The Unicorn Hunt (56 page)

‘We can speak German, your grace,’ Nicholas said.

She looked up. Her skin was uneven and ruddy, and she had the long Stewart nose of her father. Her mother had been English and royally connected. Her father, caught at eleven, had lived a prisoner for eighteen years in England. A generation later, one of her sisters had been Queen of France and another had married Wolfaert van Borselen. Few statesmen had observed the shifts and changes of power as narrowly as Eleanor of Scotland.

She said, ‘I hear you have an interest in mining, and a certain amount of bullion to invest.’

‘That is so,’ he said. ‘A considerable amount, if our surveys prove fruitful. What you have on the banks of the Inn may be as fine as the alum at Tolfa. But it requires to be expertly mined.’

‘Alum?’ she said. Her needle worked.

‘Other minerals are heavily taxed. Crude mines may be less attractive than newly dug shafts. Good ventilation and drainage cost money. And so do my experts. Indeed, even alum has problems.’

‘Then why are you here?’ she said.

‘To hunt,’ he said. ‘With your permission, this time. My men are experienced. If there is no quarry worth our joint attention, we shall tell you. If your grace will give leave.’

She said, ‘I shall do better than that: I shall come with you. You will find no better terrain than this in the north, although, of
course, there is fine sport to be had about Trent. We shall put off our journey to Brixen. We shall hunt. And then, if you have a proposal, you shall put it to my husband’s adviser. You have heard of Antonio Cavalli?’

‘Was he not in Scotland?’ said Nicholas. He might have been more straightforward had he known how much she knew. He had heard, at Dean Castle, all about Antonio Cavalli. He had heard all about Eleanor of the Tyrol. And what he hadn’t learned there, he had learned at court. The Scottish Court, and that of Brussels.

She was answering, undisturbed. ‘Master Cavalli stayed with my niece at Kilmarnock. The lady Mary, Countess of Arran. Your wife served her once. You say the Countess has left Scotland with her husband?’

Her voice remained mild. Nicholas said, ‘She was attached to him. Had he stayed, the King your nephew would have been forced to execute him. Instead they are both free.’

‘If in exile,’ said the Duchess.

‘At least,’ Nicholas said, ‘exile can be revoked, unlike death.’

She said, ‘For one? Or for both?’

Nicholas said, ‘I doubt if the Earl of Arran would be allowed to return. His lands are too valuable.’

‘You expect to acquire some?’ she said. ‘Or have you lost interest in Scotland? Having poached, so I am told, our good goldsmith Wilhelm of Hall?’

‘I have an office there,’ he said. ‘And a house in the Semple district of Renfrewshire. A little land seldom comes amiss.’

She stitched. She said, ‘My father is buried in Paisley. The monks still have their fustian sent from Ulm. The King my nephew would like us to send him cannon.’ She looked up.

‘Guns are fashionable,’ Nicholas said. ‘But, of course, their utility depends on the skill of the casting.’

‘A badly cast gun killed my brother,’ she said, and stuck the needle finally in her work. She rose. ‘As you know. You have been luckier today. I am going to give you some wine. Your arm looks painful.’

They had put it into a sling. He got up as well. ‘It will be stiff tomorrow, that’s all. Don’t trouble. I drank something below.’

She paid no attention, crossing to the board and pouring with her own hands. Her heavy robe smelt faintly of horse. He thought of other women of power in his life: the brave and delicate mother of the Persian prince Uzum Hasan; the noseless grotesque in Cyprus who had given birth to the beautiful Zacco; Bel of Cuthilgurdy, if you liked, whose influence came not through a son or a grandson but by way of a peculiar strength of her own.

Eleanor of Scotland was not a woman of Bel’s kind although, coming back, she dropped into Scots as she put the cup in his hand. ‘Drink it. It’s a receipt I keep for sair heids. Whiles, it seems that every princeling in Europe sends his bairn to the Tyrol to be reared, and a good smack or a physic does wonders. I’m told ye’ve begotten a knave on your wife?’

‘A son of six months.’ The outer voice answered. The inner voice contradicted. A son of eight months,
eight months
by now. If it was a son. If it was anything. Four teeth in a smile. Kicking. Or crooked. Or dead and decayed in the earth.

The wine was strong, with something herbal in it. He added aloud, ‘We are delighted.’

‘I’m sure of it. An heir. My niece the Countess was very taken with Gelis van Borselen. I should tell ye that the wine will put ye to sleep in ten minutes, so you’d better finish it off and get gone. I’m not a great believer in conversations over the grape. Besides, I’ve a harder head than you’d expect. I’ve had practice.’

He got up. Her unsmiling face appeared made of red granite; her eyebrows were black. He realised that it was her eyebrows that he should have been looking at. The dread left his mind, and he laughed.

‘Aye,’ she said. ‘Well, we’ve got one reaction that you meant. Let’s see tomorrow if we can find one or two more.’

Next day, riding out at her side, he felt restored and a trifle light-headed. He did not remember going to bed, but deduced that his lapse had not only been condoned by the rest but appreciated: no one much liked being with a man who was afraid to take a drink. He wondered why, possessing such a helpful beverage, she had not tried to make better use of it. It put him in her debt. That was probably why.

He knew now where they were. The purpose of this great party – horses, hounds, huntsmen, women and men of her court and her household, with their packhorses and tents, their wagons of necessities and provisions – was to comb the mountains for game, it was true. It was also to bring before him all that the Duchess wished him to see.

That first day, she conversed in desultory German. She was a magnificent shot. Her eye to her bow, she spoke wistfully of her visits to Salzburg, that last hope of the childless. As her shaft flew, she talked nostalgically of her rambles through the salt mines of Hallstatt, merely pausing to register the accurate dispatch and fall of a pheasant, a bustard, a hare. Drawing to a halt for cheese and
ale, she would get him to demonstrate the use of the short Turkish bow from the saddle, turning at the gallop to shoot into his own horse’s hoof-marks.

She had learned hunting, herself, very young. The Sinclairs were excellent tutors. But, of course, she had lost her father when she was four and her mother at twelve, the year she was sent to the French court. She had been permitted to stay in France, too, although her sister the Queen had been dead for three days when she landed. What did Sir Nicholas know of the French style of hunting? They discussed it.

They stalked a herd of red deer, and made a kill. Afterwards, she gave the dogs their bread sopped in entrails, as she had given him his doctored wine. He treated her now with extreme caution.

She discovered, as he knew she would, that they had stayed at the Sterzing inn frequented by silver-miners, and had looked at the mines. They had cast an eye, before they became lost, at Gossensass. He was hopeful that she would steer him to Bruneck and wondered if, after Brixen, she would take him where he really wanted to go. He thought now that she would.

Whenever she mentioned workings, John began to ride very close, and so did the priest. Nicholas had made no real assessment of Father Moriz, other than that he was experienced, self-reliant, and rather too loquacious. It seemed enough for the present.

In any case, after the wine and a heavy day’s hunting, few of them felt as brisk as the Duchess, whose special draught had brought not only sleep but a curious detachment which lasted for the whole of that day. She spoke of Hallstatt, and the thin, clear air inside his head connected it instantly, as it should, with the salt mines of Taghaza. His thoughts did not go beyond that, because his personal embargo was absolute; but so far as it went, he experienced no distress. It was as if all substance had been withdrawn from his mind, leaving nothing but ether. It was not disagreeable.

The sensation continued all day, and was still present when they reached the temporary lodge within which it was proposed they should sleep, and the Duchess commanded an expedition to provide fresh fish for supper. The stream they found was rushing and cold, and the trout so plentiful that the party stayed until sunset burned on the peaks, and transformed the roaring spate into flame. Nicholas said, ‘A mill could work here.’ John looked at him.

‘It could,’ said the Duchess. She had stopped. ‘They are most useful on bigger rivers, near towns. You have seen them.’

‘Floating mills,’ Nicholas said. Then he said, ‘No, that’s nonsense. The stream is too small.’

To his vague confusion, she took him up. ‘Are you interested in water? Come with me. And your two colleagues. No’ – to her chamberlain – ‘we shall not be long. We are walking the other way up to the lodge.’ And, turning, she led the way uphill, and away from the river. Her officers stood watching, and then returned to their business. The senior lady-in-waiting stood longest before turning back.

Now the slope they were mounting was wholly dark. The sun had left the river below and was slipping higher and higher in the opposite wall of the valley, the distant mountains still dazzling behind. The route the Duchess had chosen was steep and rough and full of boulders: when Nicholas offered his arm, she took it. It was, he found, only a courtesy: she was as sure-footed on the hill, despite her shortness and bulk, as she had been firm in the saddle. John le Grant and the priest, protectively climbing behind, must have already guessed that the safeguard was unnecessary.

In turn she, too, must have satisfied herself about their adequacy on hills. She said, ‘In the Tyrol, you have already discovered, huntsmen require to be mountaineers. Now it is easier to talk, away from the noise of the water. You are afraid of water? Of the water back there?’

It was dark now below, where the river had dashed and swirled a moment ago, the flames surging. He did not want to speak.

The Duchess said, ‘Think of water. There is no harm in it. Cold, fresh, rushing water, sweet and blessed and plentiful.’

Cold, fresh water swirling about him. Not starlit ice, but a bridge hanging with fire. And from before and behind, death approaching, because he had bidden it. Approaching not for a yellow-haired woman – not yet. But for himself. He knew, before it happened, that whatever possessed him was again about to give voice. When it did, the verse was unknown.

Ta femme sera de la sorte

Dans les parois de ta maison

Comme est une vigne qui porte

Force bons fruicts en la saison
.

A wash of pain followed, and he fell.

He did not drag her with him, because she freed her arm a moment before, almost as if she were expecting it. At the time he was only aware of the shock of meeting the ground; and of the exclamations of John and Father Moriz behind. The Duchess spoke. ‘Leave him. He is not, I think, hurt.’

‘No,’ said Nicholas. He began to collect himself, and his
thoughts. He had taken the fall on his right side, his good side, and his right hand felt odd. Otherwise there was nothing wrong. He had been dreaming, of what he could not quite remember. Of water. He said, ‘My hand.’

The Duchess said, ‘It’s a real treat, now and then, to be proved right. Gentlemen, are you fit?’ Her eyes gleamed in the dusk. Nicholas got to his feet.

John le Grant, coming forward, said, ‘Your grace, we didn’t fall. Are you all right?’

Nicholas grunted. The Duchess said, ‘No,
you
didn’t fall. You felt nothing. Neither did I. The alchemist who walked here with me some months ago didn’t fall either, but he stopped at the same place. The water he found – the excavation is covered – will serve the lodge when it is channelled.’

Father Moriz said, ‘Naturally, the work left the surface uneven. But no harm has been done.’

John le Grant brushed that aside. ‘How did your expert find water?’

‘With a plumb line,’ said the Duchess. ‘I brought one. Or simply by the sensation he feels in one hand.’ She spoke to Nicholas.

He said, ‘If I had another cup of wine, I could do it again?’ He could not see her expression.

She said, ‘The wine had little to do with it, except for clearing your mind. Natural forces need space.’

He said, ‘I think you are reading too much into a fall. You are saying that you think I divined the presence of water? And that you
expected I would
?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Oh, be angry. No man likes a stranger walking inside his head. But if you know about me, then I know more about you. Your friends tattle. There is a physician who says that you dream.’

‘Everyone does,’ Nicholas said.

‘To be sure.’ Her voice was bland. ‘Aye, well. I won’t ask what you were dreaming down there, but something about that river struck deep. Enough, I hoped, to bring alive this gift if you had it. You have.’

‘I fell,’ repeated Nicholas. His shoulder hurt. He wanted to shiver with cold.

She continued patiently. ‘And it is important. To you, and to me. For if you can divine the presence of water, you can divine other things.’