To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [183]
‘Better than that. It rescued itself before anyone reached it. It got itself off the rocks, and managed to sail out to sea and escape. It’s free! Uncle Adorne’s ship is safe, and the Cologner and Martin and everyone!’
He realised that his lips were drawn back like a gargoyle’s. He said, ‘Now pretend you haven’t been fooled, Master Nikolás-riddari. Where did the Unicorn go?’
‘South. Home, of course. They’ll be home before us; they don’t even know that we’re here. It doesn’t matter. M. de Fleury said he would come if they didn’t. Anselm, isn’t it splendid?’
‘You don’t know anything,’ said Sersanders indulgently. ‘And they haven’t gone home, I would bet on it. And I don’t intend to wait for Nicholas de Fleury to condescend to pick us up, if he ever would, which I doubt. No. Clean your hands. Get your bag. I’m going to find us a boat and some horses.’
‘Turn round,’ she said.
He looked at her, puzzled, and turned.
It was an odd time, he thought, to admire scenery. Certainly, the landscape had been obscured before, and he had had other things on his mind. He still had. To please her, he studied the view: the plain of the delta, and the snow-covered lava beyond. They were pink. He said, ‘Very nice.’
‘Very nice,’ Kathi repeated. She gazed at her brother. Then she turned back to the sight which she hadn’t even wanted him to observe: the distant place where the sky was still dim, and an ethereal city swam in the air – a marble confection of mosques and towers and tombs which hung sugar-pink in the dawn. It lasted one moment more; and then the light changed, and showed the massifs and the peaks to be lifeless.
Spiralling into the paling blue sky were two thin columns of smoke. Two, not one.
She said, ‘Look. I’m not going anywhere. I’m waiting for M. de Fleury.’
Her brother faced her. She had a feeling that she was still misunderstood. He said, ‘Kathi, I know what it’s like. I can’t boast. I’m no prude. But Nicholas de Fleury doesn’t want you. You would never be more than his mistress.’
‘Heaven preserve us!’ said Kathi. She rolled up her eyes. ‘Anselm? Listen! The reason I didn’t go back to Bruges is because Uncle thinks I should find someone in Scotland to marry. Poffins in soup. I don’t mind. But having decided to stay, do you think I’d waste my maidenly charms on a much-married husband and father?’
He said, ‘So come to Skálholt with me.’
‘Why?’ she said. ‘Anselm, why? If it’s over, we ought to wait and go home.’
‘It isn’t over,’ he said. ‘And we can get ourselves home without the help of the Banco di Niccolò. It’s going to be Nicholas’s second surprise. If you’re frightened, I’ll go on my own.’
‘And desert me?’ said Kathi. ‘Abandon me at the portals of Hell? Relinquish me to the clutches of –’
‘You’ve just said the opposite,’ said Anselm unkindly. ‘You don’t want him, he doesn’t want you, and you are on kissing terms with the entire population of Iceland, so far as I can see. You don’t need me.’
And that was true, Kathi conceded; but silently. She gazed at him with wistful affection tempered with admiration. He looked remarkably fresh. She wished, for the hundredth time, that he would marry.
‘I’ll come with you,’ she said. She hoped she hadn’t given in too abruptly. She was dying to know what he was up to. She had made up her mind, long before, that she was going to make the most of her journey to Iceland. She just found Anselm a boring companion, that was all.
Nicholas came to land that afternoon, arriving in someone’s flat-bottomed boat not much larger than a Thames shout, Robin with him.
It was later than he had planned. The Pruss Maiden had taken time to disable; now it was lodged with the Svipa in the sheltered north bay of the harbour. The fish-cleaning stations were in place on the shore by the ships, along with the trading-booths and the tents they’d brought with them. It was the usual practice, when southern fleets fished at the Westmanns. If any Icelanders had been rash enough to set up summer house, they were thrown off and their hovels re-occupied. Only the Hanse ships could