The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [157]
Chapter 22
IT BEGAN TWO hours before sunset, so that most of the courses were run before darkness fell, and there were only the single jousts left to take place. In case of wind, they had three hundred coloured lanterns, such as they had in Bruges and Venice in carnival-time. But, in fact, the warm, breathless weather persisted, and they were able to use the standing candelabra as well, mounted with candles so large that a single man could hardly carry a dozen.
The stands this time were two-tiered, built to face one another across the width of the lists, so that the royal party gazed at the Rock and its lesser guests sat with their backs to it. The royal pavilion was hung with cloth of gold and lined with velvet and tassels; and the knights’ tents at one end were all stitched in silk with the banners crowded around them, catching the afterglow from the west. As the lamps were lit inside, you could see the shadows of combatants arming, with their pages and bodyservants about them.
The lamps had been lit first of all in the upper stand containing the musicians, where lutes and recorders and viols had been attempting to make themselves heard over the clatter, the pounding, the roars of the early encounters. The conductor was Will Roger, with the wild demeanour of a man who has embarked, at last, on a voyage which will probably kill him, superimposed on the vainglorious smirk of the same man who has managed to beg, borrow or bribe sixty trumpets and fit them out to a man in pink taffeta.
The faces of the children in the royal stand were eager and flushed: they enjoyed jousting. The children? Waiting his turn, Nicholas caught himself thinking like Adorne, like Gregorio, and was amused. James was seventeen, but a King. His bride was twelve, but would be his consort next month. Albany might be the King’s younger brother, but he had experience of the Burgundian court, the richest in Europe, and his brothers must envy him. Mar would be a force to be reckoned with, one day, and so would Bleezie Meg, today without her attendant Katelijne, who was here, of course, in her brother’s pavilion.
In the gloom, he could not pick out the others, although he thought he saw Dr Andreas, and he did see the well-tailored dark robe of the Secretary. Archibald Whitelaw had studied law at Cologne. He had wondered if Gregorio knew that, but it seemed that he didn’t.
It was nearly time for his first bout. To tilt against Thomas Boyd with a lance, he wore the armour he had brought with him, neither etched nor gilded but cut and jointed and pinned so that he could move almost as if he wore kidskin. Lined and polished, it clung like an animal’s skin to its flesh. He had had it made not because he intended to take up a career in the lists but because there were things he wanted to do, and he preferred to survive to do them. It made it all the more ironic that he had nearly lost his life in the lists to the knife of a child, in December.
The child he had been given as his queen for the day was very young, but older than Henry. Blind with maternal solicitude, Betha had fitted her out with a cone hat with a veil, dangling oversleeves and a gown with a train. Grasping his horse-ribbon was going to be the least of it. He went to sit beside her on the bench and talked while they waited for his announcement. She had been amused by the fantastic helms in the procession – wolfheads and eagles, lyres and boars. He had told her of Marx Walther of Augsburg who wore three sausages on a spike.
His own banner, motto, badge were simple: it was not the place, although he wished it were, for something more witty. He did belong to an order of knighthood, a Cypriot one, and it was the Order of the Sword which was proclaimed, silver on blue, by the cross-hilted blade on his flag, and its motto which was inscribed on his surcoat, and round the blue and white plumes of his helm. C’est pour loïauté maintenir, it said. You couldn’t really appreciate the joke, unless you knew both Zacco and his royal half-sister.
The fight before