The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [86]
‘I’ll do that!’ Sersanders said. He made to get up.
‘No,’ said Adorne, rousing stubbornly. His eyes, heavy but clear, turned from his nephew to his niece. ‘She is right. Someone must stay here on guard. If Simon can be persuaded not to complain, we may contain this matter yet. If I am attacked again and die, two nations will feel the hurt of it. Is de Fleury not due to sail?’
‘The Ghost is waiting,’ said Katelijne. ‘You aren’t going to accuse him? With this wound?’
‘He will pay,’ said Adorne. ‘I am not, I hope, the man to accept this without some response. But not a public one. My horse threw me, and I was cut by my dagger.’
Sersanders started to argue. Katelijne finished dressing and threw on her cloak, and took a torch from the wall. The boy and the old woman gazed at her. She knelt by her uncle.
He was sallow, and grooves of pain ran from his nose to each side of his mouth. She said, ‘I shall be careful,’ and kissed him; and walked out into the snow, to where only two horses waited. She took the better and, as Simon had done, turned its face to the west, which was not the way to Linlithgow. It was then just short of midnight, and she was as far behind Nicholas as Nicholas was behind Simon. She was also weeping.
At Berecrofts, Bel of Cuthilgurdy sat in silence while Michael Crackbene paced up and down. He had sworn only once, when the man sent to Kinneil returned half an hour before midnight to report that Nicholas de Fleury was not there, and Mistress Joneta had not seen him all evening. Just after midnight, the man he had sent to Blackness came back, cold and sullen, to report that he had failed to see Julius, and de Fleury had never been there. Also, that if de Fleury intended to sail on the Ghost, he had only a few hours left to join her.
Shortly after that, on the insistence of Berecrofts and his family, he sent out search parties, and joined one himself, as did the man Archie and Robin. De Fleury, the least inept of individuals, was unlikely to be in trouble. But the snow had begun again. He was mortal. And the old woman, who would not tell Crackbene her business, was grey with anxiety.
Half an hour after midnight, news of the dead man came in.
Berecrofts the Younger brought it himself, a calm, decent young man with his arm round his son. He spoke to Bel gently. ‘We don’t yet know who it is. The man who found him says he must be a stranger, to trust the ice on the Avon just there. Mind you, the plain is covered with snow. He may not even have known the river ran through it.’
Bel said, ‘Can they reach him?’
‘They’ve got ladders. They’ll try.’ He had his hand on her shoulder. He said, ‘M. de Fleury would know not to cross. He knows the river. This is someone who doesn’t live here.’
‘So you’ll go on searching?’ Bel said.
‘Oh, yes,’ Berecrofts said. ‘I don’t know what he can be up to, but we’ll find him. We have to get him to Bruges, don’t we, no matter what?’
Just an hour before that, the King’s hunting-party had returned to the Palace and found itself somewhat reduced. It was Will Roger, in the end, who forced upon their attention the fact that the Burgundian Envoy and his niece and nephew were missing, not to mention Simon de St Pol of Kilmirren and the provider of all their present comforts, the Fleming de Fleury.
Had they been less young and more tired, they might have done nothing. But the hounds were lively, the sport had been poor, and it was a fact (as Dr Andreas reminded them) that at the house of Kinneil there was a cloak of Kilmirren’s which would give them a very good scent. They set off through the snow, and arrived at Kinneil just after midnight. The young lady of Kinneil, somewhat distracted, served them wine and let the hounds sniff at the cloak. Amazingly, when they set off, they picked up a trail right away. It led west. The physician Andreas said, ‘St Pol is going to Berecrofts.’
Chapter 12
THE TROUBLE WAS, the snow covered the blood.
Obviously,