The Unicorn Hunt (61 page)

The door had opened and Anselm Adorne stood there smiling. ‘Katelijne, my dear. We must let Dame Gelis go.’

She went. The last thing she saw was the ferocious face of the child, brush in hand, eyes focused on the terrible cradle.

One week later Gregorio of Asti, called from the counting-house, entered his chamber and found there Margot, his lost love and mistress. She looked older than he remembered, and fearful, and speechless.

He gathered her into his arms, and she wept.

She would not tell him why she had returned; only that she was free at last, and could stay. She could not tell him anything of the child, because she had sworn.

He stroked her hair, and felt only distress.

Chapter 29

W
HEREAS IN BRUGES
and Venice and Scotland the last weeks of the decade were blustery and busy and wet, the Tyrol advanced towards the new year in the deep isolation of snow.

Chamois-hunting, by tradition, ended in the last days of December, before too many people were killed. Sigismond, as ruler of the Tyrol, had no qualms about breaking tradition if he felt restless, or particularly successful, or if he wanted to place people at odds, or achieve ascendancy over them. Chamois-hunting in the peaks of the Tyrol was for men.

The Duchess Eleanor, who was an excellent shot, always stayed at home, when they happened to be living together. The cart with the girls then left discreetly. After the zest of a kill, a man would throw to the ground anyone he could find, and after, the wine and the collops were glorious. There were enough girls for them all. Naturally, the Duke took his own satisfaction first. He liked his companions to watch. He spun it out sometimes, to tease them. He had stopped once, and had a man caned.

The man whom Eleanor had brought had been with Duke Sigismond three days when the big hunt was planned. He spoke German and shot well and did what was expected of him, after the kill and before it. His prowess at everything was a degree below that of the Duke, as you would expect of someone touting for business. Unlike the red-haired fellow Martin last week, who had wanted to show what he could do. He had gone away with a bolt through the arm. Nothing too painful: his business propositions had been good. Sigismond had accepted them.

Alum and silver. This man de Fleury was after the same: he knew that from Eleanor. The fellow was percipient. He had let Gertude get him to bed. He had held, assiduously, to other matters
of proper conduct. He might forget himself quite spectacularly when he learned that the deal was already done, and he had lost to the red-haired (wounded) Martin, agent of the Vatachino. It was a pity to ruin good sport by telling him all that too soon. It was winter. There was plenty of time to deal with the chevalier Nicholas de Fleury.

John le Grant said, ‘He’s playing with you.’

‘I know,’ said Nicholas.

‘The fact that he punctured Martin in mistake for something with antlers doesn’t mean that the Duke didn’t conclude a deal with him. You may be gambling your life over nothing.’

‘Prayer will save me,’ said Nicholas. He had never yet managed to make Father Moriz utter an oath.

In any case, the matter was academic. They were already dressed and ready to go: Nicholas and Father Moriz and John indistinguishable from the other men in the party in their hooded hats and thick quilted tunics dragged down with their knives and spearheads and crampons, their horns and axes and satchels and the wooden rings which would ease a long walk on snow. Moriz, who had hunted chamois before, was armed with a throw-spear, as were the Duke and black-haired Cavalli, his current favourite adviser, who had been absent until now. None of the Duchess’s men had come with the Duke: not even Jack Lindsay. None of the Duchess’s men had spoken to them since the two households joined.

John le Grant, an expert in matters of trajectory, had brought his crossbow, and persuaded Nicholas to do the same. Among the dozen other hunters, the spear was by far the most popular. Its chief attribute was silence: necessary whatever the sport. But of course a crossbow, well fitted and covered, could also be silent. Even on flat ground, chamois-hunting would have been dangerous. In the mountains, and the way Nicholas was, it was unwise for other reasons as well.

If final proof of that had been needed, his companions would have received it the previous day, in the course of an ordinary hunt up the side of a valley, when the hounds had put up a boar.

The sale of cities and the mortgage of provinces had paid for the splendour of Sigismond of the Tyrol’s kennels and stables. Other princes kept dogs by the thousand, uniform in size and performance, and trained in sensitive packs. Sigismond’s hounds were bred for their voices.

John had heard of hound music before, but had never experienced it. If a man had enough wealth (or enough credit), he
might scour the world for apt dogs of every shape: healthy fleet dogs with one thing in common – the disparity in the sound that they made. From these, he would choose and blend his perfect pack. Then, on the day of the hunt, the lord would dispatch them to their task and, taking his place of advantage, would sit in the saddle and listen, and watch.

The prey fell to music. Notes on the staves, the hounds bayed, each voice proclaiming its name and its place, signalling the course of the chase and ending in the soaring climax, the paean of the kill.

Yesterday, Sigismond had conducted such a hunt.

It had begun late in the day. They had shot in the morning, and had been confined ever since by falling snow. By the time the sky cleared, the sun was low in the west and the mountain-shadows were filling the valleys. Then word came that the kennel-master had traced a young boar close at hand. Sigismond hailed the pack and set off.

There being an order of rank to be observed, the three minor guests of the Duke of the Tyrol had ridden among the last of the party, and were still traversing the slopes when the dogs were released. Distantly, the horns produced their bronchial stutters; the barks and yelps died away; the horns spoke again. Then, remotely, a texture of sound made itself felt.

It was not, at first, at all like the voices of hounds. Muted by space and by the swiftness with which it was travelling, it seemed to lie low and mutter, like a storm building at sea. Then it resembled more the sound a water-wall makes when it meets resistance: the snap of splintering wood, the hollow thud of breached canvas, the clangour of bells, the shrill chime of stressed rigging. Then it swelled. Then it lifted its voice, and its voice was an organ.

Nicholas stopped.

The sun still dwelled on the peaks, but there were stars in the sky. Intent on scaling the hill, le Grant did not at first notice: it was the priest who called him back. The few riders behind them began to pass. John said, ‘What is it?’

‘Nothing,’ said Father Moriz. ‘It’s going to be dark very soon: perhaps we should wait for the torches. See, someone is climbing to bring them.’ The sun had left his shoulders already; his face blazed like a nugget inside his good fur-lined cowl. Beyond the side of the hill, the ground rolled and dipped to the valley where points of light, paraphrased between mounds, showed where clusters of riders had gathered. A horn, flattened by distance, began to create valances of imperious sound. The organ stopped.

‘A kill,’ John le Grant said. The hunt-servant ran up, and he leaned down and took one of the torches. It revealed the priest’s bulbous face, its eyebrows wary. They both looked at Nicholas.

Nicholas said, ‘Well, let’s get on.’ His skin was damp. It reminded le Grant of Trebizond. It reminded him, even, of something he did not want to remember.

Le Grant said, ‘Are you having marsh-fever? In the Alps?’

‘If I want to. Would it be a record?’ said Nicholas.

His voice sounded almost right: like that of a sober man under some slight medication. Father Moriz arrested his reins. Ever since Brixen, the priest’s tongue had been sharp. He said, ‘What were you afraid of? It is only a hog.’

‘I don’t know,’ Nicholas said. Then he said, ‘Yes, I do. Something that happened in Scotland. It’s over. Let’s go.’ And he pressed his horse forward again.

The others followed. The last of the light had now gone, and ahead the sky was deepening to night. The snow was grey and the riders scattered over it black. As the three of them rode, the curve of the hill began to obliterate the lights ahead, one by one. The horns had ceased, and all the hound music had died.

Without warning, Nicholas spoke. ‘I am going to lose it.’

‘What?’ said the priest. He drew alongside. Ahead, all the lights were now masked, and only John’s torch guttered and flared, his enquiring face stark in the light.

‘
Hersia ad tenebras
. The Tenebrae Hearse,’ Nicholas said. ‘There’s a good three-part setting; I’ve sung it. The tapers extinguish one by one, or they should. Will you give me your torch?’

His voice was normal again. John hesitated, and then held it out. As he did so, the hound music seemed to float upwards again. With an exclamation, Nicholas snatched the brand and, raising his arm, hurled the torch into the night. Darkness fell. All noise stopped, save for a thin, disembodied, musical scream that faded into flakes and fragments and tatters of sound.

‘I have lost it,’ Nicholas said.

There was a space. Then he said, ‘I’m sorry. Your only light. Let me go ahead. We should pick up the flares as soon as we’ve rounded this shoulder.’ Which, of course, they did.

Nicholas himself, at this time, was concentrating on leading as normal a life as he could in abnormal circumstances.

He knew by now that he had certain powers, and had found ways of extending them. He could not only detect the presence of
water, of silver, of copper; he could guess the depth at which they lay, and their extent. From what tests he had been able to make, these predictions were accurate.

He did not feel it necessary to reveal all that he knew but even so, after the first cynicism had subsided, he found that his gift, whatever it was, had so altered people’s perceptions as to blur the purpose for which he was there, and even distort the talks he held with the Duchess’s advisers on behalf of his Bank, which should have been succinct and business-like, but instead were suffused with misgivings. He made what progress he could.

When the initial prospecting ceased and he was invited to travel with the Duchess’s court to Duke Sigismond, he felt intense relief. A pretty, petulant man of forty-two with his long, fair fringe, tip-tilted nose and kittenish eyes, Sigismond of the Tyrol was more intent on proving himself and his guests in the hunting-field than embarking on difficult questions of business.

It suited Nicholas. At first, haunted by his new-found ability, he had speculated on his chance of becoming the most accurate bloodhound in Sigismond’s pack. He was thankful to find that the dogs were still better than he was. They scented what was living and moving. His senses provided him with the emanations, shifting and muddled, of every place where their objective habitually trod. He could lead them very well to where it had been the previous week.

Those, of course, had been the ordinary hounds, not the others. Sound, it seemed, was another influence to beware of. It was as well to know. The Duchess, in her wry way, had said that.

He had, then, to learn to shut out that side of his perception. It meant reinstating the blockage by numbers. The mental effort was strenuous but it was still better than the exhaustion of Brixen.

When he had completed his business, that would end. His gift would remain: a weapon he had never dreamed of possessing, which would very likely win him the game, even if he lost the occasional throw. Whatever it meant to lose the occasional throw.

He wished he didn’t need the metallurgical skills of Father Moriz. He was glad, as he had never expected to be glad, that Godscalc was dead. He was finally pleased to be climbing with Sigismond on this hunt which, he was well aware, had not been arranged for his pleasure. To succeed here, he required nothing but human skills and a little flamboyance, and the prize at the end was worth reaching for. He trained all his thoughts upon that.

There were fifteen in the Duke’s party, but many servants climbed
with them, and yet more were deployed in the passes to net those beasts which might escape, and to aid, in their various ways, the ducal hunters.

They left their mounts at the foot of the range, and the first part of the climb was across a long slope deep in snow. The wickerwork prints of their snowshoes, round as butter-stamps, followed the single trails of the professional huntsmen, climbing to the first ridge. The mountains soared above them, dazzling white against a pellucid blue sky.

The chamois was an antelope. Nicholas had seen its skull displayed often enough, Roman and fragile, with its twin backswept horns and the cavities of its black, mourning eyes. The chamois was an exclamation, a lilt, an animal with the elevation of a bird, light as smoke, whose hooves hardly printed the snow as it traversed the peaks and soared between gullies and ledges. To kill a chamois, a man required agility, and endurance, and strength. It was the ultimate test exacted by princes, and often the ultimate doom.

Sigismond of the Tyrol led the way, and kept Nicholas de Fleury at his side. At the proper time, the snowshoes were untied, and soon after the thick leather boots were fitted with crampons and the axes were out, clawing their vertical path. Father Moriz, his lips moving, exercised his spear-hilt and settled his toes into their succession of crevices, with words of advice to one side for John, and to the other for Nicholas, when he thought the latter could hear him. Then the group of men which contained de Fleury moved upwards and out of his reach.

The numbers had gone. In the intoxication of the air, the searing light from the snow, the magnificence of the panorama forming below, Nicholas climbed without weight, without cares. If Sigismond wished, Sigismond could kill him: he was close; he had the weapons, the skill. On his other side climbed the Venetian who was at present the Duke’s most favoured servant: Antonio Cavalli, the busy envoy and expert on horses who had visited Dean Castle in Scotland that spring. Around them were other intimates of the Duke: nobles, churchmen, and men of learning who had discovered that to keep his interest they must not only quote Pliny, but hunt.