The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [25]
He missed the first race, but joined the next one, and did quite well, with Maarten this time running beside him and yelling. They had a donkey race next, and then the pinners’ men took them on at the tursing, which meant a race with a two-hundredweight load on your back. The professionals won that, but vander Poele and Julius led the laymen behind them, and vied with each other over the last hundred yards, using every dirty trick of toe and knee and shoulder anyone had ever heard of, accompanied by a stream of unquotable badinage. The boy Duke had tears streaming from his pale eyes, and Katelijne was white with delight and exertion.
Then Liddell said, ‘Why don’t we sing?’
So, as the moon shone on the sea, they settled round the red glowing mound of the fire, and the young gentlefolk sang, as Master Lamb had predicted. Now the families had begun to walk back through the sand to their cabins, and the artisans, for whom the day started at dawn, had with reluctance plodded back to the workshops. But many stayed, young men mostly, with a few elders hoping to catch a royal glance, plus a few who had snored themselves into their night’s happy sleep. All the royal party was there, and the Flemings, even to Dr Andreas.
Anselm Sersanders was not a great man for music, although he had heard plenty of it in church and had a full student’s repertoire of verses and rounds and choruses, dirty and clean. The Adornes, because of their family church, were painfully assiduous patrons, and Sersanders blamed his uncle for encouraging Katelijne’s prejudices. She fidgeted now, consumed with impatience as the flasks were passed round and the songs roared out, to whistle and trumpet and drum, and the bagpipe wheezed now and then, until someone got up and threw it into the sea. Then Will Roger started making up verses.
His was one of the good voices; as it ought to be, since he’d come from England with the name of musician and stayed because, it seemed, he’d made himself popular with the Court. He was not one of nature’s beauties, having a coarse face rather than an ascetic one, and a barrel chest and fingers like bolsters. But they were agile enough on a whistle, and the words he improvised were as neat as the measure he sang them to. Then he threw both across to James Liddell, and sang a descant while Jamie, no newcomer to the game, hummed and thought, and produced his own verse, and repeated it twice, with some help. Then Alexander made up a verse, not quite rhyming and losing the tune, but everyone chanted it after him, and Will Roger gave it its due before he turned to the girl Katelijne. He said, ‘I think I have heard a sweet voice. Do you want to try it?’
‘I need it higher,’ she said, and drew breath, and began. The first line was a joke, developing an idea of Liddell’s. The second was a parody of Will Roger’s tentative start. The third and fourth were evolutions of both. The music was precisely Roger’s throughout, except that at the end she changed the key down to minor, to prepare for lowering the range.
The applause and laughter had started by then, and almost drowned Roger’s voice as it addressed her. ‘Do it again. Keep it high. I’ll adapt.’ And when the shouting died, it revealed the two voices singing together, one high and one low, with the man improvising to the girl. They used the same words. At the end, they broke off, loudly acclaimed, and the versifying passed to other skittish, everyday voices.
Anselm Adorne said, ‘She has a great gift. I think we have brought her to the right place.’ His nephew glanced at him, and away.
Julius was singing. His voice was terrible and his verses didn’t scan, but were fertile with waggish allusions. He had wandered off tune. Following him, Maarten (who had a good voice) said, ‘I’ve lost the key. No, all right: I have it.’
Someone had quoted him the opening phrase at its original pitch. The whistle, which had begun to give out the notes, promptly stopped. The whistler looked round. ‘Nicholas,’ Julius replied