The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [15]
She saw the beach, dry near at hand, and further away firm and shining and pocked like a ploughed field with hoof-marks. Beyond was the grey sea, and far beyond that, the pale shores and blue hills of the land on the other side of the estuary. Near at hand from the right came the sound of low drumming. She put her weight on her hands and peered forward, pushing someone’s scabbard out of the way.
The beach was far longer than she had imagined. It ran glistening and yellow-grey into the distance, where a cloud of silvery spume announced the approach of a massed group of riders, vying with one another in and out of the surf. The drumming sound came from their hooves. The other roar, from behind, came from the frenzied throats of the waiting Leithers, laying off wagers. The riders came nearer.
They were not commoners. You could tell that from quite far away. First, the colours showed through the watery mist: crimson, azure and tawny, golden and black. Then the stuffs of the hats, the pourpoints, the gowns and the doublets: velvets, satins and taffetas, winking with jewels among the great dashes and drips of salt water. No one stopped them ruining their clothes, which surprised and then pleased her. She had thought Scotland was a poor country. Then she saw that they were children.
She revised her opinion in a moment: there were grown men and women among them; pretty women and handsome, high-coloured men. But the two leaders were barely fledged: boys of reddish hair and complexion, mounted on horses the like of which she had seen only once or twice even in Ghent; horses with the long-shafted bones, the dark muzzles and eyes of the Arab. The harness of both was of silver. Their whips working, the rivals glared and strained, their pale-rimmed eyes stark with endeavour. The younger, a boy of no more than her own age, was winning.
They were the only ones of their kind. Behind them, the horses were Flemish and the riders in their twenties and thirties, although she saw a boy she put at ten or eleven, and a red-haired girl-child on a pony. She got to her feet and stood beside her brother. The race hadn’t quite finished.
Their uncle’s voice said, ‘Do you recognise the boy in the lead? Alexander? He lived at Veere until he was ten.’
Katelijne knew all about Veere in Holland. The lord of Veere was Henry van Borselen. His son had married a Scottish princess, and Alexander the princess’s nephew had been sent to her household in Flanders for training.
Accordingly, the boy in front, if the same, was Alexander Stewart of Scotland, Duke of Albany, Admiral of Scotland, Earl of March, lord of Annandale and of Man. And the older boy striving to beat him must be – was, from his looks, his dress, his annoyance – the older brother of Duke Alexander. In other words, James, Third of the Name, monarch of Scotland. Katelijne said, ‘No wonder they let him get his clothes wet.’
Alexander won the race. The King, flexing his whip, rode aside while older competitors, red and blue, green and black, clustered about him. After a moment he broke away from the group and, accompanied by the blue and the black, walked his horse to where others awaited him. They formed a company, and began to ride off. The men in blue and black came back again. Those who were left on the strand wheeled about, their horses tossing their heads. The man in black remained in one place, but replied smiling to the nobles and gentlewomen who curvetted about him. Alexander, cursing his excited horse, could be heard expressing an opinion.
Now that half the courtiers had gone, Katelijne could see and hear better. The prince spoke, and a man in green took out a whistle and played a a flourish of notes by way of comment. The man in black said, ‘You don’t really want