The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [61]
When, presently, she left home again with her maid it was daylight, and she was warmly clad for a long journey, and accompanied by a party of men from the Kilmirren estate and its farms. Some, like young Andro, she had known a long time. The rest included the new steward appointed by Jordan, and the man from the east coast, from B roughton, whom Simon himself had selected. They took dogs and spare horses and food. They also took weapons. It was by then a fine day: full morning, with the sun in her eyes, dazzling white from the hoof-printed snow.
It was a good morning for hunting. The same sun roused the King’s Court at Edinburgh, where the Castle seethed with restless young men. It was a good morning for hunting and moreover the Ghost, this Flemish ship with the fabulous cargo, had arrived, they had learned, and was lying within easy reach at Blackness.
The King had already conferred with Alexander his brother, or possibly the other way round. By the time the sun had climbed in the sky, a royal hunting-party had left for a day’s sport to the hills west of Edinburgh.
They planned to hunt. They planned to descend for food upon the King’s Palace of Linlithgow. Before turning homewards to Edinburgh, they planned to ride across to Blackness and inspect the Ghost and its wonderful merchandise. Among those who accompanied the King were Anselm Adorne and Simon de St Pol of Kilmirren.
By midday, the royal party was close to Linlithgow, and Bel of Cuthilgurdy was eight hours away.
Nicholas de Fleury waited.
It was only the first stage, that was all. It was only the first knot in the snare, the first flick of the hook; the first hint of spin in the arrow. The first letting of blood not his own.
Chapter 8
A DORNE HAD BEEN to Linlithgow Palace before. The drawbridge thudded down in a sunlit cloud of snow speckled with dust and the hounds, brown and black and white, poured past the horses like salmon. Above the carved lintel, the scaffolding stood against the pellucid blue sky, marking the advance of the masonwork.
The new rooms were to be ready by the time the King’s bride came from Denmark. Through the winter, James had ridden out now and then to look at them, but not to stay. No one stayed there at present but the artisans and the Master of Works and their cook and, some of the time, the Keeper of the Palace.
Even to pause here for noon dinner had meant sending off a train of wagons at dawn, with food and trestles and benches and barrels of ale, and dishes and pots for the kitchen, and cloths and buckets and braziers. There were supposed to be spits already provided, and charcoal, and logs to heat the stone rooms. A host of servants in thick hooded mantles had travelled the sixteen miles with the baggage, glumly packed between kegs.
It was as well they had sent something to eat, for the morning’s hunting had been indifferent: a few score game birds and some hares, which had hardly diminished the Princes’ energy, or that of Sersanders and Adorne’s niece, for that matter. The countryside was white with last night’s snow: even the loch above which the Palace perched was smooth as a blanket, and the air crackled with redeeming frost over the workmen’s latrines. Beyond the entrance passage and portcullis, the inner yard of the building was stiff with mud. The Keeper stood in it waiting, cap in hand, his beard fixed in a block like winter fodder. He had just finished sneezing.
Anselm Adorne thought of the Great Hall as last he had seen it, a hundred feet long and thirty wide with unshuttered windows and bare walls and stone seats and a black fog of fumes from the hearth. And that had been in autumn. He wondered if the well froze. Maintaining a lofty Burgundian calm, he exchanged a silent flicker of woe with Jehan Metteneye.
Behind, the rest of the party, losing animation, had fallen pettishly quiet, in the way of those about to blame someone for something. Katelijne was among them, with the nuns and her mistress, young Margaret. Adorne could hear Mistress Phemie’s encouraging