The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [136]
‘If they made it a condition,’ Nicholas said.
‘And having sworn, you would keep it?’
‘What do you think?’ said Nicholas.
*
For all its recent massive extensions, the double castle of Dean, home of the Boyds by the burn of Kilmarnock, had no chamber devoted to music, and those musicians who played in the hall kept their instruments in the gallery closet, where Katelijne Sersanders soon found them. Today, engaged in a furious duet with Mistress Phemie Dunbar, Katelijne still kept an eye on the window and could see, as soon as it climbed the rise, the retinue outfitted in black which announced that difficult man Nicol de Fleury.
She said, ‘Leave this to me,’ and getting up made her descent as quickly as had the child Henry, alarmed by the sight of his grandfather.
Leave this to me, considering the age of the speaker, were words that might have alarmed or annoyed most grown women. Phemie Dunbar simply put her music away, rose, and went to inform her cousin Betha that the rich Fleming had come. Betha, in turn, went to apprise the lady Mary.
Katelijne, running out to the courtyard, saw that de Fleury had already reined in his horse, awaiting her. The lawyer, Gregorio, was behind him. She said, ‘I told Anselm not to kill you. He didn’t.’
‘A Gradual Alleluia,’ de Fleury remarked. He was attired today in black damask, and his hat was as big as a mushroom, its upturned brim pleated with silk. ‘You aren’t afraid that I might have killed him?’
‘Oh no,’ said Katelijne. ‘I told you. He’s had the very best teachers. And you wouldn’t have come if you had.’
‘I am regretting it already,’ he said. ‘I have a conditional reprieve in return for an abject apology and a promise to face your extremely competent brother in the lists. With blunted points.’
She said, ‘Oh dear.’
‘But I am still capable of appreciating the comforts of life, for a while. The lady Mary, I’m told, will receive us?’
‘Oh, yes. Dame Betha and Phemie are here. And Hearty James, the Lady’s half-uncle. And you’ve just missed Tony Cavalli. Do you know about Tony Cavalli, adviser to the Duke of the Tyrol? You ought to,’ she said.
‘If I ought to, I am sure you will tell me,’ de Fleury replied. The words sounded condescending – the lawyer smiled – but she knew when he was not speaking casually. She wondered what scheme he had devised for deflecting the Lady’s profound interest in his wife. He was not being protected by Hospitallers now. Whatever he did, he was going to have to answer some of her questions.
Inside, she watched his face as the chamberlain led him up the stairs and through the passages of the castle. Hung with carpets and lamps, cluttered with cushions, the hoary stronghold of the Boyds was being transformed by its mistress into an unwieldy bower of love against the return of her lord, Thomas Boyd, first Earl of Arran.
Sharing her house, studying the sallow, inarticulate girl only three years her elder, Katelijne had divined that some kinds of hunger could inhabit the unlikeliest forms. The Princess Mary, threatened with marriage abroad, had found herself instead with a young, lusty Scots husband, almost immediately snatched from her pillow. Perhaps she was even a virgin. Certainly she longed for her husband with all the fervour of Robert, her kingly forefather, who had sired, in his day, twenty-one legitimate children. Katelijne felt that for Mary, twenty-one would hardly suffice.
Confronted with this theory, Phemie, who had never married, smiled but did not reply. Betha, foster-mother of royalty, had said, ‘If you wed, you will bear. That is only fair to your man. To wed in order to bear is another matter.’
‘Or to wed for the joy of it?’ Katelijne said.
Betha Sinclair had looked at her then. ‘Very few have the chance of that. Or few of our standing,’ she said. ‘But joy comes with custom, often enough, if you give it a chance. You heard Cavalli. Sigismond of the Tyrol roves abroad and his wife Eleanor makes her own life at Innsbruck. But when he comes back she receives him, and he her;