The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [18]
The black rider, with a muted exclamation, righted himself. The golfer who had thrown the stick at his horse ran to his side, hooting with righteous joy, and squealed as Katelijne reached up and thrust her arm in his and held him tight. ‘Long live the game. No quarter!’ she called to the black rider. And ducked like he did as the ball, hit by the child, came hurtling back to the links.
It was stopped in mid-air by the club of another golfer.
The youth Albany jerked his stick upwards in rage and then lowered it sulkily. The golfing party, spreading out, lobbed the ball laughing to one another, to the cheers of the spectators. Katelijne chased panting among them, sometimes close enough to touch the ball herself, or even kick it. She glimpsed her brother, not quite taking part, but still grinning. The black rider, arriving without apparent effort, collected the ball, drew back his arm, and hit it sweetly out to the strand, to fall between the Prince and Princess of Scotland, who had not been smiling at all.
The girl got to it first. The boy said, ‘Stop. You’ll let the fools have it,’ and, when she paid no attention, drove his spur into the flank of her pony, which reared. The child screamed. Ignoring her, the boy rescued the ball and struck it carefully and accurately towards the expert player in black. The girl, still screaming, drove her pony against her brother’s fine-bred, magnificent Arab with such suddenness that, leaning low at the end of his stroke, he was flung from the saddle. His sister then bent down and began hitting him with her stick.
‘Well, well,’ said the man in black, and took careful aim. Katelijne, running towards the fallen youth, saw the practised stick hit the ball just as she caught Alexander’s loose, distraught horse by the reins. This time, the ball went nowhere near golfers or riders. It simply flew over the beach and, far, far away, plummeted with a splash into the sea. Where, being made from the very best boxwood, it floated.
On the beach, there was a single, fierce moment filled with juvenile fury and adult approval. Then the child Margaret screamed, ‘No!’ and whipped her pony straight into the estuary.
Katelijne was nearest, with Albany’s reins still in her grasp. She forked her skirts with one hand, put a foot in the stirrup and, springing into Albany’s saddle, pushed the priceless mare into the sea. Behind her, she heard another horse following.
On the links and the beach, the spectators saw it, as did the golfers, leaning panting on their clubs, and the six remaining members of the tzukanion teams, wheeling and calling. Julius, in red, was the first to throw his horse forward, followed by Jamie Liddell of Halkerston, Albany’s officer. The boy, the whistler in green and the young woman followed. The youth Alexander, sprawled on the sand, scowled at the rump of his child-sister’s pony, veiled in spray and clogged with a load of wet velvet.
He sat up with a jerk as his own horse also entered the sea, ridden with frightening vehemence by a minute brown-haired girl. And then he scrambled to his feet as a horse more crudely powerful than either plunged into the water and followed, kicking up sand and water, spray and foam and finally sinking, like the rest, to swim into the pull of deep water. Three people, chasing a ball.
The tide was receding. It was the first thing anyone brought up in Flanders would notice. Adorne did so, and the silent group of his fellows: Sersanders had long since left them to race down to the shore. Had it not been so, one would simply have waited, and ball and child would both have come in.
As it was, the broad head of the pony and the bared red hair of the King’s sister forging outwards rose and fell among the great waves of the estuary while the ball, the evil ball, lilted ahead, clearly visible but always retreating. For eight, she was an excellent rider, and full of Stewart valour – or obstinacy.
Pursuing, Katelijne bestowed frothing curses on both. They were now well out from the shore. The only advantage of that was the silence. As the