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

by Dorothy Dunnett

  He took the cloak and found himself outside the door, in a blue-white world of thick falling snow. He found the three Adorne horses, drooping in a bare withy shelter, and mounting one stiffly, turned its face to the west. The place must have been full of people but he saw no one: only the night, and the white veils of snow, hung with the rose-coloured blooms of the salt-fires.

  He would have seen, had he remained, a struggle as bitter as any that had taken place within the last hour, as two fresh men tried to contain a third for whom, at the moment, exhaustion did not exist, as he tried to enforce his will, without weapons.

  Adorne and Sersanders, in turn, did not draw their swords. At first, after overcoming the disadvantage of surprise, it was enough to bring de Fleury down, and then block his way to the door. But after that, the ferocity of the fighting took them both by surprise, and twice he nearly escaped them. Once, breathless, Adorne tried to reason. ‘Nicholas, why? You can do nothing. You’ll be hanged if you kill him.’

  And then Nicholas said, ‘He’s going to set fire to Berecrofts.’

  ‘Simon?’ Sersanders said. And he laughed.

  Adorne would have known better. As it was, de Fleury kicked, and kicked again, and when he got to his knees, he had Adorne’s sword in his hand, and the point of it at Adorne’s throat. He said, ‘Let me go, or come with me.’ And Sersanders, crazily, took out his own sword and slashed.

  De Fleury engaged it. He played with him, moving backwards all the way to the door. It was half open. De Fleury glanced once behind him; and then again, fighting still, at Adorne leaping towards him. The girl was almost on him as well. She was carrying something.

  Adorne reached him. Sersanders, striking wildly, found his steel locked and wrenched out of his grasp. He staggered back. De Fleury took one step through the door and Adorne grasped him. De Fleury said, ‘No!’

  It was apparent then that against three, he would lose. The girl was close; Sersanders had already scooped up his sword; Adorne’s grip was unexpectedly fierce. Adorne’s eyes, magistrate’s eyes, seized and held his. Nicholas de Fleury said, ‘I have a sword. I will use it.’

  ‘Then you will have to,’ said Anselm Adorne.

  And so de Fleury, lifting his blade, struck him down.

  Adorne sank to his knees. Sersanders shouted. Katelijne looked wildly at both and then caught the door as de Fleury thrust through it. She took a pace at his heels and hurled something.

  She had carried a one-handled pan. She threw the contents, and drenched him. He had expected a douche of seawater. He had even had time to think, ludicrously, how cold it was going to be, racing outside in the snow to where, a long way off – too far off – he had hidden his horse and his weapons.

  In a way he had been right. It was cold. He reached his mount stiff and dizzy and shivering. He was actually riding before he realised that he was drenched not in water, but blood.

  No one followed him – or not at once. Behind, Katelijne dropped the pan in the snow and ran back indoors, where her brother knelt, and her uncle lay in his man’s lifeblood, proper for salt.

  His eyes were closed. She said, ‘How bad is it?’

  ‘He can’t walk. Stay with him. I’m going to follow the bastard and kill him.’

  Once, Anselm Sersanders had been a member of that insouciant, merry tribe of youngsters in Bruges which had admired the wildness of Claes. Now Sersanders was a grown man, with the family temper. Katelijne said, ‘Our uncle will bleed to death. Bandages. Take off your shirt.’ She had her gown already pulled down. Her shift, underneath, was too dirty.

  Her brother, though hasty, was not without sense. He looked at her and then, silently, ripped up the cloth that she needed. She showed him what to do, and ran out. Before he had finished she was back, with an old woman and a boy.

  In that spectral uninhabited place, it was uncanny. She said, ‘I’ve paid them. They’re all hiding, from fear. Mysie will stay with you and tend him and keep the fire going. The boy will run to Kinneil for help. I’ll ride to Linlithgow.’

  ‘I’ll do that!’ Sersanders said. He made to get up.

  ‘No,’ said Adorne, rousing stubbornly. His eyes, heavy but clear, turned from his nephew to his niece. ‘She is right. Someone must stay here on guard. If Simon can be persuaded not to complain, we may contain this matter yet. If I am attacked again and die, two nations will feel the hurt of it. Is de Fleury not due to sail?’

  ‘The Ghost is waiting,’ said Katelijne. ‘You aren’t going to accuse him? With this wound?’

  ‘He will pay,’ said Adorne. ‘I am not, I hope, the man to accept this without some response. But not a public one. My horse threw me, and I was cut by my dagger.’

  Sersanders started to argue. Katelijne finished dressing and threw on her cloak, and took a torch from the wall. The boy and the old woman gazed at her. She knelt by her uncle.

  He was sallow, and grooves of pain ran from his nose to each side of his mouth. She said, ‘I shall be careful,’ and kissed him; and walked out into the snow, to where only two horses waited. She took the better and, as Simon had done, turned its face to the west, which was not the way to Linlithgow. It was then just short of midnight, and she was as far behind Nicholas as Nicholas was behind Simon. She was also weeping.

  At Berecrofts, Bel of Cuthilgurdy sat in silence while Michael Crackbene paced up and down. He had sworn only once, when the man sent to Kinneil returned half an hour before midnight to report that Nicholas de Fleury was not there, and Mistress Joneta had not seen him all evening. Just after midnight, the man he had sent to Blackness came back, cold and sullen, to report that he had failed to see Julius, and de Fleury had never been there. Also, that if de Fleury intended to sail on the Ghost, he had only a few hours left to join her.

  Shortly after that, on the insistence of Berecrofts and his family, he sent out search parties, and joined one himself, as did the man Archie and Robin. De Fleury, the least inept of individuals, was unlikely to be in trouble. But the snow had begun again. He was mortal. And the old woman, who would not tell Crackbene her business, was grey with anxiety.

  Half an hour after midnight, news of the dead man came in.

  Berecrofts the Younger brought it himself, a calm, decent young man with his arm round his son. He spoke to Bel gently. ‘We don’t yet know who it is. The man who found him says he must be a stranger, to trust the ice on the Avon just there. Mind you, the plain is covered with snow. He may not even have known the river ran through it.’

  Bel said, ‘Can they reach him?’

  ‘They’ve got ladders. They’ll try.’ He had his hand on her shoulder. He said, ‘M. de Fleury would know not to cross. He knows the river. This is someone who doesn’t live here.’

  ‘So you’ll go on searching?’ Bel said.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Berecrofts said. ‘I don’t know what he can be up to, but we’ll find him. We have to get him to Bruges, don’t we, no matter what?’

  Just an hour before that, the King’s hunting-party had returned to the Palace and found itself somewhat reduced. It was Will Roger, in the end, who forced upon their attention the fact that the Burgundian Envoy and his niece and nephew were missing, not to mention Simon de St Pol of Kilmirren and the provider of all their present comforts, the Fleming de Fleury.

  Had they been less young and more tired, they might have done nothing. But the hounds were lively, the sport had been poor, and it was a fact (as Dr Andreas reminded them) that at the house of Kinneil there was a cloak of Kilmirren’s which would give them a very good scent. They set off through the snow, and arrived at Kinneil just after midnight. The young lady of Kinneil, somewhat distracted, served them wine and let the hounds sniff at the cloak. Amazingly, when they set off, they picked up a trail right away. It led west. The physician Andreas said, ‘St Pol is going to Berecrofts.’

  Chapter 12

  THE TROUBLE WAS, the snow covered the blood.

  Obviously, Katelijne had known that it would, but it was the best marker she could devi
se, and she hadn’t expected the snow to continue so thickly. Also, as de Fleury rode on, the blood would dry and congeal. From his hair and shoulders, however, it should run off diluted, she judged. Like cinnabar sinking through alum; lac-flushed sugar; dragon’s blood clotted with salt.

  If you knew enough about dyes, could you cancel out red? Contradict it with some opposite colour? What made colour? Did light vibrate and form tones, just like music? Could you contradict harmony? Nicholas de Fleury might know.

  She was following Nicholas de Fleury. She had to keep thinking about that, and about spurring her horse to keep the best pace it could through the snow, while she strained to see the few landmarks she knew. She had been twice to the priory at Emmanuel. She had ridden this way at least once with her small royal lady. She had a memory as tenacious as horse-glue. So they told her.

  She was on the right route for Berecrofts – if Berecrofts was where Simon and M. de Fleury were both going. That was less than five miles from the salt-pans. If her guess was quite wrong, then Linlithgow was only three miles away, but in quite a different direction. She held her torch out, flaring and sizzling, and the snow, soft as wool, clogged her tears. She had travelled two miles when it lessened. The sky cleared. Presently she saw the snowfield ahead, lit by starlight and stamped like bookbinders’ work with a long narrow design inked in black.

  The design formed by four hooves of a horse. And to one side of it, and still fogged over with snow, an earlier, more confused track. One horseman, following another. And beside the clearer trail, as she raced across to it and then reined, a freckle of pink on the white. The blood of male gender in which Nicholas de Fleury was drenched. She choked unexpectedly.

  She had formed no plan except to be a deterrent, a witness. She followed the two trails, riding faster as the clouds drew aside and the moon rose, blanching the document bearing her own growing palimpsest. When, half an hour after midnight, she saw the flat white plain of the Avon before her and a dark horseman upon it, she swallowed again, and then gazed beyond, over the river, to where Berecrofts lay. She saw its windows, minute in the distance, and pale smoke rising. It was intact. Of a second horseman, there was no sign at all.

  She lifted her whip, and sent her horse galloping to the edge of the snow-covered river. Had she looked up, she would have glimpsed, far on her left, a haze of light over the ridge which told of the King’s party approaching. Had she looked across, a little upriver, she would have noticed a cluster of torches moving on the far side of the Avon, as a man’s body was carried compassionately out of the cold. Instead, she rode down to the horseman, who was motionless now. Who, perhaps, had been motionless ever since she first glimpsed him. In that light, no one could say.

  The snow at his feet was sprinkled with lac and with dragon’s blood. She didn’t recognise the cloak he was wearing, but knew him before he slowly turned back his hood with the care of a man decorticating a wound. The profile beneath, half pallid, half crazed with blood, was that of Nicholas de Fleury, her uncle’s attacker.

  He did not look round, although he must have heard her horse in the quiet. Although he probably knew, from its step, that it didn’t carry a man. Her chest shuddered, anger fighting with fear. She said, ‘What is it?’ and dismounted. He didn’t answer, his gaze concentrated far ahead. Then she saw what he was looking at.

  First, at a horse, hardly visible at first, since only its flank showed above an upheaval of white which represented a fissure, blocked with ice, in the river. Then, to one side, half concealed by the horse, the cloaked shoulder and averted cheek of its rider, made small and toy-like by distance. All the rest was under water. Because the cloak was so dark, the yellow hair showed, a chill point of light in the gloom.

  Katelijne said, ‘He’ll die! Quick!’

  ‘He is dead,’ said de Fleury.

  Her heart sickened. She said, ‘Maybe he isn’t. I don’t weigh much. I’m going to try.’

  Then, whatever paralysis de Fleury was in, he emerged from it. Before she could run forward, he was at the edge of the flats and had dragged off his horse-cloth. He said, ‘There is no point in your drowning for nothing.’ She was so short, the snow half soaked her gown.

  You couldn’t tell where the river began. And the edges of course would have frozen. She found a stick and hurried forward, probing the snow. The stick thrust down and skidded on ice. She said, ‘I’m on water now.’

  ‘Then get off it,’ de Fleury said. And when she didn’t obey, he thrust past her, far too fast, reaching out towards the place, nearer now, where the bulk of the animal loomed. It was motionless. It must have broken its neck and then stuck, the water freezing about it. Or perhaps it was not very deep. It wouldn’t have to be. Given time, the cold would kill quite efficiently.

  But Simon de St Pol was not wholly in the water, and so might not yet be dead. What had made de Fleury think otherwise?

  Under her feet, the ice creaked. She moved sideways and followed his footsteps, where he seemed to have found more solid footing. He was some way ahead. Then he said distinctly, ‘Stay where you are, and lie down.’ He moved quickly back as he spoke, but for him it was too late. The foothold he sought gave way with a splash and she saw he was half in the water and trying to pull himself up. The cracks ran back nearly to where she was lying, but not quite. She dragged the cloth from her shoulder and flung one end of it.

  He caught it the second time and pulled himself out, only to have the ice give way again. The surfaces before her were shaking, the water creeping up grey over the snow and the snow tilting. She sidled, gripping the cloth and easing herself over the snow to a firmer place. Next she began, hand over hand, to pull herself closer to him. Then he said, ‘No, go back. I’m in. I might as well stay.’

  There was nothing to say. She stopped, but didn’t go back. The cloth fell back as he released it. As she watched, her teeth in her lip, he slipped fully into the water and began breaking his way through to the clutter of ice round the horse. As he reached it, the pool widened and the horse started to sink, dragging the ice shards round and over the swimmer. The rider’s body, too, started to slide until de Fleury, thrusting forward, somehow caught and held it, as once he had saved the King’s little sister from harm.

  For a moment they all stayed immobile: animal, rider and rescuer. Something swirled in the water. The horse rose as if resurrected; then crashed over and sank in a great luminous wave that washed over both heads, yellow and brown. For a moment, both vanished. Then the surface was broken again and de Fleury, gasping, flung an arm on the ice. Against his shoulder the fair head lay exposed, silent. But to climb out now, it was obvious, was impossible.

  Then Katelijne saw the lights, flickering on the snow and ice all about her, and heard the baying of hounds, and voices shouting behind.

  The lawyer Julius got to her first. Julius who, cantering wearily from the east into Kinneil, had raced on white-faced to find and join the King’s party. He held her trembling in his arms and handed her back to Will Roger behind him, drawing her safely back to the shore, while they plied her with questions.

  She must have told them, because they asked her over and over, that her uncle was safe – had been hurt in an accident – was in the care of her brother at Carriden. But while she was still on the ice, they moved past her, taking torches and ropes, accompanied by barking, pattering dogs. And from the far shore, at the same time, the cluster of lights she had not noticed separated and spread out and then coalesced into a party approaching from the other bank carrying more rope, and ladders. Katelijne stood watching and shivering.

  When they threw the rope, de Fleury could not hold it. Then he wrapped it somehow around himself and the weight in his arms and found the will, she saw, to lift himself a little and push. It was the rope from the far bank, the Berecrofts bank he had chosen.

  Now the opposite party was close, she could see that Robin was in the group, and his father, and the sailing-master called Crackbene. And two men, on either side of a woman. The woma
n who had come forward at the joust and taken the child Henry away. Bel of Cuthilgurdy.

  Bel of Cuthilgurdy stood and looked at the rope, and what it was carrying, but did not come any nearer, for the ice could not bear it. Katelijne heard her speak. She said, ‘What have you done?’

  He is dead, de Fleury had said. And could not have known.

  And the lawyer Julius, kneeling in his turn on the ice, said roughly, ‘Tried to save the man’s life. Nicholas? Is he dead?’

  The two of them were out, now. Locked as in love or battle together, streaming with blood and with water, they lay still for a moment on the treacherous, snow-covered skin, as men came daintily forward to help them. Then Nicholas de Fleury stirred, and looked down, and after what seemed a long while, began slowly to separate himself, for the last time, from his burden.

  The lawyer said again, ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘She is dead,’ de Fleury said. ‘It isn’t Simon. It is Lucia, his sister.’

  All about him, silence fell: a blanket of disbelief, bafflement, curiosity. Further off, the babble not only increased but suddenly acquired a new focus: a raised, angry voice shouting questions. Deaf with horror, Katelijne ignored it. Then she saw faces turn. Thus she witnessed the cause of the commotion, the shouting. Simon de St Pol, in life, bursting forward, and driving his horse straight through them all to the ice.

  If they hadn’t caught hold of his bridle he would have joined de Fleury there in the water and killed him. Even when they shouted explanations, he threw them off and tried to force his way onwards. He had arrived to find himself a ghost. First a ghost, then a man with a dead sister. And, of course, he was in no doubt who her murderer was.

  He didn’t want to hear reason. It took physical force to restrain him and compel him to listen, while they told him over and over. The lady had drowned, riding over the river. And de Fleury, finding her, had done all that a man could to retrieve her.