He stopped, largely because the King was standing in front of him, slapping him on the shoulder. ‘You villain! Try to throw your King to his death! But here is the hero who stopped you. Robin of Berecrofts, I’m told?’
The boy’s eyes were open. He began to struggle up from where he was resting, but the King pushed him back masterfully, on the wrong shoulder. ‘No, no. My own doctors will visit you. And then we shall receive you, and see what can be done. You are old enough to hold a position. Yes, Nicol?’
‘He was courageous, my lord,’ Nicholas said. He remembered what he had said to get the boy’s head to clear. It had worked.
‘Then he should join some household that would train him. Do you not agree?’
The dogs were still licking Nicholas, and he pushed them aside. The boy’s gaze was fixed on his. Willie Roger said, ‘I think we all know, my lord, which household would be best. Nicol should take him himself. He has an army. A Scottish squire would embellish it.’
Nicholas had begun, a while ago, to realise that some such thing was going to be inevitable, if he were to continue staying close to the Berecrofts. Mistress Clémence ought to be pleased. ‘I should leave it to my lord King and to his family,’ Nicholas said. ‘But of course, I should have no objection.’ The boy’s pale face had crimsoned.
The King said, ‘Then that is settled. And now for the business I brought you for, and you cannot say, my friend, that it is not necessary. What you need – what we all need – is warm water.’
Very occasionally, when he was drunk, Nicholas came home talking, Gelis had learned. On this day, so exquisitely devised in all its features, it was his voice she heard first, as she waited fully dressed in the silence of the Canongate house where, at last, her son was at home, and asleep.
She had known since yesterday that something subversive was happening: the message had come from the Castle direct. The King, it appeared, requested the presence of young Master de Fleury this evening. He might be brought by his nurse, but not by the lady his mother. The note did not bear the King’s seal, but was brought by a man in royal livery from whom she learned that her husband had had a hand in composing it. The command was still, she was assured, that of the King.
She had been considering what to do when Archie of Berecrofts vaulted over as usual, and was casually helpful, as usual. ‘There’s a theory that barren bellies warm to other dames’ nurslings. Queens and Kings are like other folk: they want bairns.’ She had listened in silence, digesting that.
Then for reasons quite unconnected, Katelijne Sersanders had come: disingenuous, thoughtful, steering her way through all the shoals surrounding their past relationship in a way one couldn’t help but find disarming. She had left apparently undisturbed by the absence of Nicholas, who failed to make his expected appearance, and whose bed remained empty all night.
He had been kept by the King, so they said. He did not appear in the morning, and had not returned by this evening, when Mistress Clémence went off to the Castle with Jordan, reluctant and sleepy in velvet. She was glad when Archie’s boy offered to carry him, and she sent two men to escort them, with lanterns. The porter, gossiping, mentioned that the wee lady Margaret had gone up the hill with some ladies from Haddington. The Flemish lass had been with them. The one that brought Master Jordan’s new parrot.
The hours dragged. Bit by bit, the house quietened; the lights began to go out. No one came. It was later than Jordan had ever been allowed out before. Gelis walked from window to window, floor to floor. After a while she found a crooked shadow at her elbow: Pasque, snorting and grumbling. She was company. Gelis didn’t send her away. Twice she climbed to the top of the house and stood on the balcony that looked uphill towards the Netherbow Gate and the buildings of Edinburgh. The glow of the Castle, as usual, underlit the October clouds, and the wind turned her cold.
She was in her parlour when Pasque came running to take her out to the street, where folk were gathering to look at the glare to the west, steadily brightening. Govaerts, roused and running to join her, explained. ‘It’s the Castle balefire, my lady. It spreads the word that there’s trouble. The news can run from coast to coast before a courier has foot in the stirrup, and all Scotland can be under arms in two hours.’
‘What kind of trouble?’ said Gelis. ‘M. de Fleury is there, and our son.’
‘Armed ships in the estuary,’ Govaerts said. ‘Or word from the south that an army is crossing the Border. Or a mistake.’
‘You think it is a mistake,’ Gelis said. He was composed enough now, but running towards her, Govaerts had been hissing under his breath. ‘Zot! Zot! Zot!’
‘It would be strange if it wasn’t,’ Govaerts said. ‘This office has better advance information than even the King.’ He cleared his throat. ‘They will put the fire out. That will cancel it.’
‘If they are sober enough,’ Gelis said. No one answered. After a few minutes, the light from the west became unsteady. After ten minutes it had gone. A sour, lingering smoke drifted downhill, and Gelis went in. Half an hour later, her son Jordan returned, asleep in the arms of his nurse. With him came her two servants and a filthy creature with her skirts round her knees, whom Gelis recognised, with misgiving, as Katelijne Sersanders. Then she saw the litter.
The girl said, ‘It’s all right. That is, Robin’s had his arm broken: M. de Fleury again, but it all worked out for the best. Is his father about?’ Her face was smeared with dirt and there were great circles under her eyes.
‘What happened?’ said Gelis. She sent someone for Archie and brought the small cavalcade into the house. Mistress Clémence, on a nod, took the sleeping child upstairs.
‘Nothing,’ said the Baron Cortachy’s niece. ‘That is, they took Jodi to Willie’s house, and by the time it was all over, they’d forgotten about him, and M. de Fleury told us to bring him back quickly.’ She stopped and then said, ‘The King was annoyed you didn’t go, but M. de Fleury explained. It turned into a sort of race, and I’m afraid we all got rather dirty. I’ve got to go back to Margaret.’
‘Wait,’ said Gelis. ‘I was invited?’
The expression in the fevered eyes altered. ‘Oh dear,’ said Katelijne Sersanders. ‘He didn’t tell you.’ She considered. ‘There would be a reason.’
‘There usually is,’ Gelis said. ‘No doubt he will tell me himself. Unless he is staying permanently at the Castle?’
The girl looked at her. ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you moving into the High Street tomorrow? That is, we shall all go back to Haddington in the morning, and the house is yours after that.’ She paused. ‘He didn’t tell you that either.’
Gelis said, ‘No. It doesn’t matter. I knew he had a house inside Edinburgh.’
‘Leased to the Prioress. He asked her to move. She wasn’t too pleased, but she has taken another. Look,’ said Kathi. ‘He may have decided to refurbish it. He could have planned to tell you everything yesterday, but the King didn’t let him come home. He can be very single-minded. I should find it most annoying, in your place.’ She suddenly smiled. ‘I’d better go.’
Gelis looked after her. For three years, it seemed, the pretty house Nicholas had bought for his wife had been occupied by the Prioress of Haddington and her household. Now, suddenly, the Prioress had been asked to leave, and his wife was expected to live there. Once, the possibility had been mentioned, but he had said nothing since. She settled, for perhaps the last time, to listen for Nicholas coming home. But not, this night, in her own room.
The town was asleep when, finally, Nicholas de Fleury made his way down Castle Hill, down the High Street, through the Netherbow Gate (for a price) and towards the staircase that led up to his door.
Alonse, lighting his way, had not been especially helpful, although he gripped his employer’s arm once when he tripped, and twice waited, with resignation or patience, when various impediments made progress difficult. Alonse was the nearest thing Nicholas had to an automaton: that was why he had him. As time wen
t on, Nicholas discovered that he was walking with a limp and tried to correct it. It was only his neck and arm which had stiffened.
The lamp at the stairhead was still lit, and so was the other, through the pend and over the door that led direct to his offices. The moon had come up: in its brightness, the wick flames burned ochre. The watchman came out, and answered his questions satisfactorily enough, his eyes curious. Alonse waited neutrally, lantern in hand, to learn which door he would choose.
He didn’t especially want Govaerts or the clerks to find him comatose in his room in the morning. He turned up the steps to the house and told the night staff and Alonse to go to bed. He waited until they had gone, and without taking a light, found his way to a sink and got rid of the rest of what he had drunk.
He hoped it was the rest. His clothes, still sodden from neck to feet despite the long walk, were now freezing as well, engendering spasms of shivering. The water at the Castle, as promised, had been warm, and it had been his own choice to jump into it fully dressed. It had provoked another blurred expression of irritation about his wife’s absence; but the girl they had got for him to bathe with instead was silly and eager and presented no more problems than he had ever met as an apprentice, full of ale and joyous lustfulness in the secret corners of Bruges.
Remembering that made it easy. His booth had no curtain, but he removed from his mind the smells of food and wine, the squeals, the laughter, the splashing of others. Nevertheless, however he turned the girl in her excitement, he couldn’t escape the spectacle of the King, swollen-faced in his watery lodge, his little Queen clutched soaked on his knee, her immobile face turned outwards to the scented steam and all that was happening within it. Her face was staring out still when the King lifted his red-pelted arm from the water, and whipped the hood curtain in front of them both.
All of them had felt hot enough then. But not now.
The new glass windows of the Ca’ Niccolò were brilliant with moonlight. Aiming for his own quarters, Nicholas found he had stopped by the room where his son slept. The door was a little ajar. By stepping softly up to the threshold, he could just distinguish the cot with the child’s head sunk dark on the pillow. It did not stir. He might have gone in, but heard a movement beyond, by the window, and realised that Mistress Clémence was there, and awake. He lifted a hand in apology, and drew the door closed as he left.
The door of his own room was shut, but he saw underneath the line of flickering gold from the fire he always kept there, warming the cushions, the bedlinen, the heavy soft bedrobe and towels. He thought of them, walking towards it. Then he saw the twelve inches of shadow, blocking the light.
He made to turn, but too late. The door opened, and Gelis stood there. ‘Come in, please,’ she said.
She didn’t know how many women Nicholas had. She knew, of course, that in the months before Jordan was born, he had methodically bedded every mistress of Simon’s, as a journeyman of the lower grade would, laboriously proving his theory that Simon was infertile. It had proved unnecessary after Jordan, his image, had been born, but he had presumably enjoyed it. In any case, she was quite sure that on this his return, he had found similar sources of pleasure. He had indicated that she was equally free, so long as she observed discretion.
She therefore remained dressed tonight, presenting no diaphanous silhouette to her husband, and adduced by the heaviness with which he stood surveying her that she had been right. But she had guessed that already by the effortful quality of his voice, speaking to the watchman outside, and the vagaries of his step. She said, ‘A word. I am afraid I am going to insist.’ She raised her voice at the end of the sentence.
It was enough. He moved, closing the door between themselves and the way to the little boy’s room, and crossing to the platform of his bed, stepped up and disposed himself comfortably on the quilt, his bare head inclined on the pillow bere. Within the dark of the bedposts, she could not even distinguish his features. He said, ‘Shake me if I drop off to sleep. Jab me if you like; there is my knife. What drunken truths are you hoping for?’
The fire crackled. He had built a chimney-piece, such as they had now in some rooms at Bruges, and the light rippled and leaped over the hearth and the handsome tiled floor. She chose a stool halfway between the fire and the bed and sat down. She said, ‘On the ship, you told Father Moriz that I was free to take Jordan and go.’
‘Of course,’ he said. There was no hesitation.
‘Provided I never come back, and provided you never see Jordan again.’
‘So when are you going?’ he said. He had tucked his right hand behind his head; otherwise he lay still, completely at ease.
‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Now you can let the Prioress stay.’
‘Ah,’ he said. There was a space. She even thought, dazed with anger, that he had fallen asleep. Then he added, ‘One of my sins, I perceive. Are there more?’
She said, ‘Not even that; although I should like to have had warning, and to know whether you have a chamber there, too. No. I heard about your interesting evening: the King and his family brought to risk their lives on the towers of the Castle; Robin’s injury; the Adorne girl’s exhaustion; the men of your company whom only luck saved. I heard all about that, and the drunken idiocy of the balefire. But all that is your responsibility, not mine. You and I, as I understand it, are playing a different game, and I have decided to end it.’
‘Good,’ he said.
‘Good? After all those elaborate plans?’
‘Io son mercatante e non filosofo. I might say the same thing of you. If you can’t stand one day of reverses, then you have saved me from wasting my time. A game is only worth while between equals.’
She said, ‘You took Jordan into danger without me. That removes our common ground. And am I not wasting my time on a game so little regarded by you that all its course can be spoiled by some pointless demonstration of drunken bravado?’
He took the hand from behind his head and let it flop straight from the shoulder, fingers open. ‘My God,’ he said.
She could see his eyes were closed. When he spoke again, it was with insulting patience. ‘When,’ he said, ‘did you ever know me embark on a pointless demonstration of anything? Is Jordan injured in any way? No.
‘Did I suffer any form of impairment that will prevent me from pursuing this game, as you call it, and winning it whenever I choose? No.
‘So leave because you are losing. Leave because you are cowardly. Leave because you are jealous. But don’t pretend you are leaving because I have abandoned the game. I promise you I have not.’
‘Jealous!’ she said. ‘Of your bedmates!’ Then she felt herself slowly flush.
He did not reply.
She said, ‘He is my son. I have nothing to be jealous of. I won’t have him used.’
‘He wouldn’t have been,’ Nicholas said. ‘He was to have stayed in the High Street with you and his nurses, and with young Berecrofts as playfellow. Robin is to come as my equerry and page.’
She said, ‘You are moving as well?’
‘It is time to separate house and office,’ he said. ‘And it suits me to be near Adorne’s lodging. His ship has put into Leith.’
She sat up. ‘It has! Whom has he brought?’
‘His pregnant wife,’ Nicholas said. ‘But no son. They have left their doleful author behind, forced to try his luck with the new Pope in Rome.’
‘And the Boyds?’ said Gelis quickly. ‘The Earl and Countess of Arran and their children? Did they leave them behind?’
‘No,’ said Nicholas.
‘They’re here! But Tom Boyd and his father will hang!’
‘Didn’t you work it out?’ Nicholas said. ‘They couldn’t afford to leave them in Bruges, the Duke forbade it. They couldn’t bring the men here, they’d be hanged. But if Adorne left the whole tribe in England, the Princess and her children would be a threat to the Scottish throne all their lives, and James would never forgive Adorne for letting it happen. So Adorne
was left with only one thing to do.’
‘Which was?’ Gelis said. All the anger had gone, leaving the bright, clear calculation of the game: her schemes against his; the delight of exposition. His voice was shallowly drink-hoarse, but surprisingly unblurred.
He said, ‘Which was to take Tom Boyd to London and leave him there, with the prior consent of King Edward, who may keep him as long as he wishes. Lord Boyd has been given a pension, and left in some sinecure of a post in the north.’
‘And Mary? The King’s sister?’
Nicholas began to change his position. ‘She is on board Adorne’s ship with her children. He persuaded her to come. No doubt Margriet helped. The Countess thinks she is here to plead for her husband’s redemption.’
There was a silence. Gelis said, ‘Is that what you advised her to do?’
‘I didn’t see her,’ Nicholas said. ‘I told her husband to keep her with him in London.’
Gelis stared at the shadowy bed. She said, ‘Of course you would. And doting on Tom as she does, she would rush to agree to all that at once: to settle with Tom and her children in London. It was Adorne, then, who had to persuade her, for his own sake and the King’s, to come to Scotland alone with the children. Adorne must have had to pretend she could plead for Tom’s safe return and reinstatement. And when she gets here, and finds the King will do no such thing, nor let her go back – it is Adorne she will blame.’
‘I should think so,’ he said. ‘Also, Adorne will have to give up the Boyd land, or some of it. She’ll need something to live on while she hates him. But the King will be forever grateful, I’m sure. Adorne may even thank me some day.’
His voice was calm. A triumph of planning. A vindication of what he had said: for him, no demonstration was pointless. Save for Nicholas, the King’s sister Mary would never have left to roam with her husband But for Nicholas, Mary would have spent the last three years in comfort in Scotland, her marriage safely annulled, her controversial children unborn. Gelis said, ‘Does the King know his sister is here?’
To Lie With Lions: The Sixth Book of the House of Niccolo Page 22