To Lie With Lions: The Sixth Book of the House of Niccolo

by Dorothy Dunnett

  His mother had been a strong woman, conscientious, religious, who had ruled alone for three years, and had died when James was eleven. Her officers were around him still, reminding him of his duties. His rebellion, unlike that of Mars, was to throw aside work for the hunting-field, and withdraw from the problems of government to create for himself the courtly world of his aunts and his uncles, and the chivalrous world of his ancestors.

  His grandfather had just died, but James had not mourned: it was a chance to renew all his claims to the duchy of Guelders. He had just made truce with England, but planned to break it if Louis would give him the money he wanted. He was secretly planning again to relieve Louis of the county of Saintonge. He had a son of less than three weeks whose marriage he was already considering.

  Unlike Burgundy, James wanted more children and quickly, for all the alliances he must make. For many, many reasons he did not want Nicholas to leave. Towards Gelis, seated not quite so near, the King’s manner was that of an understanding physician.

  One gave a performance, under such circumstances, and Nicholas was a good actor. At the end, he was asked to step down and receive, on the King’s behalf, a parting gift. It was a standing cup, made of gold set with stones, and fashioned in Paris. The King had not used the services of Wilhelm, although Wilhelm was now a royal servant, by a contract just agreed. Nicholas thanked his host on one knee, and wondered why all the noise in the chamber had stopped. Then the King said, ‘We have another gift we have prepared for you.’

  He should have noticed that Willie had gone, and the singers. He should have been aware of the sounds from outside, the gleams of light through the windows, the murmurs drowned by the animation indoors. He should have been prepared for what he saw, when the Queen led him out through the doors and into the courtyard; and then for what he heard.

  They had not tried to assemble the clouds, or the moving lights or the Secrets. Joseph and Mary wore their own gowns, as did the Magi, and the children were barefoot in their shirts. Below the platform, Willie stood stripped to his pourpoint, with great anxious patches of sweat under the armpits. Then the music began, and nothing about it was makeshift.

  The same sky received it, the same clouds, the same hills. Below, the resonating chamber was deeper, primed by time and remembrance. Remembrance of the birth of Anselm Adorne’s child, loving gift of his wife; conceived to bring him at last the bright warrior son his heart craved. An infant cried once: the newborn prince in the Queen’s arms. It was a small audience this time: only the people of the Court, and the Abbey, and those who were thought to be his intimate friends. No one moved.

  Nicholas watched, re-created before him, the one selfless thing he had ever done. The great, solemn sweep of the work had been concentrated, salt upon salt, to a morsel of its full length. They had remembered their studies. The clear voices spoke, and the close-textured difficult harmonies lingered and surged once again, rising and falling, lovingly captured.

  Such intensity of emotion, so compressed, could overpower a choir. The singers’ eyes were fastened to Roger, who offered no comfort, no coaxing, but lashed the music out of their throats so that they sang without weakening, as if angry. Only at the end, when the music burgeoned, beginning its climb, and from north, south, east and west the silver trumpets suddenly spoke, and the four organs added their thunder, did his own face fill with what he felt for them. Then there came the silence, as happened before, and then the storm broke.

  This time nothing stood between Nicholas and the warmth: not Kathi; not Gelis. Willie Roger appeared, punched him angrily in the stomach and then locked him in an incoherent embrace. The Queen, the child asleep in her arms, reached up her wet face and kissed them both. He went through the proper form of thanks to the King, and to Sandy and to all those he knew must have devised this; and then excused himself in order to climb the steps and speak to the singers, the actors, the musicians. Caught in rising euphoria, they wanted him to come with them now, and were mutinous when he had to return to the King. It was harder still to disengage from Willie.

  Gelis had waited, Kathi beside her. Bel wasn’t there, although he knew she was in town. He was glad she wasn’t there. He had enough to contend with, without Bel.

  Kathi said, ‘So how did you like your present?’ She was dry-eyed and smiling, but her kerchief was soaked.

  He said, ‘I saw you. You were singing.’

  ‘But you didn’t hear me,’ she said flatly.

  Gelis said something, and he automatically turned to her, smiling. Kathi was right: he had heard almost nothing. The effort of hearing almost nothing had given him an acute headache, but he had solved several unusual mathematical problems, devised a poem and run through many more while avoiding the pale stare of Tobie, who had never heard the performance before and was sitting as if axed on the head.

  Gelis said, ‘I don’t remember if I congratulated you last time.’

  Nicholas said, ‘I’m sure you did congratulate me. Anyway, this wasn’t my doing: it’s Willie’s night.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ Kathi said. ‘Did you see Bel?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘She came late. She must have gone away as soon as it finished.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But this isn’t the last night of our lives. I’m not taking the habit. We’ll all continue to meet, I hope, outside Scotland.’

  ‘I expect we shall,’ Kathi said. She hesitated and then said, ‘The King is waiting. I don’t want to keep you. I only wanted to speak of the music’

  They watched her go, and turned to rejoin the royal party back in the hall. He had been looking at Gelis all night because she was wearing court dress, with jewels he had never seen round her throat and latticing the wings of her white, floating headgear. The King had been watching her as well. Nicholas said, ‘This shouldn’t take long. The Queen will want to retire. Then we take our leave. Then we go out through the gardens and walk by the back path to the Canongate house. Then we talk.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Every trader has to set dates, or starve. I am to rejoice in the palace of my master.’

  ‘Let us say,’ Nicholas said, ‘that we have enough on the board for a deal. Rejoicing would stretch it too far. So, to the Canongate?’

  ‘My poor Nicholas,’ Gelis said. ‘By the back path? Through the gardens? Do you imagine for one moment that you are going to escape all those people outside?’

  He had persuaded himself that he would. Such was his determination that the illusion stayed with him all through his last audience and past the moment when the Abbot, amiably conspiratorial, had them shown to a postern and he and Gelis slipped through. For one more moment, the Abbey garden seemed deserted and quiet. Then the glare of twenty lanterns struck him in the face, and his ears were ringing to the whoops, the catcalls, the bawling of ten times that number of people, and the saucy rattle of kettledrums.

  They had caught him. They had caught them both. The crowd of his companions marched them up to Willie Roger’s and there was no escape. None at all.

  He got drunk very quickly, because he meant to. Gelis, who had never been there before, seemed to his vague surprise to conform easily to the new habitat, in the same way that she had come to terms with tough seamen off the African coast: in the mode of a cool, amused donna di governo. It was strange, because Gelis was here and not Kathi. Roger had never asked Kathi to enter this warm vinous world of music and gossip and badinage. It was not right for an unmarried girl. And, Nicholas guessed, he saw that it would have been unfair for a girl who must marry. The distaff should not have to compete against this bright, boisterous masculine world, or with the music. Luckily, they sang only ditties, obscene ones, so that he too could float, a wanton bladder, above the dead anchor-weight of his purpose. He did not remember going home.

  He woke alone in his own room in the Ca’ Niccolò and was amused, briefly, at the confidence implied by her absence. She required no advantages. He made, with the help of Alonse, a ponderous to
ilet, and eventually sent to ask her to see him. Then he entered her room, his lids protesting against the brilliant light, and said, ‘Behold the winged lion. Your eyes are open. You were drinking as well. I saw you.’

  ‘I paused now and then,’ Gelis said.

  Her voice was patient rather than tolerant. This time, however, he was not being received by the charming young girl in loose silks. She wore no elaborate jewels, but she was dressed as formally as for the previous night, and her hair was bound under stiff voile. Noli tangere.

  She added coolly, ‘Alonse put you to bed.’

  He wondered if he had attempted to touch her and was immediately and painfully convinced that he had not. If anything in this world could be sure, it was that. He sat down and said, ‘Well, we have something to talk about. You begin.’

  ‘No apology?’ Gelis said.

  ‘No, Lady Better-than-Good. Let all receive thy pity, none thy hate. You begin.’

  ‘Are we to have a discussion?’ Gelis said. ‘I thought you had submitted one simple question to answer.’

  ‘That is the great disadvantage of being a woman,’ Nicholas said. ‘If you come to the conference table in that mood, you will lose. This is your Alnwick, your St Omer. I have proposed a date for the cessation of hostilities. That is, a time by which one side will have won or be about to win, or by which it will be apparent that neither can reasonably prevail.’

  ‘Reasonably?’ she queried.

  ‘Without demanding a fight of such length, or so destructive, that the victory would be worthless to either. Pyrrhic. Puerile.’

  ‘You are afraid of losing,’ she said.

  ‘Not at all. I am afraid of not recognising when I have won. In war, each should know the other’s objective. We have come to the place where I need to know yours.’

  ‘I know yours,’ she said. She sat with her hands clasped before her, her expression watchful, attentive. He had seen her thus when faced with other problems of innovative complexity – when preparing the Play, for example. His hatred for Willie Roger, for all of them, welled.

  She said, ‘I have known your objective from the beginning. To live with me as with Katelina, except that I should bear your numberless children in wedlock.’

  ‘How shaming for you,’ he said.

  ‘Do you deny it?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘That will do, to begin with. So what did you really want?’

  ‘I shall tell you,’ she said, ‘when I have won.’

  He closed his eyes. It didn’t help. He opened them. ‘Tell me now. Isn’t it your objective?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘It is my reward. My objective is so to reduce you that my life will be as I wish, and whatever happens, you can never change it.’

  He said, ‘I might agree to all you ask now.’

  ‘You might,’ she said. ‘But you see, I cannot trust you. Nicholas, you cannot even trust yourself.’

  ‘And how shall I know when you have reduced me?’ he said.

  She said, ‘When you beg me to stop.’

  ‘How optimistic of you,’ he said. After a moment he added, facetiously, ‘I might be quite happy, as on a recent occasion, to invite you to continue.’

  She didn’t reply. He said quickly, ‘There is really no need to anguish over mistakes with la cauza doussana. I don’t.’

  He waited again. He knew she understood. That sweet thing which she had engaged in with Simon, had nearly shared with a King; in which Nicholas himself had been so profligate, was debased: there was no need to repine over that. That union, sweet beyond imagining, which once had been theirs was still inviolate, waiting. Thunder for God, if you please. But nothing lasted for ever.

  He said, ‘Do you hear what I am saying? If we deny ourselves very much longer, even that may have gone. There will be nothing worth having.’

  She said, ‘I was about to tell you. I agree. There are eight months between now and the end of December, and by that time, one of us will have outwitted, shamed, prevailed over the other. The loser submits: the victor should have the right to direct what is to happen thereafter. Is that what you wanted to hear?’

  ‘You haven’t asked my objective,’ Nicholas said.

  She exclaimed, ‘You didn’t deny –’

  ‘I said it would do, to begin with. But suppose we regard it, in your words, as a reward. Then my objective must be the same as yours, mustn’t it? To outwit you, until you have to submit. Unless, of course, you would like to accept my terms now? A child a year? I’m sure I could trust you.’

  She said, ‘You haven’t talked to your wooden-legged friend.’

  His mind clouded with ale, he looked at her, puzzled. She continued. ‘Nicholai Giorgio de’ Acciajuoli, the noble Florentine oracle. I heard he appeared with young Nerio in Rome. I thought I told you I once met him in Florence. He instructed that you were to have no more progeny. Your posterity is already secure.’

  ‘You believed him?’ he said. From the beginning, from his boyhood in Bruges, the Florentine had interfered.

  ‘No. But you do,’ she said. ‘When you cut yourself loose from your beginnings you became easy prey, didn’t you, to all the so-called magicians? Any strolling astrologer can frighten you. Even without me, you were going to fail.’

  ‘The way I failed in Venice?’ he said. ‘I took Jodi from you. I can do it again. What if you grind me to powder, and are still left with nothing?’

  She said, ‘What do you think I have now? And what would you have? A son with no home and no future, like Mary Boyd’s children?’

  There was a silence, which Gelis eventually broke. ‘So have we reached a conclusion, despite the condition of one of us? We meet at the end of December: the war ends; one of us will capitulate. Meantime, I am to take Jodi to Venice?’

  He roused himself with an effort. ‘You will be safer. Crackbene will escort you. I have my service to Burgundy; you can join me there in the autumn.’

  She said, ‘You would leave Jodi for so long?’

  Nicholas said, ‘He is older now. He knows us both well. I shall write.’

  ‘And you will have me watched,’ she remarked.

  ‘As always,’ he answered. ‘It is you who placed us on a footing of war. You have money. You are free to have me followed, to employ whom you like. Only don’t hurt Gregorio.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘But Gregorio is the Bank. And the Bank is you.’

  ‘I thought it was also Jodi,’ he said.

  He left very soon after.

  In his room was a letter in Greek. It was the third such he had had; Govaerts knew by now to leave it unslit. He broke open the seal.

  Come. Come. For love of me, come.

  It was unsigned. It was addressed to the lord Nikko.

  Part V

  May, 1473

  VOLERIES

  Chapter 43

  A MAN OF HONOUR, recently weighing the claims of two friends, Tobias Beventini had soberly set need against need, and had chosen.

  Nicholas de Fleury chose at once, with his heart. Then, being Nicholas, he set about making his choice not only desirable, but mandatory.

  He was aided, he was not unaware, by fortuitous happenings in Burgundy. He went there to free himself, and found himself already free. He left the Duke, left Astorre, left Diniz and Moriz in Bruges and, travelling fast with only one servant, arrived in Venice in May, only three days behind the cavalcade of his wife, his son and his doctor.

  Cristoffels, staggered to see him, had to admit, in his incoherence, that none of the household was here: Master Gregorio and his guests had taken fowling-boats north to the lagoon, where the Bank owned an islet with lodges.

  They were still in the boats when the bissona swept up in all its glittering splendour and the padrone stepped into the craft containing Margot, Gelis and the two children. Jodi screamed. Gelis whitened. The vessel dipped. The bissona, professionally detached, proceeded to the small island jetty and began to unload. Glasses winked, and a damask cloth floated over the sun.
Nicholas said, ‘Mon fils, what were you aiming at?’

  ‘That,’ said Jodi, letting him go. He had been bending a very small bow at a water hen. At his feet was a bowl of clay balls.

  Nicholas said, ‘No, no. The bird would object. It is much more amusing to shoot people. See. Dr Tobias, Master Gregorio in the next boat. You might even reach –’

  ‘My lord?’ said Mistress Clémence.

  ‘Or,’ said Nicholas, ‘it might be even better to throw them. You take these balls, and I shall take these. There! A hit!’

  The balls were only made of light terracotta, and most of them missed, but Tobie was clipped all round the head until he dragged off his cap and pleaded for mercy. The show of alarm was for Jodi and Jaçon but his voice, when Nicholas disembarked at his side on the islet, was edged. ‘Do you mind not doing that again? Why are you here?’

  ‘It would have been worse with the bows,’ Nicholas said. ‘You would really have felt it with the bows. I wasn’t needed at Court. The truce is being extended, the English aren’t sending an army, and the Duke is deeply embroiled with making himself the next Duke of Guelders.’

  Plates were arriving, and food. Trestles fronted the elegant cabins. Benches were being brought out, and armfuls of cushions. It was like Linlithgow all over again, except that it was happening in sunlight, on the reeded shore of a limitless pool, and everything within sight belonged to him, and him only.

  Gregorio said, ‘I thought King James was claiming Guelders because of his mother.’

  ‘I pleaded his case,’ Nicholas said. ‘But the Duke is a very hard man to convince. He wanted the land to help make up a new kingdom. Now he may do even better than that. The Emperor Frederick is making signals again.’

  Gregorio said, ‘Keep your voice down.’

  ‘What signals?’ said Tobie.