Niccolo Rising Read Free Page B

the faces of Felix, Claes and the lightermen. Its gaze returned and settled on Julius. Simon said, “Stealing a gentleman’s hound. The penalties are, as I remember, quite serious.”
    “And what about stealing beer?” Felix said. “And eating other men’s rabbits? If you want your dog, come down and get him.”
    Felix had a great deal to learn. Julius let him go on complaining. Above, the Scotsman turned, ignoring them, and stared at the lock-keeper who went off in a hurry and came back with the beer. He put it down in front of Simon. The girl in the steeple headdress, Katelina, had walked up beside him. She said, “I thought only workmen drank beer.”
    There was a glint in the handsome eyes, quickly concealed. She had surprised him by coming. Simon said, “When stuck in a stye, do what the pigs do. I offer you beer, or another half hour of the Bishop.”
    “Beer,” she said calmly. She was speaking in Scots, which was not easy to follow. “Pay the man. Or the children.”
    The lock-keeper had revised his opinion of Simon. He also understood Scots. He said, “Thank you, demoiselle. Meester Julius will tell you its worth. Meester Julius is a Bologna-trained lawyer.”
    The Scotsman failed to blench. The Scotsman let his considering gaze drift again over the crew of the lighter, and fixed on the most miserable member, a lighterman with three days’ growth of beard and a rash. “Meester Julius?” he said.
    “Meester Julius?” said Claes in the same moment.
    “Never mind,” Julius said. He knew he was being baited. He also knew he was going to get his money, if he had to ransom the dog for it.
    “Give him a coin,” the girl said. “Look.” She tilted her head, so that the hennin wagged like the mast of a ship, and began to unclasp the purse at her waist. She had dark, well-marked brows and a fine skin, its colour a little heightened by amusement or annoyance. Julius gazed at her.
    “Meester Julius,” said Claes.
    The Scotsman, smiling, laid a finger over her hand and instead delved into his own handsome wallet, drawing from it a handful of small foreign coins. He cast them with deliberate abandon into the barge, and watched smiling as they span and hopped in the bath and sank among the bottom-planks and the ropes of the barge. Then he stopped smiling and said, “Take your hands off my dog!”
    He was speaking to Claes. Julius looked round. Now they were sinking more rapidly. The mooring-rope slid through the lightermen’s hands. The group of dignitaries on the lower bank vanished from view, every head turned in their direction. The wall of the lock towered above them, green with weed.
    As always, there were leaks in the wall. Gorged with water, it spewed carefully into the barge, splattering Felix’s smartly stuffed lap. It found and spiralled down the favourite toque Julius was wearing. It hit the Scotsman’s hound, which skipped aside, growling. The hound had been standing, Julius saw, astride the Kilmirren crest of its own unstrapped back-cloth, now spread like a bathmat beneath it. It was glaring at Claes. The crest was not what it had been. Claes said, “I’m sorry, Meester Julius, but I had to do something. The Duke of Burgundy wouldn’t like it.”
    Julius began to laugh, just as a jet of real virulence suddenly sprang from the wall and cascaded over the barge. It increased in power. It began to fill, with dynamic effect, a corner of the Duke of Burgundy’s bath, which proceeded to urge its barge sideways. The lightermen, already mesmerised, allowed the slack in the rope to run upwards. A further discharge, more violent than any so far, hit the opposite side of the bath. It started to spin just as the lock gates on the inland side proceeded to open, and the mooring ropes fell.
    Far above them the Scotsman was saying something, his face pink and white with annoyance. Beside him, the girl Katelina bit her lip, the beer standing forgotten between them. In the lighter, equally, no one was