Dorothy Dunnett - [House of Niccolo 01]

by Niccolo Rising

  He watched her. There was relief in her face, as well as disappointment. He had said what she wanted him to say. There was also resolve. She said, “It hardly matters if M. le vicomte or anyone else makes advances to me now. They’ll marry me off to somebody soon. In case I haven’t told the whole story. It’s a pity really that nothing happened. It might as well have done.”

  And so he knew exactly why he was there. She was nineteen and clever and capable; but in this matter, she was thinking like Gelis. As he might have said to Gelis, he said mildly, “Is the towel for me?”

  She had forgotten it. Then she remembered and brought it forward and then, hesitating, placed it round his shoulders as she had probably once planned to do. Her hands lingered. They were trembling. He put up one of his own and drew her round and, still holding her fingers, seated her beside him, a space away on the trestle. The firelight struck through the stuff of her robe and told him something else. So, Claes, you need discipline for two. Let’s see how you master all this.

  He said, “Demoiselle, the world is full of bridegrooms. Don’t be cruel to them because some of your suitors displease you.”

  She said, “You don’t marry.”

  That line of reasoning he didn’t propose to follow. He took another, speaking simply, to convince her. “Some day I shall. No one should expect too much, of course. But whoever my future wife is, she might regret having followed a whim.”

  “I expect too much,” she said. “What I want doesn’t exist. So –”

  So formality wouldn’t serve any longer, and what they were talking about would have to be made explicit. Which he regretted. Because she would end by loathing him. He gave her back her hand and, rising, stood, in his turn, bathed in firelight. “So you appoint me as surrogate. Thank you, but I’m not flattered,” said Claes. “And you’re wrong. There are many men who would make you happy.”

  She, too, had dropped all pretence. “Show me how,” said Katelina van Borselen. “It’s my whim. It’s not your responsibility.”

  He stood, looking down at her. “Of course it’s my responsibility. We’re of different stations. There might be consequences.”

  “There will be no consequences,” she said. “Or I shouldn’t have brought you here in the first place. Are you afraid of something else? Or am I less than you’re used to? In which case, can you recommend me to a friend?”

  She spoke, as she had at Damme, with extreme harshness. There were tears on her lashes. He said, “Oh dear God,” and kneeling, took both her hands again. He said, “Look. What you would lose, you would lose for ever.”

  “Would you boast about it?” she said. And then, “No. I’m sorry. I’m sure I know you better than that.”

  “You don’t know me at all,” he said in despair. She smelt of some sort of fine scent. He tried to keep his hands steady and force his brain to work. Suddenly she pulled one hand out of his and laid it on his bare shoulder and then drew it down, sliding over the muscles of his bruised back, down and down.

  Can you recommend me to a friend?

  He said, “I shall show you what it is like. As gradually as I can, so that you can stop me before it goes further. After that, I’ll try to stop if you tell me to. If I don’t, you must use force. I don’t know how much you know about men.”

  Her cheek was against his, and he could feel her smile briefly. He could feel her heart thudding. She spoke as if her throat hurt. “Gelis says that you’re the most passionate lover in Bruges, according to all the girls she’s been able to ask. And that you always tell them you can stop, but they never want you to.”

  She was a child. And because two men had been cruel and her mother heartless, he was going to have to seduce her.

  Or the other way about.

  Or neither. He was going to lift her and take her up to her chamber and lay her, as her future lovers would do, on her bed. Then, as carefully as his abundant energy would let him, he meant to unclothe her, and caress her, and lead her as sweetly as might be through all the intricate overture of mutual love-making. Then – if she did not stop him – he meant to arrive with force where he was needed, so that all her life she would remember the new pleasure, and not the new pain.

  Like most of his better plans it fell out as he wanted, except that he went to sleep afterwards, which he had not intended to do. But which, under the circumstances, was understandable.

  He woke in bed, with a slumbering girl in his arms, and her long hair coiled over his body. Even in sleep, her face looked different; warm with colour, and peaceful and contented. There was a smile still somewhere on her mouth, and he smiled in return for, no doubt, the same reason. Then, brought to reality, he looked to the window. Still dark, thank God. The household, to be sure, would hardly return before dawn, and the parents well afterwards. All the same, he should have left long ago.

  He knew, normally, exactly how long to make love. When to tease it up to its climax. How long to allow for the courtesies afterwards. But this, of course, was hardly routine. For one thing, he had the kitchen to clear up and his clothes, for example, to remove.

  With care, he eased himself free of the girl and left the room silently for the kitchen. There the sand-glass told him he had four hours perhaps before daylight. All the same, he did not take time to dress, but went quickly about the business of tidying. In the end it looked, he thought, as it had when Katelina had led him in from the garden. The broth would hardly be missed. Or the towel, which was upstairs for a very good reason. He looked round, lifted his clothes, and hesitated. He could dress here and depart, as he would have done had he not slept. But then, he would have taken proper leave of her.

  As it was, he didn’t quite know what to do. She seemed happy. She had been happy; of that at least he was sure. She had clung to him at the climax as if the gates of heaven were shutting. Afterwards, she had said very little, but had lain stroking him, over and over as if he were a new possession. And he had fallen asleep.

  But he was glad about that. He was not ignorant of the ways of well-born women in bed. Some made no secret of what they wanted, and were frank and comradely both in your arms and out of them. Some wanted servant-lovers to whip them in bed and crawl under their feet the rest of the time. This girl was neither of these. He wondered what he had done to her. Perhaps, having taken the first step, she would never marry, but take a succession of lovers. Until in time she ceased to take heed of the calendar, or of the courtesies, and trouble and ruin would come.

  Perhaps it would turn out well. Perhaps, like an overanxious child she would now be content to wait for a proper marriage. Or even look forward to it. He smiled a little, thinking of the kind of men, young and old, her family would propose for her. Perhaps he ought to have restricted the performance a little. But she was a delicious girl, well made and courageous. What else she might be he didn’t know, any more than she could know him, whatever she claimed. They had hardly exchanged more than a few sentences in all their acquaintance. It was not his mind she or anyone else wanted him for. That he fully accepted.

  He decided to go back and open her chamber door. She had only to pretend sleep if she wished him gone. If she were still asleep, he wouldn’t waken her. In any case, she knew she could rely on him to greet her, when next they met, as a servant should greet a lady.

  The line of light under her door told him that she had risen and renewed the candle. And, perhaps, dressed. His clothes, held one-handed before him, would have to represent the decencies: he wanted to end the matter, one way or the other. He opened the door.

  She had risen, and replaced the candle, and lifted the sheet from the floor, but she had not dressed. She looked up, half in bed and half out of it. He looked at the long line of shin and knee and thigh and all the places where his fingers and his lips had rested. And then the white skin of the arms, and the frail ribs and the small breasts, round as oranges. And her lips, which were open. She was smiling. She stood, and he could trace the small incoherence of her breathing. Then she walked to
wards him, her eyes on his hand, and the sheltering twist of his clothes. “These need to be folded,” she said. “And in any case, they are in the way.” And striking them from his hand to the floor, she took their place.

  That time, there was no courting at all. The next time, a great deal. The third time, when the sky outside the window was lightening, a desperate onslaught which he tried in vain to calm and contain.

  In the middle of it, a door slammed below. She fought him, forcing him to continue. The resulting explosion paralysed them both for long moments. Then they lay, their heartbeats shaking the bed. They couldn’t have moved, had the door opened.

  It didn’t open. One pair of footsteps shuffling about, far below, indicated a servant, intent on drawing water and setting fires for the returning mistress. Katelina, her nails skin-deep said, “Don’t go. There’s a way into the garden. Mother won’t come for hours.”

  He lay still, his face buried. So much for self-control. He lifted his head from his arms and said, “Demoiselle.”

  “Demoiselle!” said Katelina van Borselen.

  He turned on his side and looked at her. Now she was white, unlike the blooming girl of the first seduction, and her skin was damp, her hair tangled, the hollows blue under her eyes.

  He said, “What other name can I give you? I’ve taken something precious from you. I’ve given you, perhaps, what you wanted. If it’s wrong, it’s wrong. But for more than one night – that would be greed on both sides.”

  She had not thought before of the question of pride. He saw her think about it now. She said, “If you were … a lawyer … would you marry me?”

  So disarming, so cruel. He took her hand, full of affection, and said, “Even if I were a lawyer, you would be too far above me.”

  She closed her eyes, and opened them. She said, “They said you were clever. I think you are more clever than even they think. Surely you should have trained as a clerk? Why an artisan?”

  “Because I like it,” said Claes. “I did learn letters. But my mother died. Now I have all I need.”

  “I think,” she said, “that you were lying when you said you wanted to marry one day.”

  He said, “Yes, I was lying. But that doesn’t mean that I can come between you and your future husband again.”

  She said, childishly, “You don’t want to?”

  He sat up. He said directly, “Would you ask it of me? A servant?”

  She had struggled up, too. “You’re not a servant,” she said. “In my eyes you are Nicholas.”

  He said, “Because I’ve done what I’ve done, you daren’t think of me as Claes. But I am a servant. And a bad one. I’ve wakened you too far, Katelina. But what overcame me will overcome someone else, one day. You don’t need a paragon of a husband. You carry delight in your own body. You know it.”

  She didn’t speak. She watched him dress, the first time she had seen a man cover his body, he supposed. She must be wondering if it would be the last. There was nothing he could add, or do about it. When he was ready he stood by the bed, looking down, and she spoke then. She said, “If he knew about this, I suppose Jordan de Ribérac would kill you.”

  It had occurred to him. He said, “He won’t know. Don’t worry.”

  Her face was pallid white. She said, “Why did he mark your face?”

  He said, “He wanted me to spy for him on Simon. I refused.”

  “Why?”

  “Why did I refuse? Because if Simon gets killed, I don’t want to be charged with the blame. A charming family. They hate one another.” He thought about it for a moment.

  She said, “Claes?” in an odd voice, but when he looked at her, she said only, “Be careful.”

  He said, “Of course. I must go.”

  She sat very still, the sheet folded about her like a habit, and he didn’t try to embrace her. Instead he bent, and lifting her fingers, kissed her hand like a gentleman.

  She shivered, and he left quickly.

  He didn’t realise that, once, he had called her Katelina. He didn’t understand, in the slightest degree, what he had done.

  Chapter 21

  HEADACHE-GREY, the first day of Lent dawned over the city of Bruges and smoke began to rise, with reluctance, from its chimneys. In the bright and well-ordered house of Adorne the children rose, and were groomed, dressed and marshalled for Mass in the Jerusalemkirk with their parents, household and guests. Afterwards their guests broke their fast and left, including the widow of Charetty and her two daughters, who curtseyed daintily and were kissed by the demoiselle Margriete.

  The two daughters, unusually silent, were taken off to their home by a manservant while their mother made her way to the town hall, where the city was wont to mark the day with a feast of freshwater fish and good wine. She did not know, or care, where the male members of her household were, or how they had passed the night.

  Tilde had spent it crying. No one could blame Father Bertouche for bringing home the four little girls (he was in his bed today). It was a pity that the van Borselen child had broken into the party so forcefully, but no doubt Claes had been rescued eventually from her attentions. Someone – a servant; the sister Katelina perhaps? – would have to find the child Gelis and take her off home. It was not Marian de Charetty’s concern.

  She supposed Felix had spent the whole night with his new girl. Now he had got the knack she supposed, also, that she would have to speak to him, or half the servants in Bruges would claim to be bearing to him. Failing his father, the best regulator of that situation was a wife.

  She needed help with Felix. But wives had fathers. As it was, she kept falling over the pawnbroker Oudenin at every step. She returned home after the dinner in time for the annual inspection of weights and measures, and found Claes had forestalled her and was already busy in the yard, stripped to shirt and a very old doublet. She left him alone and went to the kitchens, where she found Felix cajoling one of her women. He had won a sack of bells in the lottery and wanted them sewn on Claes’ clothes.

  Claes’ clothes were already in the kitchen being pressed, and a great tear repaired. He had been pushed into the canal, said her woman, clearly believing it. Felix, his eyes brilliant with sleeplessness, clearly didn’t. Neither did she. Claes had the same look as Felix, and his red scar crossed a cheek healthy as tallow.

  Ash Wednesday. A day she had always hated.

  Later there was a brief scene when Claes came in for his clothes and found bells all over the doublet and jacket. Forced by Felix and his friends to get into them, he went straight out of the door and came back in due course with a flock of goats, which he led jingling into the house and up to and through Felix’s room, where they stood bleating and defecating anxiously. Felix was angry, but his friends, screaming with laughter, made him see the joke. A man, debited, no doubt, to Felix’s educational equipment, came later to clean up the room, while someone snipped off the bells and Claes, in his old clothes again, got the keys of one of the cellars, and had a cart harnessed. A moment later, the Widow saw it rumbling out of the yard with Claes driving and one of the yard lads beside him.

  Felix had gone off, without seeing her or asking her permission. Henninc, queried sharply over the cart, reckoned that no good had come of trying to make an apprentice into a soldier. Six months ago that was a good boy, who would never have thought of driving out of the yard in his mistress’s cart, in his mistress’s time, without asking.

  “So why did he want it?” she said.

  “Why, he’s gone to get his lottery winnings,” said Henninc. “A mail glove was all he got, but that’s but the token. It could be a shield he has to collect, or a helm maybe.”

  “Or just the other glove,” said Marian de Charetty. “In which case he’ll look a fool with a cart, won’t he? All right. We’ve got other things to bother about. Show me the scales that were altered.”

  The cart did not come back for some time. Catherine was fetched by friends, and returned later to say that there were dried-fruit stalls in
the market place, and the van Borselen girl had been there in a worse temper than ever. Gelis, the fat one. Gelis had nothing to say about having Claes as a squire at the Carnival, except that she had had the dullest time she had ever had in her life, and had gone off home by herself. She didn’t say who Claes had gone off with, but guess what. Gelis had a new hand-warmer. And guess what it was?

  Naturally, a silver-gilt apple. Marian de Charetty wondered, wearily, if Claes had handed it over before or after his clothes were covered in bells. Or perhaps last night he had carried it with him. You never knew whom you might need to bribe – or reward – at a carnival.

  At dusk, after everyone was indoors, the cart arrived back in the yard and she could hear the cellar door being unlocked. There was a tramping of feet which went on for a long time. Then the yard boy, looking cheerful, tapped on her door and said that there was some good new stock just come in, and would the demoiselle like to see it for the inventory? She folded a shawl round her shoulders, took a lamp and went out, her key bunch rattling. The wind blew under the fluted voile on her head with all its matronly gofferings, and tugged where the folds bound her chin. Claes was in the cellar alone, kneeling among sacks with the candles lit. She shut the door.

  He turned his head and said, “I took the yard boy because he’s a bit simple. He thinks half of this is wool. Look.”

  She walked to him and bent. Some of the sacks were already unpacked. Behind them were boxes, whose lids he was lifting. She saw, firstly, a packing of straw, and then metal, glinting dully. A steel cuirass, with another beneath it. Shoulder guards, nesting one into another, and thigh-pieces, and coudières. A sack of something which might have been cabbages, but in fact were iron helmets, in the German style. Another box of massive body-armour. Marian de Charetty let drop the lid of that box, and sat on it, saying nothing.

  Claes, working quickly, pulled open the last of the sacks and checked their contents. Then, picking up his candle, he whirled it in an extravagant gesture, and bringing it over, set it beside her. “Well?”