Niccolo Rising (65 page)

Jehan Metteneye nodded. “That’s what my Griete says,” he said. “And maybe there’s truth in it. But they’ve done wonders to that place of theirs. You should walk past it before they go off tomorrow.”

Simon said, “Go
off
? You mean the bridegroom is abandoning Bruges before the jousting! I thought to find him in cloth of gold at the best window. Or even breaking a lance for his elderly wife. They seem to have admitted her son to the lists, so there should be no trouble about a landless by-blow.”

It had not been a very wise pronouncement. The Metteneye, like the Charetty, were of bourgeois stock, and landless, however long their line. Metteneye said, “I’ve nothing against the jousting. The Metteneyes have always taken part, and young Pieter will be there tomorrow. But sometimes affairs have got to come first. The young man is taking his wife, I understand, to call on the Fleury hotels in Dijon and Geneva. Kinsfolk, and no doubt important clients. And as for young Felix –”

The chaplain, smiling, nodded and pushed past. Metteneye, his face slightly flushed, continued to impart information.

“Young Felix did better, some might say, than take part in a joust. He had a personal invitation to hunt with the Comte de Charolais. Delivered by the Count’s Receiver. Unfortunately for the same Sunday, so what could he do? But I dare say,” said Jehan Metteneye, “that you’ll find someone worthy to break a lance against come tomorrow. Now we’re blocking your way, and you’ll be in a hurry.”

He was in a moderate hurry, but he still took time to walk, as recommended, past the large, well-maintained and orderly premises of the Charetty behind its long wall. He made a few calls. And then he went, thoughtfully, to call on the dark and stately Muriella.

His evening passed agreeably. The banquet was lavish, and his immediate company suited him. He entertained it with ease, and continued his bantering courtship of the young lady his partner, whose jewels certainly did nothing to reduce his standing with the nobles of Bruges. He had brought Muriella a rose, from someone who stored such things for him, and she had allowed him to caress her fingers when he kissed them. Then he avoided any growing complacency by paying particular attention to the lady who partnered his neighbour. She responded warmly.

As he had hoped, the banquet was not a long one. He escorted his lady home, well-attended, and took leave of her with gentle courtesy. She turned as she entered her lodging, the rose crushed in her fingers. He was, of course, still in the roadway. He bowed. That done, he dismissed his attendants and walked through the less busy streets in the anonymity of his hooded cloak. Idle, his thoughts turned to the white skin and dark hair of the Reid girl, and the explicit comforts that the rest of her might have to offer. He reached Betkine’s house hot with an awkward energy which, put to use, gave a few moments of extreme pleasure, but refused repeatedly to disperse.

He couldn’t stay all night. He stayed twice as long as he meant to, and left well after dark. By then, the lamplit hammering and the voices of straining workers had come to an end. The market place was brightly lit, and you could trace, by the occasional murmurs, the places where the town had posted its guards to watch over the confections of wood and lath and canvas until the jousting day dawned. There were other noises. The snuffling of the ubiquitous pigs. The squeal of cats. The
muted wailing, behind a lit window, of a demanding infant. A batch of snores, from between open shutters. The lap of canal water. The shifting, in wind, of some litter. The hollow sound of lonely footsteps, crossing a bridge. From several places, the subdued barking of dogs.

He had lost a fine dog here, once. And a pretty, plump girl.

The wind had risen. It brought an odd noise which, standing still in the market place, Simon considered. You would think that tomorrow’s joust was being rehearsed at the edge of the city. A replica, in miniature, of the screams, the roar of the crowd, faint as the sea in the breath of a mollusc.

The wind brought it again. He listened intently, every sense fine-tuned to magnify the one sense of hearing. The blow of the bell overhead, when it came, struck him deaf for the moment, and nearly out of his senses.

Then it came again, a violent boom, shaking the bell-tower. And again. And again.

Someone shouted. A light bloomed in a window, and another. A door banged. The bell tolled and tolled. And over it now, a magnified voice proclaiming what appeared to be an injunction of the Almighty from the top of the bell-tower. A man, gabbling through the great trumpet. The great bell for fire. And the speaking trumpet telling the place: the dyeworks and house of the Charetty family.

Of course, at one time every building was timber and thatch, and a fire could reduce a town in an hour. Now brick and stone and tiles and slate might resist, but stairs and penthouses were of timber, and inside beams and panelling.

The city had proper regard for its responsibilities. In every quarter you would find a deposit of buckets and brooms. On the call of the speaking trumpet, men knew what to do. For Bruges was a city which made its living from cloth; which sat day and night upon the canvas bales wedged in its cellars, with all the other stuffs a merchant needed to store.

A pawnbroker’s stockrooms would be full of cloth, in the way of pawned clothes. And a dyeshop of course would have more than bolts of cloth and bundles of yarn. It would have the dyes themselves. The kegs of yellow crocus. The sacks of dried gall-nuts for fine, costly blacks, and the sacks of brazil wood blocks for crimson. The parcels of herbs: bunches of weld hanging from rafters. The trays of powdered woad and caking granules. The bladders of buckthorn and sap green and mulberry. The barrels of lakes and gums and resins. The sheds full of ashes, and empty wine-casks for scraping and burning. And scattered through the yards, the wooden vats and tools and stretching-frames; the teasel bats piled high for napping. And the lines of strung skeins and stretched coloured cloths joining house to dyeshop to warehouse in one endless pattern, like some magical puzzle in wool.

Simon of Kilmirren turned and made his way to where, now, the
distant noise was more distinct, despite the sharp sounds increasing all about him. And where, now, you could see by a colouring in the sky that there was indeed a fire, and a growing one.

People began to run past him, half-dressed, with racketing buckets. He stood for a moment and then moved in their wake, without hurrying. Whatever was going to happen would have happened before he could get there.

Which was true, of course. When he got there the fire had just gained control of the house and was advancing through the yard. The street, as he turned into it, was a mass of moving, shouting, half-naked people.

The gateway to the yard and the yard beyond were thronged with jostling men. Horses were being led out. Buckets flashed. Silver arches and cascades of water crossed the air and dissolved in white, fizzing steam. As the line of fire advanced, the bucket-line and the beaters began to fall back. Blazing stuff from the house began to spring through the air, alighting on sacks and boxes dragged into the yard. Pushing further in, Simon passed a middle-aged man in a night cap, struggling out with a sack of insect-dye, his great naked belly blotched scarlet. Simon said to someone, “What about the folk in the house?”

The man he spoke to was collecting ledgers, tumbled over the ground as they must have fallen from an upstairs window. He said, “The dogs wakened us. I think we got everyone out.” He wore a black doublet, open over his small-clothes. His scoop-nosed face was black, too, and hollow with effort.

Simon said, “Look. I’ll see to that. Go and see what else you can save.”

He waited until the man had turned away, and then tossed the ledgers one by one, carefully, into the heart of the fire. After that, the heat drove everyone back and he was content to stand in the road with the rest and watch the Charetty business burn, while the shouting and thumping moved to either side, where the nearest houses were being soaked and emptied.

Around him, the crowd had separated into small groups, silent except for muffled crying, where women clung, being comforted. In one such group he saw the man he had just spoken to, standing close to a small, comely woman with beautiful hair. Two attractive young girls, their faces swollen, were clasped to her sides. He noticed them first because of the empty space left, as if by deference, all around them. Then he realised who, of course, they must be.

The beauty of the fire was now at its height. The fusion of strange and precious substances created a red and yellow pyre of extraordinary brilliance, shot through with salt greens and acid yellows and an unsettling violet. Now and then, above the crackling roar, a report or a hiss would herald a ribbon of silver or a plume of gamboge or an arrowhead of crimson, spitting sparks. The yard, pooled with water, reflected it.

Then the wind turned, and the black pall of the cloth smoke found its way, with the stench, to the roadway. As if awakened, the crowd started to move. The house, half ash, half fire, offered no threat now, with the altered wind. The nearby houses were safe, and the swarming figures began to leave them one by one. The woman who must be Marian de Charetty stood still, looking towards them. Simon saw the man in the black doublet speak to her gently and then, moving away, begin to look about him. Soon he was surrounded. He would have shelter to find, of course, for all the Widow’s people.

But of course, she was a widow no longer; and it was perfectly plain what she was waiting for. Something more important than the mere distress of her employees and their losses. And, sure enough, a figure separated from the last group of soot-blackened men coming back from their labours, and trod with strong, bare feet towards the woman and her two daughters. This immortal young bastard; this Nicholas.

Whatever expression he wore, a gum of soot and sweat concealed it. There was burned skin as well as dirt on his body where the untied shirt didn’t cover it. Then Simon saw the flash of his teeth and the taller of the two young girls left her mother’s shoulder and ran towards him suddenly. Nicholas put his arm round her tightly and kissed her forehead. Then holding her at his side, he walked forward and, one-handed, drew the woman and the younger child into the same wordless embrace. The mother’s long, ruffled hair blew about them.

What he said after that could not be heard, but the woman’s eyes as she listened spoke for her. Indeed, no one watching could doubt precisely how she had been induced to marry. Then her juvenile husband, breaking carefully away, called to the man in black, who turned and replied, and then looked about him, and then saw Simon, and pointed.

In his black cloak and satin feasting-clothes, slightly ruffled by Betkine, Simon waited while Nicholas walked over and stood before him. Below the dirt, the youth’s face was colourless.

Simon said, “With the world full of fat little businesses, why marry one so ill-smelling when heated? I hear you planned to scurry to safety tomorrow. But see, we’ve met none the less.”

They might call him Nicholas now, but the boy who took all the beatings still stood before him. He said, “Gregorio tells me that he left all our ledgers in your care.”

“Gregorio?” said Simon. He looked about.

“The lawyer in black. He did not, of course, know who you were,” said the youth.

Simon located the man in black and smiled at him. The man began to come over.

“Oh, another gallant employee drenched in urine. Tell him not to come,” Simon said. “If, of course, that’s the man whom you mean. I’ve never seen him before, or your poor ledgers. Are you sure, my dear
Nicholas, that your lawyer didn’t find it convenient to throw them back into the fire? It’s been known.”

The man Gregorio had arrived. He turned to the youth who, God save him, he must be forced to regard as his employer. He said, “What did he do with them?”

“Flung them back in the fire, I imagine,” said Nicholas. “This is a gentleman called Simon of Kilmirren. It allows me to repeat what I said the other day. If he attempts to enter any building of ours, or interfere with any employee of ours, or speak to the demoiselle against her wishes, you are to call Meester Metteneye and Meester Adorne immediately.”

Simon looked at the fellow’s clown’s eyes, large and white as blisters in the blackened face. He said, “There must, surely, be some insult that would force you into a manly attitude. But, by God, I am at a loss to think what it could be. In a somewhat varied life, I have never met, Meester Gregorio, a servant quite so craven as the one who calls himself your master.”

He smiled and moved off, and no riposte followed him. He did not look round to see if the youth was gazing after him.

After a moment Gregorio said, “I take it you have your reasons.”

Nicholas turned. He said, “I don’t know whether I have or not. There is more to think of than a squabble.”

“The ledgers …” said Gregorio.

“They’re not irreplaceable. And if you’re going to ask whether he started the fire, I don’t know.”

“But you
are
going to try and find out?”

“No. You are,” said Nicholas. “You’ll have a lot of help. The city takes these things seriously. But I don’t expect anything will be found.”

“And the loans,” said Gregorio. “The security for all those loans, and the income you needed to repay them …”

“Oh, yes,” said Nicholas. “It couldn’t have come at a worse time. Whoever started it counted on that. They probably counted as well on half of us burning to death. But no one did. And that, really, is all that matters.”

The demoiselle had come up, with the girls. She said, “That wasn’t …”

“Come to say how sorry he was. Not exactly. We’ll talk about all that later. Now, let’s see what has to be done.”

Nicholas left for Geneva on Tuesday, only two days later than he had originally intended. With him went the hired escort he had already arranged, with the mules and his own horses rescued from the stables, with their harness. Also salvaged from the stables were his saddlebags ready packed for the journey, and (against strong advice) a single cart stacked with bales of cloth for Jaak de Fleury.