Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [63]
The tone was jocular. The eyes were not. Katelina said, “Messer Arnolfini is right. I know only by hearsay. My lord Simon conceived a dislike for an apprentice, and their paths crossed. There was a fight, which the apprentice lost. The stabbing was an accident, I am sure.”
The vicomte de Ribérac’s lips moved in a smile. “A feud between a nobleman and an apprentice! It would hardly happen in France. A youth is impertinent: he is beaten, not fought.”
“Oh, Claes was beaten,” said Katelina. “He replaced my lord Simon in the bed of a serving-girl and was responsible for the death of his dog. For both these things he was thoroughly beaten. And imprisoned.”
“As is, surely, natural?” said the fat man. “Then the apprentice in turn, I deduce, tried to kill monsieur Simon? Messer Orlando?”
The Venetian in black damask put a finger to his beard, striving to understand. He said, “The fight? But it was the labourer, I am told, who wounded Messer the Scotsman with his shears. Messer the Scotsman, instead of having him killed, chose to fight him with staves, a weapon of the people. I consider this a mistake. A nobleman does not meddle with peasants. In the event, the youth received what he deserved.”
“He was killed?” said the fat man.
“Nearly,” said Katelina. “Because your noble Scotsman stabbed him with the same shears after beating him nearly to death.”
The fat man smiled, and then turned to Vasquez, Arnolfini and Florence van Borselen. “The customs of Burgundy! Well,” he said. “Is this rumour or fact? Monsieur Simon, who could have told us, has unfortunately left. But perhaps he is merely being modest. To best a brutish child of the people with his own chosen weapon is something, surely?”
“And to stab him is something else,” said Katelina coldly.
Her father said, “Katelina. You know that isn’t true. The shears became entangled between them. And the apprentice stabbed Simon in the first place.”
“Did he?” said Katelina. “The rumour I heard said that it was an accident.”
The cold eyes remained on her face. “You sound, madame,” said the vicomte de Ribérac, “as if you were no friend to our noble young Scotsman.”
She stared him back. “Then you are right,” said Katelina. “I happen to think him – to know him – to be a self-indulgent, vindictive rake.”
“So I thought. What a pity it all is,” said the fat French nobleman, and heaved a deep sigh. “When you, my dear madame, comprise in all your magnificent parts my perfect ideal of a daughter-in-law.”
Somewhere, trumpets sounded. The conversation in the great hall began to lessen. People moved, to make way for the Controller, for the Dauphin, for the brother of the King of Scots. People began to take their places to walk, two by two to the banquet. Only around one small group did complete silence fall; did no one move.
As if alone, Katelina van Borselen and the gross man called Jordan de Ribérac gazed at one another.
“What a pity,” repeated the fat man, with no emphasis. “For – perhaps I should have told you? Forgive me if I did not think to tell you – your self-indulgent, vindictive rake … really? How very sad! – is my son.”
It was Katelina’s father, she realised afterwards, who, apologising with chilly courtesy, extracted her and led her to take her place in the movement to table. It was her father who, after conversing as duty demanded with his dinner partners, turned to her during the elaborate meal and said, “You were at fault, as you well know, in expressing immoderate opinions of absent persons in such company. But the greater fault lay with the Frenchman, in allowing such a discussion to take place without revealing his interest.”
Then Katelina, who had thought of nothing else, said, “How could he be his father?”
Florence van Borselen said, “I have enquired. I, too, feel I have been misled. I was informed quite clearly that Simon of Kilmirren was nephew and heir of Alan, lord of that property, and that his own father,