The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [64]
Everyone else stood at the windows, the Prioress and the Bishop taking the centre, their eyes fixed on the recess where the cellar steps lay, still in sunlight. A small crowd of workmen and grooms had gathered hesitantly in the yard, giving way from time to time as a liveried servant disappeared down the steps. One of them carried a crowbar.
Adorne said, ‘This is a pity.’ He could say no more. The King was there, with his uncles. It was not for a foreigner to interfere.
The first person to emerge was the lady Margaret, climbing the steps and marching over the mud. Her hat was still intact, tied on top of her furious red hair, but her cloak had been replaced by many ells of black and gold velvet, unrolled from the bale and tied by some means to her shoulders, from which it fell as a train into the occasional grasp of a page. It did not fall in the mud, because someone was walking beneath it. Adorne recognised, choking a little, the legs of his niece. Knollys said, ‘The stupid young wench – the expense o’t!’
‘To whom?’ said the Bishop. ‘Perhaps you would care to go out and help her? Then again, who knows what will come next?’
What came next were three folding chairs, each of velvet-trimmed leather and tasselled, and each borne on liveried legs. After a pause, and a burst of louder laughter, a scroll appeared which, lengthening, turned out to be a long roll of arras succeeded by a close-stool and a hat-stand. There followed cushions, many of them, and a procession of stand- and field-beds and a mirror. And then pile upon pile of fine linen followed by heavy objects which appeared to be plate-chests. There were coffers, and trays, and a wall-clock; lecterns and sheets; a perfume-burner and a fine Turkish carpet. There emerged Will Roger, grim-faced, supervising the carriage of two objects no one recognised at all.
By then the King’s sister had entered the Great Hall with her train, inevitably mired, dragging behind her. Katelijne said, ‘They are unpacking it all.’
Her uncle said, in Flemish, ‘We can do and say nothing. You have helped as much as you could.’
He watched, since observation at least was open to him. Eventually all the King’s party had made their hilarious way back to the warm, the filthy Great Hall. And below dirtied glorious arras, upon blemished cushions of silk and velvet and leather, served on embroidered snagged linen, aided by dented exquisite silver and lit by ill-hung, precious candelabra, the banquet was served.
Nicholas arrived at the end, with his keys. Arrived, in person, in the centre of the Great Hall, without warning from gate-keeper or porter; without discreet interception by Argyll or by Whitelaw to prepare, to explain, to excuse what the Princes had done.
Anselm Adorne saw him enter and stand, his sable cloak held at one shoulder; his other hand, finely gloved, hanging idly between the black hem of his doublet and the gilded leather below.
Far down the table, Simon glanced up and saw him, and his face changed. Adorne, ceaselessly observant, saw Nicholas de Fleury’s dense gaze rest on Kilmirren for a moment, then move. It travelled slowly over every part of the vast room, from the dishevelled tapestried walls to the broken Venetian glass, the smeared salvers and magnificent salt-cellars on the strewn tables; and then extended to the diners, their servants beside them, whose inconsequential chatter and laughter began slowly to dwindle, and then resurrected itself, vaguely, in gleeful whispers.
Adorne said, ‘The wine. What was in the wine?’ At the top table, the Princes lay back in their tasselled chairs while the elders about them sat up, and tried to recover their gravity.
The wine, warmed, had been spiced. With what, Adorne could not say, although he had tasted something like it before. He was conscious that even his head, legendary in Bruges, had been affected.
Metteneye said, ‘Lamb’s house in Leith. The same spices.’
The same spices, before the night on Leith strand. The same spices, supplied by de Fleury.
Perhaps he exclaimed. The altered eyes of the