Niccolo Rising (52 page)

They parted briefly: Felix de Charetty and his party to settle their horses and baggage in some other inn whose name Claes had some
trouble, it seemed, in remembering. Then they returned, as guests, to share Florence van Borselen’s supper.

Her father had taken a private chamber for his family, and had invited other guests, all burgesses of Ghent with one or two wives and one daughter. His own clerk was there, considerately placed next to Claes. The room itself was small, with a clean tiled floor and a long table with a good linen cloth on it, striped with drawn threadwork. Seated on trestles along its three sides, the company ate and drank and made seemly conversation, served by her father’s excellent servants. Katelina watched the one girl glance at Claes, and away, and back again. He didn’t appear to notice, but she knew, positively, that he had. He and the clerk were finding an enormous amount to say to one another.

Her mother, as might be expected, talked of Brussels. Young Felix contributed something, but soon changed the subject and launched into a detailed and rather endearing account of coursing with the hounds of the Dauphin. When that came to an end, her father spoke of the attractions of Louvain and its professors and, politely, of the Charetty business there, and those parts of it about which clearly he thought Claes as well as Felix might feel able and happy to speak.

Katelina said, “You forget, Father. Claes has left that part of the business to carry dispatches.”

Her mother tapped her father’s hand. “There now, Meester Florence: you did forget that. And the beautiful warming-apple young Gelis received from Milan. A fine city, I’m told. But the princess’s chaplain was shocked at the way the ladies whitened their faces. He is a broad-minded man. But the paint was too much for him. He told us about it.”

Katelina’s father rarely listened to what his wife said, a practice which, Katelina often thought, must have contributed to his sweet temper. Now he said, “Dispatches? That should take you to some interesting places. Do you carry for the Dauphin?”

The two deceiving dimples appeared in Claes’ cheeks. The girl – who was she? She had missed her father’s introduction – glanced at them and remained looking at Claes. Claes said, “I know jonkheere Felix hunts with the Dauphin’s hounds, but there are the limits to the exalted company we keep. I carry for Angelo Tani, though, and the Strozzi bank and the Doria.”

“Well, I’ve met the Dauphin even if you haven’t,” said Felix. His hair, solidly curled for once, bounced as he turned to his host and hostess. “A delightful castle, Genappe. I expect you know it?”

Since they didn’t, he told them about it. Katelina doubted, from the recital, if he had seen much of it, or had been there often. She thought that it was perhaps just as well. Every plot was supposed to start at Genappe. It would do the Charetty business no good to appear too close to it.

Her mother said, “I suppose there is something to be said for a good
family life, even if one doesn’t trouble with great households of servants and lodgings in every hunting-forest. There is the King of France, unloved and ailing, in spite of his dozens of new silk gowns and red and green doublets; and his own son his bitterest enemy.”

Katelina’s father smiled. “Hardly unloved, by all accounts, my dear,” he said. “Indeed, if you will forgive me, it is the love which they say has caused the ailing. But yes, it is sad. For a son to dislike his father – that passes. That is natural in a growing man. For a man to vent hatred on his son – that is unnatural.”

“Then look at the Duke of Burgundy!” said her mother. “What has he but an only son; charming; religious; of the purest habits. The finest landowner in Holland: brave as you wish: sailing his boat in the roughest seas; longing only to show his worth in the field. And see how he hates his father and his father hates him! That dreadful quarrel! But for the Dauphin, they might have killed one another. As it is, the poor Duchess left court. And now, when the Dauphin takes young Charles hunting, the Duke is furious. They said the King of France offered in jest to take the Duke’s son for his, since his own liked the Duke better. See what land and power will do!”

The guests, who had met Florence van Borselen’s wife before, smiled warily and preserved a circumspect silence. As they always did, Katelina and her father sat through it also. At the end, her father said merely, “I advise you to watch your words, my dear, or you will have Katelina marry a pauper in case her heirs are impelled one day to turn and rend her.” He had not mentioned Simon of Kilmirren, whose relationship with his own father he had once called “unnatural”. And whom, once, Katelina had toyed with the idea of marrying.

Felix had flushed. Claes glanced at him, hesitated, and then said nothing. Felix said, “I don’t say the Dauphin is right, or the Count of Charolais. But men don’t always want to obey orders. Whether it has to do with land or power or not.”

“You are quite right,” said Katelina’s father. “Indeed, even womenfolk object to orders at times. But the effects in some families are more far-reaching than others. Discord between princes can ruin a country. A dispute between father and son can of course ruin a business. A quarrel between a fisherman and his son might mean that the boat cannot be launched and a livelihood is lost. Hence a king will have many bastards so that, failing sons, he will have men of his blood he can trust. Hence a man of small family will cleave to his uncles and cousins, for he may need them. Many a man had a truer son in a nephew than the one born to him.”

She had not heard her father say that before. She realised that the presence of bastard Claes had slipped his mind, and glanced over to find the same bastard looking at her, mildly amused and mildly reassuring. Then her attention was recalled as her mother exploded.

Her mother often exploded, and they all simply waited until it passed
over. It appeared that she was deeply affronted to think that any husband of hers could dream of putting some woman’s child before his own two dear pure-bred daughters, and was sure that the other ladies round the table would feel as she did. She thought the number of the Duke’s bastards a disgrace. Was her husband trying to tell her that the Dauphin’s two illegitimate daughters were also got as a matter of state policy? And what about …?

The principal guest, with great aplomb and a certain amount of experience of the Borselen family, discovered that it was sadly late, and he deserved a chastisement for keeping Meester Florence and his lady from their beds. So kind had been their hospitality, so ravishing their company, they had however only themselves to blame for it.

People rose, Claes among them and Felix, with reluctance. The unknown girl required help, supplied by Claes, to extricate herself from the table. He had stupid eyes like an imported monkey. It was perfectly true. And the muscles inside his sleeves came from pounding cloth in a dyevat. The dimples trembled, and the girl looked up at him, speaking, her eyes sparkling. He replied. The girl was smiling.

Her father said, “Katelina! You’re dreaming. Pray escort the ladies.” She attended their departure punctiliously and with a certain tart enjoyment. She saw them leave the inn gates and turned back to follow her father and his clerk, and bumped into someone. Claes said, steadying her with a nearly invisible palm to her elbow, “She has the reversion of three bakers’ shops in Alost. What do you think?”

As if he had flattened it with a hot-iron, the pain disappeared. Katelina lifted her hand and, when he dropped his, caught it in her own and held it, despite him. The inn-yard lights shone on them both, and showed her his eyes flicker: to her father waiting on the steps, and back to her again. She kept his clasped hand in shadow. He was smiling. He said, “Oh Madonna, you must go in.” And within her, another ache had begun.

Her father was returning down the steps, his face impatient. Katelina said aloud, “Tomorrow morning, then. My maid will give you the packet. Father, you don’t mind? Claes has been kind enough to undertake a transaction for me.”

Her father also was smiling. “You’re a good lad,” he said. “Young Felix couldn’t be in better hands. I’m only sorry you can’t stay in Bruges all the time. But youth calls, eh? And ambition. You’ll do well. I’m sure of it.”

And then Felix, whom Nature rather than youth had called with inconvenient suddenness, reappeared to repeat his formal thanks, and take his leave, and begin, before he left the yard, to berate Claes for not having the forethought to reserve rooms in the same place. Claes, who usually answered back and got him into a good humour again, was less communicative than he should have been.

It was van Borselen’s fault. Servants should never be invited to table, or they thought they could do anything.

Katelina retired to her room. It was a lady’s privilege, to test young men, and tease them. If Claes didn’t come, the matter was closed. He was a servant, and a coward.

If he came tomorrow to the family room, and made her transaction in public, it told her something else about him. He was a prude.

If he came another way, trusting her maid, trusting her powers of bribery, trusting her discretion, he was too sure of her, and too sure of himself, and ungallant. And false, after all he had said.

He came before dawn. She was asleep. It was her maid who wakened her. By the time he opened the door and closed it behind him with the utmost quietness, she was sitting up, the sheet high and firm round her body. A candle, shielded from the door, had been lit. She had also loosened her hair from its night-pleat. She saw it reflected in his eyes, as if she had only summoned him as a mirror. Her hair, and the sheet, and her naked shoulders.

He stood by the door and said softly, “There is some trouble?” His voice was reassuring, but there was concern in his face of a kind she couldn’t mistake. Of course. That was why he had come.

Pride demanded that she should undeceive him and send him away. Beseeching flesh overwhelmed it. Her throat was dry. She said, “Yes, there is trouble.”

He left the door at once and came to the bed and knelt, so that their eyes were level. She could see the glint of stubble above the swell and curl of his lips and over the frame of his jaw. His eyes, even unsmiling, still had a crescent pad of laughter tailored to each lower lid and beyond, ready for when he felt happy again.

Her hand lay on the coverlet. She saw him begin to move his own, in simple concern, to cover it, and knew that she couldn’t prevent herself from shaking. He touched her, and she shuddered from head to foot.

Taught by one night, she could read his response in his softening face. She watched him try to master it. But when he began to draw away, she snatched at his hand. The sheet dropped to her hips. If he moved to the door he would have to pull her naked with him. And out into the street. Her inner body was springing apart, was beginning of its own accord to scale the peak she had wanted him to drive her towards. She cried, “Oh,
comfort
me!”, but thought, even as he let himself respond, that it was too late.

He was experienced. She was brought from the bed to the floor, and in seconds he was with her, and this time with insistent violence. It hammered her, already come to her pinnacle, and kept her there, agonised, dying with pleasure. In the last moments, with a sort of crazy wildness that plunged beyond practised timing, he sealed it by joining her.

She lay, stunned into a sort of oblivion that might have been sleep. When she woke, she was again in bed, the sheet folded over her. Her limbs had melted. Where the ache of longing had been, there was a host of dim, unwonted pangs, quite unlike the small, sharp rending of her initiation. It came to her, an odd thought, that last time she had become merely a ravished virgin. This time, somehow, she had been made a woman.

By Claes, again. Had he gone? No, that would be too discourteous. Then, fully dressed still, waiting for her to awake?

She moved, and found his bare shoulder by hers, and his head deep in the pillow beside her. To comfort and receive her confidences, he had done what was considerate. And for other reasons, surely, too. Even Claes could never have reached that point so quickly, unless he had wanted her.

He moved, feeling her move, and lifting himself on one elbow, stretched not towards her but to the bedside. When, half-sitting, he turned, he held a pewter cup of water, already drawn from her drinking-stand. Instead of offering it to her, he rested the cup on the sheet, and said, “Lie still for a little. Sometimes, when it’s like that, the first movements can make your head ache.”

She lay, and felt her body settle, and the weight lift from her brow. He made no bones about his experience, even now. After a bit she moved too, and pulling herself up a little, took and emptied the cup. He leaned free of the sheet to place it on the floor, and she watched the muscles play on his body, from shoulder to rib, rib to hip and hip to thigh, and when he turned back, let him see her examining him.

She said, “I saw a young bull once, working a field. I couldn’t believe what I saw. How many others have you mounted today?”

He paused, but didn’t draw up the sheet, although his expression quietened. “None, demoiselle,” he said.

Katelina stared at him. “I see. Hence, no doubt, the – brilliance – of your performance. If I hadn’t been here, what would you have done? Gone to a brothel?”

He didn’t avoid her gaze. “Single men do,” he said. “It’s something society allows us. I’ve just left Felix in one.”

“You mean,” she said, “I’ve saved you some money?”

He let another interval pass, one elbow pushed into his pillow, his eyes on his hands clasped before him. Then he said, “You said you were in trouble.”

“Yes, I did,” said Katelina. She was breathless with anger, and panic. She said, “You enjoy my body.”

He smiled a little, at his hands. He said, “I failed to hide it, then.”

She said, “If I were your wife, you could do that all night, and all day. Would you marry me for it? Or can you do better with other women?”

He looked up. Then, unclasping his hands, he reached for one of hers and held it to him, folded lightly. He said, “You are without peer. But,
demoiselle, there are things to discuss. You didn’t tell your parents of Jordan de Ribérac?”