The Unicorn Hunt by Dorothy Dunnett

Author:Dorothy Dunnett
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307762436
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-10-12T10:00:00+00:00

Dans les parois de ta maison

Comme est une vigne qui porte

Force bons fruicts en la saison.

A wash of pain followed, and he fell.

He did not drag her with him, because she freed her arm a moment before, almost as if she were expecting it. At the time he was only aware of the shock of meeting the ground; and of the exclamations of John and Father Moriz behind. The Duchess spoke. ‘Leave him. He is not, I think, hurt.’

‘No,’ said Nicholas. He began to collect himself, and his thoughts. He had taken the fall on his right side, his good side, and his right hand felt odd. Otherwise there was nothing wrong. He had been dreaming, of what he could not quite remember. Of water. He said, ‘My hand.’

The Duchess said, ‘It’s a real treat, now and then, to be proved right. Gentlemen, are you fit?’ Her eyes gleamed in the dusk. Nicholas got to his feet.

John le Grant, coming forward, said, ‘Your grace, we didn’t fall. Are you all right?’

Nicholas grunted. The Duchess said, ‘No, you didn’t fall. You felt nothing. Neither did I. The alchemist who walked here with me some months ago didn’t fall either, but he stopped at the same place. The water he found – the excavation is covered – will serve the lodge when it is channelled.’

Father Moriz said, ‘Naturally, the work left the surface uneven. But no harm has been done.’

John le Grant brushed that aside. ‘How did your expert find water?’

‘With a plumb line,’ said the Duchess. ‘I brought one. Or simply by the sensation he feels in one hand.’ She spoke to Nicholas.

He said, ‘If I had another cup of wine, I could do it again?’ He could not see her expression.

She said, ‘The wine had little to do with it, except for clearing your mind. Natural forces need space.’

He said, ‘I think you are reading too much into a fall. You are saying that you think I divined the presence of water? And that you expected I would?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Oh, be angry. No man likes a stranger walking inside his head. But if you know about me, then I know more about you. Your friends tattle. There is a physician who says that you dream.’

‘Everyone does,’ Nicholas said.

‘To be sure.’ Her voice was bland. ‘Aye, well. I won’t ask what you were dreaming down there, but something about that river struck deep. Enough, I hoped, to bring alive this gift if you had it. You have.’

‘I fell,’ repeated Nicholas. His shoulder hurt. He wanted to shiver with cold.

She continued patiently. ‘And it is important. To you, and to me. For if you can divine the presence of water, you can divine other things.’

‘No,’ said the priest. It had the weight of a command.

‘It comes from God,’ said the Duchess Eleanor. ‘Do you doubt it?’

‘I have seen it done,’ said John le Grant. ‘But why Nicholas?’

‘Either of you might have had the same power. Many do. I suspect,’ said the

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