The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [89]
Now the opposite party was close, she could see that Robin was in the group, and his father, and the sailing-master called Crackbene. And two men, on either side of a woman. The woman who had come forward at the joust and taken the child Henry away. Bel of Cuthilgurdy.
Bel of Cuthilgurdy stood and looked at the rope, and what it was carrying, but did not come any nearer, for the ice could not bear it. Katelijne heard her speak. She said, ‘What have you done?’
He is dead, de Fleury had said. And could not have known.
And the lawyer Julius, kneeling in his turn on the ice, said roughly, ‘Tried to save the man’s life. Nicholas? Is he dead?’
The two of them were out, now. Locked as in love or battle together, streaming with blood and with water, they lay still for a moment on the treacherous, snow-covered skin, as men came daintily forward to help them. Then Nicholas de Fleury stirred, and looked down, and after what seemed a long while, began slowly to separate himself, for the last time, from his burden.
The lawyer said again, ‘Is he dead?’
‘She is dead,’ de Fleury said. ‘It isn’t Simon. It is Lucia, his sister.’
All about him, silence fell: a blanket of disbelief, bafflement, curiosity. Further off, the babble not only increased but suddenly acquired a new focus: a raised, angry voice shouting questions. Deaf with horror, Katelijne ignored it. Then she saw faces turn. Thus she witnessed the cause of the commotion, the shouting. Simon de St Pol, in life, bursting forward, and driving his horse straight through them all to the ice.
If they hadn’t caught hold of his bridle he would have joined de Fleury there in the water and killed him. Even when they shouted explanations, he threw them off and tried to force his way onwards. He had arrived to find himself a ghost. First a ghost, then a man with a dead sister. And, of course, he was in no doubt who her murderer was.
He didn’t want to hear reason. It took physical force to restrain him and compel him to listen, while they told him over and over. The lady had drowned, riding over the river. And de Fleury, finding her, had done all that a man could to retrieve her.
‘It is true,’ said Katelijne. Her voice, uplifted among the rest, seemed to have the greatest effect. It could be seen, now, that Simon himself was marked as if caught in a fight; the blaze of anger, retreating, seemed to leave him mortally weary, and the face he turned to Katelijne was stark.
He stopped speaking. The lawyer Julius, holding her arm, fell silent also. Then Simon said, ‘How can I cross?’ His voice was quiet. The tension slackened and the group, falling apart, began to move up the trampled white banks.
Julius said, ‘I’m going too. I don’t trust him. What happened?’
‘They fought,’ she said. ‘M. de St Pol and M. de Fleury.’ Walking, she told him a little. Her teeth were chattering.
‘Wounded your uncle!’ the lawyer said.
‘He was trying to stop them. And M. de Fleury thought Berecrofts was in danger.’
‘So it was just coincidence,’ the lawyer Julius said. ‘Nicholas riding to Berecrofts at the same time as Lucia. And Simon wasn’t anywhere near – he had changed his mind and started back to Linlithgow.’
‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘Was M. de Fleury expecting to sail?’
The lawyer came to a halt. ‘He ought to. Unless you’re going to stop him. You’ve every right.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘But it might be as well if he leaves quickly. If he can.’
A gentle man of good sense, Archie of Berecrofts had separated the two who had died on his doorstep that night: the man lay on clean straw in the barn, and the lady, wrapped in dry linen, had been laid on the bed in his guest-chamber, tended by his good serving-women, with his visitor, Mistress Bel, to close the eyes and comb the over-bright hair and cross the helpless ringed hands on the widow’s breast.
Robin had helped, and the two men the woman had brought with her. Robin had seen death before, as part