The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [129]
Master Gregorio bowed, carefully, in the saddle. De Fleury said, ‘Your aunt belongs to that glorious sisterhood who revere the first-born of a marriage. For the sake of mine, she forgave me.’
‘My brother doesn’t like babies,’ said Katelijne. ‘We didn’t think you’d come back.’
‘So what should I do about Sersanders?’ he said. He sounded interested. He was again the careless rider of Leith strand, not the bright-eyed man, soaked in blood, who had tried to drive the life out of St Pol, and had taken cold steel to her uncle.
‘Apologise to him,’ she said. ‘He knows what it is to get battle-silly. Then agree to meet him in a fight. That will salvage his honour, for those people who suspect what happened.’
De Fleury frowned, riding beside her. He said, ‘But he’s good.’
‘That’s the idea,’ she said.
‘It wouldn’t be enough to apologise? You would accept an apology.’
‘No, I shouldn’t. You’d have to do something else.’
‘Katelijne?’ said a gentle voice. Phemie Dunbar, come to spoil the game with tranquil good sense.
De Fleury said, as she hoped, ‘Well, we have a day’s ride before us. We should be able to work something out.’ Then he turned and introduced Phemie to Master Gregorio, which was an excellent idea, since they should have much in common. And then, when he had presented himself to the lady Margaret, and renewed his acquaintance with the other attendants in her train, de Fleury was free to ride at her side, as the two parties blended. Dropping back, they devised between them his punishment.
She had not meant, at the outset, that it should be quite so disruptive, nor that it should gradually involve the Princess’s whole party, not excluding Margaret herself. It restricted itself to the route, since the ride along the estuary was as long as anyone should wish to make in one day. But it made use of every sporting facility they could muster between them, from bow to lance to falcon, and even to one of those long-stemmed clubs which, used from horseback, could send a ball from man to man along the flats, earning points for each target.
By dinner-time they were hot and exhausted with laughter as much as with exercise. But even during the meal, which they took in the fresh air, Out of baskets, de Fleury snatched up her viol and commanded her to perform, adding new rules and new contests, until she stopped eating, as he had, to compete, and the others clamoured to take part. Then the lawyer Gregorio, who had been sitting apart, came over and knelt beside de Fleury and spoke.
She knew what he was saying. He had been talking to Phemie. She watched de Fleury’s profile, eyes downcast, as he listened. When he finally rose and came over, she knew what he was going to say, because they all said it: her parents, her brother, her uncle.
De Fleury said, ‘They want us to stop. Have I apologised enough?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘I didn’t think so. What might we do that would convince them we’ve stopped?’
As it happened, she had already thought of something: a word-game. He had never heard of it before, but she taught it to him, and he invented a number of variants as they paced side by side at the end of the column. As they entered Edinburgh, he allowed her to win. It made her so angry that he reversed the last moves and beat her soundly. Shortly after, the two groups of travellers parted. Last of all, he applied to her and she absolved him.
She wondered why he had wasted a day on such trivia. She concluded that there was no one in either party whom he regarded as interesting or useful, and that he had found some kind of repose in exertion. In the lawyer Gregorio’s face she thought she recognised a trace of the same look that Phemie wore sometimes. Towards de Fleury himself she felt curiosity, and a degree of affinity, and a sensible wariness mixed with something she would not call fear.
Gregorio experienced fear. In spite of all that Julius had said, he had not been prepared for the reality: for the tall, secretive house