The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [289]
The shouting behind them died down, and there was only a short exchange, in a language he couldn’t quite catch, between two of his captors; and the sound of water; and of someone breathing heavily in his ear. He was lying half under a canopy. One of his captors got his hands together and tied them, and bound a cloth over his mouth, and flung something dark on top of him. An object partly under him stirred, and the breathing sound altered. At some cost, he moved back a little and saw the dark bundle again, and a slipper he knew. He was quite thankful. At least he hadn’t given up for no reason. Although why someone should want Catherine any more than they should want himself, he was at present unable to fathom, and was feeling too sick to care much, in any case. He lay and bled into Catherine’s cloak until they arrived at their destination. He didn’t see where it was, because they knocked him unconscious immediately.
Simon said, “Kick him. He’s shamming.” The language he hadn’t quite caught had been Scots. Nicholas opened his eyes.
Simon de St Pol, heir to Kilmirren, was quite as handsome as when he had last seen him in Bruges just a year ago. Viewing this paragon objectively from the floor, and disregarding the unease caused by a cut lip and a swollen eye and various extremely tender areas in the belly, the groin, and the lower back, Nicholas formed the opinion that my lord Simon was untouched by time and probably by experience. His hair below the velvet cap was leaf gold; his eyes blue, his lips curled in a sensitive smile. His doublet was of double-cut satin and velvet, intricately pleated, and he had followed the new Venetian fashion of parti-coloured hose. His legs could have been moulded for him by a classical sculptor. Perhaps they were, and his real legs were inside, which must make it hard to mount a horse.
Nicholas had never before felt amused by anything to do with Simon. He divided twelve quickly by three and concluded that he had not been punched seriously on the head. He was in a long room with shuttered windows and one door, before which two armed men were standing. By the window was a chair, and an ornate writing desk with a lamp on it. Simon, who appeared to have recently entered the room, was standing in the centre surveying him. Nicholas wondered if it was night; and this madman had accordingly caused hours of worry to Marian, as well as a wretched blight over their meeting. The chairman of the Collegio was presumably also awaiting him, over which he felt no concern. Then he observed that, although the lamp was lit, there were rims of daylight round the shutters. Also, the upper parts of his clothes were still wet. He had not been there very long. He heard a sniff behind him and twisted his neck. Catherine de Charetty sat against the wall in her black gown, blotched with damp, glaring at him. She said, “I thought you could do anything.”
“Fight eight men, no,” he said.
“Seven,” she said. “Sit up and tell him. He lets me go, or Gregorio and my mother go to the Doge immediately. Pagano doesn’t owe him a penny.”
Nicholas sat up. He felt dreadful. The whole business, from beginning to end, was so excruciating even to contemplate that he wanted to break into idiot laughter. This man before him had provided Pagano Doria with a ship and a cargo and sent him east to oppose the Charetty company and, if possible, ruin it. Pagano, in his inimitable way, had responded by marrying into it. But having neither ruined Nicholas nor killed him, he had compounded failure by losing his own life, so that nothing remained for Simon, one would have said, but a sporting handshake for the victor. Instead of which, he himself was here, battered into insensibility, and Catherine, it seemed, had been kidnapped again.
It was crazy enough to be funny, if you didn’t know there was a relationship between himself and my lord Simon. And even then, it was still fairly ludicrous unless you knew