The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [31]
Most of all, Katelijne relished her lessons with the musician, Will Roger. It was best when Margaret wasn’t present, and there were only one or two boys and herself, with her maidservant Emmelot chaperoning them, asleep (despite the noise) in the corner. It was after one such hilarious afternoon that she glanced out to the courtyard, Master Willie chatting beside her, and saw what new arrival had emerged from the gatehouse.
He seemed to be expected. She saw the porter ushering him across; the steward coming out to direct his men; the stablemen hurrying to lead off the horses. The newcomer had two servants with him and ten mounted men, all in black, and a burly companion of unknown provenance, who remained at his side.
‘Balls!’ said Katelijne Sersanders.
‘What?’ said her tutor.
‘Remember? Balls,’ said the Princess’s companion. ‘And I still have his ballocks knife. Tell him. I’ll get it.’ She whirled, colliding with the collected person of Mistress Phemie, upon which she had the grace to blush.
Mistress Phemie, in her habitual dress of high-necked gown and neat wimple, gave no sign of alarm, her attention being diverted, in her turn, to the visitor. She said, ‘What a beautiful man.’
Unlike her taste in poetry, Mistress Phemie’s grasp of secular matters was shaky. Katelijne corrected her. ‘He isn’t. He just walks as if he is. It’s my uncle’s friend M. de Fleury. Did you know he was coming?’
‘Of course,’ said Mistress Phemie. Above her chastely bound jaw, her round copper eyes followed the newcomer. ‘He brings godly news of the evangelisation of Africa; setting up the truth, as Athanasius says, as a light upon its miraculous candlestick. Also he knows how to value our wool in the boll compared with the heathenish throw-away prices offered for Catalan.’
‘I thought,’ said Will Roger, puzzled, ‘that Catalan wool came from other Cistercian houses?’
Mistress Phemie’s jaw prodded its wimple. ‘I pray you,’ she said, ‘refrain from reminding our holy mother, the Prioress. She is a great lady, but details escape her.’
Will Roger was among those who, an hour-glass after that, gathered with nuns, prioress and household, guests and officers, to learn about the Land of the Blacks through the equally unreliable memory of Nicholas de Fleury. The music master, a virtuoso entertainer himself, admired the performance. Here was not a beautiful man, by God no. But here was a skilful one.
At the end, he joined in the applause. It was merited. ‘Poor Father Godscalc!’ they exclaimed. ‘How terrible! How sad! And what can be done for the heathen?’
To which their visitor answered by shaking his head. ‘Nothing. Indeed, I am told the tribes have since rebelled, and Timbuktu and its sinners destroyed within sight of redemption. One must weep. One must weep, even for blacks.’
Then he answered their questions until, after a while, the discussion insensibly had departed from the Joliba to matters of deep concern to thinking people, such as the margin for pricing their leeks and the means of obtaining better terms for their fells and even how to make a profit from coal. One of the nuns, subject to sudden enthusiasms, exclaimed, ‘But we know, don’t we, who could help there?’ and subsided, eyes lowered, before the Prioress’s quick frown. De Fleury, who had excellent manners, paid no attention.
To one or two, his manners perhaps were too striking. Will Roger, a silent spectator, was not surprised when Dame Betha crossed to sit beside him and, for once, lowered her voice. ‘That man. What do you know of him?’
She knew, better than he, who de Fleury was. He knew what she was asking, but preferred to hedge. ‘He can swim,’ Roger said. ‘And sing. And act, I suspect. Katelijne?’
She thought. She always thought. She said, ‘He tells lies very well. He is angry. He is rich, and married to Gelis van Borselen, who is related to the young Scottish King and to other great families by marriage. He used