‘And now Jodi and I are competing as well for your care. Nicholas, you can’t be everyone’s crutch. You don’t need to be. I’m here as well. So is Kathi, and Tobie and Clémence. You walked into all this alone, and you’ve managed for five months. But now we are all with you.’
He said, ‘But I was meant to—’
‘You were meant to prove that you could hold to a straight line on your own. You have sustained it so far. I’m prepared to trust you the rest of the way. So are the others. Nicholas, Nicholas, don’t.’
This was how, stemming his grief, she had held Jodi all through his childhood, wishing that he were Nicholas. Now it was Nicholas.
Presently, when the positions had courteously got themselves reversed, he said, his voice still disconnected, ‘I meant this to be different. I haven’t even told you yet what I feel about seeing you.’
‘Perhaps later,’ Gelis said. ‘You did say that Clémence was with you? She must be running out of small talk by now. Unless she’s found Jodi?’
She had found Jodi. Exploring, Jodi’s father and mother discovered the two of them, deep in a game. Then Jodi looked up and saw Nicholas, and the game flew to the floor.
Much later, Clémence asked, with some briskness, if anyone would mind if she removed Jordan to her own house for the night, as there was something Dr Tobie was waiting to show him. Jodi said No, and then Yes. Gelis kissed Clémence, even before she kissed Jodi goodbye.
Mailie came to say that my lady must be tired, and she had made up the bed.
Nicholas discovered that he also was tired. He said, ‘I have an idea. I go to bed first, and you follow.’
‘It doesn’t sound very seductive,’ Gelis said.
‘They do it in harems,’ Nicholas said helpfully. ‘Anyway, you followed me here.’
She said, ‘What made you think I was coming to you?’ They were upstairs by now. He noticed that Gelis’s coffers had been unpacked, and some of his own belongings moved to the room next to the marital bedchamber. Clémence had been busy.
He said, ‘Well, for one thing, no one has claimed you. Which is just as well, because now you can’t go.’
‘I can’t?’ she said. He was thankful to see that she was shaking as well. He shut the door of the bedchamber.
‘No. It’s a convention. It’s like not leaving before the end of a dinner, unless you can plead you’ve a nose bleed.’ He was suddenly shattered. ‘Of course …’
‘No. I don’t have a nose bleed,’ she said. ‘You’ve gone white.’
‘That’s because—’ He broke off. ‘Do you suppose we could just get there together?’
Where?’
‘On the bed. Anywhere. Oh God,’ said Nicholas, ‘there isn’t time to undress.’
She was laughing, and so was he; and then there was no room even for laughter, because they were as one at last: joined in lust but also in love; knit together in love, but also in constancy.
Part II
And be thow nocht, as nocht sone sall thow be;
Forget thi-self and in ensample se
The lyoun, king of bestis, as thou sayis
Sum tyme is fude to megis and to fleis.
Chapter 12
Welcum he was, and thar he baid all nicht
HAPPINESS, THAT MOST childish of states, is infectious. Furthermore, in its innocence, it will not be hidden, even when tempered with sorrow.
In the weeks that followed, none of his friends required to be told what had happened to Nicholas. Most, like Kathi, were thankful. Others took longer to welcome it.
A growing son, available once more to his father, expects his father’s attention. Nicholas, rather desperately, did what he could, but it was Mistress Clémence who swept Jodi off and embroiled him and his minders in the raucous young community of the Canongate, from whose expeditions of fishing or fowling he returned ragged, filthy and triumphant. Occasionally, he would be sent to exhibit some bedraggled capture to Robin, but never stayed long. Robin, like Jodi’s father, was a deity whose services tended, as now, to be moderated or withdrawn without warning. Usually, someone else was to blame.
At eight, Jodi himself was too young to detect the same reaction in Robin. As he welcomed Jodi, so the bedridden young man greeted Gelis when, friendly and practical, she came to call as she had done in Bruges. She went alone, and so did Nicholas, and neither appeared before him with Jodi. The tact this time, it seemed, was too obvious: Robin showed his annoyance by driving himself and everyone else into a morass of business minutiae, displaying a lightly cutting insistence both in the counting-house and in private with Nicholas.
It was Andro Wodman, the veteran Archer, who diagnosed the root trouble and, one day in the Berecrofts house, put it to Nicholas, who had called. While Adorne remained with Andreas in Roslin, the double house in the Canongate had become home to several new people: the home and offices occupied by Sersanders now housed John le Grant as well as the Conservator, and opened its doors to the frequent visits of the sailing-master Crackbene, and Dr Tobie. At present, the inhabitants were merely a coterie. They were also, you might say, a company in embryo, awaiting instructions from two very different men.
Both of these, for personal reasons, were at present preoccupied; and the Conservator, like Kathi, was not censorious. Nevertheless, when Nicholas, crossing the road, raised the problem of Robin, Wodman gave his opinion. ‘Of course he’s moody. That’s because you and Tobie are wrong. Robin doesn’t want to talk about business at all. He wants to talk about war. So does John. They just don’t realise it.’
John wasn’t there. John, since his return, had resorted to the same pugnacious isolation he had adopted, according to Gelis, in Bruges. Nicholas stared at Wodman, whose damaged nose, since the oysters, lent a hooting quality to his lightest remark. ‘You think so?’
‘I’ve seen it before. You’re the one they’re afraid of. You’ll have to take the lead.’
By now, Nicholas knew that there were men who were afraid of him, because he intended them to be. Applied to John or Robin, it was mad.
Except that, God knew, fear took different forms, and arose for different reasons. Pride, for instance. He said, ‘Then I suppose I’d better go and talk war to them.’
‘That’s right,’ Wodman said. He had looked grim. ‘Hold an inquest.’
He hadn’t said any more, and presently Nicholas left. Thinking it through, he realised how right Wodman was. He had led Robin through such an interrogation at Berwick, but that was not enough. Men subjected to horrors require to talk about horrors, but also to try to find in them some meaning. Men whose imagination, fired by chivalry, still idealised war didn’t want to be offered some well-meaning substitute: now this is all you can manage; forget all your dreams.
That was Robin’s private misery. John’s must be different. John’s wars had been like his own, the happy exercise of a gift for ingenuity, with no particular bias, reprehensibly, towards either side. Until—a little older, a little less footloose—John had found and respected Astorre’s company, and had also discovered a reason to think about causes.
Unlike Robin, John had other passions. He could take to the sea, or make a name with his devices. But he also needed first to digest what had happened at Nancy, to pass this immovable block through his spiritual gut and get rid of it.
Kathi, when Nicholas took the idea to her, was unimpressed by the metaphor, but examined the theory in silence. In the end she said only, ‘I wonder. If you want to do it, they’re in there together just now, Robin and John, talking about the price of slab iron. It wouldn’t be hard to go in and alter the subject. It might help them. It might put them through hell on the way. It might do that anyway, and not help them.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘That’s why I asked you. I may have been doing the wrong thing all this time.’
She shook her head. ‘You couldn’t know. None of us could. What Robin needed at first is not necessarily what he needs or wants now. If we have fenced him in, you can show him that
there is a gate in the fence.’
‘I’ll go to them,’ Nicholas said, and got up. ‘There are a lot of possibilities, you know. All we have to do is to find out what he wants. Then, I promise you, I’ll see that he gets it.’ He paused, and winced.
‘I know,’ Kathi said. ‘Apart from a body replacement. Nicholas, be careful. Of him, but also yourself. You are not Robin. Don’t try to be.’
‘I know,’ he said, in echo, and stood, looking down. In a year or two, Jodi would be taller than Kathi was at twenty-three. She looked spent, as she had done in Berwick; her face full of slight, sharpened bones and the ends of her mouth curled in irony rather than mischief. Always, Katelijne Sersanders had treated her strength as a boundless commodity; a windblown orchard, spinning winter and summer with blossom, in which the fruit never took time to set. In that, he and she were alike.
But now he had Gelis, who had an ability—noticed before, when they had worked side by side—to render the impossible possible, and to divert him from his enthusiasms, before they exploded from white heat to ashes. Only now her devices were different.
Kathi was smiling. She said, ‘At least, if John and Robin collapse, you will remain firm as a chimney. Nicholas, you look as if you could walk on water.’
‘That,’ he said, ‘is an illusion.’
He had Gelis, but Kathi had nothing. That is, she had a doctor, she had Tobie. And she had Robin. She would have Robin, for he was going there now, to sit with Robin and John, and force them—and himself—to talk about Burgundy. And then about the late Duke. And then about how he had died. And that would be the beginning.
It was a beginning. It was about war; and about leadership; and about responsibility. It was about how peoples were ruled, and might live together. It was not, this time, about the sights and sounds of the battlefield, although that was its provenance. It disposed, for all time, of the unalloyed enjoyment of war for its own sake, although it couldn’t banish completely their instinctive love of a fight. They were men.
Afterwards, he did not seek Kathi out: he had no wish to share this experience. He went home. Later, his balance sensationally restored by quite a different experience, he was able to turn his mind to other things, such as the news that Jordan de St Pol had gone back to Kilmirren, leaving the old lady, Bel, in his house. It was Clémence who told him, recalling the old fondness between Mistress Bel and young Jodi. Nicholas owed a great deal to Bel of Cuthilgurdy. Her opinion of him, he knew, was not so high. Nevertheless, he would take Jodi to see her. It was safe: even Henry was not there, but lodged with a comrade. He would go, when he had time.
He did not immediately have time. It was remarkable, during this period, how little time Nicholas had, and how unpunctual he had become. He also fell asleep, now and then, at his desk. He had a suspicion that Gelis spent part of the day, every day, recovering her sleep. In fact he knew that she did, for once or twice he had returned to the house of an afternoon and found her fast asleep in her chamber. Which had made him late for something again. He was gripped by carnal delight to a degree of shocking intensity—an immersion in glorious lechery which still retained, at its heart, all the uncomplicated joys of his boyhood, kept for the only woman who matched him exactly in this. For this was her music, this ferocious deployment of instruments; each development unexpected; each thoughtful progression reaching for a different climax.
He gave himself to it, for it would never happen again, or not to this degree. And when it reduced itself, as it must, to the safer levels of marital happiness, he would be enabled, charged with this power, to master anything.
Then Adorne came back from Roslin, and Davie Simpson from the north, where he had been engaged in Cistercian business. He was made welcome, as ever, by the Abbot of Newbattle.
There were two things to be done before the matter of Scotland reopened, with all its new players. Nicholas descended one of the paths to the Cowgate, and fulfilled a serious appointment with Avandale. Then he set off to return to his house, to fulfil his intention of taking his wife and his son to see Bel.
He hadn’t reached home when he was stopped by someone from his own household. ‘Ser Nicol. I was to ask gin ye’d come. Young Maister Henry’s arrived at the house, and won’t budge till he’s seen you.’
The man’s voice was low. Nicholas turned to him, smiling; and resumed the steep climb in his company. ‘Did my lady send you?’
‘Oh no. It was Master Lowrie was worried, my lord. Mistress Gelis is fine. She could heckle on Satan himself and never mind it, begging your pardon.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Nicholas said, with genuine amusement. Then he sent the man off, for they were approaching his house, and he could hear, muffled, the voice of Henry de St Pol raised in contention inside.
• • •
THE CONFRONTATION WITH Satan, aged sixteen, in the full panoply of an Archer of the King’s Guard, had begun a short time before, when Kilmirren’s grandson had arrived on the doorstep and the demands had begun. Even when Gelis had him admitted and he saw for himself that she was alone, Henry had refused to leave. She had time to be thankful that she was alone: that Nicholas for once was spared this; that Jodi was elsewhere, doggedly perfecting his martial arts, and would not be required to face the cousin who had once tried to kill him, a baby of three. She knew why that had happened. She supposed that Nicholas knew as well.
Meantime, Nicholas was away, and here was … Here was his other son, about whom Diniz knew, and Dr Tobie, and Father Moriz, and Nicholas and herself. But no one else.
His beauty was breathtaking. Enhanced by young manhood, the fine skin, the brilliant eyes, the gilded hair were carried now by an athlete, slender and straight-backed and graceful. She did not know, she would never know why her sister Katelina, wilfully importuning the servant she took him to be, had contrived to bear this glorious infant to Nicholas but had not allowed him to claim it. Instead, she had found a surrogate father, and married him, and passed the coming child off as his. Simon de St Pol believed that Henry was his only son and true heir. Henry would fight to the death anyone who implied otherwise, and despised Nicholas as a bastard. She, Gelis, had come close to spoiling Nicholas’s life and her own over her jealousy. She had forgiven Nicholas, who was the victim of his own generous nature (so happy, so often). It had taken her longer to forgive her dead sister.
Now the boy, white with hatred, confronted her, cuirass glinting under his tunic, powerful sword sheathed at his side. He had flung his plate gloves aside, scoring the wood of a table. ‘Well?’ he said.
She sat in a chair with a back and arms: always an advantage. She tented her fingers. ‘Henry, you heard me the first time. I don’t know where your uncle is. I don’t know when he’ll return. You don’t want to come back another day?’
‘No.’
‘You wouldn’t like him to come and see you?’
‘No.’
‘You don’t want to tell me what it’s about?’
He stared at her. ‘It amuses you? It won’t if I send the Guard to roust through every tavern and house till they find him.’
Gelis said, ‘The Guard? Henry, I’m sorry. If it’s as serious as that, then let me go myself to Sir David. I’ll get my cloak. You should have said. In fact, I think your uncle is with the King at this moment. I was told not to say so, but if Nicholas is to be arrested, then it must be made public.’ She had left her chair and was already crossing the room. She stopped beside him. ‘What has he done, Henry? He’s killed somebody? Will it harm you, because you’re related?’
‘I’m not related!’ he said.
She frowned. ‘But you always call him Uncle,’ she said. ‘He told me. I know he likes it. And I’m your aunt and he is my husband.’
Henry smiled. He backed to the door and stood against it. ‘You are clever,’ he said. ‘I grant you that. No, you’re not going out. Neither am I. Suppose we both sit over there, and you tell me about all these delightful family ties. You are his wife, but you slept with my fathe
r. Of course, everyone did. So whose son is Jordan? Do you know?’
‘He happens to be mine,’ Nicholas said from the door. ‘So who is your mother? Do you know?’
Gelis drew in her breath. Nicholas, in the grip of real anger, for a second had a look of his son. She said sharply, ‘Stop it, both of you. Henry, he didn’t mean that; he was only protecting me. Sit down, let me send for some wine, and let us deal with this properly. And for Christ’s sake take off those swords. You’re not going to use them, and you look just as close to real men without them.’ She marched off to give orders, but stayed within earshot.
Behind her, Nicholas gave a half-laugh, and her heart eased. He said, ‘That’s marriage for you. I’m sorry. Begin again. What was the matter?’
‘Tell her to go,’ Henry said.
‘She’s bringing the wine,’ Nicholas said. ‘And I’ll only have to repeat it all anyway. Is it Mar?’ Gelis reappeared.
‘Mar!’ said Henry. ‘Why should I come to some failed out-of-work mercenary for advice about Johndie Mar? No. I want back the horses you stole from me. With three more, to compensate for my trouble. And if you don’t tell me where they are now, I’ll get that woman under me the way that my father did.’ He had his sword in his hand. Nicholas started slowly to move, and then stopped.
‘Well, about time,’ Gelis said. Lowrie, entering with a tray, laid it down, caught Nicholas’s eye and left. She said, ‘Sit down, both of you. You can’t drink, Henry, with a sword in your hand. Why on earth should your uncle steal horses? Nicholas, if you don’t sit, I shall take Henry at his word and carry him off to the bedroom. And that will frighten him silly.’
Nicholas started to laugh, and did sit. Henry reddened. Gelis walked across with a cup and stood before him. His jaw was set, and his lashes were as long as a woman’s. She said, ‘I heard how you bought Nicholas’s horses. It was a trick, but it was legitimate. If they’re stolen, I suppose you might at once think of him. But why should he do it? If he didn’t complain then, and he didn’t, why should he invite trouble now? You were bound to want redress. The theft was bound to come to light.’ She paused. ‘You have his groom, haven’t you? What does he say?’
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