‘With her brother. She had some crazy idea of protecting them both. Nicholas should never have let her come: they always end up in escapades of some sort. This time she could have killed herself, and Nicholas came back in a fairly bad state. Moriz says he had been divining.’
‘What happened?’ Tobie said.
Margot answered. ‘Afterwards? Kathi had to come back to Bruges for her aunt, and Nicholas and Gelis went to Antwerp.’ She smiled. ‘Nicholas bought a house in Antwerp four years ago, but didn’t tell anyone. Gregorio was furious.’
‘Why?’ Tobie said. He wished he were less tired, or less drunk. None of this was what he had expected.
‘Why Antwerp? Secrecy, we suppose. He hadn’t decided yet what to do. And now it removes Gelis from the gossip of Bruges. People still talk about Simon. And he thought it would keep Jordan safe.’
‘Jordan?’ The gross man, Simon’s father came to mind.
Margot said, ‘What are we doing, keeping you sleepless on your first night? The rest can wait till tomorrow. Come. Gregorio will take you to your room.’
He remembered who Jordan must be. ‘The child?’ he said. ‘Keep him safe from what?’
Then he read the letter from Moriz in Bruges that she showed him.
After a while, he looked up. Margot had gone, and Gregorio was sitting quietly, nursing his cup. Tobie said, ‘Henry tried to kill the little boy?’ The boy Robin had been there; the new page who had been taken to Iceland. He wondered who Robin’s father might be.
‘He tried to kill Nicholas too, a while ago. I remember Henry from Madeira. The little brute should have been hanged. As you see, Nicholas has decided to chastise him himself. I shan’t mourn him.’
‘It may be the other way round,’ Tobie said. ‘Dear Christ … What did Gelis do?’
Moriz doesn’t say. Henry is her nephew. Presumably she would think the army less humiliating than prison. And when Simon de St Pol does descend on them all, it will be Nicholas he will single out, not his wife.’
There was a long silence. Then Tobie said, ‘You said we were wrong in our fears. You haven’t said that we were wrong to have fears. Nicholas and Gelis are not together from love. Why are they together?’
‘I don’t know who could tell you. Kathi, perhaps,’ said Gregorio. ‘They are waging a war, Moriz thinks. An impersonal war, it seems to me, of skill and attrition, rather than something sprung from contempt, or hatred or loathing. For her, the child is of importance because it is important to Nicholas. For him, the child has a right of its own.’ It might have been Gregorio’s own deduction. More likely, it was the conclusion – the informed conclusion – of Margot.
‘What is he like, the child?’ Tobie said. ‘Hounded from person to person, how has he grown?’
Gregorio looked at him, smiling. ‘Are you afraid of another monster in embryo? Veere gave him a fright, I am sure, but there has been a continuity of upbringing, Moriz says, which has not spoiled the child or warped it so far. And even its nurses have no complaint against Nicholas as a father. He has impressed them, I am told.’
‘And he has taken Henry with him?’ Tobie said. ‘Perhaps he means to train him as well.’
‘No,’ Gregorio said. ‘The consensus is that Simon’s son is not worth redeeming.’ He paused. ‘You know Nicholas would welcome you back.’
‘Would he?’ said Tobie. It emerged more sharply than he meant, and he was sorry.
‘Well, we should,’ said Gregorio.
In Antwerp, as the freshness of June merged into the heat of July, Mistress Clémence of Coulanges was pleased to find that the child Jordan de Fleury, responding to firm, kindly treatment, was virtually himself once again, although a little inclined to cling, and to ask for his father. His extreme distress at the mention of Veere had caused Mistress Clémence to advise against repeating the visit, despite the lady of Veere’s many kind invitations. Happily, Jordan’s mother fully agreed. Mistress Clémence was gratified.
In some ways it was a pity, for the wide skies and soft sands of Walcheren would have been pleasant in summer. But there were other meadows, other beaches; and excursions were easier than they had ever been, with the size of the bodyguard at her command, and the amenability of Pasque, who had received a great fright, and who in any case melted into complaisance, given the presence of jolly, muscular men in her kitchen. The helpful Bita, despite her even more helpful relatives, had been dismissed.
There remained the Lady. By now, it was perfectly clear, to Mistress Clémence at least, that this was not a marriage of indifference, no matter how much time the parents might spend apart. Returning from Bruges, the mother had been distant in manner for several days. Of course, her lord had blamed her for what had happened, and Mistress Clémence herself felt some guilt. She had seen jealous children before, and spoiled children. She knew what they could do, and she knew the anger they provoked in shocked adults.
Even so, she thought the lady Gelis had been unprepared for her husband’s treatment of the St Pol boy. Oddly, the good-looking woman, the German, had been more discerning, both towards the unfortunate boy and the sieur de Fleury. Mistress Clémence had admired her competence, but thought it as well that she had returned to Cologne. This marriage had enough to contend with.
Certainly, the husband had taken steps to keep in touch with both his wife and the child; the tales that came were often amusing, as one heard the Lady relating them. It could be taken for granted that she was more anxious than she showed.
Such parental attention was helpful when the boy Robin of Berecrofts came to leave, for the child had come to think of Robin in much the same possessive terms as his father; the disappearance of both to Iceland had taken some time to forgive, and Jordan did not enjoy tales of the sport that Master John or Father Moriz or especially the demoiselle Kathi had enjoyed in their company.
Robin himself would miss the child, Clémence thought, although no blow would ever be as great as the dismissal he had suffered at Veere. At first he had waited, withdrawn, for the threatened orders. Next, as the days passed, it seemed likely that the sieur de Fleury had either forgotten him, or was going to leave him neglected in Antwerp. Then one day the boy, flushed, had received a letter in his master’s own hand which had redressed all that silent misery in one stroke.
It contained an apology, it would seem, although in what words the boy did not say. It also contained a request. Until the future of Henry was settled, it would be advisable, said the sieur de Fleury, that Robin and the young St Pol should not meet. Robin therefore was to place himself under Diniz at Bruges, there to continue his training in arms, and to study the methods of the Banco di Niccolò. Thus, whatever was destined to happen, he would return to his father with something of value.
Robin had left for Bruges the same day, with the regular courier. He was not going to war, but at least he was going to the heart of the Flemish business, where all his master’s dispatches first arrived. Robin already knew Catherine de Charetty. Now he would meet the other step-daughter and Diniz her husband. And nearby, of course, were Katelijne and Anselm Sersanders.
Jordan’s manner became petulant for a while, and Mistress Clémence dealt with it with her own brand of patient remorselessness. She was sorrier for the mother. Scotland might have been alien, but it had provided the lady with a busier, more companiable life than she now led in the isolation of Antwerp. She wondered if Dame Gelis allowed herself to remember, now and then, her castle of Beltrees and her houses in Edinburgh and the Canongate; and whether her husband would have been astonished if she did.
Chapter 35
OUTSIDE BEAUVAIS, the Duke of Burgundy’s summer campaign proceeded to fulfil all its unfortunate promise. The initial impulsive assault might have succeeded, had the attackers possessed a few proper ladders, and a little more ammunition for their guns. The town should certainly have fallen when the Duke himself turned back to invest it, with John le Grant and Jacques d’Orson controlling the artillery. And even though the citizens pro
ved to be positive Tartars, hurling fire-faggots in the faces of the attackers and repairing the breaches almost before they were made, the town would have capitulated soon enough had it not been immediately and extravagantly reinforced from behind, at the one spot Duke Charles had insisted on leaving unguarded.
The air above the Burgundian camp hung thick with agonised oaths. ‘Holy Mother!’ cried Captain Astorre. ‘They were most of them bloody women! Did ye see the one with the hatchet!’
I thought she was looking for you,’ Nicholas remarked.
‘I’m not surprised,’ Julius said. ‘Women getting excited. They don’t want the rude soldiery tramping through their clean parlours.’
‘God’s toenails!’ said Astorre. ‘Where have you been? They’re keeping the Bresle gate on fire with bits of their own houses! I tell you, the women round here are worth more than rich German countesses!’
‘It’s a pucelle tradition,’ said Nicholas soothingly. All the commanders were grumbling, and the Italian captain was speechless; he began to think he might have got Astorre to Scotland after all. There was nothing more he could do. The strategic advice went to the Duke, and the Duke vetoed it. Everyone had heard the shouting from the Grand Bastard Anthony’s tent, when even his powerful half-brother couldn’t shake Charles’s belief in his own perspicacity.
Nicholas had made some attempt at persuasion himself, but his role at this court was that of financial and political adviser; his company was part of the army. He was aware that the sense of frustration was general in the inner administration as well, extending even to the Duke’s most loyal friends: Philippe de Commynes, his Master of Household; the Chancellor Hugonet, who kept day-to-day command of the affairs of the duchy, and of the ever-changing trains of envoys – from France and Milan, from England, Naples and even from Scotland.
Duke Charles had called Nicholas before him after the Scottish embassy. One of the equerries, he was almost sure, had been Andro Wodman. There had been no chance to drop a hint about the Duke’s military tactics, since the tirade merely covered all the usual complaints about Scotland. Nicholas recapitulated, humbly, all that he had already offered in the direction of loans, ships, guns, and long-term Scottish planning.
‘But Iceland!’ the Duke had interrupted. ‘What can you do for us in Iceland, except waste time and resources on a personal business adventure, and force the lord of Cortachy to do the same!’
‘But he has received a great honour as a result,’ Nicholas had protested. ‘Anselm Adorne is now the Scottish Conservator in Bruges, and trusted by the King, as I am.’
‘And now the King has gold!’ the Duke had said, switching complaints. ‘What will he use it for? To send an army to help France?’
‘As my lord has already heard, I am sure, the Scottish Parliament has forbidden the King to lead such an army, and it will not leave without him. What this has achieved,’ Nicholas said, ‘is to provide the Scottish King with the money he craves to improve his own estate, so that he has no need of a French pension.’
‘Such as you have,’ the Duke said. ‘Depleting the French treasury, the argument ran. You want to go and see him this summer, you said.’
‘There is a difference,’ Nicholas said. ‘If I am killed, my successor will not fight for France. Kings die young in Scotland and a pension, once arranged, is easily continued.’
The Duke had grunted, and soon he was dismissed. The Chancellor Hugonet had been present throughout: a friend of Adorne’s, but in other ways a man worth cultivating. Some time after that, Nicholas went and sat on the grass beside his legal partner, stretching his legs. ‘Julius, did you know Cardinal Bessarion should be in France by next month?’
‘I knew he’d been made Papal Legate. I thought he was too ill to travel. Where’s he going?’
‘Not here,’ Nicholas said. ‘He wrote to the Duke, but Charles isn’t taking advice, as we’ve noticed, even from Sixtus. He’s travelling through Lyons to the Loire. I’d like to see him.’
‘So should I,’ Julius said. ‘Why not? It’s easy. We just abandon the siege and tell the Duke we’re going to go off for a few weeks to France. He won’t worry.’
‘No, he won’t,’ said Nicholas mildly. ‘I’ve got leave already. If I’m going to keep up the fiction, I have to report to Louis some time. Then I bring back all the French secrets to Burgundy. But not until we’ve taken Beauvais.’
‘You devious … Can I come?’ Julius said.
‘Ask me later,’ said Nicholas. He waited. He knew Julius wouldn’t like that.
Julius said, ‘You won’t be sorry to abandon the brat. You know everyone thinks he’s your son?’
‘I hope so,’ said Nicholas. ‘And don’t deny it. It may keep him alive a week or two longer. I’ve even told Hugonet that he’s called Jordan.’
‘Why?’ said Julius.
‘I don’t know. Word gets about,’ Nicholas said.
In private, Nicholas gave some consideration from time to time to the matter of Henry, just as, among his other business concerns, he allotted time to his wife and son Jordan. The couriers who passed regularly between the camp and his office in Bruges connected with others from Antwerp. He knew what Gelis was doing, and Jordan heard from him every few days. They were compiling a poem together.
He was not compiling a poem with Henry, unless it were the groundwork for an epitaph. The irony of the situation was bearable only if ignored; the fact that Henry de St Pol of Kilmirren, jokingly rumoured to be his son, was his son. Julius, of course, had no idea of it; nor had Astorre. Diniz had guessed. Wherever he was, Tobie knew; and carried the paper that proved it. And Gelis had guessed, for her dead sister Katelina was Henry’s mother who, marrying Simon, had persuaded him that Henry was his child. Which Simon, thank God, still believed. For if Simon ever learned the truth, he would kill Henry.
The problem, at the moment, was to prevent Henry from killing the man who had shamed him at Veere; whom Henry knew only as Nicholas de Fleury, a base-born apprentice with a grudge against Simon his father. Initially, Nicholas had placed the boy entirely under the rule of Astorre, and from Péronne to Nesle, had remained out of his orbit. It would be hard enough for a self-willed spoiled child without the thought that his captor was gloating.
The first reports indicated a sullen silence, as he expected. In a few days, that had changed. The boy, said Thomas (Thomas!), was amazingly quick on his feet, and he would thank everyone to give him first call on him. It emerged, as time passed, that Henry was not only fast but eager and biddable. Give him your spurs to get ready, and they were shining like mirrors. If you fancied an onion, he’d find a garden and dig till he got one. He’d groom the dirtiest horse; run the most strenuous errands; lug water; start fires; find fresh straw for the bedding. After one little jib, he’d even started to empty the night soil. And all with a smile, as sweet as you please, with that dimple.
A pretty boy. Naturally, after all that had been said, none laid a finger on him. But the women of the camp chucked him under the chin, and pulled him close on the grass for a cuddle, and he always smiled, with that high-flushed rose-leaf skin and the glowing blue eyes. A lovely boy, who only looked sad when someone mentioned the sieur de Fleury. It began to be discussed in the tents, how he had come to be beaten so badly by the padrone. If the two had been intimate in the past, there was no sign of it now. The boy would not talk, but somehow the rumour went round that he had been asked to do unspeakable things, and at length had refused. Certainly, on the few occasions when he had to report to the sieur de Fleury’s own tent, the spring left the boy’s step and he loitered, with despair on his face, not a smile.
The rumours reached Nicholas through Astorre. He confirmed them for himself, witnessing the boy’s bright face and willing manner, and also the change that occurred if their glances happened to meet. Standing before him in his tent, Henry cut a figure both timid and brave; at times he would shiver. On his face, for Nicholas alone, there would be fixed an expression of mockery: an almost irres
istible invitation to hit him. It pained Nicholas, almost, to disappoint him.
For a boy of eleven, it was clever: it was diabolically clever. But he was only eleven, and even when driven by hatred, could not deny his nature for ever. The day came when, his head turned by the rough camaraderie and the increasing show of goodwill, he volunteered shyly to share in some of their games. The fierce ones were beyond him, but his accurate eye and superb training gave him an advantage with the bow and even the crossbow that they thought at first freakish, and then greeted with good-natured praise. He should have accepted it, and returned to his tasks. Instead, day by day, he continued to vie with them, and sometimes to beat them. Then, when he sat with the women, he boasted.
At Beauvais, he received a black eye, and Astorre went to see Nicholas in his tent. ‘The brat’s in trouble.’
‘No longer everyone’s friend?’ Nicholas had guessed most of it.
‘He got tired of that. Now he’s trying to play them off one against the other. Soon they’ll realise what he’s up to and do for him. He’s disrupting the company.’
‘At eleven?’
‘I’ve seen one woman do it,’ said Astorre. He paused. ‘If you don’t care what happens, do nothing.’
‘It’s all right,’ Nicholas said. ‘I’m arranging for him to go. Meantime let’s give him to John to look after.’ He had seen Henry up at the battery, watching the fast, heavy work and the thundering roar as each cannon spoke. His face had been avid, intent. Neither gunner would care for it much, but John had more patience than d’Orson, and would stand for no nonsense. And given something to master, the boy might forget his vendetta.
It was about then, or just before, that Nicholas chose not to contradict the rumour that had spread about Henry. It had arisen, he supposed, as a result of the tales about Jordan at Hesdin. It was known that he had brought a young son to camp. Few people would remember what he was called, or his age. And thinking Henry that son, men would – perhaps – stop short of actually killing him. It might also persuade them that his tales of abuse were unreliable. There were other potential benefits.
To Lie With Lions: The Sixth Book of the House of Niccolo Page 59