The Unicorn Hunt

by Dorothy Dunnett

  There were three courses to run, and three lances to break, if he could. The horse pounding towards him on the opposite side of the barrier showed no fear; no intention of deviating, and the long, heavy shaft gripped in Simon’s right glove pointed steadily at the heart of his cuirass. Adorne adjusted his plated grip very slightly, and moved his weight in the saddle in the way his horse knew. The horses drove together; the point of Simon’s lance flashed towards him and then slid, diverted from the plate at his breast while his own point, with all the force of his shoulders and back and arms, struck Simon in the centre of the incrustations by his shoulder and, locking there, thrust him half out of the saddle.

  Half, but not quite. The next moment Adorne was past, the lance dragged free and Simon had gone, his horse somehow responding to his command even as he began to bring the weight of his body back to the saddle and reclaim his stirrups. Then they reached the ends and turned and took lance for the second course. And this time, Simon would be angry. Which, reflected Anselm Adorne, was not necessarily a bad thing.

  The buffets the second time were full and direct: Adorne met the point this time without turning his mount or his body, and aimed his own solely to unbalance. His lance broke. He felt the impact through his whole body, and saw Simon shudder, but they passed, neither dislodged.

  He reached the other end and turned, glancing down to take the fresh lance being offered him. His memory gave him, in retrospect, the roar of the crowd at the moment of collision and his eyes showed him now the grinning, jostling faces, colour drained from their tunics, their jackets, their caps. In the stand, flushed by the brightening gold of the braziers, he glimpsed the confident face and red hair of the child Margaret whose scarf he wore, and further along, almost equally distinct, the intent face of Nicholas de Fleury, once vander Poele. Below, a drift of white on stout cushions, sat the retired singing maidens, Will Roger beside them. The musician had his hand on the shoulder of Adorne’s niece Katelijne who, her face bent, was rocking Emmelot her maid in her arms. Emmelot, who came from Liège.

  He had almost missed the trumpet. Adorne saw that St Pol was already coming at full gallop towards him. He drew himself together, and collecting his horse, threw it forward as well.

  Everyone saw the hesitation. Julius, his courses satisfactorily completed, inserted himself beside Nicholas without removing his gaze from Adorne for an instant. He sat chanting, ‘Come on. Come on. Are you dreaming?’

  ‘Be quiet,’ said Nicholas.

  The collision occurred. For a moment, as the horse-cloths swirled, it was difficult to tell what had happened, except that both horses had stopped. Then it could be seen that Adorne was in the saddle, trying to control a plunging, curvetting horse, while the saddle of Simon’s horse was empty. Nicholas stood, wrenching up Julius with him. Men ran on to the grass.

  They were bending over the glimmering object of the smith’s art that was Simon. They put their hands under his arms and lifted him to his feet. He stood.

  Nicholas said, ‘He isn’t dead. What a pity.’

  Below him, Katelijne lifted her head. She said, ‘How can you say that?’

  ‘It’s quite easy,’ Nicholas said. ‘Oh look, now they’re going to fight each other on foot. Sword, axe and mace. My money’s on Adorne. Simon’s shaken. Look, he’s dropped a couple of rubies. No, his chin is bleeding. Help us, Lord, upon this erde That there be spilt no blood Herein. Simon’s down.’

  ‘He’s lost his temper,’ said Julius. ‘Adorne counted on it. I must say he’s good. I’m not taking your wager. It’s a foregone conclusion. Simon loses.’ He watched, with some irritation, as events proceeded to prove him right.

  Adorne wasn’t as fast, but he had a great deal of experience, a gift for tactics, and a level head. For the rest, they were two handsome men, fit and well made and skilled in their craft, so that the crowd rose to them both. They were both over forty, and breathed still like men half their age. Julius said, ‘If it had been a proper fight, the lance would have finished him. Simon.’

  ‘They’ve spoiled our day,’ Nicholas said. ‘Let’s go. No, we have to stay for the King and the children.’

  Adorne won, and was crowned with laurels and promised his unicorn horn at the banquet. The King ran his ceremonial course, auburn hair gleaming in the light of the fires. Adorne was duly unhorsed and went to kneel at the feet of the youth. The lists emptied, and the lines of mounted children took their places at either end, armed with their stout wooden swords for the Little Mêlée. Robin, Old Berecrofts’s grandson, was among them. And John of Mar, the King’s youngest brother. And Simon’s son Henry, in silver armour.

  Far behind him, the vanquished Simon de St Pol stood frowning in his gorgeous array and glared at the boy.

  But for the glistening armour, as offensive as the far more extravagant attire of Kilmirren, young John of Mar would probably never have chosen to single out an opponent so junior. At first, no one noticed. Free entertainment was not to be scorned, but the main contests were over; attention on the common side of the field had relaxed, and some parties were leaving. No one had left from the stands. These were their children.

  Now the silhouette of the Castle was black against the fading glow from the west, and the blue haze from the blood-bright braziers swam over the ground. Julius said, ‘Poor little monkeys, they’ll kill one another in the dark. My money’s on Robin’s team, unless they’ve been told to lose out to Mar. Nicholas?’

  ‘My dear Julius,’ Nicholas said. ‘Children don’t always do what they’re told. They’ll probably kill one another.’

  ‘Stop that!’ said Katelijne from below. Her fancily wreathed face, thrown upwards, was livid.

  ‘And go to Purgatory. It’ll be like Liège,’ Nicholas continued thoughtfully. ‘Astorre and Thomas in some expiatory field condemned to batter into chivalric shape a mob of unpractised young, speaking exclusively in the Scottish vernacular. Do they have jousting in Purgatory? I feel sure they do.’

  ‘Listen. Stop talking,’ said Will Roger suddenly.

  ‘Why?’ said Nicholas, stopping courteously.

  Julius saw why.

  In the field, the lines had engaged. For a few moments, in the dim light, the boys had fought as they had been trained, as a team, but now it had become a general struggle, of the kind to be seen outside any school, with screaming child battering at screaming child and blood running.

  The King’s brother John of Mar was not screaming. His arm raised, he was dealing blow after blow at the silver armour of the heir to Kilmirren, and matching words to the blows. The words, if you listened, came quite clearly.

  ‘That for Chamberpot’s grandson. That for what your family did to Liège. They’re bastards. They’re traitors and bastards. Aren’t they? Say it! Your grandfather’s a bastard!’

  ‘He’s not!’ Henry screamed. His arm lifted and fell, his strokes glancing off the royal armour. He dropped his reins and took his sword in both hands.

  ‘Yes, he is. I think he likes boys. I think he licks the French King’s arse when he’s asked. I think –’

  The words broke off. A two-handed blow from the furious child caught him in the face, and then full in the chest-piece. John of Mar jerked free of the saddle and then, leaning forward, grasped the boy Henry round the waist and dragged him with a crash to the ground. He got up slowly, and panting. ‘Go on,’ said the King’s brother. ‘Get up. Say I’m wrong. Say your father’s got so many women he doesn’t know who you are. Who are you, Henry?’

  At that point, Julius got to his feet without quite knowing why. He saw that the girl Katelijne had jumped up also, Will Roger beside her. Julius looked to see what Nicholas thought. Apparently Nicholas had no opinion: he sat without expression or movement, his gaze on the field. You couldn’t even be sure he saw what was happening.

  The boy Henry got up off the ground. He stood, his armour scored and scratched and dented, his whitened face dim in the twilight, and looked up at his royal tormentor. Henry said, ‘I am Hen
ry de St Pol of Kilmirren. My grandfather is not a bastard, and neither am I. But maybe you are.’ And without warning, he rushed at the older boy.

  It was possible that Mar, thickly plated, had fallen more heavily than he intended. It was certainly true that he was taken by surprise, and that the first blows, on his arms, must have numbed them. But the avenging fury that came at him then, raining blows from its sword, from its fists, kicking and shrieking, gave him no time to lift up his sword, and when he suddenly stumbled, caught on the wrong foot, he had no chance to recover. As a ball might demolish a building, the boy Henry flung himself at him and crashed with him to the ground. Then he rose and, standing over him kicked and battered and swore.

  Mar struggled. He rolled over, gripping his sword. Henry kicked it out of his reach. The movement had dislodged Mar’s conical helmet, with the royal crest and the plume. Henry swept the helmet aside and lifting his wooden sword with both hands, prepared to drive it point down into the prince’s horrified face.

  He got no further. A large hand gripped his arm, and another pinioned his shoulder. A hated voice said, ‘But your grandfather is a bastard, my dear. Never fight for lost causes. Apologise to my lord of Mar.’

  ‘No!’ screamed Henry.

  The hand, moving down, had torn the sword from him, and now taking his arm had twisted it high behind his back. It was pressed against cold fur. ‘You didn’t mean to hurt him, and you were only joking when you lifted your sword against him just now.’

  Henry screamed, from pain this time.

  ‘You see?’ said Nicholas de Fleury to the faces about him; and increased his grip. The rest of the fighting had stopped. The men running on to the field were royal officials and barons, and Mar’s own tutor and nurse. Julius was among them, and Katelijne and Roger the musician. The light from the braziers glistened on the silver armour, the golden hair of the angelic boy, and left in demoniac shadow the jet-clad figure of Nicholas de Fleury at his back.

  ‘He apologises,’ Nicholas said sweetly. His hand, squeezing, covered half the child Henry’s face. ‘Do you accept the apology, my lord?’

  It was Secretary Whitelaw, moving forward, who said abruptly, ‘He accepts,’ cutting across the prince’s angry protest. A calm man, tutor once to the young King himself, he touched Mar on the arm as he spoke. ‘Childish brawls. Nothing more need be said. My lord of Mar, let me take you to my tent.’

  They began to leave. The crowd opened. Nicholas de Fleury slackened his grip, both of the child’s jaws and his arm. The boy Henry said hoarsely, ‘He lied! I will never apologise!’ and tore himself free. A dark young woman in green ran up and then, noticing the boy’s hazy stare, touched de Fleury’s arm quickly and stepped back. The child’s hollow gaze followed her.

  ‘You have just apologised,’ Nicholas de Fleury said to him. ‘Abjectly. And you’d better thank me for it.’

  The thanks came at once. De Fleury’s own dagger, snatched from the sheath, flashed up and stabbed through the air, Henry’s fist on the hilt.

  Katelijne cried out a warning. Julius hurled himself forward and stopped. For the second time, as in a dream, the powerful hand of de Fleury closed upon that of the boy and arrested fist and dagger together, tight and still at his waist. Then, looking down, he disengaged the dagger with care and smiling, sheathed it below the folds of his cloak. His dimples appeared, untrustworthy chasms in his shadowy face. He said, ‘My poor, stupid child. If you don’t calm down, you’ll hurt somebody. Mistress Bel?’

  It was the first time Julius had noticed the old woman standing near the front of the crowd. Her shapeless face was the same colour as Henry’s. Nicholas looked at her. He said reflectively, ‘I think you should take him away.’

  Julius thought he was crazy, but the boy didn’t protest at all. He stood as if he hadn’t heard, and then, when the woman touched him, he moved. He was shaking. He looked back, once, at Nicholas, but Nicholas was already strolling away.

  Julius caught up with him. ‘That should earn you a few contracts at Court. My God, I thought he was going to kill Mar. A temper as weird as his father’s. Should we go back to the stand and be thanked? Or we can be thanked at the banquet.’

  ‘We?’ said Nicholas. He was being congratulated already, by spectators crowding about as they walked from the field. The wench in green seemed to have gone. Behind, the Mêlée had come to some sort of conclusion, and heralds and trumpets were beginning the ritual, in the near-dark, of ending the tourney. A free space opened before them. De Fleury said, ‘Why don’t we vanish modestly for the present? Can we avoid Katelijne?’

  ‘No,’ said Adorne’s niece, standing before them. Behind her was Andreas, Adorne’s physician. She said, ‘Can you walk?’

  ‘I learned quite early,’ Nicholas de Fleury said. ‘Your singing was bearable. Do you mind?’ He made to brush past.

  ‘Because,’ she said, ‘the Hospitallers’ house is quite close. Or the Greyfriars are nearer. But the banquet is there.’

  She stood in the gloom with the doctor, looking at Nicholas. Julius said dismissively, ‘Well, we’ll see you at the banquet.’ People were beginning to pass again, calling to them.

  The girl Katelijne, saying something impatient, seized Nicholas by the cloak. With the other hand, as the boy had done, she pulled his knife from its sheath and slanted it to catch the remains of the light.

  The blade was wet. She did not speak. Julius thought she had gone mad, like Henry. Then he saw that the blade was not only wet. It was red to the hilt.

  ‘As you say,’ Nicholas said. ‘A temper as weird as his father’s. What a pity you saw it. The house of the Hospitallers, yes, perhaps.’

  ‘You mean the brat managed to – I’ll kill him!’ said Julius.

  ‘Do. That would solve everything,’ said Nicholas de Fleury, and began to laugh, until Andreas stopped him.

  Chapter 7

  THAT NIGHT THE boy Henry left the tilting-ground no less swiftly, and through an agency no less efficient. Bel of Cuthilgurdy, sweeping the child from the field, looked for and found sympathetic bystanders to help her, and sensible hands to undo the boy’s armour and then convey them both to the Castle Hill house. She did not try to find Simon, whose task must be to reach the King before or after the banquet and make his excuses for what his son had attempted against the King’s brother. They reached the house without Henry having spoken a word.

  There, she sent a request for milk and warm water, and took him alone to his chamber where she stripped him prosaically in the privy and wrapped him in the biggest towel she could find. She talked, now and then, telling him what to do, but the shaking continued, and his white, dirty face hardly changed. It wasn’t until the steaming tub had been left that he spoke. He said, ‘I killed him.’

  Bel sat back on her heels, holding the towel crossed on his chest. She said, ‘You thought you did.’

  ‘No,’ said Henry. It was shrill.

  Bel said, ‘He’s just a man, Henry. If you’d killed him, he’d be dead.’

  The boy wasn’t even looking at her. ‘But it went in,’ he said. ‘The knife went in. I killed him.’

  ‘You meant to,’ said Bel. Sorrow filled her. She said, ‘Men can walk, even when badly hurt. You hurt him. But he wouldn’t hurt you.’

  ‘I killed him!’ Henry screamed and, sobbing at last, fell into her arms.

  Later, Simon arrived. Later, Simon strode to the bed and roused the child from the oblivion of exhaustion with a blow that shocked Henry gasping awake, to be followed by slap after slap on his face. When Bel caught Simon’s arm, he turned on her.

  ‘Lullabies! Possets! Embraces! You know best, don’t you, what a murderer needs? There is the result of your cosseting. A son of mine fights his prince like a gutter-born bastard; profanes his name; compels his father to beg his King for clemency. What Court will accept him now? What society?’

  ‘Ye silly loon,’ Bel said. ‘You’re hitting a boy for defending your honour. Prince or no, John of Mar was in the wrong. The
people who saw it think your son is a hero. Daft, but a hero.’

  Paper-white, the boy’s face didn’t change. ‘Defending my honour!’ said Simon.

  ‘Aye. A non-existent item, we ken, but he’s only a bairn. But since he’s about the only one on your side, it doesna make much sense to blame him. He beat Mar; it’s over; the King’s overlooked it, I’m sure, and we’d all be the better of a good night’s sleep.’ She touched Simon’s arm. ‘Leave it. I’ll stay. There’ll be time in the morning.’

  ‘He’ll be gone in the morning,’ said Simon. ‘Do you think I want him in Scotland?’

  In a flurry of movement, Henry plunged to the edge of the bed. His eyes were wild. Bel said, ‘Well, I want him in Scotland. He can come to me, or to Lucia.’

  ‘Really?’ said Simon. ‘Well, why don’t you take him? See if you can train him to keep his place in a mêlée and refrain from chopping up princes who happen to rile him. I’ve been wasting my time.’

  ‘No!’ said Henry. He thudded down to the floor. His skin was so white, the red weals of Simon’s blows could be counted, as well as the darker abrasions of the fight. He said, ‘I killed him. The other boy’s father.’

  Simon stared at him. Bel said quickly, ‘See, you’ve scared him out of his wits. Go on. Go to bed. Leave him to me.’

  ‘You’ve killed who?’ said Simon. Beneath his full attention, the boy began breathing deeply at last.

  ‘The other boy’s father. Claes,’ said Henry. ‘The man with the wife you got under you. The wife that’s birthing my brother. Now he can’t be a knight, can he, my brother? Now that baby won’t have a father like I have?’