had been with the Charetty since he was ten, and being a family by-blow, he got to speak that way to Felix. Through the years Claes had become not only an apprentice but a kind of servant-companion to the Charetty heir. Felix tried to batter Claes regularly but mostly put up with him. Felix’s mother, thankful for peace, let Claes off his dyeshop duties whenever Felix demanded it. Julius, equally thankful, hoped that Claes’ spasmodic apprenticeship would last long enough to see Felix into maturity, if not old age and burial.
Julius, an easy-going sort of man, had nothing