To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [266]
The boy reddened. He said, ‘I despise the van Borselens. I renounce them.’
‘Your father doesn’t,’ Nicholas said. ‘He sent you to Veere to be educated in chivalry, and instead you attacked your own baby cousin.’
‘He was a coward,’ said Henry.
‘I think,’ Nicholas said, ‘that all men are cowards at three. Your father will be ashamed of you. Instead of the mortification of seeing you imprisoned in Brabant, he will suffer the disgrace of what you have done today, and the penalty you must suffer.’
‘You can’t,’ Henry said. ‘I’m a prisoner waiting for ransom. It was an act of war. It was legal.’
‘My dear Henry,’ Nicholas said. ‘I am your uncle, and you are here to be trained in the military arts. You chose to come, rather than suffer the Steen. You have been fed, warmed and sheltered by this company and none of them, I think, has treated you with unbearable harshness. Yet you were willing to kill or hurt them at random – not just me, not just Master John, but the boys, the pages, the servants, even the women. That by itself is something that very few men could forgive. But you say you did it for France, and that is even worse, for it makes you a spy. And the penalty for spying is the most ugly of deaths.’
‘I knew you would kill me,’ said Henry.
‘If John or I wanted to kill you,’ said Nicholas, ‘we should take you now from this tent and denounce you before all those you were planning to murder. You would never survive to be hanged.’
‘You wouldn’t dare,’ Henry said. ‘I am a St Pol of Kilmirren. They wouldn’t touch me.’
He was breathing hard. At moments like this you could see Katelina in him: her proud spirit so fatally combined with the insensate flamboyance of Simon. What else lay there undeveloped it was impossible to say, and there was no time to find out. To reach him would be the work of years rather than months. And Nicholas could not bring himself to use force, to break that pride and that spirit together.
The only force he could use was the ordinary kind, which would be misconstrued, but which must be applied. Nicholas said, ‘You have threatened the lives of many friends of mine who have not harmed you, any more than Jordan had harmed you. To be a good soldier, you must learn to be just, and you must accept punishment when you do something wrong. I am not going to take you outside. I am going to beat you. It will be no more than you can bear, but it will be a heavy beating, because you deserve it. And if I am questioned by any man, your father included, I shall explain what you did to provoke it, and they will tell you that you are fortunate to have escaped with your life. Are you ready?’
‘I expected it,’ Henry said. ‘My father will thrash you. He will kill you. You are a fool.’
‘In that,’ Nicholas said, ‘you are probably right.’
He called John into the tent after it was over, and caught the flash of surprise, and the even greater surprise on the face of Julius when he learned what had happened. He wondered if they had expected him to cut the boy’s throat. He had the doctor visit him, and gave orders to have him well guarded in case someone else thought they’d repair the omission. Outside he found they had cleared up the carnage and set up a tent for him nearby, furnished with bits of other people’s equipment. Astorre had got him a horse, and some food, which he didn’t want, and a lecture which he didn’t want either. Eventually he rolled into bed, but couldn’t sleep.
The boy remained in John’s tent, and Nicholas returned, in the following days, to the concerns of the Duke and the siege. A good watch was kept, but nevertheless in the early hours of one morning a small number of men from the garrison, mostly mounted, made a surprise sally under cover of darkness and succeeded in crossing the ditch to the encampment. There they scattered, slashing and stabbing among the nearest tents of the besiegers, as if looking for someone. The action did not last long; the tent-ropes tripped and slowed down the horses, and as soon as the camp started to rouse, the men of Beauvais turned to go.
Nicholas