It worked, after a fashion, during the first weeks of their investment of Beauvais. During two weeks of continuous firing, Henry learned something of the art of gunnery, and grew to treat John with a mixture of hate and respect to which John remained exasperatingly indifferent. It ended when the Duke, casting aside all the protests of his officers, assembled his entire force before the gates of de Bresle and de Limaçon, and ordered them to take Beauvais by storm. It was dawn, on the twenty-eighth day of June.
Had it been launched in the first two days of the siege, the attack might have succeeded. As it was, six score Burgundians were killed and a thousand more injured before the Duke’s men were flung back by the solid force of seasoned defenders within. During the assault, the heavy artillery was directed away from the walls and the bridges, and latterly was unable to fire, for fear of killing men in retreat. It was late that evening when, resuming his post at the gun-battery, John le Grant noticed that something was wrong.
The aftermath of any battle is a chaotic affair. The garrison of Beauvais, firing steadily from the walls, had made the withdrawal as dangerous as the assault had been, and the retrieval of the dead and the wounded went on for some hours. Nicholas, who with Julius had taken his share, and had seen his own men drop around him, stayed in the field with Astorre until all the company had been returned or were accounted for. It had been a wasted effort. Everyone knew it. Astorre, bending over this pallet and that, spoke in tones that were heartily cheerful, but walking back to the tents he cursed under his breath and his shoulders were bowed. Nicholas felt the same weight of anger and weariness and parted from him without speech. He had almost reached his pavilion when John le Grant came running up in the half-light and, shouting, pulled him aside.
Nicholas, hitting the ground, thought at first that John had lost his mind and attacked him. Then the roar of an explosion cracked through the air, and his shadow lay black on the dust which everywhere else had turned a flickering red. He rolled over and turned. Behind stood a column of fire where his pavilion had been. The screaming came from his horses, and descending fragments of cloth were already setting light to the tents next in line. After the first shock, men had begun running with water. Julius raced calling among them. ‘Oh my God. Is he dead?’
‘No, I’m not dead,’ Nicholas said, and stood up, his eyes fixed on John’s. ‘You knew.’
‘He’s in my tent,’ le Grant said. ‘I found the culverin covered with gunpowder, but managed to put out the fuse. He couldn’t help bragging about what else he’d done.’
‘Who?’ said Julius.
‘No one,’ said Nicholas. ‘It was an accident. Spread the news. I don’t suppose anything can be saved?’
‘What do you think?’ Julius said. ‘Both your horses have gone. No men – your servants were lucky. What else did you have?’
‘Papers. Nothing,’ said Nicholas.
Papers. A poem. A drawing. He did not need to ask whom John le Grant had caught and confined in his tent. In a moment, he was confronting him.
Henry was not now the shivering assassin of seven who, seized with mindless horror and joy, had stood with a bloody knife in his hand, waiting for this same man to denounce him, to drop. Now Henry knew what he was doing, and was ready to answer for what he had done. He remembered his father’s face, Simon’s face, smiling on him that day, caressing, praising him for killing his enemies. Sitting there, with his arms bound behind him, Henry looked Nicholas in the face with the same insolence he had managed to show ever since Veere.
He said, ‘Next time, I shall time the fuse better.’
‘Leave us,’ said Nicholas. He heard John hesitate, and then go. He found John’s campaign bed and let himself down on it. His sleeve was sodden with blood not his own.
The boy said, ‘You don’t want witnesses.’ He was jeering again.
Nicholas said, ‘You planned to blow up the battery?’
‘All the guns,’ Henry said. ‘It would have destroyed half the camp. It would have ended the war. We should have won.’
‘We?’
‘Us. The Scots and the French.’
‘John le Grant is Scots,’ Nicholas said. ‘Perhaps he beat you while he was teaching you?’
‘He was fighting for the enemy,’ Henry said. ‘He is a traitor, like you.’
‘And like you,’ Nicholas said. ‘You had a Burgundian mother.’
The boy reddened. He said, ‘I despise the van Borselens. I renounce them.’
‘Your father doesn’t,’ Nicholas said. ‘He sent you to Veere to be educated in chivalry, and instead you attacked your own baby cousin.’
‘He was a coward,’ said Henry.
‘I think,’ Nicholas said, ‘that all men are cowards at three. Your father will be ashamed of you. Instead of the mortification of seeing you imprisoned in Brabant, he will suffer the disgrace of what you have done today, and the penalty you must suffer.’
‘You can’t,’ Henry said. ‘I’m a prisoner waiting for ransom. It was an act of war. It was legal.’
‘My dear Henry,’ Nicholas said. ‘I am your uncle, and you are here to be trained in the military arts. You chose to come, rather than suffer the Steen. You have been fed, warmed and sheltered by this company and none of them, I think, has treated you with unbearable harshness. Yet you were willing to kill or hurt them at random – not just me, not just Master John, but the boys, the pages, the servants, even the women. That by itself is something that very few men could forgive. But you say you did it for France, and that is even worse, for it makes you a spy. And the penalty for spying is the most ugly of deaths.’
‘I knew you would kill me,’ said Henry.
‘If John or I wanted to kill you,’ said Nicholas, ‘we should take you now from this tent and denounce you before all those you were planning to murder. You would never survive to be hanged.’
‘You wouldn’t dare,’ Henry said. ‘I am a St Pol of Kilmirren. They wouldn’t touch me.’
He was breathing hard. At moments like this you could see Katelina in him: her proud spirit so fatally combined with the insensate flamboyance of Simon. What else lay there undeveloped it was impossible to say, and there was no time to find out. To reach him would be the work of years rather than months. And Nicholas could not bring himself to use force, to break that pride and that spirit together.
The only force he could use was the ordinary kind, which would be misconstrued, but which must be applied. Nicholas said, ‘You have threatened the lives of many friends of mine who have not harmed you, any more than Jordan had harmed you. To be a good soldier, you must learn to be just, and you must accept punishment when you do something wrong. I am not going to take you outside. I am going to beat you. It will be no more than you can bear, but it will be a heavy beating, because you deserve it. And if I am questioned by any man, your father included, I shall explain what you did to provoke it, and they will tell you that you are fortunate to have escaped with your life. Are you ready?’
‘I expected it,’ Henry said. ‘My father will thrash you. He will kill you. You are a fool.’
‘In that,’ Nicholas said, ‘you are probably right.’
He called John into the tent after it was over, and caught the flash of surprise, and the even greater surprise on the face of Julius when he learned what had happened. He wondered if they had expected him to cut the boy’s throat. He had the doctor visit him, and gave orders to have him well guarded in case someone else thought they’d repair the omission. Outside he found they had cleared up the carnage and set up a tent for him nearby, furnished with bits of other people’s equipment. Astorre had got him a horse, and some food, which he didn’t want, and a lecture which he didn’t want either. Eventually he rolled into bed, but couldn’t sleep.
The boy remained in John’s tent, and Nicholas returned, in the following days, to the concerns of the Duke and the siege. A good watch was kept, but nevertheless in the early hours of one morning a small number of men from the garrison, mostly mount
ed, made a surprise sally under cover of darkness and succeeded in crossing the ditch to the encampment. There they scattered, slashing and stabbing among the nearest tents of the besiegers, as if looking for someone. The action did not last long; the tent-ropes tripped and slowed down the horses, and as soon as the camp started to rouse, the men of Beauvais turned to go.
Nicholas was already out, fully dressed with his sword, when he heard the high voice screaming above the clash of metal and the hoof-beats and the shouting. Henry, his hair aureoled by the lamplight, had burst out of John’s tent and was racing towards the French soldiers. ‘There! There! Here is the master gunner d’Orson! There is the banker de Fleury!’
The finger pointed at him. The riders faltered and some of them turned. A sword flashed, and he saw d’Orson fall. Then a horn blew, and with a surge they were off, all but half a dozen who closed round the boy. A man’s voice shouted a question; the boy replied, his voice shrilling with eagerness. The next moment a mailed arm came down, and the boy himself was swept up and thrown over the saddle. Nicholas saw his face, bemused, looking back at him, and lifted his sword, braced for the thundering hooves and the blade wet with Jacques d’Orson’s blood.
They did not come. The last he saw of them was a tight knot of men riding back over the ditch to the portals, with a glint of fair hair bobbing among them.
‘What?’ said Astorre. He leaned forward, staring at Nicholas. ‘What are you pulling faces about?’
‘Nothing,’ Nicholas said. ‘I told you I was arranging for him to go.’
‘The French have got him,’ said Captain Astorre. ‘The French have taken the brat into Beauvais.’
‘I know,’ Nicholas said. ‘And as soon as the Duke decides to get on his way, I think I might make a little journey as well. As I mentioned to Julius, I’d rather like to visit Bessarion. You’ll manage without me.’
Since this was true, Astorre didn’t deny it. He said, ‘You think they’ll let you cross France right down to the Loire?’
‘They ought to,’ Nicholas said. ‘The Duke doesn’t mind if I go, and King Louis has provided me with an extremely elaborate safe-conduct. In fact, I feel for Henry’s dilemma: we are either all traitors these days, or we are loyal to everyone.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ Astorre growled.
‘I always do,’ Nicholas said.
Shortly after, in Antwerp, direct communication with Nicholas ceased, and incoming dispatches were confined to the news from Astorre. The padrone had left, it was said, on a short trip, during which couriers would not be available to him. The sieur de Fleury had begun an entirely fresh poem, which he hoped Mistress Clémence would help to continue. He also sent a new tune for the whistle. The Lady was much on edge.
In Bruges, the doctor Tobias Beventini of Grado called to express his condolences at the home of Anselm Adorne, and found himself instead in the company of Kathi, Adorne’s niece, and the youthful person of Robin, the unexpected new merchant apprentice – now page, so the tale went, to Nicholas.
Adorne was out, and Robin was visiting, and Kathi was delighted to see the physician and friend of her travels.
Of this last, there was no doubt at all: her elvish face was incandescent as she flew to embrace him. ‘Dr Tobie! I heard you had come! We need you so badly!’
She was too thin, she was a sprite. Nevertheless, there was no possibility that that statement referred to herself; any more than it could be relevant to the stalwart young Robin. Tobie said, ‘The lord of Cortachy? I was so sorry to hear of his lady. How is he taking it?’
Only when she coloured did he realise his mistake. He said, ‘Oh dear. Our other mutual friend?’
He saw the boy look at the young woman. Kathi said, ‘It must seem very strange. But Uncle Anselm has many friends, and has always led a well-ordered life. And Nicholas is alone.’
Nicholas. Tobie said, ‘He has friends. And a wife. And a son.’ He did not add, And two sons. He felt aggrieved.
Kathi said, ‘I haven’t even asked how you are. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. But we were talking of Iceland. My brother has gone, and I have to go back to Scotland next week. And Nicholas is so stupid.’
‘That he is not,’ said the boy. He was smiling.
‘You are both right, of course,’ Tobie said. ‘He is a clever man with a defective grasp of reality. Such people sometimes cannot be helped, and do no harm except to themselves. You have your own lives to lead.’
He had forgotten her bright hazel eyes. She said, ‘We are leading them. It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t help someone else where we can. Would you come to Scotland? We shall all be there this winter. You would like Robin’s father. And there will be no fighting at all.’
‘You heard what happened,’ he said.
Surprisingly, it was the boy who answered him soberly. He said, ‘Yes. We heard of Volterra.’
Tobie stayed a long time. He gave them his news, then listened, in silence, to the true account of what had happened in Iceland, followed by something no one else had mentioned at all, to do with a Miracle Play. When he left, in the end, they asked for no promises and he gave none. He had not called to see Gelis or the child, and did not propose to go, without Nicholas.
He had barely returned to the Bank when the courier came, riding post-haste from Florence. He carried a letter from the Count of Urbino summoning Dr Tobias to the sickbed of his wife, mother of that ninth miraculous child and first son. Battista had been seized with illness in Gubbio, and the Count was leaving Florence to race to her side.
The message was several weeks old. It had been pursuing him since the last day in June. And before he had decided what to do, a second courier had come, exhausted, in the wake of the first, with another message. The lady Battista was dead. The Count begged his friend to return.
Dr Tobias Beventini, standing alone in his room, considered two men, and his feelings and duty towards them. The choice, in the end, was not hard to make; and was based, not illogically, on something he had been told about a Miracle Play.
Chapter 36
THE CHTEAU OF Saumur crowned the left bank of the Loire like a wheatsheaf in marble. In place of the mighty cylinders of Angers, its towers were slender and tall, with lacy battlements and crowded blue turrets. The golden spires with their fleurs-de-lys finials lay reflected in the sliding blue water, only disturbed by the ruffling of oars. Despite the safe conduct, the last part of the sieur de Fleury’s long journey from Beauvais had been completed under compulsory escort; the King of France wished no unsupervised Burgundians travelling his realm. The presence of Julius was tolerated.
Their horses sailed with them. Presently, disembarked in the flowery heat, they were led to the tall landward port which they entered over a drawbridge. They were expected by now. The captain of the castle was pleased to greet them, and have them shown to a chamber. It was understood that they wished to interview the lord Cardinal Bessarion, at present in delicate health after his arduous travels. This would be permitted. Thereafter, they would require to await the Most Christian King’s pleasure. Roi monseigneur was not at Saumur.
The castle was shady and cool, and at first even Julius succumbed to the need for repose. Afterwards, he was avid to explore his surroundings; price the furniture, the woodwork, the marble, the windows; walk through the gardens; inspect the stables; accept the captain’s offer to arrange a small hunting-trip or a little falconry, or a swim in the clear sandy water. Even the ladies swam, on a hot August evening.
It was a change from Beauvais.
Sometimes Nicholas went with him; sometimes not. Since he was nineteen, Nicholas had been handling Julius. The inquisition had occupied all the earlier days of their trip, and Nicholas had dilated obediently on all the subjects Julius had raised, except those to do with personal relationships, when he became first obtuse and then mildly deaf.
The rest of the time was more enjoyable, filled with the kind of chatter and hilarity natural to a meeting of two men who had known each other in o
ne case from childhood. It was well over twenty years since Julius had met the boy Nicholas in the bullying household in Geneva of his great-uncle Jaak de Fleury; and since then he had twice saved his life. They talked of Tasse, now dead, who had been kind to them both; and of Tilde and Catherine, whom Julius still couldn’t take seriously. He asked, as only Julius could, what Gelis made of her husband’s first marriage to Marian de Charetty, which was, after all, the start of his fortune and so not to be sneezed at.
‘I don’t know. We never speak of it. Are you going to marry your Anna?’ Nicholas asked.
Julius had blushed: a remarkable sight. He said, ‘If I do, it won’t be for her money.’
‘I’ve met her. I believe you,’ said Nicholas. ‘How did you find her? She’s beautiful.’
‘She found me,’ Julius said. ‘Through the Hanse merchants in Cologne. She had all this property from Wenzel, her husband, and wanted to realise it all and invest it. She applied to several others, but we offered the best proposition.’
‘How much did that lose us?’ said Nicholas amiably.
The flush had become even deeper. ‘Nothing. We made a profit. You can see the books if you like. Gelis was there at the time. She’d remember.’
‘Calm! Calm!’ Nicholas had said. ‘I’ve seen the books. I was joking. I shouldn’t blame you if she owned all the Fleury instead of half of it. So are you going to ask her to marry you?’
Julius, unusually for him, had been silent. Then Nicholas had said, ‘You want to, I’m sure. So why not? You’re afraid she’ll refuse you?’
Julius had said, ‘I have nothing. I don’t know who my parents were.’
‘That may be, but you are far from having nothing. And beautiful as she is, she hasn’t married anyone else, or even spent time with anyone else from what you tell me. Would you like me to plead for you? I can give you a fairly good character.’
He didn’t think Julius would take him seriously, and he didn’t. He said, ‘If anything would ruin it, that would. I have to wait. I must be sure. With someone like that, you only get one chance.’
To Lie With Lions: The Sixth Book of the House of Niccolo Page 60