The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [154]
‘And their jewels. You’ve no idea what they’ve stockpiled in jewels. No. I don’t think so. And the chains don’t enter into it. The King didn’t buy them from me. They’re the price of what I’ve bought from him.’
‘What?’ said Gregorio.
‘Personal entertainment,’ Nicholas de Fleury said. ‘Go to bed. Tomorrow night we get to share in the banquet. And before that, I have this appointment with Thomas Boyd and Sersanders. You really should have protested harder.’
‘The trouble is, it’s an honour,’ said Gregorio. ‘They decided they would propose you to do it, and I couldn’t get you released. But Sersanders will have had another fight, too, by the time he meets you. And you have had some training. With Astorre. In Milan.’
‘It was a long time ago,’ said Nicholas mournfully.
*
‘Of course I know. I suggested it,’ said Katelijne Sersanders with what seemed to be inordinate relish. She was fifteen years of age, and could hardly know what she was talking about.
‘Suggested your brother should encounter Nicholas de Fleury in the lists? I can see,’ said Gregorio slowly, ‘that it might appear quite exciting.’ Now he came to look at her, she seemed to be smaller and thinner than ever, although elaborately turned out in a high-waisted gown with tight sleeves. Her hair fell in a long, curly tail from a caul too small for the rump of a horse.
The dress anticipated the evening: she was not summoned for duty till then, which was apparently why she was here, in the convent’s town residence rented from Nicholas. Gregorio didn’t mind, although he didn’t mean to stay long. He added, ‘I don’t imagine for a moment they’ll harm one another. The swords are blunt, anyway. You’re going to lead your brother into the lists?’
‘So I’ve been told. Why didn’t M. de Fleury want to joust in December?’ she asked. She had been stitching her embroidery and studying a piece of music at the same time: her bright squirrel-glance reached him across two sets of frames. It looked innocent.
Gregorio smiled. ‘Merchants don’t do very much fighting. And maybe he didn’t want to face Simon de St Pol.’
‘He did, later. Master Julius said he fought with Urbino’s mercenaries and his own in the Abruzzi. He said you were all in the wars against the Turkish army at Trebizond. He says M. de Fleury fought in Cyprus for King Zacco and killed a Mameluke emir in single combat.’
‘I wasn’t there. I wasn’t in Trebizond. He didn’t kill him,’ said Gregorio. He wished Julius had kept his mouth shut. He wondered how Julius always remembered these things, and he didn’t.
The girl said, ‘I know. He cut the Mameluke’s hand off, and the King came up and finished him off. Then a Mameluke tried to assassinate M. de Fleury in Venice. Do you know the parrot speaks Greek?’
After all that, Gregorio nearly laughed. Then he met the cool, level stare and refrained. He said, ‘How do you know?’
‘I know the sound of it. When we visit you, M. de Fleury speaks to it in Spanish. Not when he thinks he is alone.’
‘And it answers?’ said Gregorio with false jocularity.
‘It repeats what it has been taught,’ said Katelijne. ‘The same thing always, and a name. I heard it at Dean, and in the Canongate since. But I don’t understand Greek.’
‘The name is Greek?’ said Gregorio.
‘The name is Nikko,’ said Katelijne.
*
As the tournament of December had been a rehearsal, so the first public celebration of the wedding festivities of James, King of Scotland, was a splendid precursor of the mimes, the plays and the music, the feasts and the dancing, the hunts and the shooting, and the increasingly elaborate tourneys planned for the élite of Scotland gathered for these weeks in Edinburgh, together with the foreign lords come for the wedding.
The critical foreign lords. Everyone knew that to arrange such a series of spectacles demanded wealth and experience. Not so long ago, when feats of arms dominated the event, the court armourer would not only come up with weapons and arms, but import everything