Niccolo Rising (15 page)

The merchants, running up with their lanterns, didn’t know what Simon was thinking, although they might guess some of it, and Claes might have worked out the rest. The echoes of forgotten, festering hurts. The memories that included Mabelie’s shy, inviting smile and fresh body. The insolence on the quay. The caustic voice (but neither the merchants nor Claes knew about that) of that shameless Borselen woman: “
No one you need be afraid of
.” And the other, swinish words she had repeated that had come, as Simon now knew, from the spiteful adolescent before him. Who, amusing himself, had used them again just now, to Simon’s face, sure that Simon would be none the wiser.

He had the knife still in his hand, and he intended quite simply to use it.

Claes turned round just as Simon lifted his arm. It was too late to duck, with his legs encumbered with men and dogs. He snatched the only weapon at hand, the leaden club in the hand of the man next to him, and parried the blow as it came, and the next. He went on wildly swinging.

Enclosed in the general fighting, the duel attracted no attention. The hondeslagers, profiting from the mix-up, beat about them with a will, and if a dog got away, it was lucky. The quayside and half the bridge were covered with what, in skin and fat money, would keep them in beer for a fortnight. Lanterns jostling, the merchants stumbled here and there, laughing and calling until the fray started to slacken, the last dogs were being disposed of, and even the fight in the middle was changing. When it stopped altogether the merchants, even then, hardly noticed. When they remembered at last to look for the cause of the trouble, all they found was the handsome Simon, alone, in a great state of fury.

Alone, because the lad Claes had got away somehow. That is, he’d totally vanished.

A pity, you’d say. But Christ, he’d given them all sport enough. So had Simon, standing dripping and reeking, so that you had to go upwind to talk to him. Of course he was angry. He even accused the dog-killers of shielding the youngster.

He had a point, if it mattered. There had been a circle of men – it was hard to see how the youth slipped between them. But where else could he have gone? Not over the bridge. Not back into the river. Not down the quayside along which they themselves had been advancing. Unless he had risen into the air?

It was John of Kinloch, recipient of too many slights, who expressed the kind hope that friend Simon’s own hound was uninjured. Baying after another, Simon had forgotten his dog. He looked round for it. It was easy to find by its collar: a magnificent beast, lying dead at the feet of the hound-chief.

The hondeslager blanched. To touch the dog of a knight meant a flogging. A collared dog, a branded dog must be distinguished at night from all others. Therein lay the skill of their office. And here, in the half-light, he had killed the hound of a noble Scots merchant. He said the only thing he could say. He said, “My lord, you saw your dog, jumping about. It could have hurled itself into the path of anyone’s club. None of my men killed it directly. I swear to you. As for myself, how could I? There is no club in my hand.”

“A hondeslager without a club?” said a cynic.

“The boy took it. The apprentice. You saw him,” said the dog-man to Simon.

Simon said, “And he killed my dog? It must have been him or you.”

The dog-killer was silent. A decent man, he kept his gaze strictly
level. Simon started to speak, his face darkened. From the wall of the lodge high above them, a cheerful, resigned voice forestalled him.

“Oh, the shame; the shame of it!” said the Charetty apprentice. “Friends, I have to admit to it all. For the lawyers will never believe you.”

The crowd of men lifted their eyes. From its tall, hooded niche on the corner, the oldest burgess of Bruges, the White Bear, the
het beertje van der logie
, does not look down at his peers but up, to the clouds and the rooftops. He wears a high golden collar, and golden straps cross the white painted fur of his chest, and between his two paws he clutches the red and gold shield of the city.

He stood there that night, his gaze lofty, and ignored the two battered arms which encircled him; the thicket of dun-coloured floss at his cheek-bone; the amiable chin which pressed on his shoulder. From one of the embracing fists, hopelessly damning, dangled the stained leaden club of the hondelager.

“Take me. I’m yours,” said Claes peacefully. “I don’t deserve to have a nice girl like Mabelie and then go off killing dogs; and I’m giving a terrible smell to your beertje.”

“Come down,” said Simon softly.

The youth embracing the bear nodded agreeably. “But when the sergeant arrives, if you don’t mind. And if there’s a Christian among you, would you tell Meester Julius I’m in the Steen again, and he’ll need to have a word with a bargeman?”

Chapter 5

T
HE GROUP OF
apprentices outside the Steen the following morning was even bigger than it had been the day before. Weavers running to work, wellwishers on their way home paused to grin through the window-bars. The two crane-repairers were among them.

This time, there was no Mabelie to put butter for Claes in the begging-bags, but her name hung in the air, as if written on bunting. Even when the work bell rang and the space outside the prison reluctantly cleared, there remained one or two curious burghers who stood on their toes to spot the stolid face of the apprentice and who, before passing on, threw him fruity reprimands in voices less than severe.

Left standing also was a tall, black-bearded man of mild aspect who was not a Fleming. “Well, Claes vander Poele?” he said to the prison. The inmates, who owed Claes the worth of a night’s entertainment, pushed him heartily up to the window and pressed round him, grinning.

Claes’ battered face showed, also, his customary cheerful smile. “And give you good day, Messer de’ Acciajuoli,” he said. “If you’re collecting for me, don’t try the King of Scots this time.”

Nicholai Giorgio de’ Acciajuoli pursed his bearded lips, but his eyes were amused. “Nor the Duke of Burgundy, I must assume,” he said. “After the episode of the bath and the cannon. Nor, I suppose, those innkeeper-brokers with pretty serving-girls. Do you cause so many upsets in Louvain?”

Claes tilted his head and brought it cautiously upright again. “Perhaps,” he said. “But the university is more used to them.”

“Where, of course, you attend your young master. And his mother, the widow of Charetty, oversees you. Is she strict?”

“Yes,” said Claes, and shivered.

“I am glad to hear it,” said the Greek blandly. “I hear from Messer Adorne that she is on her way to Bruges to deal with these matters.
Master Julius has already called to discuss your case, and you may well be freed before nightfall, if a price can be agreed. Do you think your employer will retain your services, which are costing her so dear?”

“Monsignore,” said Claes. Two lines had appeared on the untroubled brow.

“Yes?” said the Greek.

“I thought I would be out by mid-morning. They let you out after a beating.”

“Are you complaining?” said Acciajuoli. “By offering money, your master the notary has spared you a second beating so soon after the first.” He paused. “Or did you have another assignation?”

Behind the bars, the brow cleared. “That’s it,” said Claes. “And my friends have left. And if I know him, Meester Julius won’t let Felix come and see me. And – I don’t suppose, monsignore, I could trouble you to convey a message to Felix de Charetty?”

Nicholai de’ Acciajuoli, of a race of Athenian princes, who had merely paused from curiosity on his way from Messer Adorne’s house to a pleasant rendezvous in a tavern, was moved to laugh. He said, “In Greek? I very much doubt if it would be possible. In any case, why should I?” He might have agreed, so clear was the boy’s smile.

“Because you stopped,” said Claes.

Messer de’ Acciajuoli paused. His feelings at that moment were of a sort that Julius would have recognised. He said eventually, “And what would be the message?”

“Tell him not to do it,” said the apprentice simply.

“Tell him not to do it,” repeated the Greek. “And what is he not to do?”

“What he is doing,” said Claes. “He’ll know.”

“Presumably he will,” said Messer de’ Acciajuoli. “But I am going to the market-place to join my good friend Anselm Adorne after his magistrates’ meeting. I have no idea where to find the shop of the Charetty.”

“Monsignore, there is no difficulty,” said Claes. “Felix will be with Meester Julius in the Two Tablets – in the same tavern after the fine is paid. The magistrates meet upstairs to consider these cases. I hear that Turks are damned souls and drink nothing.”

It was time to go. “Some of them drink,” the Greek said. “But I don’t know if you could consider them saved as a consequence. I can make you no promise, young fellow. If I see your young friend, I shall tell him.”

The great smile returned. “Monsignore,” said Claes. “Tell me, if any day I may do you a favour.”

The Greek laughed. Afterwards, he remembered laughing.

If the angriest man in Bruges that day was the Scots nobleman Simon, the next was Julius, the Charetty notary.

By noon, of course, the news of Claes’ folly was all round the town. Of the repercussions in Silver Straete, where Florence van Borselen heard an uncensored account with some disappointment, and his daughter a censored one with contemptuous laughter, Julius knew nothing.

He learned, as everyone did, that the town had taken advice, quietly, of the officials involved, and was not proceeding against anybody. It was assumed that the injured Metteneye family would complain to the long-suffering Charetty family about the conduct of its apprentices, and restitution would be made. The owner of the scavengers’ boat had been content with the price of an alepot.

The man Simon had lodged a formal complaint about the death of his dog, and Julius had just finished another unpleasant interview with Meester Adorne and two magistrates in which Claes’ liability had been defined in terms of large sums of money.

If the final amount to be paid by the Charetty company to the Scots merchant was less than it might have been, they had the Scots bishop to thank. From his residence with the Carmelites, Bishop Kennedy had disclosed his disapproval of unseemly night brawling. My lord Simon had lost a fine dog, but he had himself at least partly to blame. Compensation was due, but not prodigal compensation. He trusted his good friends of Bruges to see to it.

Breathing hard, Meester Julius crashed downstairs to the public room of the Two Tablets of Moses after that interview and threw himself on to the tavern bench occupied by Felix, who had collected round him a number of unreliable friends such as the Bonkle boy and Adorne’s nephew Anselm Sersanders and the Strozzi under-manager Lorenzo, who seemed to spend such a lot of time, looking discontented, away from his employer’s business.

Someone said, “Aha! The party of dog-lovers. Julius, my little friend, your mistress is on her way to chastise you. Stick to ink and parchment and numbers, my dear. It takes men to control men.”

It was the voice of one of the most tiresome Frenchmen in Bruges. Lionetto the condottiere was sitting at the next table with the bald-headed doctor Tobias and all his other friends round him. Tobias was drunk, and so was Lionetto. In Italy and in Geneva, Julius had seen enough of drunk mercenary captains to know at least how not to handle them. He said, “Do you want Claes? Take him.”

Lionetto gave a long laugh, which emerged in two phases with a central intermission. He was one of the few mercenaries Julius knew who looked not only low-born but proud of it. But that might have been the red hair, too coarse to curl, which brushed his shoulders, and the pock-mottled skin and ripe nose. He had a chain over his doublet with rubies in it. Or glass maybe. But the gold of the thick links was genuine.

Recovering, Lionetto said, “Pay me and I’ll take him, if you’re afraid of the widow. Hey, Felix! Your mother’s coming, you know? Get your backside stripped off for the horsewhip! You too, Julius! Hey?”

Beside him the doctor, grinning, let his elbow slip off the table and knocked over Lionetto’s full tankard. Lionetto, cursing, smacked the doctor over the head and then, leaning forward, ripped off one of the man’s stained black sleeves and mopped up his splattered hose with it. The doctor looked annoyed. Lionetto shouted.

“Julius, my little man! Give me your naughty dog-killer and I’ll give you a sot of a physician in exchange for him! One pint of Gascon wine, and he’ll abort you quintuplets. That is, if you could ever get quintuplets between you. You’ve only got one man at the Charetty, and he’s your fornicating apprentice!” Lionetto frothed. “Claes’d have your mother under him if she wasn’t too old.”

Felix missed it, thank God. There was only one sort of man who could handle Lionetto, and that was another condottiere. Wait, Julius thought, fuming. Just wait till Astorre gets to Bruges with the demoiselle. Then we’ll see about horsewhips. He saw Lionetto open his mouth and steeled himself to do something about it, and then didn’t have to. Everyone quietened. Everyone looked at the stairs. From above, solemn in their long gowns, the magistrates were descending to take their customary refreshment in the common room. Anselm Adorne was among them.

And as they seated themselves, and talk began to resume, a second interruption caused it to wane again. The tavern door opened, and in walked the Greek with the wooden leg. The one who was begging gold to ransom his brother. Acciajuoli, that was the name.

Nicholai de’ Acciajuoli looked around, smiled at Meester Adorne who was signalling to him, and crossed steadily to where Julius and his assorted juniors were sitting. He was looking at Felix.

Lionetto’s attack, surprisingly, had not upset Felix. Felix was subdued today. Or rather, that flattered him. Felix was quietly sullen. Sullen to Julius, that is. To his friends he turned a different face. Coming downstairs, Julius knew he had heard the wheeze of suppressed laughter. Julius had just spent an hour making feeble excuses to magistrates. If you weren’t the company notary, last night’s escapade no doubt appeared side-splitting.