The Unicorn Hunt

by Dorothy Dunnett

  He stopped speaking. The lawyer Julius, holding her arm, fell silent also. Then Simon said, ‘How can I cross?’ His voice was quiet. The tension slackened and the group, falling apart, began to move up the trampled white banks.

  Julius said, ‘I’m going too. I don’t trust him. What happened?’

  ‘They fought,’ she said. ‘M. de St Pol and M. de Fleury.’ Walking, she told him a little. Her teeth were chattering.

  ‘Wounded your uncle!’ the lawyer said.

  ‘He was trying to stop them. And M. de Fleury thought Berecrofts was in danger.’

  ‘So it was just coincidence,’ the lawyer Julius said. ‘Nicholas riding to Berecrofts at the same time as Lucia. And Simon wasn’t anywhere near – he had changed his mind and started back to Linlithgow.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘Was M. de Fleury expecting to sail?’

  The lawyer came to a halt. ‘He ought to. Unless you’re going to stop him. You’ve every right.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘But it might be as well if he leaves quickly. If he can.’

  A gentle man of good sense, Archie of Berecrofts had separated the two who had died on his doorstep that night: the man lay on clean straw in the barn, and the lady, wrapped in dry linen, had been laid on the bed in his guest-chamber, tended by his good serving-women, with his visitor, Mistress Bel, to close the eyes and comb the over-bright hair and cross the helpless ringed hands on the widow’s breast.

  Robin had helped, and the two men the woman had brought with her. Robin had seen death before, as part of the family wisdom: his grandmother and mother, and the infants which didn’t survive his own living siblings. Robin had been more shocked by the living: by the blue-white skin and livid weals on the face of his particular friend M. de Fleury as he leaned drenched on the doorpost. And then the face of the lady Robin also liked, the woman called Mistress Bel who, instead of saying soothing, comforting things, stood foursquare before M. de Fleury and said, ‘For this, I will have your account.’

  Then Master Crackbene the sailor had elbowed past her, taking the other man with him.

  After that, even though all the servants were up, there was so much to do that Robin had no time to feel tired: fires to bank up, water to heat, messengers to get on their way, food and drink to be brought from the kitchen. The Flemish doctor Andreas arrived; then the Bishop of St Andrews himself with the dead lady’s brother. And then, finally, the lawyer called Julius, bringing Robin’s friend Katelijne, looking like girls did when in bed with a pain. Robin yelled to bring his father but it was the lady Bel who hurried forward and took the girl in her arms. After that, it got quiet.

  It was very quiet in the room where Lucia lay. The Bishop had gone. Dr Andreas, finishing his work, stood soberly by the lamp while Simon, entering, found his way to the bed and looked down at the face of his sister. It was void of expression. You couldn’t tell how she had died. The reticence was uncharacteristic. Whether you wanted to or not, you always knew Lucia’s feelings.

  He bent and kissed her. He had never liked her. On the other hand, she had never been capable of making positive trouble. Unlike others. He looked up.

  ‘She drowned,’ said Dr Andreas. ‘The ice gave way, and it was too cold to struggle. There are no other marks.’

  ‘She was driven on to the ice,’ Simon said.

  The doctor looked at him. ‘There is no proof of that,’ Andreas answered. After a moment, he bowed and left him alone.

  Simon sat down, since he wanted to think and was finding it difficult. For the sake of appearances, he had borrowed a shirt and a doublet: underneath, the rest of his linen had stiffened and stuck to his skin. When the door opened on Nicholas de Fleury, he noticed that he, too, had changed, if only roughly. Out of respect, of course, for the dead. Simon said, ‘Come and see. You must be so disappointed.’

  The other man, moving slowly, closed the door. Simon watched him. Beneath the open doublet, the lawn, he must be as bone-weary as Simon was, with a heaviness worse than the pain of the abrasions and burns they both carried. And if Simon himself was exhausted, then the river must have brought his late antagonist to the extremes of fatigue.

  And indeed, when de Fleury spoke he let the weariness show, as if there were no point in dissembling. He said, ‘No. I am sorry.’ He moved, stopping short of the bed.

  Simon said, ‘You thought it was me.’

  ‘For a while.’ His gaze brushed the bed. ‘We both killed her.’

  ‘We both …?’ It wasn’t worth vehemence. Simon said, ‘I lured you to the salt-pans?’

  ‘To Scotland. Why was she here?’

  His voice remained low, and hardly intensified. Despite that someone outside had heard them. Before Simon could answer, the door opened again. And this time it was the interfering old woman. Lucia’s helpmeet, nursemaid, companion. The old woman Bel, in her thick gown, with cloth all over her head.

  Simon said, ‘Excuse me. This is private.’

  ‘I’m sure it ought to be,’ said Bel of Cuthilgurdy, coming in. She shut the door and, walking forward, sat down at the foot of the bed, her face as ever shapeless, her eyes buttons, her body a sack full of homely, sensible vipers. She looked at Simon. ‘So answer him. Why was she here?’

  Simon could guess, he thought, why Lucia was here. He was going to debate that very point with de Fleury. He didn’t want the old woman here. Neither, it appeared, did de Fleury, who turned. The skin of his face, like Simon’s own, was oddly frayed and raw with abrasions. It would be hard to deny what had happened between them. De Fleury said, ‘We had finished talking.’

  ‘Then you can start again,’ said the old woman.

  Simon lifted his eyes from her face and met Nicholas de Fleury’s full gaze. He looked as he had in the ice. Then de Fleury said, ‘This is not the place. No.’

  ‘Is it not?’ said the woman. ‘In the face of that puir feckless lass on the bed, is it not the place to ask what or who brought her here to her death? And if St Pol canna tell ye, I will.’

  The lamp burned. On the far side of the bed, de Fleury touched a settle, and sat. To Simon, seldom fanciful, it seemed as if they were all in a painting: the still, porcelain corpse with a silent guardian at either hand and its faithful donor and friend at its feet. There should be angels, lilies, lap-dogs, swaddling-bands, trumpets.

  The old woman had noticed the movement. She said, ‘Aye, get ready.’ Her eyes were fixed on de Fleury. ‘She made that ride for the sake of her family; because she thought she could succour Kilmirren, and Henry, and maybe even both of you. And you are both here, but she isna.’

  De Fleury looked up, as if she had compelled him. Simon remembered that these two had been a long time together in Africa. It wasn’t possible to say what was in the old woman’s gaze, although he had seen something like it in the assize court. He saw suddenly that she was an ally.

  Then de Fleury said, ‘Could you be quick?’ and Simon moved.

  The woman turned. ‘Calm yourself, Simon,’ she said. ‘I ken the ship’s there. So does he. Ye can both wait for this. There is one on the bed can none other.’

  ‘So speak,’ de Fleury said.

  ‘What brought Lucia here?’ said the woman. ‘It’s simple enough. Nicholas? You’ve cause to mind the day in the lists. The Prince insulted the lad, and Henry tried to use his bairn’s might against him, and when you interfered, against you. I canna measure the courage it took, except by the damage it did him.’

  She turned to Simon. ‘Henry was let off one crime. For two, he would have been banished or worse, if Nicholas had reported it. But then, Simon, you let the boy see you were proud of him. He couldna brag to his friends, but he gave a fine account of it to his aunt at Kilmirren. How he’d all but killed the Bruges merchant de Fleury.’

  Simon cursed. He said, ‘When?’

  ‘Yestreen. The day afore, it is, now. He came by me, and said something of it. I should have done something sooner. But when I went to the castle, Lucia’d left with her man. And t
hey said she’d gone east, to M. de Fleury.’

  She switched her gaze. De Fleury sat as if the icefield had entered the room. He said, ‘I think you will have to say why.’

  ‘Because she didna trust you,’ said Bel. ‘And she didna trust Simon not to goad you, once you were fit to mix with others again. Matten’s not a maid with much sense, but Lucia talked to her. Lucia knew that you’d meet, and one of you would kindle the other, until Nicholas would take the revenge he planned all along. Of course, he never meant to spare Henry.’

  ‘You think that?’ de Fleury said.

  ‘She thought that,’ said Mistress Bel. ‘And that is all we are speaking of.’

  ‘So she was coming to plead,’ said de Fleury.

  ‘Lucia? No, my fine gentleman, no,’ said the woman. ‘She was coming to threaten. She had something to bargain with. She had something to tell you, or thought she had. If you took against Henry, Lucia would denounce your wife and St Pol here as wantons, and your coming child as conceived in his bed.’ She stared at de Fleury. ‘But perhaps you kent that already?’

  Between the flaws, his skin was dazzling white, like a face painted for carnival. He said, ‘Ask Simon. Or count his scars, maybe.’

  ‘He knew,’ said Simon. It was painful to smile, but he didn’t mind. Suddenly, his tiredness was lifting. ‘I didn’t tell him. Monseigneur was rather anxious no one should tell him.’

  ‘But you wanted him to ken what you’d done,’ said the woman. ‘So ye did away with the vicomte’s own orders. Ye made it possible for Lucia to get out of Kilmirren. As she did.’

  She was supposed to be on his side. ‘And so it’s all my fault? Hardly,’ said Simon. ‘She had a fancy, and couldn’t wait until daylight, and ran straight into the very person –’

  ‘She ran straight into no one,’ said the woman harshly. ‘She lost her way. Her man called at Kinneil, and then tried to cross the Avon and drowned.’ She glanced at the bed. ‘Alone, she hadna much chance. She wasna a strong lassie, or bold. As for her fancy, she was right, was she not? You were at each other’s throats.’

  ‘Yes,’ de Fleury said. He waited. Then he said, ‘How long have you known?’

  The woman studied him. ‘About Gelis? I was told at Kilmirren.’

  He waited again. Then he said, ‘Why did you follow? You thought the news would unhinge me, and I would harm someone?’

  ‘For all the good it did,’ she said flatly.

  Simon said, ‘For all the good it did Lucia. He killed her.’

  He was staring at de Fleury, but the old woman answered. ‘Oh, you’d like tae think so, nae doubt. But for why? Any secret she had, you had also.’

  ‘He thought it was me,’ Simon said. ‘He just said so. He drove her into the water.’

  ‘And rescued her? Simon,’ said the woman. ‘The hounds drove her into the water. She wore an auld cloak of yours. The King’s hounds followed after. A half-turn of the hour-glass before, and she would have been safe.’

  ‘No, she wouldn’t,’ de Fleury said. Then he became very still.

  ‘You hear?’ said Simon.

  ‘She wasn’t touched,’ the woman said. Her gaze was locked with de Fleury’s.

  ‘He knows how she died. He had a dog. There was a dog at the salt-pans.’ Simon spoke across the bed this time. ‘You thought it was me.’

  ‘Even so,’ the woman said. She was still watching the other. She spoke to him. ‘Even so, would you kill?’

  Simon sat. The walls were so thick that no sound came from outside the room. His sister lay waxen and white, while the three voices passed and passed over her, teasing out the strands that had led to her death. Teasing and twisting them into a cord with which to take sasine of this man’s bodily housing, his neck.

  The woman also wanted the truth, he saw that. She said again, ‘Would you kill?’

  De Fleury said, ‘I get angry.’ It was an affirmative.

  ‘Tonight?’ she said.

  ‘Oh yes, tonight.’

  ‘And in the future?’ she said. ‘More of this? And you, Simon?’

  ‘You expect me to forgive him?’ said Simon. ‘I tell you over my sister’s dead body. He’ll hang.’

  ‘He maybe will,’ said Bel of Cuthilgurdy, ‘but not for this crime, or any other this night. You’ve forgotten the whip hand he has. You’ve forgotten Henry.’

  She heaved to her feet and her eyes, resting with compassion on the bed, lifted up with the same compassion to Simon himself. She said, ‘Nicholas de Fleury is going to depart, and ye maun let him depart. His ship will sail, and ye maun let it sail. But before he goes he will tell us, I hope, that he is never going to come back to Scotland.’ She turned. ‘You will stay away. Do you hear?’

  ‘I hear,’ the other man said. ‘But it is not a promise that I can keep. I am sorry.’

  He rose with an effort. For a moment, approaching the bed, he leaned towards it. When Simon made a quick, hostile gesture, he stopped. ‘Did you think I was going to kiss her? I thought her son Diniz should be told how she looked, that was all.’ He stood motionless where he had stopped, his eyes open.

  ‘Nicholas.’ It was the woman, reminding him.

  ‘I am going,’ said de Fleury, and shivered.

  Simon was no less tired, no less angry, and with a brother’s responsibility for what had happened. He said, ‘I say when he goes. And he doesn’t go quite so easily.’

  The woman looked at him. She said, ‘It’s his house.’ As she spoke, as on cue, the door opened. Simon looked towards it in haste.

  Hacked out of Scandinavian whalebone, the renegade sea captain Crackbene stood there. He said, ‘Padrone, it is time.’

  De Fleury moved then, pulling himself erect like a bow at the stretch and looking at the woman, and then at Simon himself. He said, ‘I am sorry. I have to go to Bruges, where so many, many riotous delights may be had. Sadly, I also mean to come back. Unfinished business: profits in prospect. I do own a Bank.’

  He had begun to walk towards Crackbene, who was watching him. De Fleury glanced at him and then back. He said, ‘It may not be as bad as you think. It may be worse. At least, Mistress Bel, you have tried. Simon … I am sorry. I cannot wait for the funeral.’

  ‘I would throw you out if you came,’ Simon said.

  De Fleury turned at the door. ‘Like you threw me out of the salt-pan,’ he said. Simon moved; but the woman had thrust out her arm as a barrier. Her eyes were bright as two silver sequins.

  The door opened and shut. The lamp flared. Lucia de St Pol lay on her bier, and the woman Bel stood, her arm still outflung like a curse or a blessing, or perhaps just a silent appeal.

  The first stage was over.

  The Ghost sailed before dawn, carrying Nicholas de Fleury to Bruges. As a matter of record, a horse bore him from Berecrofts to Blackness, but he did not see the sails raised, being felled once aboard as by death.

  The voyage was rough but unmarked by disaster. They were stayed for a week in the harbour at Berwick, awaiting the abatement of winds, and forbidden to step on dry land except to snatch water and victuals. Having himself issued this edict, Crackbene slipped ashore without notice, and reappeared a day later, morosely rolling a barrel of salmon.

  Julius was outraged. ‘Where has he been?’

  ‘In the family colony,’ Nicholas had said. ‘There are Crackbenes all over Berwick. They call themselves Crabbes.’

  It was true, so far as it went. There was no call to mention the priory at Coldstream, or Ada.

  He was himself by that time, and it was some days since Crackbene had brought him the letter addressed by Adorne. Unlike the others put early on board, inscribed to Adorne’s fellow merchants and wife, to the Chancellor of Burgundy and the Duke, this had no chequered seal, and was hastily sewn. It contained three sentences only, written under evident stress at Kinneil:

  For the sake of the town we both serve, I have attributed my wound to a mishap. I expect you to call on me in Bruges. I do not expect you to come back to
Scotland.

  ‘What does it matter to him?’ Julius said. He had learned a little too much from Katelijne.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Nicholas said. ‘He’ll be home himself by the spring. I don’t propose to let it upset our planning.’

  It satisfied Julius, who did not always remember that planning occasionally failed. Circumstances arose. Nicholas himself had not spent the autumn, for example, entirely as he had intended. On the other hand, the one linchpin upon which all else depended was fixed. He would be arriving in February in Bruges.

  He would be arriving in February in Bruges, to find out whether his marriage was fruitful.

  Chapter 13

  ‘FOR GOD’S SAKE, WRITE,’ his manager had cried in dread and anger from Bruges to Nicholas de Fleury in Scotland. He couldn’t say more, for fear that others might read it.

  Alone of the company he, Gregorio of Asti, feared what Nicholas might be perpetrating in Scotland. For he, alone of the company, knew what Gelis had done. He had been there within earshot, when Gelis van Borselen, on her marriage bed, had informed her husband that she was pregnant by Simon.

  If Nicholas was returning to Bruges, he was not coming thereto by chance. He was coming because his wife’s child, announced for the spring, was due now.

  He had been absent from Flanders for six months. In all that time, his letters to Bruges had dealt with nothing but business. In all that time, Gregorio had sent nothing private to Edinburgh except for one letter, dispatched by the Ghost, in which he had told Nicholas why Margot had left, who was to him what a wife might have been. And, of course, he had reported what all Bruges had learned by October: that Gelis van Borselen was expecting a child, and had retired to a place of retreat for her health.

  So the months without Margot had passed, and Gregorio waited in the Hof Charetty-Niccolò, his home and his office in Bruges. The Ghost was coming, he knew; and Nicholas with her. The passage, he guessed, would be slow. The husband of Gelis must not seem to hurry too much, when the legitimate birth was so distant.