The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [52]
Julius caught up with him. ‘That should earn you a few contracts at Court. My God, I thought he was going to kill Mar. A temper as weird as his father’s. Should we go back to the stand and be thanked? Or we can be thanked at the banquet.’
‘We?’ said Nicholas. He was being congratulated already, by spectators crowding about as they walked from the field. The wench in green seemed to have gone. Behind, the Mêlée had come to some sort of conclusion, and heralds and trumpets were beginning the ritual, in the near-dark, of ending the tourney. A free space opened before them. De Fleury said, ‘Why don’t we vanish modestly for the present? Can we avoid Katelijne?’
‘No,’ said Adorne’s niece, standing before them. Behind her was Andreas, Adorne’s physician. She said, ‘Can you walk?’
‘I learned quite early,’ Nicholas de Fleury said. ‘Your singing was bearable. Do you mind?’ He made to brush past.
‘Because,’ she said, ‘the Hospitallers’ house is quite close. Or the Greyfriars are nearer. But the banquet is there.’
She stood in the gloom with the doctor, looking at Nicholas. Julius said dismissively, ‘Well, we’ll see you at the banquet.’ People were beginning to pass again, calling to them.
The girl Katelijne, saying something impatient, seized Nicholas by the cloak. With the other hand, as the boy had done, she pulled his knife from its sheath and slanted it to catch the remains of the light.
The blade was wet. She did not speak. Julius thought she had gone mad, like Henry. Then he saw that the blade was not only wet. It was red to the hilt.
‘As you say,’ Nicholas said. ‘A temper as weird as his father’s. What a pity you saw it. The house of the Hospitallers, yes, perhaps.’
‘You mean the brat managed to – I’ll kill him!’ said Julius.
‘Do. That would solve everything,’ said Nicholas de Fleury, and began to laugh, until Andreas stopped him.
Chapter 7
THAT NIGHT THE boy Henry left the tilting-ground no less swiftly, and through an agency no less efficient. Bel of Cuthilgurdy, sweeping the child from the field, looked for and found sympathetic bystanders to help her, and sensible hands to undo the boy’s armour and then convey them both to the Castle Hill house. She did not try to find Simon, whose task must be to reach the King before or after the banquet and make his excuses for what his son had attempted against the King’s brother. They reached the house without Henry having spoken a word.
There, she sent a request for milk and warm water, and took him alone to his chamber where she stripped him prosaically in the privy and wrapped him in the biggest towel she could find. She talked, now and then, telling him what to do, but the shaking continued, and his white, dirty face hardly changed. It wasn’t until the steaming tub had been left that he spoke. He said, ‘I killed him.’
Bel sat back on her heels, holding the towel crossed on his chest. She said, ‘You thought you did.’
‘No,’ said Henry. It was shrill.
Bel said, ‘He’s just a man, Henry. If you’d killed him, he’d be dead.’
The boy wasn’t even looking at her. ‘But it went in,’ he said. ‘The knife went in. I killed him.’
‘You meant to,’ said Bel. Sorrow filled her. She said, ‘Men can walk, even when badly hurt. You hurt him. But he wouldn’t hurt you.’
‘I killed him!’ Henry screamed and, sobbing at last, fell into her arms.
Later, Simon arrived. Later, Simon strode to the bed and roused the child from the oblivion of exhaustion with a blow that shocked Henry gasping awake, to be followed by slap after slap on his face. When Bel caught Simon’s arm, he turned on her.
‘Lullabies! Possets! Embraces! You know best, don’t you, what a murderer needs? There is the result of your cosseting. A son of mine fights his prince like a gutter-born bastard; profanes his name; compels his father to beg his King for clemency. What Court will accept him now? What society?’
‘Ye silly loon,’ Bel said. ‘You’re hitting a boy for