Read Online Niccolo Rising by Dorothy Dunnett - Free Book Online Page B

on those leaves. You were saying?”
    Simon watched the servant disappear tranquilly enough, and led her to the bench, where he took off his jacket and spread it for her. “I wassaying that, like everyone on the good Bishop’s fine ship St Salvator , I was in Bruges to sell part of the cargo, to invest the proceeds, to buy and to lay orders and, most of all, to enjoy the arrival of the Flanders galleys. You could have asked me all that on board.”
    The trees were darker. A strengthening light, advancing, told that Ederic was coming back. “I wonder why I didn’t?” she said. She sat down.
    He said, “Because you were afraid I might give you another answer. There is a time for everything.”
    “And this is the time?” she said. Ederic, stooping, was introducing the brand to the pile of damp leaves. The leaves hissed, and a little smoke showed, and a trace of movement from the first moths. Simon made to sit down. “If you stand,” said Katelina, “you could tend the flame while Ederic takes the brand back to the kitchen. It is not the time to burn down my father’s house anyway.”
    Blue smoke rose from the fire. Ederic looked at his mistress and left. Or at least, withdrew from sight. Simon surprisingly knelt by the fire, staining his hose, and, bending, blew into its darker regions. The darker regions retorted. “If you wish to see me blackened,” he said, “I have no objection. As to your question, the art of timekeeping is one that is peculiarly Flemish. When the hour arrives, I expect a Fleming to tell me.”
    “You seem to have waited a very long time to be told. Perhaps you may find yourself waiting as long again. Oh.”
    Simon said, “I am afraid, if you sit over there, that you will continue to be stung. Let me recommend this side of the fire, where the smoke will blow past you. Why did you refuse his lordship? He had a fortune, and he would have died very quickly.”
    “Would he?” said Katelina. She considered, and then rose with his jacket and, spreading it, dropped by the fire. He was right. The smoke was just enough to ward off the gnats, but it flowed in his direction, not hers. Already his fair skin was flecked with soot, changing its classical contours, and his eyes shone.
    “Of course he would, with you as his wife, demoiselle. Although I am told he prided himself on his embraces. You didn’t experience them?”
    He must know perfectly well that Ederic was within earshot. She said, “I cannot really remember. I find courting tedious.”
    He had removed his hat. His hair and eyes gleamed in the firelight. The sky was lurid; the garden was dark. Her gallant Scotsman bowed his head, examining the erratic course of his fire. “Look,” he said. “So damp and so miserable. But at a touch” – he bent and blew – “the right touch, of course … Warmth. Light. Comfort.”
    Katelina van Borselen, black from her brow to her bosom, looked back at him. And then round at him, because swiftly, he had slipped round beside her.
    He said, “And sometimes, the right touch is not comfortable at all.But how can I find out whether my courting is tedious unless we are both black as well? My black hands here and here, and my black lips where you would like them. Katelina?”
    His breath was scented. The silk on his arms and his body was warm. His lips, arrived at her mouth, tasted of wood ash.
    His black lips were on hers, and his pink tongue was inside her pink mouth, disturbing her. Her chin, when she jerked it away, was wet and sticky. She wiped it with trembling fingers.
    “Mother Mary,” she said. “They said you had the conduct of an oaf and the talents of a girl, to the shame of your father. Now I believe them.”
    One hand remained caught at her breast. The other lay slack at her neck. He became perfectly still. He said, “ They? Your father?”
    She could not lie about her father. She twisted her shoulders, and his hands fell away. There was a space between them. His soiled face, intent