To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [250]
They left, and Wolfaert van Borselen, dismounted, stood in their place. He said, ‘What can I say?’ He sounded hoarse.
‘There is your pupil,’ Nicholas said. ‘He speaks for you.’
The boy Henry had got to his feet. Expertly delivered, the blow should have broken his neck. At the last moment, the man had held back. As it was, the boy swayed. The whole side of his face was discoloured, and his pupils were so distended that his eyes appeared black, and not blue.
‘He is scum,’ Wolfaert said. ‘I should never have taken him.’
‘He is the son of your cousin. This is a house expected to breed and train leaders. You were sent a savage and have done nothing to curb him.’
Wolfaert said, ‘He caused no trouble before.’
‘Are you excusing him?’
‘No. But the fault isn’t all mine. ‘You and your feud with his father–’
‘And the conduct, you would say, of your other cousin, who slept with his father?’
‘You said it, not I,’ Wolfaert said.
‘Just to remind you. You knew. So that any fool but you, my lord, would have been on the lookout for trouble.’
‘I beg your pardon!’ Wolfaert was flushed.
‘I am not ready to give it. This boy is afraid that mine has a claim on his father. He wants him dead. Am I right?’
He turned on the boy who returned his stare from under drawn brows. ‘Of course,’ Henry said. ‘A bitch litters. The product is dung. You and him.’
Wolfaert lifted his arm, and then dropped it.
‘What a pity,’ Nicholas said, ‘that I wasn’t wearing a ring. My lord? I need transport.’
‘Anything. Anything. Food, a wagon, an escort. And for this knave, a prison cell in the castle.’
‘I am a van Borselen,’ said the boy. His face blazed.
‘You are a St Pol, nothing else,’ said the seigneur of Veere. ‘I have disowned you. Beg your life from this lord.’
‘What lord? This cuckold?’ said Henry.
‘Did you speak? Don’t speak,’ Nicholas said.
‘How will you stop me?’ said the boy.
‘With a gag. Will your men remove him, my lord?’
‘Where?’ said Wolfaert.
‘Oh, to prison,’ Nicholas said. ‘But not for long. An hour, maybe. I have to send off some messages. Then I am taking him with me to Bruges.’
‘Tonight?’ Wolfaert said. A man of conscience, he tried to dissuade him, but was clearly quite thankful to fail. He knew Nicholas had already ridden from Antwerp. In fact, he had set out that morning from Ghent. Nicholas hardly remembered it, through the pure, high, white fury that burned, Loki’s star, in his mind and his senses.
*
It was a fast journey, fast as he wanted. He slept, he thought, in the van Borselen boat which took them from Flusa over the Scheldt, but no one mentioned it; the small armed escort provided by Wolfaert were silent throughout. Henry’s eyes followed him in the half-dark but Henry said nothing: Nicholas had sealed his mouth, as he had promised, some time ago. He took a room for a few hours at Sluys, which they reached after midnight, and changed Wolfaert’s horses for some of his own, which were kept there at stable. At three in the morning there was an outcry from the place where the men-at-arms were sleeping with Henry: the boy had been ungagged on his orders, and on some excuse his escort had untied his hands, and he had nearly escaped, wounding the innkeeper. Nicholas dealt with it as Astorre would have done; the men-at-arms muttered behind him. By dawn they were riding into Bruges with the first of the packhorses and wagons, and Nicholas was at his own door.
The night porter was sleepy, and unknown to him. Nicholas kicked the door from his grasp and, when men came running half armed, made known his opinion in a few suitable words, and had his escort made welcome and led to the kitchens. He gave the leader his purse, entire, as a gesture to Wolfaert, but the man’s eyes, as he thanked him, were aloof. Henry stood, his face grotesquely bloated, and shivered while everyone stared. His hands were tied and his lips bound again. Nicholas hooked him by the shirt-collar and pulled him indoors and upstairs, passing familiar faces but not looking at them. No one spoke. Since he did not know which door was Gelis