The Unicorn Hunt: The Fifth Book of the House of Niccolo

by Dorothy Dunnett

  So what now would he do? Step back, it seemed, to recover. Step back, always watching, feeling his way past the tubs. Simon followed, then stopped. It was too crude an invitation altogether. Claes might, but Nicholas de Fleury wouldn’t back himself into a trap. Now he was against the far wall.

  The other man said, ‘You were right not to come,’ and pressed the wall with one shoulder. It gave. A broad door had been made in what now appeared to be only a partition between this and a third and last room in the pan-house. Inside the third room it was dark, but he could glimpse another bench, and a pile of pale cones and rectangular tablets, bedded on straw. The room was filled with pale smoke, and at the far end Simon perceived two small windows, very high, through which fresh snow was blowing. A drying chamber, and a vent from the furnace. The windows were too small to squeeze through.

  If he had dashed forward, he would have been pushed through and cut down. For there, of course, must be hidden the sword and dagger de Fleury had worn in the Great Hall at Linlithgow.

  He could still prevent him from lifting them. Clearing the tubs, Simon landed in front of the door, shears in one hand, iron bar in the other. The axe glittered in the other man’s grasp and for a moment his one weapon parried Simon’s two in a blaze of blue light. Then, still fighting, Simon’s foe slammed the door shut behind him and stretched up a hand.

  There was no sword in his grasp, nor a dagger. Instead, he held a faggot of straw: held it pressed to the single poor tallow candle until it burst into flame. Simon backed. The young man laughed, his face bright as a lamp. Then lifting himself to the edge of the tub, he reached up and touched the first hanging basket.

  Light bloomed. Simon jumped forward, and the axe glittered, and the fire flamed in his face. Then the Fleming touched off the second, the third. The straw, brittle and old, dashed into fire, flashing and crackling and hazing the air with sparks and needles of flame. The cords above glowed. The pan-room, once sombre, became a blaze of carnival lamps, whirling and dancing; the salt hissed, naked and dry in the pan; the blood-glazed floor shifted and glittered.

  The pan was iron, the furnace salt and clay, the walls and ceiling luted and safe. Only the tubs were vulnerable to fire, and the wooden shovels and scoops, and themselves. Simon tracked his tormentor between the swaying cornucopias of flame, the heat approaching and leaving his face, his hair hissing and smouldering as he ducked and stooped. The other man was moving as quickly, retreating. After the last basket, he tossed the burned-out faggot aside. Then the baskets started to fall, and lay flaring. The heat was beyond belief.

  It had to be ended. And now Simon knew how to do it. He said, ‘So you were Diniz’s lover. I didn’t know the negro had you as well.’

  Upon which, with unforeseen accuracy, the other man hurled the axe at Simon’s head.

  Chapter 11

  THE BLOW SHOULD have killed. At first, in the jumble of light, the perpetrator clearly assumed that it had. He stood motionless, his eyes wide, and then stumbled aside, his hand seeking the wall.

  By that single, rash act, he had disarmed himself. And Simon, because of a single opportune movement, was alive. More, behind him, sunk in the wall, was the axe.

  His chance had come, and would never be better. He exchanged the shears for the axe. The crackle of burning straw and the fizz of salt masked his steps; the chiaroscuro of light disguised the speed of his rush. He was upon his would-be killer, hatchet lifted, even as the other man turned, his eyes open again, his actor’s face split, too, into shards of darkness and light: agony, disbelief, wonder.

  Its last expression was one of profound purpose. The movement with which he struck up Simon’s fist round the haft was so hard that the blade, losing power, barely sank to de Fleury’s own half-naked shoulder where for a moment it fitted into the scar of another wound. Then de Fleury used all his advantage of strength to drag himself apart and to kick, the way men kick when fighting for life on a battlefield, before bending to scoop up something at his feet.

  A double-hooked bar, lying half under the fireball of straw which had felled it. It came towards Simon, clawing, its bent iron smoking and red, and Simon struck at it with the cold iron he, too, still held in one hand, and then swung the axe as his opponent backed, fencing. Behind him was the wall hung with tools, but the axe would get to him first. Then the axe itself glared a warning and Simon, alerted, had time to spring to one side as a dazzle of fire hurtled down and a basket, burning free, burst into a fireball of flame at his feet. By which time Nicholas de Fleury was again armed.

  Now, no one spoke. In the struggle that followed Simon used most of the objects in the room, and had them used against him. The two men fell, sometimes, into the kind of close-gripped combat Simon preferred to avoid, but he held his own, although he received no more inconsequential advantages.

  It worried Simon that, holding an axe, he could not immediately prevail. But then, as he had, de Fleury used long-shafted weapons against him. They both bore bleeding gashes and livid burns on their half-naked bodies and sometimes he remembered that he, the elder by fifteen years, had run a long way that evening. And the truth was that the other man was more of a match than he would ever have thought to be possible. Then his mind began to turn on the key.

  He intended to win, and would win. But he was facing a man of strong passions; a man who had already tried to kill him tonight. He did not mean to die at his hand.

  It was then, just over half an hour before midnight, as the fires were dying and the glow from the furnace burned low, that he began to plan his last strategy. Soon even the candle would be spent. Already the walls and floor were in darkness as they stalked one another, breathing quickly; attacked and dodged in the red light from the king-bed of salt and the dull, crimson hood at its end, its rim flushed, arch as a bonnet, from the glow of the strip of live, burning coals underneath. For the grid covered all of the salt, but not all of the fire.

  Perhaps the other man, too, realised that his strength was not inexhaustible. It was easier to believe than that he had been waiting, measuring time, judging the moment when Simon would flag. Simon felt the change in his movements: an alteration in pace; a steadier rhythm of breathing. He knew that it was time, and he had to act now.

  He did, first, what his opponent had done, and threw the axe. He made it appear a mistake, so that instead of striking to kill, it flew towards the glowing cross-timbers of the pan and slid between them, its blade in the salt. It shone, satin-red.

  And de Fleury, as he hoped, went after it. They met at the bench-step in collision, the side-plates of the pan searing their ankles and calves. Simon by then already had his grip on the other. He levered and threw. The man crashed on his side on the poles over the salt-pan, arms and legs thrusting. Their purpose was not to save himself, Simon found, but to bring Simon with him.

  Wrestling was leverage. And this Fleming was an expert in leverage. So instead of one, both men struggled there, the red-hot pan full of salt just below them, the hook-heads searing into their bodies, their ripped shirts and hose darkening in the heat, the air burning its way to their lungs. And this time, neither would give way.

  The handle of the axe was scorched and smoking. The Fleming reached it first and had grasped it when Simon stopped him, his hands round his waist, and began to draw him away. Perspiration poured down his body and face and turned to steam underneath him: only the leather of the other man’s belt gave him the purchase he needed. Then, within the thickness of the belt, he felt something hard under his fingers. The key.

  If he sought for it, he released his opponent to draw out the axe. He hesitated. The other man spoke: it emerged between a gasp and a cry. Somewhere else, the impasse would have merited laughter. The pain increased and Simon wanted to move, but wouldn’t. The other man spoke again. He demanded a rebuttal to do with someone called Umar. He held the axe-handle still, his hand blistering.

  Simon remembered that Umar was Loppe. He said, ‘I don’t need to give promises to a corpse. I’ll te
ll the world about Loppe when you’re dead.’

  His attention must have lapsed from the pain. The other man ripped his belt free. Taking proper grip of the axe, the other man swept it out of the salt and held it, radiant, above Simon’s head. Then Nicholas de Fleury brought it down, twice.

  It burned through the air, as the sword had. As before, it didn’t touch Simon. Instead, it sliced through the two timbers upon which the end of the salt-pan was carried. De Fleury cut them both short of the traverse beam below which they passed, and then himself gripped the traverse beam hard. Behind him, under the hood, the shortened beams dropped, carrying the pan-supports with them. And the end of the pan, supported on nothing, dropped with a crash into the coals. Something bright followed: the blade of the axe, its handle charred through and snapped with the impact.

  De Fleury ignored it. He clung to the beam, his head down, his body sloping, his feet almost touching the flames. Simon, grasping nothing, began to roll down the slope to the trough and caught at his adversary. For a moment he half dragged him loose, and then redoubled his grasp as the other resisted. The blood drummed in Simon’s ears. Neither spoke.

  He heard another noise, separate from them both. He saw his captor open his eyes and knew he had heard it as well. Outside, someone beat on the door. Someone shouted. His throat parched and burning, Simon made to answer and stopped. He saw de Fleury lower his head. He was frowning.

  Anselm Adorne’s voice said, ‘Nicholas. Open the door.’

  This time, the other man didn’t move. It was Simon who pushed, grimly levering himself up the grid, and then preparing for the sudden fast turn that would end it. The other man let him get within six inches of the belt before he seized his wrist and wrung it. Simon swore and flung himself back, so that he almost broke the man’s remaining one-handed grip and saw him fight to retain it. Adorne’s voice said, ‘Simon?’ and this time, it seemed best to answer.

  ‘He has the key,’ Simon said. It was an excuse, not a complaint. It was far from being a complaint. He did not, at this moment, want Anselm Adorne. He wanted time in which to kill the brute he was fighting. Otherwise he would be hostage to this man for life.

  He heard Adorne say, ‘Nicholas, stop. One of you, open the door. You cannot go on, now I am here.’ His voice, without emotion, proclaimed a truth. The other man was a burgess of Bruges; Simon a Scot of reputation. It further proclaimed that he knew, or guessed, what was happening.

  Nicholas de Fleury opened his hand. Simon, released, heaved himself painfully to the edge of the grid and let himself crash down in the red gloom to the bench, where he crouched. De Fleury had lifted a hand to his belt.

  Simon said, ‘Give me the key.’ The smoke from the disturbed coals made him cough. He didn’t want the key. He wanted a moment’s respite, and then a throwing hold on the other man’s arm.

  You could see he, too, was tired. He dragged himself up and, freeing raw fingers, tunnelled down and drew out the key. It lay in the palm of his hand, and he looked at it. Then he tossed it into the heart of the fire.

  ‘Does that suit you?’ he said; and came, a dark figure, heeling over the edge as Simon had done, to collide with him on the bench and then, grimly, drag him again to the floor.

  It was Simon’s intention that only one of them would survive. He had made it clear enough; he knew the other recognised as much, as they locked limbs and wrestled, cheek to cheek and arm to arm, breathing in sobs. This time, the other didn’t slacken or check. This time, their concentration was such that they had no space to notice the eddy of cold air that touched their inferno, or hear the door from the third room pushed wide, or realise who, smaller than either, had managed to squeeze through the high window. Then Katelijne’s voice spoke, a quarter-octave higher than usual, and cutting. ‘The Ambassador my uncle says, if one of you kills, he will see the other hang.’ She stood, red-lit, her wet feet planted beside them. To move was to hit her.

  Beaten by pulses, Simon stopped. The other, too, ceased to move, but did not free Simon; nor did Simon disengage. The agony of the lock continued for seconds. It came to Simon that he was not going to prevail. His strength, deliberately sapped at the beginning, was not enough to break the other man’s grip in this bout. He could not kill; yet he must. Well, to begin with, he could maim; and the girl would have to look out or shift. He drew on all his powers and thrust.

  A panful of warm foetid water slapped full into his face and another drenched his opponent. Unable to breathe, Simon relaxed his grasp, retching and choking, and felt his body released as the other man, too, caught his breath. The girl, grim-faced, had another scoop almost ready. Simon, gasping, rolled aside and rose on his good elbow. Beside him, the Fleming did the opposite, dropping his head on his arm. He was shaking with what might have started as laughter.

  ‘The key,’ said the girl.

  De Fleury said, ‘It is in the fire.’ Simon found he was trembling too.

  The girl threw down the scoop and stepped back into the firelight. Barefoot and stripped to her soot-besmeared small-clothes, she appeared as voluptuous as the wick of a lamp. She gave them both one searching look and then, scrambling about in the dark, found the tongs and the rake, and sprang with them up to the bench where she began, cricket-elbowed, to rummage into the fire.

  Where the rake had been, the blades of the shears flickered once, red in the new flames.

  Simon sat up by degrees. The other man lay on his face, breathing fast as if spent. The low fire, reflected from the roof, showed the pale triangle of shoulder and waist, scrawled over by dirt and scorchmarks and blood and patterned with fissures through which the flesh showed merely black. His own was the same. They were well matched. But the other had taken care to create his advantage. No one else had ever had Simon dragged running and tied between two horses, or hounded by dogs. For that alone, he deserved death.

  Simon turned and, flinging himself full length, seized the shears and brought them round in a single red murderous swing.

  The girl shrieked. The other man, obeying some instinct, threw himself over and away and then turned, crouching, his fingers touching the ground as the shearpoints sank thudding down where he had been. Simon tugged them out and then stopped, for the girl was standing between them again, and in her two hands was the door-key held fast in the claws of the tongs. Claws and door-key glowed red. She said, ‘Give me the shears.’

  Behind her, the younger man stood. He said, ‘Give her them.’

  Simon hesitated. The key was darkening. She was only a girl.

  She was Adorne’s niece, and a witness.

  He said, ‘There are other ways,’ and flung the shears to the back of the room. The girl was so short that he and de Fleury stood eye to eye, even though she was placed between them. Then she had gone, running, to open the door.

  The other man said, ‘There are no other ways.’

  ‘You have partners,’ Simon said. ‘And possessions. Berecrofts will regret sheltering you, my friend, before this night is over.’

  ‘The night is over, for you,’ the other man said, his voice strange, and stepped forward.

  It was the last vindictive flare of their battle, and brief though it was, it lasted in its fury until fresh, cold, powerful hands pulled them apart and held them, still struggling, like beasts. Then Simon stood still and Anselm Adorne, slackening his grip, transformed it into one of light support. Opposite, young Sersanders kept a strong arm round de Fleury until he too was still. Then Adorne’s nephew shifted his grasp, with no tenderness, to his arms. His eyes, scanning Simon, were bright with horrified anger, and his dress caked and glistening with snow. Behind, the open door was a luminous rectangle of swirling, feathery white. Nicholas de Fleury said, ‘You wouldn’t care to give us five more minutes alone? For the price of a ship?’

  Adorne said, ‘You are barking-drunk, both of you. So is half the Court. St Pol, take my cloak and go while I hold him. There are horses waiting outside. Can you manage to ride to Linlithgow?’

  Si
mon said, ‘He had me dragged here roped to two riders.’ He had not meant to blurt it out. But the alternative, now, was to have the other man walk out scatheless to Berecrofts.

  Nicholas de Fleury said, ‘I felt he deserved it. Should we not tell the whole story? Should we not go back and complain to the parasol of authority together?’ The girl had brought in a torch, quick as a firefly, and was lighting others. They made a sunken glare of de Fleury’s face, the dimples black as charcoal, or scorchmarks. The cool response had come from a furnace.

  Adorne spoke to Simon. ‘Pay no attention. You can’t. Go. I shall take care of this.’

  ‘No,’ the Fleming said.

  ‘Do I need to explain?’ Adorne said. He stood, cloakless now, experienced and, of course, admirable, as he had stood victor in the lists against Simon himself. He said, ‘So far, no one knows of this but we five. Do you want the world to witness this feud? St Pol, go!’ The girl, running about, was raking together all the lethal debris under their feet and throwing it, with efficiency, into the third room, where the snow was melting under the window.

  ‘Let us go together,’ de Fleury said. The girl looked at him, and shut the door.

  Adorne said, ‘So that you can attack him again?’

  ‘Would you let me?’ said de Fleury. ‘I won’t harm him.’

  ‘I don’t propose to let you try,’ Adorne said.

  ‘Then you’ll have to follow us,’ Nicholas de Fleury said; and, flinging Sersanders off, took a first step towards Simon. Adorne exclaimed and sprang forward. Someone – the girl – dragged at Simon’s arm, pulling him towards the door, and thrusting her uncle’s cloak into his arms. Simon looked back.

  Adorne shouted ‘Go!’ The word ended in a gasp. From the door, Simon saw the three men struggling together. There was nothing he could do. Just now, there was no way he could get rid of this man. But there would be other times. And meanwhile, there was Berecrofts, where the Bank of Niccolò kept more than one ledger whose loss would be felt.