Voices. Barking. Someone had disturbed his hound. Metteneye’s voice, and then Metteneye’s face round the doorpost. “No need, gentlemen, to be alarmed. Someone has reported open bales to the mercers’ men, and they have come to search. It will not take long to prove their mistake. Everything is in order.”
They groaned. It happened every now and then. Foreign merchants had to abide by strict rules. Goods might be sold in their lodgings on certain days and at certain times only, and must be corded up when that time was over. Uncorded goods meant fines and confiscation. The native traders of Bruges were well protected. One was polite – as now – to the officials who came in with their strapped caps and heavy jackets and broad shouldered servants standing behind. And agreed, of course, to descend to the cellars where the great bales were kept, and from which light, said a passerby, was showing at every trapdoor.
The tramp of feet was sending his dog hysterical, so Simon let it out and took it down the cellar steps with the rest, his fingers tucked under its collar. It snuffled and tugged, even when the cellars proved, of course, to be totally empty but for merchandise, and all the merchandise neatly corded and baled as it should be. Metteneye crossed to snuff the rogue lantern, which some fool had left burning untended.
The dog nearly knocked him over. Wrenching itself from Simon’s hand, it leaped past Metteneye, round a pillar, through an archway and, scrabbling, vanished behind a great stack of kegs. They followed it. It had stopped before five bales of forest and brown and middling wool and a sack of skins which had just been inspected. It was barking in front of the bales as if they either threatened its peace of mind or contained its dinner.
Simon walked forward. Between the bales and the wall was a space. Upon the space, a makeshift bed appeared to be laid, composed so far as he could see of an assortment of fox, cat and hare skins, imperfectly cured. The portions of fur obscured a single undulating shape which separated, as he watched, into two distinct forms. A white article, evincing itself at one end, resolved itself astonishingly into the cap on the winsome head of the servant called Mabelie, followed jerkily by her shoulders.
She would have stopped there, but crowding round her, the mercers’ men and the Scots merchants had already begun to break into laughter. They dragged her out, guffawing, while she kept her eyes shut and her scarlet face hidden as best she could. She had her stockings on. Otherwise the only part of her clothed was her waist. Metteneye, smiling angrily, took off his jacket and flung it over her.
Simon took three steps off. He stood at the other end of the warm heap of furs where his dog was still barking, and he had in his hand the little dagger which foreign merchants were permitted to carry, to protect themselves against robbers. He bent, perhaps to probe with the blade, or perhaps to defend himself. He had no need to do either. Under his eyes, there emerged slowly a dishevelled head of dust-coloured hair, a pair of brawny shoulders and a sweating chest half encased in a madeover shirt of limp canvas and, over this, an even cheaper pourpoint whose laces did not seem to be entirely attached to their stockings.
Simon knew the face. He knew the broad brow, the moon-like eyes, the nose, precise as an owl’s between the dimpled cheeks, and the deprecating, disarming smile.
Claes, the Charetty apprentice. Claes, whose expression at this moment was neither apprehensive nor rueful nor mischievous, but something of all three. Who said, shutting his eyes with a sigh, “I won’t deny it. I admit it. I’ve the conduct of an oaf and the talents of a girl, and there’s nothing surer than this, that I’m a mortification to my father, wherever he is.”
It was the biggest joke of the evening, thought the mercers. Instead of a nasty scene with the Scots, a court case, a lot of ill feeling, there was a serving-wench being given her business by Marian de Charetty’s great smiling lout Claes, lying there in his undone laces, talking his way into his next beating.
It made you wonder, too, when you saw how the fellow Simon was taking it, whether the noble Scots lord might not have had an eye on the lassie as well. He had certainly gone a queer colour. Indeed, for a moment, the knife he had in his hand flashed once or twice, as if he wouldn’t mind using it.
And perhaps the fellow Claes thought so too, for all of a sudden, with a heave and a jerk, he was out of the furs and thrusting past the dog and between two of the lads standing laughing at him, and through the arch and round the pillar and up the steps and off through the house in the direction that led to the courtyard. The merchants and the mercers’ men looked after him guffawing, and someone slapped Metteneye on the back. Then the noble Simon seemed to come to himself, and he burst out laughing as well, and sheathed his knife, and called to his dog and said, “Well, what are we waiting for? That’s a rogue needs a beating, and all we have to do is catch him!”
Immediately, his companions saw what he was after. The joke was good, and it needn’t be over yet. Apprentice Claes, the great lover, was a long way from his attic at the Charetty house. The least they could do for poor Metteneye, with his trust abused and a good servant maybe in the family way, was to catch the fellow and make him regret it. Crowing and hallooing, they streamed out of the cellar, leaving Metteneye to grip the little piece by the arm and drag her up the steps to his lady.
The trouble was, of course, the odour of fox, and cat, and hare, and even a faint residual tincture of rabbit. And yet the lad was inventive, by God. He nipped round into St John’s Place and past the English merchants’ house before you could blink, and then dived straight across and into the Englishmen’s tavern, where they were not at all welcoming as he dashed through, spilling the beer and the dice and the card tables, and still less so when a quantity of pursuers burst through the door, including those well able to see what the dicing stakes had been. By that time, Simon’s dog had been joined by another.
By the time they fought their way through to the back door, Claes had gone, but there was a wicket door swinging loose in Winesack Street with both dogs barking before it, so they flung it open and poured through, and across a courtyard, and up to a door which opened courteously when they hammered on it, revealing a stout, shiny gentleman in towelling robes, loosely – too loosely – swaying at dog-height.
No one consoled him. Ignoring advice from the better-informed, merchants and mercers pressed past him, following Simon. They bounded from passage to parlour and into a medley of chambers furnished, like Paradise, with nothing but white clouds and seraphic pink bodies. Among them were several more mercers, a midwife, two counsellors, the chief clerk of the tonlieu, a Grand Dean, two guild-sisters and a bell-founder with muscles like anchor-chains.
No fleeing apprentice was visible through the steam or, indeed, rigorously sought. Two of the pursuers had the misfortune to miss their footing on the slippery tiles and fall into the baths, overcome with the heat, the noise and the inadvertent movements of bathers. Those who emerged, streaming, into the September night might have gone home at that point but for the sight of Simon, running fiend-faced and light-footed before them, with three or four dogs at his heels.
They followed, and were rewarded with the sight of the boy, the randy big bastard who had caused all the trouble, dashing through the darkness to the quay and down the steps to the water. A moment later, one of the long barges moored there swung out and began punting out into midstream, pointing towards Damme. On the steps, Simon paused and then, turning, sprang up to the quay and began running hard with the dogs for the next bridge, followed at an increasing distance by the breathless merchants and mercers, to whom had added themselves a curious householder or two and the porter of the bath house, exuding general goodwill and a willingness to be bribed by almost anybody.
Powerfully though the apprentice might drive his oar, he was only one man in a barge too broad for punting. The boat came sluggishly up to the bridge just as the Scots lord, perfectly trained, flung himself on to its incline and, balancing, jumped.
The reek must have met him in mid-air. Before he hit the laden barge, he would know wh
at it was he’d jumped into. As it was, he first crashed into the boy, who dropped his oar in the water. Then the lord Simon’s feet hit the cargo, and he stumbled and sank into something which responded with squeals and forced grunts and queer pipings, each of them borne on a belch of unpleasant vapour. Air from the bellies and bladders of Bruges’ deceased dogs and cats and the little dead pigs of St Anthony, retrieved from the water each night by this, the regular scavenging barge.
Sadly, the Scots lord was lying among them. The only oar was overboard. And so, in an ungainly plunge, was the youth Claes, forging, for the second time in two days, through the doubtful water of the canal to the far bank. Choking audibly, Simon of Kilmirren rose to his feet also, stepped up and, diving, began with ease and style to overtake the flapping apprentice.
On both banks the merchants followed him, and the dogs. By their lanterns they saw him master the interfering cross-sway of the water, and follow the darkened head jerking through the water ahead of him, beyond which was the bridge of the Poorterslogie, and the tall latticed bulk of the building itself, the clubhouse of the great White Bear Society.
The lad was no swimmer. He must know how swiftly the lord Simon was gaining on him. The youth would have to land at the Poorterslogie, and if he got there – and he might – before Simon, he wouldn’t get there ahead of the dog-pack. A pity. A pity to let it go so far, poor silly boy. For the water might rinse off the worst of the odour, but plenty would stick. Every brute in the place would be there on the bank with a welcome. And swimming coolly, effortlessly, at his back, the Scots lord Simon wasn’t going to rescue the apprentice. Not after all that had happened.
Simon got to the bridge a little after the dogs. Above the racket of barking, opening shutters rapped one after the other. Squares of light fell from their windows and showed the dogs grouped, growling and yapping at the head of the steps and the apprentice half out of the water, hesitating at the foot.
There were men there as well. They weren’t householders, because the light shone on badges. Drawn by the barking, they were a passing party of hondeslagers, the patrolmen paid by the city to clear the streets of stray dogs. Obligingly, they were cuffing the beasts from the steps; holding them back from young Claes. It annoyed the Scots lord, you could see. Thinking the youth might escape, he drove himself swiftly forward and lunging, seized the boy by the ankle and wrenched. The youth toppled off-balance and hit the steps with his shoulders. He exclaimed. The dogs, driven to frenzy by the redoubled odour, broke loose and pounced on the two men, one fallen, one upright. Claws ripped down the lord’s doublet and he took out his knife. The men, swinging leaden clubs, set about them, and dogs hurtled squealing, and dropped as the apprentice got to his feet, threequarters naked. The Scots lord straightened behind him.
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
THE 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 bur
ghers 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?”