Authors: Dorothy Dunnett
‘I beg your pardon,’ Robin said. ‘You are wrong. And even if you were not, Lord Beltrees is your own uncle.’
The change in the seraphic blue eyes turned him cold. Then, after an interval, the boy spoke, less guardedly than before. ‘Claes,’ he said. ‘The ape is called Claes, or maybe Lord Billygoat. His wife might enjoy thuggish handling, but Claes vander Poele shares none of my blood, and his son is the son of an animal.’
‘Henry?’ said the lord Wolfaert’s voice. It was impatient, not shocked. He had heard the tone, not the sense of the outburst.
Henry turned his bright head, his face pale. ‘My lord, forgive me,’ he said. ‘But I cannot bear to hear light words of my mother, even though she is dead, and I know my lord of Beltrees is happily married. If you will excuse me, I shall go to my room.’ A tear had caught in his lashes.
‘Of course,’ said the seigneur of Veere slowly. He watched the boy
leave, and then returned his heavy gaze upon Robin. The table was silent.
Robin got to his feet. He said, ‘I am sorry, my lord. The young man was mistaken. But if you will excuse me, it might be better if I go to my room also.’
‘You are excused,’ Wolfaert said; and turned to his neighbour.
Robin did not go to his room. Instead, he followed the noise to the nursery, and dragged Pasque out of the room. ‘We must go home.’
It was like holding a chicken. ‘What? What? Are you crazy? We have hardly arrived!’
He tried to explain. But even if he had known her vernacular, her desire to remain would have thrown back a legion of Goths. ‘So you and some spoiled child have quarrelled! You are the guest! Go to the lord, and apologise, and make your peace! Or if you cannot admit you are wrong, then go home. We do not need you,’ said Pasque.
‘You do!’ said Robin. ‘Pasque, he could hurt us.’
‘Hurt old Pasque? A silly boy of eleven? Go along,’ said the woman. ‘Find the boy. Make it up. I am busy.’
He saw, soon enough, that it was hopeless to argue, and that he was unlikely to make an ally of Pasque, or the bodyguard. He had no case to make, other than an account of a conversation, which the boy would deny, and a feeling of extreme foreboding. The boy was only eleven, and parroting the language of elders – but even so, what had happened was not accidental. Robin had been placed in disfavour, and it would take little more to persuade the lord of Veere to send him home. Robin did not know why Henry should want that, but he proposed to make sure it didn’t happen.
Chapter 33
R
OBIN OF BERECROFTS
had little vanity – his father and grandfather had seen to that. But he had a sense of pride and of fairness, and he had to sacrifice both in order to stay at his post beside Jordan that day. There was no appeal. Even if the lord of Veere were not wholly deceived, the boy Henry was well born and his kinsman, and Robin was the page of a man who could have no love for Henry’s father.
His plan had been to stay with the child while it slept. Instead, curt words and raised eyebrows forced him out to the butts to help retrieve arrows, and to hold the pennants for the pony-racing that followed. The lords and their friends worked Robin hard, but the June sun was high in the sky, the pleasure-grounds were green and tree-shadowed and pleasant, and he would have borne them no grudge, had he not been aware of a growing unfriendliness, so that no matter how fast he pelted about, the shouts from the players became brusque and impatient. And as it developed, he watched Henry’s smile.
He learned to admire Henry. Young as he was, the boy must have trained long and hard with a master to attain such proficiency. He was also inherently gifted. He managed his horse, big for his years, with the grace and strength of someone much older, and his eye was razor-sharp.
Robin knew. The arrow that slightly missed its route pierced his skin by so fine a margin that, although he bled, he deserved no attention other than an irritated order to watch where he ran. It was Henry’s horse, alarmed by his presence, which reared and came down, shouldering him to the ground. And it was Henry who, almost winning a cast, had his aim put out by Robin’s sudden appearance and throwing, grazed Robin’s thigh with his lance before being dislodged by his horse from the saddle.
Ladies ran to the fallen boy’s aid, but Henry leaped to his feet and
gallantly absolved Robin from all blame, while agreeing, limping over the grass, to take his ease for a while. The lady of Veere had emerged, with the children. Jordan, walking sedately with Pasque, saw his new sister and ran to her lap, where he sat, being courted with sweetmeats. Robin could hear his high voice, and see the ladies round him exclaiming and laughing. Henry smiled, showing one dimple.
Robin went to sit beside Jordan, but the lady of Veere wished to speak to him. Listening, he was advised that, being a boy among coarse-living men, he had not yet learned to conduct himself as gentlemen did, but should try and learn from example. He heard that it was positively atrocious that a youth of his years should attempt to strike a valuable animal and injure its rider, and moreover spread malicious tales of his host and his hostess and their guests. She wished him to know this, and to understand that she would take no severe action, provided the misconduct halted at once.
Robin bled, inside and out. Robin said, ‘My lady, anything I have done, I have done unknowingly, and out of ignorance. Please forgive my lack of skill. I would not harm you or yours, not for the world.’
The lady of Veere looked surprised, and her face softened a little. But when the meal was over, he found himself chivvied into the sports field again.
His lesions ached, but at least he knew now what to expect (or so he thought), and whatever Henry might do, he managed somehow to avoid him. The child Jordan played among the women and babies. It was only when the call came for golf that Robin felt the first breath of danger. Any game with a ball would attract Jodi.
The clubs came, and the heavy balls fashioned of wood. Robin took one, and gave it to Jodi. Henry strolled up and took it away. ‘Did you want a ball, Robin?’ he said. ‘I shall ask the lord of Veere to spare you one later. But really, we need them all now.’ He went off, and Jordan looked up, his lip trembling. Catherine kissed him. ‘Come and play with me instead.’ Then someone shouted for Robin, and he went.
They played rovers at first, hitting the ball from place to place: into trees and over walls and into pools, from which Robin retrieved it. Twice it made its way back near the children, and twice Jordan scrambled up and, trotting, attempted to capture it. Each time Robin got there before him and, picking him up, carried him back to the others. Jordan squealed at him with frustration, and Robin had no way of explaining.
Miraculously, the third time was spared him since the lady of Veere, standing up, ordered her lord to take his party elsewhere, for the sake of the little ones. Robin looked at her in a fervour of gratitude, and then dashed off to serve as he might.
He was not needed for long. Already the golf seemed to be palling. They listened to Henry when, boyishly shy, he asked if they might not ride to the dunes and shoot rabbits. He added, thoughtfully, that he was sure Robin too would enjoy it, despite not, of course, having a weapon.
Robin agreed. He hoped that Henry was as accurate with a crossbow as he was with the other kind. He proposed to do his very best to keep behind Henry. He didn’t know whether to be glad or not when he saw that monseigneur’s step-daughter Catherine had left the child in order to ride to the beach with her sweetheart. He felt alone, and not alone. He was a person, as he had been in Iceland, riding up between Katla and Hekla. He was monseigneur’s representative.
Soon after that, he saw that Henry was missing. He wheeled his horse and, ignoring a peremptory shout, spurred back the way he had come. He did not realise, then, that the girl Catherine had turned to come after him, or that it was Paul van Borselen who had shouted.
Later, he pieced together what had occurred at the castle. Later, he could imagine how Henry, arriving back, had abandoned his horse and, making for the discarded kolfs and the balls, had lured Jodi into following, tap tap tapping the wood, making it bounce out of sight through the garden. Through the garden, the park and the fields until the castle was well out of sight. Then he invented a game. Jodi trotted, and his cousin bounced the ball after him.
The laughing gulls must have had the best view: the three-year-old chuckling and stopping; the ball thudding up to his feet; Jodi bending to seize it and then, reminded, staggering on, frothing with laughter. And stopping. And watching the ball bounce again, while lissom Henry, big cousin Henry, pretended to be unable to catch him. While behind the child, nearer and nearer, was the ditch, the deep drainage ditch of the flatlands.
By the time Robin saw them, far in the distance, the ball was no longer trickling to the child’s feet but bumping against him; gently at first, with a little rebound, and then harder, so that Jordan cried out and turned, tears of surprise in his eyes. And then big cousin Henry, instead of comforting him, took out another ball from his sleeve and, dropping it, drew back his club. Jordan watched him perplexed, without moving. Then some hint of what was happening must have reached him, for as Henry bore down on the ball, the child turned and staggeringly ran.
Robin heard the crack of the ball and Jordan’s scream. He saw the ball chop in the air, a speck in the distance, and the white, fixed stare of Henry behind it. He heard the rap as the ball fell, then the crack as the club again caught it. The double sound, repeated over and over,
reached through the quiet like the cluck of a bird, or a man alone, tapping a hammer. Only, ragged and faint as the wail of a leveret, there came too the cries of the child whom the ball was pursuing.
A single hard shot would have felled Jordan and killed him at once. That was not Henry’s aim. Henry was deliberately whipping him on to fall and drown in the gutter behind him.
Then Robin shouted. Behind him, unexpectedly, he heard other cries, and the thud of other horses from his own hunting-party overhauling him. A deep voice roared: that of Wolfaert van Borselen.
Henry’s face lifted, white as a shell. Briefly, he hesitated. Then he drew a great breath and, racing forward, stopped at the ball, and raised his club as a hunting-cat would stretch out its forearm. For like the hunting-cat, he was smiting to kill.
There was no chance they could stop him. There was no chance that anyone could stop him, even the rider who burst through the trees from the castle and scored through the grassland like fire, crying aloud as he came.
Henry heard him. Henry glanced round, once, with no real surprise on his face. Then his head lifted, to weigh up his target. He positioned his club without haste, and without haste swept it down to connect, clean and hard, with the ball. There was a click and a whisper as the solid boxwood shot through the air. There was no doubt that it would strike the child’s head. Henry had all the skills of his father.
While it happened, the horseman behind was riding flat out. Robin saw that he leaned to one side, the reins in one hand and a kolf in the other. Memory, uncontrolled, showed himself as a boy, also eleven, standing on the flat sands of Leith and watching a cold, distant man, the same man, dispatching a tzukanion ball far out to sea. He saw that there was a ball now in the grass ahead of the rider, one dropped by Henry, and that Nicholas de Fleury was riding towards it.
He saw Henry swing up his club and glance round as the other man shouted. He saw Henry prepare for his stroke, his eyes on the staggering child. He saw Nicholas de Fleury lift his club in turn for the stroke that would kill Henry as Henry killed. Just before the moment of impact the man’s face, so unlike, was blank, uncannily blank like the boy’s. The sieur de Fleury called, one final explosive cry, and then closed his grip and aimed.
Far ahead, through his panic, Jodi heard his father’s voice, the familiar, trusted voice, calling his name. Oblivious of the ball whistling towards him, he tried to turn but could not. Soaked and frightened and sobbing, he lost his balance and fell, just as the boxwood hurtled up, and sped over his head to skid glistening into the turf.
Behind, all the clamour broke off. The sieur de Fleury’s club dragged and bounced over the ground, aborting its shot. The horse cantered on. The rider hurled the kolf from him. It sped hissing and whining to dig, splintering, into the ground. Then its wielder was level with Henry de St Pol who stood motionless, scornful, waiting for the great blow that reached him, and felled him.
No one moved. The boy lay on the ground. Then Nicholas de Fleury walked past him, and threw himself down by the small, mewing child in the grass.
Robin was first to rush up, his throat choked. The girl Catherine dismounted beside him, saying nothing. Her stepfather Nicholas did not look round. The only sound was his voice, conducting a long peaceful monologue as he sheltered the child with his shoulder, and blew its nose, and wiped the mud from its cheeks. It sobbed intermittently, and his fingers caressed it. When he addressed them, it was in the same conversational tone.
‘Berecrofts, you will take Jordan back to the castle, collect the slut who helped you bring this about, and return to Antwerp at once with them both. Van Borselen will give you a guard and a wagon. There you will remain until Mistress Clémence will join you. You will not go out, or take the child out for any reason whatever, and you will stay until you receive further orders. Are you capable of understanding all that?’
The child, clinging, claimed his attention, and his fingers, circling, gentled its head. Catherine de Charetty said, ‘Robin is injured from trying to protect him. Henry did all he could short of murder to get Robin thrown out.’
‘And you stopped it, I see.’
She flushed and paled, her face lined with anxiety. ‘None of us realised at the time. We were stupid. Let me take Jordan. Let me go with Jordan to Antwerp, with Paul.’
Her stepfather looked at her, as to a stranger. ‘Why not?’ he said, and got up, lifting the child in his arms. ‘See,’ he said. ‘Catherine has almonds, and Robin will let you ride on his horse.’