The bung-hole, at his eye, was trained on the new-lit inferno of the front of the barge. The splintered gaps at his shoulder, on the other side, let in light that was dim. That way therefore, and quickly. What had been merely light through the hole was now blistering heat as barrel upon barrel of tar caught, and flared and rose into sheets of flame.
He kicked, this time with full force; but the bottom boards and the staves were immovable. So the lid, perhaps was tacked down in a hurry. He forced one hand over his head and punched upwards. The nails gave. One side opened. There was no time for more. With the hand that was free he thrust out and found a purchase and pushed his barrel away, disconnecting from the intruder; starting, again, a dislodgement that turned him over and all but broke the arm protruding over his head.
He drew it in as the landslide gained momentum. His barrel was rolling and so were others. Through the half-open lid he heard waves of shouting. All Bruges lined the canal, watching the fire and the fireworks …
Christ.…
If the slide went the right way, he and the kegs with him might tumble off the burning barge.
If another cask hit his half-opened lid, it could kill him. When the half-open lid took the water, it could drown him. To stay and burn to death might really be preferable.
This struck him as very amusing. He realised that he was rather drunk. Under the circumstances, that was even funnier. Between laughter and hiccoughs, he thudded from side to side of his barrel as it rolled and bounced with the others. When it hurtled into the canal he had a swinging view of the crowds on the bank, their faces brilliant with light and euphoria; their voices raised in good-natured catcalls as the city’s inept officials lost a dozen badly-packed kegs from the ship-fire. Among them, diamond-bright, were the faces of the drunkards he had met at St Christopher’s. This time, they were sober and he was inebriated.
The canal was half-congealed. Some barrels bobbed in water; some crashed on to floes. His was one of the latter. The base of the barrel was stoved through and it fell on its side. Two staves cracked, but the bands held it together. Vaguely, he was aware that he was still within his container, and that it was sliding, self-propelled, over the ice. If they saw him they would, of course, lift his barrel between them and cast it back on the fire. So he must shout.
He had just reached this conclusion when the icefloe stopped, and the barrel tilted, dropped, and smacked into freezing water. It entered his barrel at one end and left at the other, drenching and nearly choking him and leaving him in a rocking pool. The barrel floated, bumping into the bank. No one lifted it up. No one had noticed it.
Claes considered, dizzily. Then he straightened his legs and pushed them through the broken base of the barrel. The cold of the water was numbing. He braced his elbows inside the barrel and, using his legs, propelled himself silently along the lee of the bank. Somewhere near was a watering-slope, an incline from bank to water used by horses. There he could slip from the barrel and merge with the crowd. Half-drunk and soaking wet, with two of his enemies a few yards away. And perhaps the person or persons who had paid them.
He was so cold by now he could hardly breathe. Another irony, but he had nothing left to laugh with. The barrel bumped on the incline he was seeking, and he felt for the ground with his feet, and found it, and tried, stupid with cold, to push the barrel from him and emerge from it. He was attempting to do this, at the bottom of the ramp, when the light from the top of his keg was cut off by moving figures and someone took hold of his barrel quite firmly in a two-handed grip and rammed it down on him again, wrenching off the lid a moment after.
Before he could see who it was, his entire head had been obliterated by an object crammed down on top of it. A familiar voice said, crossly, “Are we to meet this drunkard everywhere? You! Call yourself a friend of Poppe?” The voice of Katelina van Borselen.
Poppe. The gingerbread seller in the barrel.
She said, “Three of you. Look. He can’t even stand.”
She didn’t know if he could walk. Slowly, he got to his feet, his body enclosed in the barrel, his head emerging, wearing whatever she had put on top of it. A carnival mask. A lot of feathers. A man’s voice said, “I took Poppe home hours ago. I thought he was home.”
“Well, he’s got out again. Can’t you see?”
Christ. A child’s voice this time. The sister. The two van Borselen girls must be there.
Gelis. Of course. Gelis must have seen from the tower. And recognised the two pseudo-drunkards. And warned her elder sister not to give him away. But how were they going to explain Poppe soaking wet in a soaking-wet barrel? They didn’t need to explain it. Just to get him surrounded by a helpful crowd who thought he was Poppe. That way, no one could harm him. Until they got to Poppe’s house.
The barrel was incredibly heavy. Perhaps the punishment barrel had handles inside. Or a special lid, or rests for the shoulders. He had to half-carry this one, with people bumping into him on either side and behind. There seemed to be a small crowd willing to escort him. A popular fellow, Poppe. He wondered where he lived. He realised he was stumbling regularly and, but for the crowd, would be lurching all over the road. Occasionally, through the slits in his mask, he would glimpse the child’s unlovely face, pasty with worry. And sometimes the demoiselle’s, with a line between the black brows, but no worry. Rather a look of the fiercest concentration.
People were slowing. People were stopping. The house of Poppe. With Poppe asleep in bed no doubt inside, with his wife and family. Why was the demoiselle unworried? She had come to one side of him, he saw. And the child Gelis had come to the other. Someone said “Up!”
The barrel rose in the air and the demoiselle said, “Get out and run!”
It was more a case, he wished to submit, of ducking vaguely and falling flat on his face. But he had hardly got free of the barrel before someone – the demoiselle – had caught him by the arm and was dragging him sideways. The barrel remained behind, apparently tenanted.
“Gelis,” said the demoiselle. “She’ll set it down in a moment and disappear. She’ll be all right. Gelis always manages. I told her to go to the Veere’s.”
His teeth drummed together. The vibration made his head want to split open. The freezing cold in his face made yesterday’s cut feel like an axe-blow. His brain had frozen too. She said, “I’m taking you the back way to Silver Straete. The house is empty.”
He remembered being surprised that the van Borselen kept their postern unbolted. He remembered being led into a kitchen lit by the embers of a huge fire, and stopping dead on the threshold, and then realising why he had stopped and walking steadily forward. Steadily was a misnomer. He could not stop shivering. He remembered very clearly the demoiselle saying, “Strip!”
He said, “No.”
She wasted no time, he granted her that. She dragged out the wooden tub, and poured cold water into it by the jugful, and then padded her hands and lifted the great cauldron from the fire and filled the tub with the steaming hot water. Then she said, “I’m going to get into dry clothes as well. Strip and get in.”
The good blue cloth tore as he tried to get it off. He stepped out of everything all tied together. He had to do even that leaning against the kitchen wall. He held the edge of the bath, but in spite of that, slopped the water, thudding into it suddenly. He laid his arms on his updrawn knees and his head on his arms and his senses swam and returned and then left for good. The fire, built up by the demoiselle before she went out, became a healthy blaze and kept the tub and its contents warm as a copper.
He slept.
Chapter 20
A LONG TIME LATER Claes, born Nicholas, woke, and turned his head lazily on his arm.
A kitchen. The well-run, well-equipped kitchen of a household of means, smelling warmly of chicken.
He turned his head further.
A wooden tub. A scrubbed table with two truckle beds under it and a clutch of tallow candles on top. A wall covered with pans and pots of iron and copper a
nd long-handled implements in iron and wood. A carved press, half-open, showing bowls of wood and earthenware and pewter and brass, and some pewter plates. A copper water-jug on the floor, and a meat-safe and a pail. A sugar barrel. A salt box. A bench with a young brown-haired woman in a loose robe sitting on it.
And he appeared to be naked, hugging his knees in a bathtub of water.
His wits would not immediately provide him with a reason. The girl displayed a well-bred and absolute calm, with a touch of amusement. Having no idea what response she expected, he returned the look with equal tranquillity. The effort made his head spin. It was already aching. All his body was aching. He removed his gaze from the girl and allowed it to wander to the fireplace. His clothes were spread before the hearth, drying.
He remembered everything. This was Katelina van Borselen, changed into dry clothes. Changed into a fine linen chemise with a loose mantle thrown over her shoulders, and her hair unbound.
All right. First things first. He confirmed, for his own peace of mind, that his present position was one of reasonable decorum. He remembered that she had said the house was empty when they arrived. He returned his gaze to her and found she was still looking at him. Not watching him. Looking at him, the way Colard studied a painting brought in by a foreigner. He said, “I seem to have been asleep.”
“An hour,” she said. “The house is still empty.”
He said, “Thank you for drying my clothes.”
“They’ll be ready to wear in an hour or two,” she said. “Get out. I have some broth heating.”
He had dealt with variants of this often enough, in bath houses and out of them, and the result was a romp. In those cases, the girl was not Katelina van Borselen, and he had not just been in danger of losing his life. So this was not what it seemed. He set a course as straightforward as possible. He said, “You have me at a disadvantage.”
She looked at him with contempt. She said, “Do you think I’ve never seen a whole man before? My parents sleep in a naked bed, and my servants, and my cousins.”
There was no towel within reach. Matter-of-factly he palmed the tub-rim and hoisted himself up and over it. He treated her to whatever view she wished of his back as he walked without haste to the fireplace and, picking up his damp shirt, wrapped it round his hips and tied the points neatly to hold it. His fingers were withered with soaking and someone had unbuckled his muscles. He put a steadying hand on the chimney-piece and turned, smiling. “Now,” he said. “There was something about chicken broth.”
She hadn’t moved from her bench. She said coldly, “Get it yourself if you want some. It’s there at the fire.”
He left trails of water wherever he moved. He saw that she observed it, but in her turn of mood was disregarding it. In any case, the room was heavily warm. He found the pot on its chain, and stirred it, and went to the wall press for two bowls, nursing his energy as it began to come back. He needed the broth, and hoped that he might have time to take some before hostility, for whatever reason, became open war. He filled the first bowl from the pot and placed it deftly on the table before her with a spoon. He said, “The demoiselle will also eat?”
He had presented her, somehow, with a problem. She said rather shortly, “We shall both eat at the table.”
There was a second bench, on the opposite side of the table. He took his bowl there and sat. “God save the hostess,” said Claes. She didn’t look as if she wanted the broth. He picked his up and drank it off immediately, thick and warm and nourishing, dispatching the lingering taste of canal water and malmsey. He said, putting down the bowl, “You’ve saved my life twice. First the canal, and now the soup. I haven’t thanked you yet.”
He had no doubt she had questions to ask. There were quite a few he wanted to ask himself. Such as who else had seen what had happened apart from herself and Gelis. Such as how she had come to be there, unaccompanied. Such as why, having rescued him, she hadn’t raised an outcry and called in her parents, or the magistrates. And why he was here, like this. Had it been anyone else, he would have known. It was a puzzle, like the Medici ciphers, to be approached indirectly. All he could do was offer a comment, and hope a conversation would follow.
Nothing followed. The lady Katelina dipped her spoon in and out without answering. He waited politely.
She was a handsome girl, and nicely made, like a good piece of wood-turning. Her breasts, under the chemise, were round as small Spanish oranges. His gaze, on its way somewhere else, drifted over the rest of her. The linen was so fine that you could see the colour change, where the white of her skin ceased below it. His gaze continued until it rested on his own bowl, which gave him time for a little necessary self-discipline.
He knew his reputation, and it was mostly deserved. He liked girls. He liked them, of course, for providing him with life’s greatest and most inexpensive delight; but also he liked their company; their opinions. He liked to make them talk. This girl was a virgin. He was sure of it. Of these, he had little experience. Girls of that sort who offered themselves were usually too young to be responsible: one did not take advantage. Sometimes, with an older woman, it was a kindness.
This girl didn’t look as if she wanted to talk. She was already half-regretting what she’d done. It would be easy to make the situation quite impossible, so that she’d ask him to leave. A little loutish behaviour would do it. But then what would she do? Better to help her. He said, “Do you know, demoiselle, if Meester Simon is in Bruges?”
Her hand with the spoon stopped immediately. She said, “He was not responsible.” Then she flushed. She added curtly, “He is not in Bruges.”
She was not a serving-girl, and she’d caught the other thought in his mind. Now she would ask him to leave. He pushed the bowl aside and made firmly to rise. She said with sudden fierceness, “They meant to burn you to death.”
He restored his weight to the seat. He said carefully, “They failed, thanks to you, demoiselle. I know who they are, I think. They won’t do it again. You needn’t worry. Tell your sister it’s all right.”
He watched her. She couldn’t have been alone on the streets. He had to know if anyone else knew. He said, “Did your sister come for you?”
The question alarmed her. She pushed her bowl away distractedly and, getting up, walked round behind him to the fire. There, where it had escaped his notice, was a striped towel, warming. She leaned over and picked it up as he turned on the bench, watching her. The firelight glowed through the fall of her linen, and he realised that she had left her outer robe on the trestle. She turned, the towel in her hands unfolded. She didn’t answer his question at all. She said, “Did he cut open your cheek?”
He remained still. “Simon? No.”
“Not Simon. Simon’s father, Jordan de Ribérac.”
It was like being in the barrel again, such was the buffet. Yesterday, she hadn’t known how he came by his scar. Today, she was able to connect it with Jordan de Ribérac. And to imply – as surely she had implied? – that they both knew that Jordan de Ribérac was responsible for what had happened tonight. Yet she hadn’t clamoured for help.
She was holding the towel bundled together before her, as if for comfort. He said, “You met him this evening? Monseigneur de Ribérac?”
“He offered me marriage,” she said.
Marriage! He looked at her now with sheerest bafflement. The light from the fire flickered and gleamed over the expanse of his skin like the Northern Dancers.
She had spoken with bitterness. As if Jordan de Ribérac had offered her something else besides marriage. If he had, it would hardly have been in the street. So it was here, in the empty house. But how could Jordan de Riéerac get himself admitted to the house of an un-chaperoned girl? In one way. Claes loosened his hands. He said gently, “He was masked? And he told you he wanted to harm me?”
“Something like that,” she said wearily. “He said he had settled Simon’s feud with you. Of course he had. He thought he had got these men to kill you. Gelis an
d I can testify to it. I shall tell my mother and father. He’ll be punished.” She was twisting the towel in her hands. She wanted de Ribérac punished.
Claes said, “Perhaps he did pay men to get rid of me, but I wonder what proof there is? Did anyone else hear him threaten me?”
There was a stool by the fire, and she sat on it. Her hair was brown tinted red in the firelight, and crimped where it had been plaited. She said, “He was here. I was the only person he spoke to. He was my partner for the evening. I thought he was … someone else.”
He had guessed as much. He said, “And the two men who attacked me? We’d need witnesses, or someone who knew them, or someone who could connect them with Monseigneur. Without that, accusing him would only link your name with his in a way you wouldn’t like. He could twist what happened quite nastily.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know who the men were. Don’t you have any evidence against him?”
“Nothing that would be any good. Look,” said Claes. “There’s no need for you to do anything more about this. It’s my battle anyway, although I’m glad you made it yours for a bit. Otherwise I shouldn’t be alive. But now, forget about what happened to me. Tell your parents only that M. le vicomte deceived you and made an unwelcome proposal. He shouldn’t trouble you again.”
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.