The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [367]
The boat flying the Lusignan flag was filled with such phantoms. Chiefly he hated those masks which were white. A human back turned, and there was the oval, inhuman face, the pursed lips, the slender, classical nose, the ceramic cheekbones, down which a thread of silver or gold had been lazily drawn. The lightless eyes and cut nostrils above the beautiful gown; the shy, timorous gestures. The girl wearing the black diamanté mask had come forward again, and was gazing down at the boat with Jan in it.
Tobie had seen who was in the next boat. He had tried to stop Jan from climbing over. He knew Simon de St Pol had befriended Adorne’s son. He knew the girls in St Pol’s cabin were harlots, masked and costumed as men. The only mercy was that Jan also was masked, and the journey was short. Nothing much could occur in ten minutes.
Two minutes later, the curtains in the next boat flew apart and Dionysus emerged, dragging an indignant cockerel by the wrist. It was not apparent what they were arguing about. Then the argument suddenly stopped, as the eye of the cockerel fell on the Corner boat beyond, and the girl in the black mask who stood there.
Slowly she raised one gloved hand and allowed something to float from it: a kerchief. Jan leaned out and caught it. Then, shaking off the man at his side, he placed a precarious foot on the gunwale and offered his hands to the girl who began, with slow, ineffable grace, to step from her boat to his. Simon de St Pol made to move to prevent her.
Tobie called John’s name, without making it urgent, while he himself scanned the Knights’ boat. Adorne, to his relief, was not visible, but he could see Kathi’s red gown, and where her gaze was directed. She saw him. He could feel her question, but do nothing about it. By the time John pushed to his side, the drunken cockerel and Simon were fighting in the next boat while the exquisite girl stood, one ringed hand arrayed at her breast, her mask sloping. The single tear glistened. The curtains of the deck-salon were open, and the entrance crowded with plumpish young gentlemen.
Simon was not a man of great patience. Perhaps only Jan was surprised when the golden god lifted his arm and caught his feathered disciple an efficient blow to the chin. Jan staggered back, stumbled and fell. The girl made no effort to save him. Instead she lifted her head and put first one gloved hand, then the other on Dionysus’s near golden shoulder. The cockerel scrambled to its feet. Simon glanced at him, then turned his golden mask to the girl. She leaned on him, her white fingers folded, and he put a muscular arm round her waist.
Jan exploded between them.
By now, every boat within reach was alerted, and people were scrambling to watch. Tobie stood grimly at his own rail, with John and then the others crowding beside him. Father Moriz said something in disgust and walked away; Gregorio followed.
It was never a contest. Jan was the son of a jouster but not the champion that Simon was. He gripped the boy by the shoulders and spoke to him. When the boy continued to fight, he spoke louder. Last of all, Simon de St Pol twisted back the cockerel’s arms and, pinning him down, leaned to draw the girl closer.
She came, in a glint of jewels and a rustle of taffeta. She came within an inch of them both. The eye spaces devoured, the diamanté lips hung; the spark of a tear lent its wistfulness to the virginal face. Then Simon wrenched off the mask and the headgear.
Nerio of Trebizond laughed and said, ‘Oh! Oh! How cruel!’ and rubbed the bare skin of Dionysus’s chest with his finger. Then, leaning forward, he plucked a feather from the motionless cockerel’s cap and stuck it in his own well-cut, masculine hair. ‘Now who will ever teach him the difference?’
Laughter spread. The boy, freed by St Pol, stumbled to the side of the boat, where Tobie and John were already leaning to rescue him. Behind the mask, he was retching. Between them, the two men lifted him over and set him shivering on the deck of the Bank’s boat. Below the mask, he was green.