The Unicorn Hunt (23 page)

‘So I did,’ the other man said. ‘But then, I didn’t know all the facts. I didn’t know that you and my future wife were currently lovers. I do apologise,’ the unhurried voice added. ‘A boy’s list of grudges.’

He knew.

‘You owed me a girl,’ Simon said. He said it to cover the depth of his surprise; the breathlessness of a slow and stunning delight.
De Fleury knew
. All these months, he had known about Gelis.
This
was why he had come to Scotland; had tricked him and trapped him and, hiring four bullies, was now bent on some puerile accounting.

Everything was explained. At once Simon was relieved of the unreasonable fear he had felt out there under the sky, among ghostly watchers. Tonight he was in the hands of an aggrieved amateur, not a soldier; not the deadly and furious magnates whom he imagined de Ribérac had angered. His situation was perilous, but retrievable. And rendering it almost sweet was the knowledge that the other man had learned what he had done to Gelis van Borselen, and she with him, and would never cease to imagine it.

He, Simon, had effected a masterstroke of the bedchamber worth all the sneers of a Jordan de Ribérac. A stroke which repaid, in one blow, all the pin-pricks he had suffered from Claes; all the fury his very existence had caused him. Which almost surpassed, in its life-long implications, the bludgeon-blow attempted this evening. For which, in due course, he, Simon, would extract life itself for payment.

Simon smiled; and the other man, seeing the smile, said slowly, ‘Yes, of course. It had to be true.’ Then, hearing something, he lifted his head.

Simon’s lips parted. Clear through the walls came the barking of the mastiffs at last, swarming into the settlement, and the blare of the horn close at hand, and the cries of the hunt-servants, and the cracking of whips. Freedom. The King’s party, and freedom. He made to move.

Stupidly, he had been slow. His assailant – the cuckold, his attacker – was soundlessly on his knees beside him, the axe at his throat. De Fleury said, ‘I should prefer you not to call them.’ Simon reared, and the blade bit his neck. He lay still. It didn’t matter. Life and purpose had returned to his body. He was an expert. There would be other chances.

They stayed, without moving. They heard voices raised in
enquiry, and other voices, answering. They heard the thud of bodies as the hounds belaboured the walls and the doors. Simon lay, his clothes, once sodden with snow, now again soaked with his own perspiration, and watched sweat streak the other man’s cheekbones from the darkened screws of his heavy, waterlogged hair; slide from his brows and his lashes down the thin channel of Jordan’s incision.

His hand on the axe-shaft was wet, but when Simon stirred, it tightened instantly. ‘No,’ said the man he had cuckolded.

Then, suddenly, the sounds began to grow fainter. Simon heard laughter. He heard a man’s voice distantly raised in a chant, and others joining, slurred with wine, and overlaid with diminished barking. He heard the nasal twang of a jew’s trump.

Above him, the other man’s breathing checked. An instant’s distraction was all Simon needed. He flung himself to one side, and then whined with pain as his captor swung his axe high and brought down the flat of its blade on the stob of his gnawed, bloodied elbow. The weapon returned to its place at his throat, where it stayed until all sound had vanished, upon which the other man rose and stepped back. Throughout, he had never appeared less than calm.

Simon said, ‘What are you going to do?’ He sat, holding the weight of his forearm. His injury throbbed.

‘Shed blood,’ said his captor. He was tall, with a long reach and broad shoulders, but carried too little flesh, as might a man fighting a long campaign or recently ill. Something inconvenient strayed into Simon’s mind. The other man, hooking the axe at his side, lifted a scoop by its ear and lowered it into a bucket.

He said, ‘I promised the salt-master I’d look after the cauldron. You know that salt has to have blood? It has to be male blood: bull or buck or calf. Or human, of course. You add it thus to the brine, and it clarifies it. See.’ And he lifted the scoop.

He seemed to be absorbed. At his waist, the axe glinted. For an instant, Simon was ready to lunge; and then the smallest swing of the dipper warned him what was going to happen. He rolled back and the dipper, correcting itself, swung back and over the cauldron, into which it delivered its cargo of gore.

Deliberately, the brine had been permitted to boil. Instead of seething, turgid and brown, the blood leaped on the surface in vivid splashes and gouts, and inflated into thin blemished spheres which burst in fine crimson spray on the walls and dripped from the roof and filled the foetid air of the salt-house with the iron-sharp odour which, rank and stale with age, rose from the compact
dirt he had been sitting in. Simon, fast though he moved, found himself – arms, shirt, doublet – filmed with blood, and felt it slide through the sweat on his face.

The other man, streaked with gore, had hardly troubled to avoid it. He plied a long-handled paddle, still smiling; and then, taking a rake, revived the flames in the furnace below. His eyes in the flare were large and wet-lashed and ruddy. Simon looked at him, and felt a doubt, and dismissed it.

The other man said, ‘I shall need to add coal soon. You can help me.’

‘Coal?’ Simon said. He moved back, inoffensively, and sat down.

‘Small coal. Dross. It comes from the mines near Kinneil. It gives more heat than wood or straw for less bulk, so the salt is quicker to form. You saw the mark on the door? Hamilton, of course, holds Kinneil and Carriden under the abbot, but he has agreed to let me develop it. Salt and sugar and alum have a good deal in common. I have access to a brilliant engineer, and some experience from the flatlands elsewhere. It all comes down to hydraulics and drainage.’

‘You don’t need to tell me about coal,’ Simon said. He spoke as if amused, but in fact was astonished and angry. Hamilton should have mentioned this.

‘You mean your new Hamilton land in the west? But your Hamilton land has no coal,’ his captor said. ‘You thought it had, because I wanted to buy it.’

There was a silence. Simon said, ‘That won’t wear. I saw the reports.’ Then he remembered who brought him the reports.

‘Quite so,’ said the man he had cuckolded. ‘But that was Joneta’s doing, for me. Her father sold you the land in good faith. As you remember, he himself made no claims for it. But it’s worthless, of course. Stone. You might get some gorse for your Kilmirren herd. If you manage to keep your Kilmirren herd.’

Simon looked at him.

The other man met the look. He said, ‘Did you think that was all? Did you think that all I would do is bribe your armourer and make you look foolish? Sleep with your mistress? Compel you to run in the snow, and hurt you a little? Do you really think that I,
I
of all people could not find just the way, just the fitting, flawless, appropriate way for Simon de St Pol to pay his debts to me?’

‘My armourer … You’re mad,’ Simon said. He believed it.

‘Beginning with your name. You saw the crest on the door.’

‘It is not your name,’ Simon said. He felt himself whiten.

‘Need we go into all that again?’ For the first time the other man
rose and walked off and turned without cause. He said, ‘Your wife was my mother, and she named me as your child. I believe her. I know you were fifteen and forced to marry. I know she was nearly twice your age. Still, I cannot excuse you for denouncing her, or me. If I choose, I will use the name of St Pol as well as de Fleury. How will you enjoy hearing me call you Father? I could do it,
Father
.’

And this was insupportable. Simon said, ‘You will not.’

The other man said, ‘How will you stop me?’

Simon showed his teeth. ‘By force.’

‘But I have the ascendancy,’ his captor said. ‘And the axe.’

‘You would kill your father?’ said Simon. He spoke with derision.

‘You invited your daughter-in-law to your bed.’

It was time to stop this. Simon said, ‘That’s enough. You are not of my blood, or my father’s. As for Gelis van Borselen, keep her if you are able. She is too lusty for me. My God, I barely escaped with my manhood. She has a habit …’

He waited.

‘Yes?’ said de Fleury.

‘Shall I tell you?’ said Simon.

‘If you want to. I thought I knew all her habits,’ said the other man.

Already perplexed, Simon found himself outraged. ‘One would think –’

‘I didn’t care? Of course I don’t. But I dislike trespassers. I have returned the courtesy, by the way, so far as flesh will allow. Your taste and mine sometimes differ. Ada, for example. I felt the love of a working mother would be better savoured by Crackbene.’ There reappeared the punctual insult of the dimples. The man was still calm. He stood there, exuding an unnatural calm.

Simon said, ‘I may, then, announce your wife’s coming child to be mine?’

‘Of course,’ said the other. ‘And I shall say, hand on heart, that so long as it is healthy, I should welcome any sister or brother born of my wife.’

Put into words it was loathsome. Only a sick man would think of it. ‘No one would believe you,’ said Simon.

‘But they would repeat the story,’ the other man said. ‘And unless I let you, you couldn’t really deny it. Because I hold the ultimate card. The denunciation of Henry.’

The words fell into silence. Simon heard them, his thoughts in disorder. Henry’s guilt. The danger he had remembered and tried
to thrust out of mind: the murderous stabbing of young Mar’s preserver to which so many could attest – Adorne and his niece, Julius, Roger. The stabbing which de Fleury had not reported, Simon now saw, for this very reason. To hold against this moment the weapon, sharper than steel, which Henry – his heir, his jewel, his joy – had placed in the hand of his enemy.

Simon drew all his forces together, and spoke. ‘I gather he was competent? If not quite competent enough?’

The other man’s face showed no emotion. ‘Competent enough to ensure that, if Gelis survives, her child will pass for mine and not yours. If, sadly, neither survives, I have other propositions to put to the family.’

The words shrank and boiled like chips of ice in the heat. Simon tried to retrieve them. ‘If neither survives?’

‘I am going to Bruges,’ the other man said. ‘And coming back. Whatever it, is, I shall convey my family news to you, or your father.’

The chill this time was unmistakable. Simon said, ‘
That
is why you are going back?’

He stared at Nicholas de Fleury who he now saw and had to accept was not the Claes he had known and despised. Who had come to Scotland on a cool, well-designed mission of vengeance which was not new, but had found many targets over the years, as he now recognised, although its full malevolence had never, until now, been turned against Simon himself.

Except, of course, through the killing of Katelina, his wife. No one had ever proved that Nicholas caused the death of Katelina in Cyprus, but here was evidence at least that he was capable of it. Capable of killing Simon’s second wife, and now his own; now Gelis van Borselen, who had spoiled the pure line of the House he was carefully creating.

Therefore Simon would meet hatred with guile. He would remove Henry from Scotland, so that no accusations could harm him. And then, or before then, he would exterminate Nicholas. Or he could be in thrall to a monster for life.

He broke the silence innocuously. ‘You mean to come back to Scotland from Bruges?’

‘To fill your place,’ the other man said. ‘You are planning to take Henry away? And go yourself? It might be wise; I may not be a comfortable neighbour. You know I hold the land next to Kilmirren?’

In the pan, the bubbling had died. Now, choking the liquid, beds of orange-brown salt were appearing, stained by the blood
and the scum which no one had troubled to skim. Where it touched the hot lead of the pan, it lay, hissing.

Simon forgot both Katelina and Gelis. He said, ‘There is no vacant land there.’

‘There is Kilmirren itself, which Jordan owns, and you manage. There is also the land Kilmirren held under the bailery. Until your superior tired – didn’t you know? – of your mismanagement. Now it is out of your hands, and I have it.’

‘Sir Robert has let you …?’

It was impossible. The old man was wandering. His superior was the titular head of his family. Once, their combined ancestors had owned all the land they now shared. Then, as junior branch, Simon’s forebears had settled and built their own dynasty in Kilmirren. Henry’s pure line. Henry’s heritage.

‘Sir Robert of Elliotstoun has installed me. Or his son in his name, to be accurate. Don’t you believe me? Semple, they call themselves now, not St Pol. Should I do the same? You noticed the sign on the door.’

Simon said, ‘And this is all against me? You’re mad. You have no interest in Scotland.’

‘You don’t think so?’ said the other man. ‘The King will buy – don’t you think he will feel compelled to buy? – some of the rather fine objects he saw today, and perhaps favour me in other ways. He did cause damage, and I have been amazingly humble. And my ship also brought people. Singers, carvers, masons and painters. A master melter and jesters. A glassing-wright and a goldsmith.

‘Forgive me, but I could dispose of you alone rather more cheaply. I suppose’ – he paused – ‘I simply prefer to work on a broad canvas. And, of course, there is Jordan.’

‘This is devilment for its own sake,’ Simon said.

‘Perhaps,’ his captor said. ‘But it is not careless devilment. You may at least know, as you suffer, that I mean it.’ And he rose to his feet.

There was no point, now, in asking what he was going to do. The door was locked. The other man had the key, and an axe, and would be ruthless. His eyes spoke for him.

Simon watched him, and thought. He would have to fight – he had always known that. But fight this time while keeping his temper, and goading the other man into losing his. Where was de Fleury weak?

Simon said, ‘So, for whom are you amassing this power? You won’t get another wife now. Who would marry you? Didn’t you kill Marian de Charetty as well?’