Gemini

by Dorothy Dunnett

  That was a piece of hideously difficult music, scribbled on ecclesiastical vellum. The composer, said Willie, was one of the Arnots. Nicholas sang, and Robin became very silent, so that they went back to chaffing again.

  Nicholas, too, spent this time observing and learning. Henry de St Pol, returned to the home of his grandfather, did not go out until his face healed. After that, he divided his time between his guard duty, his new stud, and Leith, where he had begun to take a keen interest in coastal shipping. Having lived in and about Portugal, he was not unused to vessels, and a few of the skippers took him out now and then to practise his skills. At sea, he was not a bad companion (so said Crackbene’s spies), and the lads let him take part in the May King of the Sea contests, one of which he nearly won. Between that and looking out for Johndie Mar, he had no time, it seemed, to create pitfalls for Nicholas; and the deep hostility of his grandfather, which seemed immutable, now manifested itself only in contemptuous silence. Nicholas had not ended the feud with the St Pols, but he had its measure, at least.

  David Simpson, passing one day, called on Robin, but was regretfully turned away, on medical grounds, by Mistress Clémence. He did not trouble to return and Nicholas, informed, recognised it for the cynical nudge that it was. Comfortably surrounded by bodyguards, David was waiting. David had relied on the St Pols to make life insupportable for his victim but, failing that, might condescend to provoke Nicholas into action himself. As Nicholas, of course, was presently proposing to do for friend David. But not until Robin’s future was as secure as might be.

  In all of it, he had the support of Tobie and Clémence. The medical care that had brought Robin alive from Nancy was still there, bolstered now and then by unobtrusive help from the Castle, from the circle of physicians who still, no matter what their ostensible offices, watched over the medical needs of the Crown. Soon, as Robin grew self-sufficient, Tobie would profit from a wider circle of interests, rediscovering the clients and friends of his previous stay. Now he was beginning to emerge from the nausea and weariness of the journey, and to rediscover the satisfactions of disagreeing, often, with Nicholas. He found the battles stimulating, and Nicholas quite often lost. Only occasionally would Tobie revert to the wretchedness that lay behind him, some of it evidenced in his concern for the other prisoner, John le Grant. Unhurt in a camp full of injured, alive in a field full of dead, John had at first retreated, as Tobie had, into the single-minded campaign to save Robin. That done, he had withdrawn into himself. Tobie had advised Gelis what to do, before he left.

  ‘What?’ had said Nicholas.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Tobie.

  Nicholas himself, unmolested, began to move out of Edinburgh, to Stirling, to Dundee, to St Johnstoun of Perth. He, too, was interested in shipping. He was interested in currency. He talked to goldsmiths, and carried his findings not only to the Master of Berecrofts and Robin, but to the Councillors of the King. He began to know Argyll well, and understand some of his tongue and appreciate his subtlety. He held Avandale in the kind of respect that he had given, as a boy, to Adorne. But Avandale was royal, and you didn’t forget it, any more than you forgot the Orkney antecedents of Oliver Sinclair Royal, but without the royal flaws, as Bishop Kennedy had been.

  So there was a lull. It wouldn’t be permanent, but it let him establish the groundwork of what he wanted to do. With the lengthening peace, the country had a chance to start building. In England, in France, in Burgundy, the effects of the Duke of Burgundy’s death, of the Duchess’s union, were surely being assimilated by now.

  Even when the news came, in June, that Prosper de Camulio, the Papal Collector, had been arrested by the Milanese as a traitor and was not therefore returning to Scotland, it seemed to Nicholas that Simpson, with his own position to consolidate, would not change his tactics towards his victims just yet. Robin was slowly responding, Phemie was flourishing, Nicholas himself was doing what he had set himself to do. He beguiled himself with the idea that if Phemie’s child were born in July, he might even sail with her in August to Bruges, and spend time there with Gelis and Jodi. But that would excise two full months from his programme, and lengthen this interminable separation in the end. Also, David might follow him. It was Gelis for whom David was waiting.

  All the time, Nicholas thought about Gelis; for these days, every sense was her messenger.

  Chapter 11

  As cald with heit and richt so heit with cald,

  Ioye with sorrow richt so the contrar wald.

  IN BRUGES, THE cells in the Steen, even the better rooms, were rank, now, with over-use. As the arguments and counter-arguments pounded on, the law hung suspended, and Anselm Adorne and his fellow magistrates lived from day to day in the prison, passing the time in the quiet pursuits of reading and card-playing and talking, the more timid taking their example from the courage of the rest.

  Locked away from the fluctuating temper of the mob, they were treated with pointed aloofness by the gaoler, the bailiff, the turnkeys who supervised the cleaning of their privies and fetched the rough food that was all their staple. The provisions they relied on were those brought from outside: money gave them access to that, as well as to rooms on the upper storey, and bedding, and freedom from manacles. It did not buy exemption from torture. Not all had suffered; Adorne so far had been spared, together with two of his own closer friends: Paul van Overtweldt, who had been his First Burgomaster two years before, and the magistrate Jean de Baenst, who was related to Margriet, his late wife. Others, less lucky, had come back silent and limping and scarred from their questioning. Out of sixteen burgomasters and treasurers to be accused, the sole condemned man, Barbesaen, was guarded elsewhere.

  As well as provender, they were permitted visitors, who brought them clothes, and news, and received instructions for the family or the business left masterless outside. In the case of Adorne of Cortachy, the routines established by his niece continued uninterrupted after her departure, and the household of the Hôtel Jerusalem, under his chamberlain, did their utmost to ease his imprisonment. His groom or his body-servant passed to and fro with satchels and baskets containing ink and paper and letters, books and linen, and his chaplain from the Jerusalemkerk paid anxious visits, as did the religious of the churches in the other places—Ronsele, Viven and Hertsberge—where he had inherited seigneurial rights. He had been a liberal patron, and they were rightly anxious. His family visited, assiduously, and the nuns his daughters all wept.

  Gelis, making her own regular calls to the Steen, avoided them if she could. Most often she was accompanied by Dr Andreas, who had moved into the Hôtel Jerusalem, the better to campaign for its master. Andreas of Vesalia bore a name that carried some weight: his father had been town doctor of Brussels and Rector of the University of Louvain; his late half-brother Everard had been doctor to the little Duchess herself. But more important even than that, he was a respected member and doctor to the leather guilds, bound by their trade both to Genoa and the Adornes. All his life, Adorne had been generous to the guilds, and a popular member of the merchants’ club, the White Bear Society. Diniz spent all the time he could spare at the White Bear, pursuing support for his uncle. Andreas did the same with the skinners and glovemakers. And Gelis used her influence with her van Borselen relatives; on Wolfaert, the Governor at Veere; on Gruuthuse here, on whom the Duchess depended.

  On advice, she did not try to speak directly to the Duchess again, and John le Grant, who had once accompanied her, did not offer to do so now. Since Robin and Tobie had gone, the engineer had lost what little interest he had had in the winding up of the mercenary company, and had begun to exchange his desk for the quayside at Sluys, or even the wharves as far off as Antwerp, where there were always men whom he knew, and taverns to meet them in. He had his share of the company money, and was free to live as he chose: Tilde kept his room and Diniz accepted his wandering without comment. It was understandable that, now, he did not want to exchange one responsibility for another.

  Within the pri
son whose outer walls he had protected such a short time ago, Adorne received his friends and their reports with unfailing courtesy, and a wry sense of humour. Since his wife died, he had made a fresh will, to replace the one prepared years ago, before his trip to the Holy Land. He would not, now, be leaving his best sapphire to the Bishop of St Andrews, because Bishop Kennedy was dead, and his nephew Archbishop Graham had been arraigned before the law, as he himself was. And it was unlikely, now, that twenty-four porters of the weigh-houses would wear new robes and carry new torches to his lying-in-state, amid hangings of black and white and grey linen, or that the bells of his three churches would be permitted to ring, to remind Bruges that he had died. Waiting now, a little more spare, a little more pallid than he had been, Adorne passed his time well enough with his fellow magistrates, but was glad, as they were, of any diversion. Reports on the altering political climate were important to him, for they affected his chances of life. But dispatches from Scotland were what he was waiting for.

  Gelis couldn’t tell, yet, whether he had broken the news about Phemie to his existing family. Since he could not marry as yet, perhaps he would wait. He wanted to know, always, what news she had of Nicholas, and she told him whatever she heard. Then, in the middle of May, there came word of Robin’s safe home-coming in a letter from Kathi and with it, at last, a joyous response to his letter from Phemie herself. That afternoon, Gelis returned to the Steen with something from his own house: the lute upon which he had so often made music with the Scottish friend of his heart. He took it from her and then, leaning forward, kissed her cheek. ‘Nicholas is fortunate,’ said Anselm Adorne. ‘And I am fortunate, to have known you both.’

  He was a brave man with few delusions, who knew that, hard as they might work, his life hung on a thread.

  Early that month, the Estates-General had accepted the Imperial marriage as valid, and were even now waiting for the Archduke Maximilian to set out from Vienna. The signs were that the country was becoming reconciled to ‘the rude German’ against whom King Louis had warned. If so, they would wish to put their house in order before he arrived. They would wish no sign of dissension in Bruges.

  The little Duchess made sure there would be none. A letter of remission was posted in June, absolving the Brugeois from alle mesdaden, offensien, mesgripen ende abusen, which satisfactorily excused the summary execution of the sentence on former burgomaster Barbesaen, at last.

  Adorne’s family rushed to the Steen. Dr Andreas presented himself at the Hof Charetty-Niccolò. ‘They are to hold a final Tribunal. I have done all I can. So have you. Now all we can do is pray.’

  It was Gelis who stood before him and spoke. ‘We don’t need to pray. You can tell the future. You know what is going to happen.’ None of the others said anything. John le Grant for once was in the room, as well as Diniz and his family.

  Dr Andreas shook his head, with its bright eyes and its fresh, big-featured face which seemed compatible with human appetites rather than spiritual ones. ‘I draw up birth charts. Sometimes they hint at what is to come. But not everyone wants to know his own fate. My lord of Cortachy asked me to refrain from compiling his horoscope. So did your husband.’

  ‘Nicholas? But he can tell the future,’ said Gelis.

  ‘Can he?’ said the doctor. ‘It would surprise me. He can divine, as many people can, what is lost, or under the earth. He may be able to communicate, in a simple way, with those to whom he is close. But if he has some window into the future, I should like to know of it.’ He paused. ‘I have reassured you. It is not certain, then, what he sees? Or he sees unwanted splinters, of no meaning?’

  ‘That,’ said Gelis. ‘It disturbed him. So did the pendulum. But perhaps both have stopped.’

  ‘One may stop using a pendulum,’ Andreas said. ‘He has probably made that decision: you are right. But the other is not within his control. He is only the recipient.’

  She stared at him. ‘Of what? Someone else has chosen him? Someone else with a pendulum is deliberately—’ She broke off. ‘This is nonsense.’

  John le Grant spoke. ‘Of course it’s nonsense. A pendulum never saved anyone, or visions or prayers that I know of. If anyone was sending messages to Nicol, they didn’t do him much good. Or Robin: Or Astorre.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Andreas. ‘But do we blame the unseen for what happened? No one is consciously trying to reach Nicholas from beyond the barrier of life. If such intangible transmissions exist, they are involuntary, and harmless. Should we not be thinking of Lord Cortachy, rather than this?’

  ‘I was. I am,’ Gelis said.

  ‘Then pray,’ said Dr Andreas. ‘John does not agree, but for the rest of us, there is comfort in prayer.’

  The word came later, from the courtroom over which Anselm Adorne had himself presided so often, before judges who once were his equals or underlings, and now were not.

  The prisoners Anselm Adorne, Jean de Baenst and Paul van Overtweldt had all been tried, and found guilty. The last two were stripped of all they possessed, and immured in a monastic community, to be separated from their families until death. Anselm Adorne was disgraced. His punishment was to walk in solemn parade, dressed in mourning before all those he had deceived; and to be excluded for ever from all the public activities of the city of Bruges.

  ‘But his life!’ Gelis said. ‘He has his life?’

  ‘They all have their lives. Through the intervention of the Zwaer Deken, the Council of Grand Deans of the Guilds.’

  ‘And Phemie can come here then? They can be married!’

  It was Diniz who said, ‘Gelis, he is disgraced. Don’t you understand? After two hundred years of his family’s service to Flanders, he has to walk like a beggar before his own people, apologising for something he didn’t do. He can never hold public office. He can belong to no clubs, no societies, and soon will lose all common ground with his friends, and become an embarrassment. They might as well have killed him.’

  ‘That is going too far,’ said Andreas. ‘Time may bring a change. He is not incarcerated. He is not in a convent. He must face something, for sure, that I would wish on no man; but his reserves are profound. With a new young family to accompany him, he can go on to make a new life.’

  ‘Here?’ said Gelis.

  ‘It would take time. But yes, why not here? Or with the van Borselens at Zeeland, or with his son Jan in Rome or in Naples? Only Genoa, for an Adorno, would be unwise. He could survive anywhere else, and return when he pleases.’

  She looked at him dry-eyed. ‘I am afraid to go and see him,’ she said. ‘I think he will think as Diniz does. Two hundred years in Flanders. That great house, freely lent to the state whenever the state wished to borrow it. That magnificent church, draining his personal pocket, built on Flemish soil as a replica of the Holy Sepulchre, to the glory of God and this town. All his illustrious forebears; all he has brilliantly achieved to make them proud of him; all to end in this. He will think, too, that they might as well have killed him.’

  ‘No,’ said Andreas. ‘He is stronger than you know. You have travelled with him in times of adversity. During these last weeks he has accepted you as a friend. But you have not stood in opposition to him, for example, as your husband has. Your husband knows the measure of Anselm Adorne.’

  EUPHEMIA ADORNE WAS born into the world in the last days of June, and was carried to the private oratory within the Castle of Roslin, where she was baptised. As the child of an unmarried mother, she was privileged to be received into the Church by the compassionate hands of the churchman-physician who was to be Archbishop of St Andrews, and she was held at the font by her first cousins, Anselm and Katelijne Sersanders.

  From there, she was returned to her cradle, while those who had attended her walked over the bridge and climbed, in silence, the winding, tree-shaded path to the unfinished church of the Sinclairs, where the northern door was hung with black and white and grey linen. And inside they knelt, still in silence, before the casket that stood at the altar, and loo
ked upon the calm, closed face of the child’s mother, Euphemia Dunbar, lady of March, lying in death.

  So they were found by Anselm Adorne of Cortachy, come from prison to Roslin to claim a bride, and a child.

  By then the music had started: grave, spare statements in harmony of the kind that only Will Roger could induce from a choir, and then only when sung from the heart. Of all those surrounding the catafalque, it was Katelijne Sersanders who first detected the faint patter of hooves approaching outside and who, with a premonition of doom, rose to her feet even before the sound ceased and two men came to stand on the step which led down from the sunlit archway of the north door.

  Her brother jumped up. Around them, Oliver Sinclair also rose, followed by Phemie’s cousins and sister and all those others who had come to welcome the child, and to mourn.

  Willie Roger, after one glance, slowly swept up one arm, and smoothed the music down into his hand. Silence fell.

  Anselm Adorne walked into the aisle, Dr Andreas behind him. With a glimmer of silks, the Archdeacon moved slowly forward and stopped.

  Adorne said, ‘They gave me some news at the castle. Is it true?’

  Will Scheves was a humane man, and a skilful one. He said, in his quiet, ordinary voice, ‘It is true that you have a daughter. It is true that the mother who gave her day is now at peace with her God.’

  ‘May I see her?’ said Adorne. ‘May I see my wife?’

  She was not his wife. The affirmation, before all the company, was a challenge. In the gentle beams from the high southern windows, Adorne’s face was grey; and he faltered, once, as he walked forward. With a light hand, Dr Andreas guided him to the coffin, from which everyone else had drawn back.

  Oliver Sinclair said, ‘Let us leave him with his family,’ and led the others away, so that only the priest and Katelijne and Sersanders were left with Adorne in the circle of candlelight. Behind them, in the dimness, the singing had begun again, tender and close-knit and low.