Tobie said, ‘I thought only Netherlanders made sport on ice. Where did you learn?’
‘In the Netherlands,’ said Mistress Clémence.
Her face beneath the white cap and hood was benign, and her skirts were correctly shortened to take account of the skates. She was taller than he was. Tackled privately, he had protested at the whole idea of escorting her, until Kathi’s elevated eyebrows had reminded him that the safety of Jodi was in question. He watched, out of the corner of his eye, a group of pretty girls laughing, stumbling and screaming. He had recently had cause to realise that the girls he noticed were getting younger and younger.
Mistress Clémence said, ‘Were you at the Carnival in Venice, Dr Tobias? It must have been rather different two years ago.’
He thought of mist and water; of exquisite buildings and floating awnings of silk over the piazze; of the masked figures, mysterious and elegant, drifting from this or that performance of theatre or poetry, observing the artists of mime and of balance, following the delicate music of consorts over bridges and through garlanded alleys. He thought of the light-wreathed Canal, and the gilded flotilla of boats hung with tassels with the masked figures within, and the tables laden with wine and with delicacies. He thought of the agonised search for a child, and all that had followed.
‘I prefer this,’ Tobie said. ‘So, probably, does Jodi’s father. It will remind him of Bruges.’
‘He was an exuberant young man, I believe,’ said Mistress Clémence. A circle had formed round a tumbler, rearranging his limbs to the scrape of a fiddle. Smells of warm food drifted across from the booths. In a corner, a group of eight people were dancing to a pipe and screaming as they fell down. A man passed, hauling two sliding children. There were no princes here; none but the populace and burghers of Edinburgh. She added, ‘It is an art, to enjoy life at different levels.’
There was a note in her voice that he put down to censure. He said, ‘I doubt if he could return to that kind of simplicity, even for the sake of the child. Or not unless his active life were to be curtailed.’
‘He requires some supervision,’ she said. ‘A return to the simple life, as you call it, may be a periodic remedy that should not be ruled out. Unfortunately, he does not seem to care for Dr Andreas, an excellent physician. I find the young demoiselle, Katelijne Sersanders, extremely sensible.’
‘I know. She ought to have been a nurse,’ said Tobie irritably. A moment later he said, ‘There they are. Which is Jodi?’
The Berecrofts party seemed to include half the Canongate; he recognised the bright cheeks of Archie surrounded by a mob of small children and one or two older, including Archie’s own. Robin, in the manner of boys, had subtly thickened in the six months of Tobie’s acquaintance. His waving hair clung to his neck and his voice, neither broken nor shrill, had chosen a level which Whistle Willie said was light baritone. He was a good-looking boy, and there were three pretty girls tugging at him. Tobie felt elderly.
Mistress Clémence said, ‘Jodi is the child in the brown hooded jacket with the red scarf. Between the two youths.’ She had pulled her hood over her face.
Tobie said, ‘The boy won’t recognise you?’
‘We shall stay at the east end of the loch. He will remain under the Castle, and will be taken home in an hour; you will not have to suffer for very long. Have you treated many children, Dr Tobias?’
He didn’t want to talk about spots in the throat. He said, ‘My work has been largely in army camps.’
‘I understand. But that often entails childbirth and women’s infections, does it not? And if undiagnosed, an infection can spread when the soldiers come home. I suppose a good doctor examines everyone in his camp before they disband?’
‘Either that, or catch them on shipboard,’ Tobie said, refraining from citing examples. ‘You can’t send them home with a diagram.’
She said, ‘You must have been glad to change eventually to a civilised court. I was sorry to hear of the death of your uncle.’
Betha or Phemie had been gossiping. He said, ‘We didn’t get on.’
She said, ‘People of similar temperament often do not. A spell in the field might have broadened his knowledge, and a spell of teaching might have enabled you to pursue your experiments to their proper end. I take it, since you have published nothing, that you have not completed them?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Tobie.
Her face, or what he could see of it, remained undisturbed. She said, ‘It is as well to be reminded, now and then, of why one selected one’s profession. There, I think, is Lord Beltrees at the Halkerston entrance. Should we move closer?’
Darkness was falling. The flaming brands swirled like the hairy-tailed besoms of comets, and the smoke from the torches badgered the cloudy white breath of the revellers. Nicholas wore a stained sheepskin jacket and scarf-cap and was skating slowly, looking about him, but maintaining his distance from Jodi. Tobie, watching with interest, saw a demoiselle in a large knitted hat disengage herself from a group of young men and skim like an arrow towards the indolent skater. Nicholas stepped aside with unhurried skill and let her flash past; she emitted a howl and cannoned through a circle and into the fire-eater, who inhaled when he ought to have blown. A vociferous crowd closed about the bellowing man. The voices of Nicholas and Kathi, soothing, could be heard in its midst. Tobie started to laugh, began to move, and was stopped.
‘I think that gold has already anointed the hurt,’ said Mistress Clémence with dryness.
Nicholas emerged from the crowd, which was now laughing, with Kathi at his side. Both appeared to be arguing, and she was carrying her hat, which was smoking, and had apparently been used as an extinguisher. Her coat, like his, was unkempt and curious, with the grey and oat-coloured burnish of sealskin falling under her wind-whipped brown hair. They moved past, still disputing, to where Tobie saw Gelis standing cloaked, where Nicholas must have left her.
Iceland, Tobie thought. The source of the garments, the raillery, the easy, intimate camaraderie. For a moment he saw again the Nicholas of the dyeworks at Bruges, employing all his voices and faces, expatiating, complaining. The girl, with the face of an affronted kitten, was replying in kind. Then, breaking off, Kathi swept up to Gelis and clutched her by the arm, expostulating, her free arm waving, while on the other side Nicholas did the same. Gelis, listening, smiled and replied, and the next moment the three had moved off, linked together in mild animation.
‘As I said,’ remarked Mistress Clémence. ‘A sensible girl.’
Viewed from the height of the ridge, the rink – seventeen hundred feet long, four hundred broad – appeared a long gut of fire, from which arose smoke and smells, music and laughter.
Simon of Kilmirren turned from his window and said, ‘Well? It was your offer, I believe. To perform whatever final acts I might require.’
The red-haired man beside him was already sitting. He said, ‘But that, my lord, was before the family received the recent special attention of the King, and before you yourself had to leave Court. Also, I have to say that the incident of the cart was singularly ineptly carried out.’
‘It was your idea, as I remember,’ Simon said. ‘As for the rest, no one knows I am in Edinburgh.’
‘All the more reason, my lord, for exercising restraint. This opportunity is quite unexpected and there has been no time to plan. Much as the Vatachino would wish to see the end of de Fleury, I am not prepared to face criminal charges for work ill prepared.’
Simon said, ‘You will let him betray you, wreck you, cheat you and do nothing?’
Martin pursed his lips. ‘There are other theatres. It is our thinking at present that the final confrontation should take place outside Scotland. You need not be involved.’
‘I want to be involved,’ Simon said. ‘Here.’
‘Then you must do it by yourself,’ Martin said.
The hour of Jodi’s freedom began to draw to its close. It was possible, even from a distance, to glimpse him, a
bundle of brown and red swinging and sliding between two bigger children; a jubilant parcel on the shoulders of Archie or Robin; a pair of ecstatic eyes viewing a sweetmeat being handed down from a stall. Tobie and the nurse, being less identifiable, held to that part of the ice nearer the centre; the other three kept to the east. A tall man and two comely girls were not easily hidden. Indeed, they were meant to be seen, as proof that the child was not there.
Sometimes, Gelis forgot why she had come, so strange and fearful was the whole experience. Since Nicholas had sent for her two summers ago, she had learned how readily the enemy could change into the apparently affectionate friend. It had happened during the work with the Play; it happened in public; it happened whenever Jodi was there. Skating among the rough, merry crowd, with fire and stars wheeling about her, Gelis felt herself again a child on the frozen Minnewater in Bruges, bewitched once more by the big man whose warm, steady hand now enclosed hers, as his other was given to Kathi, while his voice swooped, as light as their movements.
He was full of invention, and so was the girl. It began with word play and with chanting and then developed into a variety of games, sometimes the three of them on their own; sometimes appropriating other parties of adults and children. He bought everybody mulled wine and pastries from the great tent with the portable oven. They played dangerous leapfrog and danced. He borrowed a sledge and set off careering one-footed with Gelis. He took Kathi under the arms and spun with her. She flew, fast and neat as a whip, brown hair flying, her hands on his shoulders, her serviceable boots firmly together. By then, the young men had come clustering to lure her away. Set down, her cheeks crimson, her eyes brilliant, she threw out her hands in enquiring despair.
‘Oh, go on,’ Nicholas said. ‘But keep Willie’s verses in mind. Where is Willie?’
‘In Haddington with the Princesses,’ Gelis said. ‘And just as well, too.’ She paused and added, ‘What verses?’
Kathi had gone. Nicholas grinned. ‘All about her aspiring husbands. Don’t ask to hear them: you wouldn’t be able to look anyone in the eye for a week. Oh look, there’s Tobie.’
Gelis knew that tone of voice. She looked first, and saw what he meant her to see. She said, ‘With Mistress Clémence!’
‘Kathi’s suggestion,’ he said. ‘She says he’ll end up doubting everything he’s ever been taught, including his toilet training. He wasn’t anxious to come, but he seems to be sticking it. Come on. I want to teach you something.’
Tobie said, ‘That was rather remarkable.’
Mistress Clémence said, ‘It is pleasant to see them so light-hearted. Dr Tobias, do you know the history of this piece of water?’
‘The history?’ Tobie said. He was watching Kathi speed off, a seal-coated mascot in a small group of covetous men. She had made Nicholas laugh again and again, and Gelis, too, had thrown herself into the sport. Now Nicholas appeared to be teaching something to Gelis; she kept stopping to laugh, and so did he. She looked beautiful. Tobie saw that he had brought her another cup of hot wine.
Mistress Clémence said, ‘This is an artificial lake only thirty years old, created to defend the north side of the Castle. It is fed from the well-house over there, and by springs. Its height is controlled by a dam and sluice at the east end, by the Trinity College gardens, through which the sluice water runs. Skating is perfectly safe so long as the water is frozen quite solid, but care is required as the season advances.’
‘Why are you kneeling?’ said Tobie.
‘To listen,’ said Mistress Clémence, sitting up. ‘I am sure there is no reason to worry, but if you will lay your ear to the ice, you will hear a murmur of fresh running water. It is not frozen solid.’
Tobie listened. She was right. She reminded him of a tutor he had once had and disliked. He said, ‘None of the natives appears to be nervous. In any case, Jodi leaves soon. Will the Berecrofts escort him?’
‘In great numbers,’ she said. ‘They will send us word. You will be able to rest. Do you take very much exercise as a rule?’
It was unfair. He had just bought her a pancake.
Jodi’s scream, when it came, was not heard by his nurse or his parents, for the noise between them submerged it. Even Robin, kneeling to replace a glove, didn’t at first understand why the child had pulled his hand away and exploded into terrified screeches, dragging his scarf down, drawing every eye to his scarlet face and petrified stare. Then the sound came to his ears: a sound no greater than the cluck of a bird, or of a man alone tapping a hammer. The sound of a quiet game of golf, newly begun just behind on the ice. The sound, to Jodi, of a golden-haired cousin hitting, hitting to hurt him.
All the terror of Veere had returned. There was no swift way to reassure him; there was no way at all to muffle the little boy’s cries. If he had enemies, now he had been identified. Robin swept him up, vainly consoling. Robin’s father said, ‘We get him out, now. Christ, what is happening?’
The golfers, having barely started their game, had withdrawn. In their place a cavalcade had appeared: a team of four working horses, stud-shod, pulling behind like a fishing line an unreeling column of skaters, shouting, singing, brandishing tankards and torches as, each holding the person in front, they set to skim across the huge crowded pond.
The horses were properly harnessed, with a man on the back of the leader and a structured handgrip behind, which the head of the long train of skaters could grasp. It was the first reassuring thing that Archie saw, after he realised that the way from the pond was cut off. There were town musicians slithering cheerfully too, grasping fiddles and tambours and flutes, setting the rhythm, leading the familiar choruses. The horses, of the sturdy kind that dragged carts, responded gallantly, manes and tails full of cheap ribbons, and the column, always lengthening, began to pick up speed over the ice. Warned by the laughter and music, revellers moved out of the way, or joined in. The cavalcade covered a quarter of the loch.
They couldn’t stay where they were, unable to leave, and with Jodi’s camouflage gone. It was better to join in; and at the end of the loch, they could slip aside. Robin said, ‘Look, Jodi, look. Come and slide with the horses.’
Tear-stained, hiccoughing still, Jodi was lifted and carried by Archie and, embedded in Berecroftses, found himself inserted in the long gliding column. The wind brushed his cheeks. The singing rose all about him. From ahead came the thud of the horses, the horses like his own pony at home. And the click of the kolf far behind had now gone, as if it had never happened. Someone put a sweet in his mouth, and someone told him to sing. His cheek bulging, he did so, and Archie exchanged relieved grins with his son as they held one another and slid. The pace quickened. They had skimmed over a third of the loch. The pace quickened again.
Robin said, ‘Father?’
‘Quite,’ said Archie. ‘It’s getting too fast. Let’s move sideways and take out the little ones. Can you draw up the people behind you?’
It wasn’t easy. It would have been unfair to break the whole column. The mending of the gap required such attention that Robin was free before he realised that something had happened. The merriment continued except far ahead, where the songs had been replaced by shouting, and the rhythmic gallop had changed to a stutter. And as the pace of the horses had changed, so it seemed that the horses themselves were at odds with one another, their heads and bodies jolting apart so that all the smooth gliding column behind shared the disruption. And because they were travelling so fast, disengagement was deadly.
To those who watched, and those who had escaped, it seemed as if the skaters were played on a line, whipped from side to side, undulating and buckling and shedding hurtling figures, unable to stop. The main column itself could no longer control its direction, but brushed past stalls and through tents, throwing spectators sliding out of its way. Cauldrons tipped and braziers tumbled into the glittering grease. Flames sprang up. Screaming, once started, reached a pitch easily heard at the far end of the loch.
Nicholas heard it. He said, ‘Jo
di,’ in a voice Gelis thought was quite calm. Then he said, ‘Stay here. I will come back. I promise you.’
Her instinct was to go. She saw that she could only hinder him. In this he was quicker and stronger, and she need never doubt that he would do all he could. What had happened to Henry proved that. Then she thought that at least she could follow, without fear of distracting him. Everyone around her was moving – either rushing to help or to escape. She had begun to gain speed herself, when a man’s shoulder sent her stumbling sideways, and a man’s deliberate kick to her side thrust her hard to the ice. It was not an accident. She was being attacked.
She saw her assailant looming above her, black against the dark sky, and then the boot came down again, and there was nothing but darkness.
*
Tobie and his inappropriate partner had the best view of the disrupted column. They heard the singing procession approach, and saw the horses abruptly break pace to prance and to neigh and to struggle apart. Before the first traces broke, Tobie had made to rush to the west, and Mistress Clémence had stopped him.
It infuriated him that she could; that she was taller and fitter than he was. She said, ‘The Berecrofts family are capable persons. They are there. They will be dealing with Jodi. Remember his parents.’
He glared at her hand on his arm. He had no wish to hurt her. He said, forgetting the niceties, ‘Nicholas can look after himself and his wife.’
‘Do you think so?’ she said. ‘I think the sieur de Fleury will go straight to his son, and his wife will have to fend for herself. Which may be what someone is counting on.’
He stared at her. ‘St Pol is at home.’
‘He wasn’t at Haddington,’ she said, ‘when the cart slipped.’
Now the darkness was uneven: half the orderly torches were hurled aside or extinguished, and the braziers scattered. Racing back, swerving to avoid the wreckage of tents and fleeing people and tumbled and struggling figures, Nicholas plunged from near-blackness to sheets of shuddering light where flames rose to the sky and ran reflecting across new-melted ice. He stopped for nothing, but every now and then cupped his mouth and made the one call that would bring him an answer. After a while, Kathi replied, and he found her.
To Lie With Lions: The Sixth Book of the House of Niccolo Page 68