The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [23]
‘Figs! Fegs, why kittle your belly with figs, when there’s beef and ham and deer collops afore ye?’ It was John Lamb, their host, half-risen and calling.
‘Because I’m full of seawater. John, why am I here? Master Adorne has been asking.’
‘To buy houses,’ said Lamb, sitting down again and wiping his chin. It was a large one, and gleaming with bristles in the light of his best candelabra. His hat-shadow loomed on the painted wood ceiling. ‘Ye ken this lad has bought yon fair little house with the orchard in the High Street of Edinburgh? Or the Bonkle family for him. And now do you ken what he has done? He’s taken two of Old Berecrofts’s tenements. Berecrofts, ye ken? Him who made a fortune from salt-pans and coalheughs? That’s Robin, his grandson. Aye, well, Master Nicholas has got some good competent ground, and is building himself a stone house in the Canongate.’
‘In the thick of the Abbot’s merchant colony. I heard. So you are contemplating serious trading in Scotland?’ Adorne said.
‘Julius and Jannekin are,’ vander Poele said. ‘But I’m not here for that at all. I thought I was, but I’m not. Did you know the King is getting married?’
Everyone knew that the King, aged sixteen, was getting married to a Scandinavian child-bride of eleven. Half the Court was in Denmark concluding the deal for the dowry. The voice of Adorne’s nephew said, ‘Nicholas? You’re going to do them a Burgundian wedding? Oh, my God!’
‘They’ve had a Burgundian wedding,’ said vander Poele. ‘Her grace the late Queen Mother was Guelders-born, wasn’t she? But I might contrive a fresh fancy or two.’
‘Pissing wine,’ ejaculated Sersanders. ‘You didn’t see what Nicholas led into –’
‘Most of us did,’ said his uncle. ‘My lord Duke will think us uncouth. But I can recommend Nicholas to you. I have seldom met a more ingenious engineer. And when is the royal wedding?’
‘Ask the wind and King Christian of Denmark,’ said Jamie Liddell. ‘He’s got to get the money together. It’s winter. Next year at this rate.’
‘Time to practise the jousts,’ said vander Poele thoughtfully. ‘You know, my lord, that Master Adorne and Master Metteneye are both famous jousters? And young Sersanders. Does Maarten indulge?’
‘Maarten is to take minor orders,’ his father said. ‘He will be at the Bishop’s court at St Andrews. As for the rest of us, it is a long time since we first rode to the barriers, but we should be delighted, of course, to join in the sport. You have some fine exponents yourselves.’
‘Simon de St Pol,’ said Sersanders with malice. (Young!)
‘And Master Julius and you, Master Nicholas,’ said the Duke of Albany.
This time vander Poele laughed. He said, ‘That would be sport indeed. No. I can hold my own on a battlefield, but I shouldn’t waste Simon’s time in the lists, either with him or against him. Are you disappointed?’
He spoke, Julius thought, to Sersanders beside him, but it was Adorne’s dark-robed doctor beyond that who answered. Andreas said, ‘Unthinking persons might accuse you of cowardice. You must not feel compelled, under pressure, to fight.’
‘I shall quote you. Cedere rather than contendere,’ Nicholas said pleasantly. Julius flushed. It had been an insulting remark. He wished that Tobie had come, and not this talkative Flemish physician with the fuzzy ash-coloured hair and large-featured face. The eyes in it were clear as two radishes. He went on talking while Nicholas smiled, with one dimple. He didn’t know Nicholas.
‘We have a mutual friend,’ Dr Andreas was saying. ‘The lord Nicholai Giorgio de’ Acciajuoli told me that he stayed in this self-same house when in Scotland. You remember him? He has a wooden leg. You and he talked about Volos.’
‘I remember him,’ Nicholas said. ‘He would have given me advice, I am sure, about this jousting matter.’
‘I doubt it,’ said the physician. ‘He would have drunk only water, as you and I and the demoiselle Katelijne have been doing. So who taught Master Anselm’s young lady sister to swim? The same black servant you mentioned?’
Julius groaned. Nicholas smiled in a meaningful