The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [151]
‘Boyd?’ said Nicholas. His response this time was unfeigned.
‘They’ve announced the first tournament. You’re due to run three courses against Thomas Boyd – Arran – before the joust you asked for with Sersanders. I’ve protested.’
‘Have you? Thank you. Why?’ Nicholas said.
‘Because Sersanders will be fresh and you won’t. There ought to be parity. Not that there is. Boyd and Sersanders both grew up jousting, and you couldn’t ride a horse until – well. That is, although you’ve done a lot since, it’s not fair.’
‘I see that,’ Nicholas said. ‘Well, you’d better organise a great big Dane as a first joust for Sersanders. Otherwise I’ll sulk in my tent and leave the fight to my armour; I’m training six ferrets to activate it. What’s it like to be drunk?’
Gregorio sat up slowly. He said, ‘Was it that bad? Or that good? I have a flask …’ He laid a fumbling hand on his pouch.
‘That good,’ said Nicholas. He let himself smile into Gregorio’s face with its anxious, fixed stare and then, rising, crossed to the shelf where the cups were. One managed, most of the time. It was Gregorio, not Julius or Godscalc.
Gregorio said, ‘I have to tell you. I was meant to tell you. She has a child, Nicholas. But it isn’t yours.’
His fingers eased. The pewter slipped, but he saved it immediately. He said, ‘Now there is an alarming statement, if ever I heard one.’
‘Joneta Hamilton,’ the other man said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘That it isn’t mine?’ Nicholas said.
‘You knew,’ said Gregorio.
‘Really,’ said Nicholas. ‘As the ultimate expert in marital and extra-marital intercourse, I can claim some proficiency. I can, even yet, identify a virgin when I am lucky enough to obtain one, and know the signs of incipient or successful motherhood as well as I know what to do about it. Or if I didn’t, by God, Gelis has taught me.’
Gregorio had turned white. He said, ‘I’m drunk. I’m sorry,’ and uncorked and held out the wine-flask. Nicholas started to move. Before his palm struck the flask Gregorio threw it himself on to the floor where it lay, the wine spreading. Gregorio watched it and then, lifting himself, walked to the door. He turned and said, ‘I didn’t mean any harm. To save you from …’
‘From this?’ Nicholas said.
The door closed. He put down the cup but it fell, warped out of balance. It was as well Margot couldn’t see it. On the other hand, Gregorio had come close to abusing a privilege. That wasn’t why he was here.
The Canongate was draped with scarlet for the Entry of Margaret of Denmark, and the houses lining Leith Wynd hung arras and cloths from their sills. The procession, from Leith, was a long one.
Between the junction and Holyrood, the windows on both sides of the street were in demand and Berecrofts the Elder had packed his high, jutting frontages with friends and neighbours, and encouraged the wealthy foreigners on his land to do the same. Waiting, they shouted from window to window. The street was so narrow that from some upper storeys men and women could touch hands across it and the banners, when they came, would clap and slither into the windows.
In the Banco di Niccolò the upper loggia creaked with the number of neighbours and guests who packed into it, picking their choice of meat or tartlets or dried fruit from the platters they passed, and grasping their ale or their wine as they talked. They wore holiday clothes, but even so they brought with them, released by the heat, something of the odours of their calling: the smells of hide and wood-flour and metal, of malt and pig-lard and incense. The wives, in their tall folded headgear and necklaces, wore heavy scent and peered round the heads of their children at the paintings, the arras, the sconces, the chests, the tables, the enamels and the lozenged windows now thrown wide to the street and surrounded by flowers.
Nicholas de Fleury presided. He could have chosen to take his merchant’s seat in the swagged stands so painstakingly erected in the yard of the Abbey. So could Berecrofts. But business came first, and there were others who