Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [50]
He took his time. To Julius, who had held a sword, it was painfully apparent that every blow of the apprentice’s was being anticipated. At leisure, smiling, even talking cuttingly as he circled, the man Simon was watching the youth with practised eyes: noting the smallest change in Claes’ breathing, his footwork, his shoulders, the flickering glance of his eyes.
Then Claes would thrust, or swing, and Simon’s club, cracking, would deflect the other and then, driving on, would hit where Simon designed. On the joints. Across the knuckles. Once, full in the chest so that the breath momentarily left the other man. Once, glancing off the side of the head so that Claes staggered back, frowning, and only, by some bemused instinct, managed to dodge the swift return blow which ought to have felled him.
He had a hard head. You had to give him that. When he straightened, he had his senses again, and this time, you saw that he had learned something. Instead of relying on schoolboy whacking, turn about like a game of palm-tennis, he too was trying to watch, to guess his opponent’s next move.
Sometimes he was successful. Twice Simon was careless, and Claes’ heavy pole struck him; once on the shoulder and once on the wrist, in a blow which made the nobleman draw in his breath and swing fast out of range, until the strength came back to his grip.
An experienced man would have given him no time for recovery, but Claes had neither the skill nor the energy. Instead, he stood and shook himself, reviewing his muscles, thought Julius, like a general reviewing his troops and recalling them to the standard. But all the time, his eyes were scanning Simon, and when Simon lunged, for the first time Claes was there before him, and their poles crashed together, and dropped, and disengaged.
But after that, Simon was careful, and whatever Claes might have learned, it was not enough to protect him from the buffets which reached him, over and over, out of the scuffling dust of their engagement. And Simon was still fresh. His face, when you saw it, was smiling, and between clenched teeth he was still, now and then, throwing out some tempting jibe.
Claes, on the other hand said nothing. The ebullient, talkative henchman, the clown who could imitate anybody, was shuffling now instead of dancing, and stumbling when he swerved. Where he had been struck on the knuckles, one hand had begun to swell and blacken, and there was scarcely a patch of unmarked skin on the blue-stained fluff of his arms, or above the torn hose at his thighs, or on the half-bare feet stubbed by the cobbles. As they watched, Simon contemptuously leaned forward, feinted, and driving the broken end of his pole down the wall of Claes’ chest, tore the youth’s sodden shirt to the waist, leaving behind a track of red gashes.
The conduct of an oaf and the talents of a girl. And a mortification to your father.
Felix said, “Stop it. Astorre, I order you. Stop the fight, or I will.”
The crowd didn’t want it stopped. They liked Claes well enough, and they had no particular love for the Scotsman, but one man baiting another was always good value, and this was better than Carnival time, when the Duke set a batch of blind men to round up wild pigs in the market-place. “Kill him!” some woman was yelling to Simon.
Julius said, “Astorre, you heard him. Stand up and admit defeat, for God’s sake. Do you want that fellow Simon to kill Claes?”
Astorre’s beard had an obstinate set. He said, “If someone else wasn’t giving him a drubbing, I would. Anyway, he’s a powerful lad. And it’s for the Charetty honour, isn’t it? Would you want the Widow to have the name of employing nothing but cowards? After what that animal Lionetto said about her back there?”
Felix lifted his fist. Envisaging, for a frightful