Willie said, ‘Henry Arnot’s being sent off to Rome. Why don’t you do something properly, just for once?’
‘I do,’ said Nicholas. ‘I’m trying to run a Bank properly.’
‘You’re back on water,’ said Willie Roger. ‘You always have a bloody short temper when you’re on water. Well, you’re wrong. I’ve spoken to your Julius. I’ve spoken to your Gregorio. I’ve spoken to your Govaerts. I don’t think you’ve ever done anything with everything you’ve got, except perhaps music. And that’s just improvising. That’s not striving for perfection.’
The clerks, their necks red, were writing assiduously. Nicholas sighed. ‘You think I’ve forgotten about the Chapel Royal money.’
‘I know you have. Haven’t you?’ Roger said.
‘Drums, you promised me,’ Nicholas said.
‘If you managed to extract the money for your Passion and my – You haven’t?’ said Roger.
‘Why do you think Henry Arnot is going to Rome?’ Nicholas said. Someone was hovering. Alonse.
‘Why?’ said Will Roger. His face, too, had turned pink.
‘The King,’ Nicholas said, ‘has reached the conclusion that the Priory of Coldingham ought to be suppressed, and its revenues directed instead to the Chapel Royal of St Mary the Virgin at St Andrews. I know Henry Arnot is going to Rome. Why the hell do you think he is going to Rome?’
Will Roger kissed him. It was highly unpleasant but not unexpected, and the clerks, turning round, had raggedly embarked on a round of applause. His grip must be slipping. Alonse, his face neutral said, ‘Messire?’
Nicholas pulled himself away and gave Roger a blow between the shoulderblades that was a quarter bonhomie and three-quarters meant to rattle his teeth. Then he turned to Alonse.
‘Messire,’ said Alonse. ‘The lady of Cortachy has called. She asks if she can speak to you privately. I have taken her to sit in your chamber.’
Of course. Anselm Adorne’s pregnant wife, come to beg; come to quarrel. Everyone did.
At home, she made small jokes about her size, since the swelling this time was everywhere, and she was hard put to disguise it: wearing her robes extra long to hide the grotesque feet and legs, and enfolding half her neck and her chest in the drapes of her white linen headgear. Even her face felt inflated. Whereas Claes vander Poele – Nicholas, now de Fleury – looked at first sight the same as the troubled, determined lad of nineteen who had asked her help and Anselm’s to marry the widow Charetty his employer in the Jerusalemkirk.
He was not the same, of course. He was thirty, and made to seem taller by some change in the shape of his muscles, and the way he now stood. His eyes held the attention now the way Anselm’s did, by their authority, and not just because they were wide-set and grey. She thought he had probably modelled himself on Anselm, and set her lips, remembering the wound he had given her husband, and the tiff she and Anselm had had over it. Anselm had always been soft with the boy. But now, of course, the boy himself had had his first son, and she had not been one to harbour a grudge.
She said, because she was thinking of it, ‘I’ve been to see your young Jordan. A babe to be proud of, and a lovely young mother. You are lucky.’
‘I know,’ he said. He had remained in the doorway while she spoke, but now he came quickly in and sat down beside her. He said, ‘I would have come to you. What can I bring you? What do the doctors say?’ That was the other difference. The dimples had gone.
She smiled. ‘Alonse was kind. He is bringing some milk. Dr Andreas says I have to rest, that is all. Jan was no trouble, nor will this one be.’
He said, ‘Jan is safely on his way to Rome, so far as I know. He will come to no harm from me. Is that what you wanted to know?’
He was direct. She supposed she looked tired, and he wanted to shorten the encounter. She said, ‘He was a silly boy. Yes, I did want to know that, and about Sersanders and Kathi. Although Kathi has taken your part more, I must say, than I think she should.’
Unexpectedly, the dimples appeared. He said, ‘Kathi takes everyone’s part, that of Gelis included. I think she has made her peace there. And Sersanders and I have an understanding, I think. We spent a great deal of our boyhood together. I haven’t forgotten. Nor what you did for me and for Marian and the girls.’
‘Tilde’s baby!’ said Margriet, flushing again with happy remembrance. ‘And Gregorio and Margot, whose child will come just before mine! All to grow up together, companions to your Jordan! Are we not blessed?’ She broke off. ‘You knew about Margot?’
His smile returned. ‘Yes, of course. We are blessed, as you say. But you are still anxious about something? Or my lord your husband has a message?’
She sat up. She should have made things plain at once. ‘No, no. Anselm has no idea I am here. Anselm thinks he can do everything; asks no help; takes no advice. All the time he was away …’ She bit her lip and stopped. She said, ‘Everything that was correct, we all did. Two births, two christenings, with the great from every land in attendance. My home was not my home for eighteen months. My own children stayed away; Jan was put out of temper … We did our best.’
‘No saint could have done more,’ the young man said. ‘No one knew, I think, that the whole burden would fall upon you.’ He sounded reserved.
‘I did,’ Margriet said. ‘I knew as soon as –’ She broke off again. ‘But Anselm was thinking only of us, and of Jan. The sacred relics he would bring back; the thanks he would receive from the Duke and King James; the goodwill of the Pope – that was for us, for his family.’ She had a kerchief somewhere and started to hunt for it in her layers of clothing.
Claes said, ‘The Princess will remember all that. She is only suffering because the King will not let her join her husband.’
‘She wouldn’t see me!’ Margriet said. ‘I called to see the babies, and your Gelis, and Mary would not come from her chamber! And when I told Anselm, he said he had known all along. He knew the King wouldn’t let Tom return. He knew the King would imprison her. And yet he got her to come.’
There was a silence. She blew her nose. Claes said, ‘Demoiselle? Wasn’t that, too, for the family? It would have been bad for you and for your husband if you had left the Countess in England.’
He was a man. Even so. Margriet van der Banck looked up and rammed down her fist with the kerchief. She said, ‘Have you seen that poor girl? She thinks of nothing, wants nothing but her Tom. And so do her poor fatherless children. What is Anselm’s future or mine compared with that? This is not our country! We could go back to Bruges tomorrow!’
Alonse came in with the milk, looked at her, and left after laying it down. Claes said, ‘You think I can help?’
Her mouth was dry. She picked up the beaker and gulped from it. She said, ‘The Countess will see you. Gelis says she never stops asking for you. Tom said it was your advice to stay together, a family in England, and they would have done that if Anselm hadn’t overruled them. You helped Mary get away once.’
‘I see,’ he said. He seemed to be thinking. He said, ‘I can go and see her, of course. I shall do that. But simply because I helped her before, the house is guarded. It would be almost impossible to get her away. And even if that weren’t so, I might find it harder than you or Ser Anselm to suffer the consequences. I have Gelis and the baby to think of.’
‘Of course,’ she said. Put like that, it was plain. Her throat was painful, and she cleared it. She said, ‘It’s just that I’d like Mary to know that we wouldn’t hurt her, and did what we thought best. Anselm is so … He sometimes can’t see beyond his own family. And the King is grateful enough, but sore that Mary has not come to stay of her own accord, and cooler than Anselm expected. If you could tell the King that we did all we could. Not,’ said Margriet, in a sudden burst of recollection, ‘that I could ever take to Thomas Boyd or his father.’
‘That should earn you the King’s pardon for almost anything,’ said Claes with a faint smile. The lids had dropped over his eyes. He said, ‘I’m
not sure that the King would welcome interference, but I shall do what I can. I’ll see the Princess, of course. I’ll try to tell you what happens. But go home now. Alonse will take you. Say nothing to Ser Anselm. And above all, I beg you, make sure that no one else helps the Countess run back to her husband. Whoever does so will pay, and she herself might live to regret it. Tom Boyd is a disagreeable man. He wanted position and wealth through his wife. As soon as the Queen starts to bear, his last chance will have gone.’
She looked at him in horror. ‘You think –’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But you may have done the right thing, even though the lady Mary might not think so at the moment.’
He helped her rise, and as she took her leave, she gave him a kiss. She felt him recoil. It upset her, thinking how she had intruded on him her thick heated body and wet face. She went home.
Chapter 14
A WELL-RUN CHILDREN’S establishment, to the mind of Mistress Clémence, had much in common with a well-run military barracks. It was the extreme competence of the Burgundian camp under Captain Astorre which increased the hopes she had already formed of M. de Fleury’s capability as a parent. The talents of his wife, the lady Gelis van Borselen, had now also been demonstrated, to Mistress’s Clémence’s satisfaction, in the transformation of the house in the High Street
The lady Gelis was, of course, already conversant with the requirements of a royal household. The King’s sister and her attendants were suitably quartered, with neatly erected extensions for their housing and service in the gardens and the Priory’s mansion next door. The cooks were reconciled, and some of the lesser servants turned off in favour of better-qualified ones from the Canongate house.
The nurse of the two royal children went back to Bruges after a week; but the wet-nurse, a humble creature called Scone, appeared glad to remain. The royal children were aged eighteen months and three months and on the point of being irremediably spoiled: it was fortunate that they arrived when they did. Jordan, introduced to them carefully, had shown no sign of jealousy.
His father, with remarkable good sense, had left the household alone for two weeks, but had arranged to communicate with the child at regular intervals. Most parents sent presents. M. de Fleury sent questions: What have you eaten today? What is the parrot saying? Have you new gloves for winter? Mistress Clémence doubted whether the answers, returned through some servant, ever reached M. de Fleury himself; but composing them gave his son great satisfaction.
Indeed, the child had to be protected from over-much attention: members of the royal bodyguard sometimes found their way indoors, the foremost being the man Andro Wodman, who spoke her own kind of French and whom she tended to keep, perhaps, longer than she should. And then the boy Robin came often, and the girl Katelijne stopped by very occasionally when on her way with her mistress to see the Countess. But both these young people were level-headed, while the lady Gelis, managing it all, was clearly better suited than she had been, alone in her rooms in the Canongate. But for the silly, poor-spirited girl they were housing, Mary Stewart, Countess of Arran, the new life might have been close to ideal.
She hinted as much, once, to the young girl Sersanders on one of her visits. The girl, who had taken up knitting, had come in with a large woollen object which proved to be a hat destined for Jordan. As always, it was to be given to the lady Gelis and not direct to the child.
The girl had sat down, knees akimbo and balanced the hat on her head. ‘She isn’t interested in anything. Even the children. Would you miss Tom Boyd as much as that?’
The nurse had smiled. ‘I don’t know him.’
‘I did,’ said Kathi. ‘I think he was just the first man she saw outside the nest. Like the chickens in Cairo. The King thinks if she can be made to make friends with the Queen, the Queen will feel the same about him. He wants them both to go with the children and stay in Kilmarnock. He gave the Queen the Boyd lands in the west.’
‘I do not think,’ said Mistress Clémence, ‘that such a plan would have much chance of success.’
‘No. Not, anyway, while Mary blames her brother for everything. Although you wouldn’t be any worse off in Kilmarnock. Dean is a fine castle, and the children would like it. And M. de Fleury has his new keep nearby at Beltrees. The Countess likes him,’ said the girl thoughtfully. ‘I don’t know where he’s gone, but I shouldn’t be surprised if he solves all the Countess’s problems when he comes back.’
She left the hat and went off. An old head on young shoulders. A fast intellect running a body scarcely able to keep up with it, from what the Adorne physician, Dr Andreas, said. She had seen it in other children, poor things. It sometimes struck her to wonder whether, in M. de Fleury, she was not witnessing a survivor of the same combination. She had looked for it in the boy but found nothing but balanced good health and normality. Of course, she had had the upbringing of Jordan.
Nicholas returned to Edinburgh exactly when his wife calculated he would, and called on her almost immediately. Gelis heard the bodyguard’s challenge below, followed immediately by the familiar voice. She dismissed Mistress Clémence in the middle of what they had been arranging; the nurse curtseyed and bent, before leaving, to pick up and replace the object of their discussion, which had slipped to the floor. Then Nicholas was shown in. ‘Arrested at my own door!’
Their eyes met. The message was always something quite different; something which threatened to stifle her plans, as at Hesdin. She forced her five senses to work for her, not against her, and sat down gracefully, folding her hands. ‘Andro should have been on duty. Perhaps the others will now tell one another who you are. Or you could leave them a drawing. Your bruises have faded quite nicely.’ She could see the marks still, which in the dusk of the bedchamber she had taken for shadows. Such vanity. She added, ‘The coverlet was badly stained.’
‘I was sure you would hear all about it,’ he said. He leaned against the door, his head almost touching the beams of the ceiling, his thumbs in his belt. He had left his cloak below, and was not therefore leaving immediately.
‘The Countess heard, from her sister,’ Gelis said. ‘The Countess thinks it was thoughtful of you to spare me the ultimate embarrassment of the bath-stalls. She is anxious that, despite all, we should have a marriage as happy as hers. What a brute you have been to that girl. And to the Adornes.’
‘So you have already said. Save your sympathy. Le feu épure l’or. The good Baron Cortachy as usual will emerge glowing richly,’ Nicholas said.
‘And his wife Margriet?’ Gelis said. ‘In case you are interested, Betha Sinclair goes across every day to see if she can help. Phemie too.’
‘Phemie?’ Nicholas said. Phemie was Betha’s cousin, and shared her rooms in the Priory. In the midst of her disgust, it pleased Gelis to have tripped Nicholas into that question.
‘Margriet asked for her. They met in Bruges, at the christening of the Countess’s first child. Bel of Cuthilgurdy as well.’
This time she received only the flick of a dimple. ‘I know Bel isn’t here. The shrine of sanity has presumably found better things to do than follow our family carroccio. She has left us to the angel of distributive justice.’
‘I hope not,’ Gelis said. ‘Justice is not what I had in mind. Are you here for some reason, such as to apologise; or merely on your way to visit the Countess?’
‘Apologise for what? You are enjoying this,’ Nicholas said. ‘I am here to see the Countess, and the little broquette, and yourself. Govaerts and your steward have solved most of the problems, I gather, but there may be others to settle. Also, I shall divide my time now between this house and the other. There are rooms set aside, I am told.’
‘With a separate entrance,’ she said.
‘But within earshot,’ he said. ‘People have been known to conceive by the ear. The Virgin Mary. Two or three friends we both know. Did you read the paper I left you?’
‘I burned it,’ she said.
‘Oh,’ he said. He wore one of hi
s clown’s faces, full of disappointment. ‘You should have kept it for when Simon comes home. Simon needs it.’
‘Certainly,’ Gelis said, ‘you do not.’
‘No,’ he said. He pushed himself thoughtfully off the door. ‘But one must keep up the average. The Marquis of Ferrara had sixty-six bastards, they say:
‘De ce côté-ci du Pô
Tous sont fils de Niccolò.
‘I aim,’ Nicholas said, ‘for both sides of the Alps.’
‘Why not?’ Gelis said. ‘You may have made a better start than you know. I have no complaints, and no questions. Go and see the Countess and make her even happier.’
He went to see the Countess, since that was why he was here, but first he visited Jodi, who had been smartly switched into a fresh tunic, he deduced, to receive his unheralded parent. Both Jodi and Mistress Clémence, for different reasons, looked rather pink.
Mistress Clémence was a choice of Gelis’s with which Nicholas had no fault to find – but then, he had always had a respect for his wife’s managerial powers. Whether employed by Gelis, by himself, or now within their joint ménage, Clémence of Coulanges had successfully steered her correct way through the changing relationships, while keeping her main task firmly before her: the wellbeing and training of Jordan.
He took her advice, within limits. When it was brought home to him now that Jodi was one of three children, and that he must give some attention to the others, he accepted that it was necessary for Jodi as well as for the Countess’s brood, and acted accordingly. He had grown up among child apprentices, serving-maids’ children, the children of his own employer who became later his wife. He had carried Tilde about on his back, who now had her own child, named Marian. As he sat, obtaining strange sounds from the whistle, he thought, not for the first time, of Margot’s coming child, so long deferred because of the taint in her family. He had been prepared to find the same thing in Jordan. He supposed Margot felt as he had. Sometimes, in the stream of such thoughts, he wondered why he was doing what he was doing; but not for very long. Soon, he got up and went to see the King’s sister.
To Lie With Lions: The Sixth Book of the House of Niccolo Page 24