Gemini

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Some such offer had always been likely. He had discussed it with Gelis some time ago. ‘Sandy will try to persuade both his sisters away from the King and Adorne. This is one way I can counter it. But only if you think it would be good for Jodi. He will be in a royal household, as a page.’

  And Gelis had said, ‘Thank you for asking me. But you wouldn’t even have suggested it if you hadn’t been sure. If it’s good for Jodi, then yes.’

  And now he was trotting beside Sandy—beside Alexander Stewart, Duke of Albany, Earl of March, lord of Annandale, lord of Man, Lord High Admiral of Scotland and Warden of the Scottish March—with all these cheeses and wine barrels bouncing behind, and a hundred men-at-arms, happy to be away from the wife, and ready for anything.

  The plan was quite simple: to begin at Dunbar, the chief stronghold of the earldom of March (Sandy’s pride), and proceed south by the coast, calling on the controversial Homes at Fast Castle and the other obdurate Homes of Coldingham Priory, and spending some days with the criminally adept population of Berwick-upon-Tweed. Then, following the course of the Tweed and the Border to the east, a ten-mile sweep would be made via a number of good fishing pools to the church and lands of Upsettlington at the Carham ford, the place between the East and Middle Marches where Border disputes were usually settled. Then they would turn for the north, and return to Edinburgh, calling on the Abbot of Melrose (to whom Alec Brown was related), and by the village of Lauder to the hospice of Soutra, which had a good vegetable garden and a sound set of latrines, and a house beside Bonkle’s in the Cowgate of Edinburgh.

  When Border truces failed and war broke out between England and Scotland, the area about Lauder was a popular mustering-place: it was where, four years ago, an excited Albany, aged twenty, had gathered an army to repulse a threatened English attack led by the possibly superior, possibly cynical, possibly simply ambitious Richard, Duke of Gloucester, not yet twenty-two. The attack didn’t come.

  There was a theory (held by Bishop Spens and Gelis, for example) that Sandy Albany, one of five royal siblings, sometimes modelled himself on Richard, one of seven. They had first met at Greenwich Palace, the home of Richard’s mother in England, when Richard was twelve, and Sandy was ten and a captive. Then Sandy and Bishop Spens had been allowed to come home, and Richard had been sent to the Earl of Warwick’s. Richard had gone to Bruges as Sandy had, but not from choice; he had been exiled when he was eighteen with his brother the King. They had stayed in the house of Louis de Gruuthuse, whose wife was a van Borselen. Then they had come triumphantly home, in a ship of the Admiral Henry van Borselen, Sandy’s great-uncle by marriage. The Lancastrian King was defeated, and Richard acquired honours and a great household and was appointed Admiral and, two years ago, became the right high and mighty Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester, Warden of the West Marches for the defence of Cumbria, based in Carlisle. But of course he didn’t need to stay at Carlisle, having Lord Dacre to deputise for him; and the Middle and East Marches were looked after by Harry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, with whom Sandy was supposed to discuss all the tiresome frontier matters of purloined horses and cattle, and infringed fishing-rights and wanton injury and destruction, and failure to pay damages or return hostages.

  It was stuff for lawyers, and half the time Sandy sent a deputy. He was here just now out of pique, because Percy had called a meeting and then cancelled it, just when Sandy had proposed to attend it. So Sandy decided to go on tour anyway, and visit those sheriffs and baronial officials who dispensed local justice in peace-time, and were supposed to supply him with troops in time of war. And check, as he should, that the decrees of the last March truce meeting had all been obeyed. And observe (his private intention) just how much illegal activity was taking place on both sides of the Border where English and Scots, comfortably distant from central authority and mostly related by blood, were pursuing their own sports and their own interests with blithe disregard of anyone’s rules.

  Nicholas let it all happen. Once on the road, you couldn’t argue with Sandy. But his friend and steward, at least, saw the dangers. It was Jamie Liddell who warned Nicholas that the excursion was mooted, and who kept to himself, in due course, the fact that Nicholas had dispatched a discreet warning to everyone on their route. Sandy could be tactless, especially in the company of Homes.

  It seemed at first to promise well. At Fast Castle, no one killed anyone else, although words were exchanged. At Coldingham, Nicholas diverted questions about the future of the monastery, which the King wanted to change, in order to finance his royal chapel music. After the arguments died, Nicholas tracked down those monks who were genuinely interested in music and obtained their approval for one or two new choral pieces, which happened to be signed by Whistle Willie. In between, he visited the scriptorium and had a long talk with the monk in charge of the archives. Sandy came out with a whole skin, and Nicholas came out looking thoughtful.

  In Berwick-upon-Tweed, having called on Lauder of Bass at the castle, they repaired to the Browns’ roomy mansion in St Margaret’s, and got Sandy’s bard to perform while they ate. It had surprised Nicholas, in the past, to find that Henry de St Pol had ever heard of a blind poet called Harry, since that particular bard was unwelcome at Court. It had not surprised him, subsequently, to discover that the minstrel, an acerbic veteran best met in the open air, had been adopted by Sandy for parading in taverns and among certain types of patriotic society. He had even, in Nicholas’s presence, got the old man to recite the bloodier bits of The Wallace for Meg, his unmarried sister, who had burst into tears. Nicholas had felt like bursting into tears himself, but for different reasons. He had no objection to the fifteen contradictory versions of the life of Sir William Wallace, great Scottish hero and martyr, whose left arm had ended up nailed to a gateway in Berwick, any more than he objected to the fifteen lives of Alexander the Great or Robin Hood or King Arthur. He did, however, become disenchanted with Jamie Liddell’s deep compulsion to verify facts, which doubled the length of the sessions.

  ‘Where did you hear that? I’ve never heard that.’

  And the old man would bridle. Encased in lid-leather, his eyes looked like pigs’ knuckles. ‘What would you know? That was a Latin book, that was from.’

  ‘Then the Latin book was by some idiot romancer who didn’t know his Ayr from his Alva. Shall I tell you what really happened?’

  ‘Don’t,’ Nicholas would beg. ‘Just don’t.’

  But he always did.

  That night, it was the Lord Clerk Register, Alex Inglis, who entered the room just as Harry was vicariously slaying an Englishman:

  Wallace tharwith has tane him on the croune,

  Throuch bukler, hand, and the harnpan also,

  To the schulderis, the scharp suerd gert he go.

  Lychtly raturnd till his awne men agayne.

  The women cryede; ‘Our bukler player is slaine.’

  The man was dede; quhat nedis wordis mair?

  The bard broke off. Alex Inglis remarked, ‘Good evening, my lord. I see we are preparing to contribute to the peace in our usual fashion.’

  Sandy looked furious. It was customary for a representative of central government to accompany the Warden on his visits, which was partly why so many had lodgings in Berwick: the Clerk Register lived in Hide-hill in style, as befitted a man who expected a bishopric. The said Clerk Register, at the moment, was suppressing much the same annoyance as Sandy, since he was supposed to be working in Edinburgh, and indeed had been, before Nicholas rousted him out and advised him to speed down to Berwick.

  Nicholas caught Liddell’s eye, and they began hastily to mend the situation, with partial success. When they all left for Upsettlington and Melrose, Alex Inglis was still with them; but so was Blind Harry.

  BACK IN EDINBURGH, Nicholas called first on Anselm Adorne, even before he went home to Gelis. It was safe: Sandy had gone to the Castle and Liddell and Inglis to the Cowgate; Nicholas slipped into Adorne’s house in the dark. Adorne was the friend of the
King and the Queen and the Knights of St John. Nicholas was a fellow Burgundian, but not a recognised courtier. He was Sandy’s friend.

  Adorne was there, springing up from a card game with Andro Wodman, who rose also to greet him with what might even have been satisfaction on his broken-nosed face. Nicholas himself didn’t want to eat or drink: he didn’t even want to be given a chair, but sat on the step of a prie-dieu in his rubbed boots and travel-stained doublet, listening as Adorne told him that Gelis was back, and the gist of her news and his own.

  Since the storms of the previous year, news from Flanders had not been cut off, and Adorne was the recipient, as was Nicholas, of many quiet dispatches from unusual sources. They knew that the Medici outpost in Bruges had now closed, and that London was closing. Tommaso Portinari was still in Milan, from which city Adorne had been surprised to receive a small bale of Genoese alum bearing Tommaso’s seal and a Biblical text, which those who knew him found faintly alarming.

  The van Borselens wrote. Some news percolated from Jan Adorne in Rome, but not overmuch. The many adult young of the family Adorne had had little to say since the arrival of their father’s small daughter. Even the cherished Arnaud had merely sent a stiff note to announce the birth of his first son Aerendtken. Nicholas, in his new understanding of Anselm Adorne, judged what it had cost him to confess such a thing to his children, and thought them ungenerous.

  He himself had found it sufficiently oppressive to send the same news to his former manager Gregorio who, although now happily married with his own son, had once had a fondness for Phemie. He had had to use less discrimination writing to Diniz in Bruges and Moriz in Germany, neither of whom would be over-surprised. Julius, of course, would not only be unsurprised, but avid for details. Nicholas trusted Moriz to keep Julius fully occupied in Cologne, and not where he could rampage about upsetting the delicate balance in Scotland.

  Relating now the essence of the journey with Albany, Nicholas had cause to remember just how fragile it was. He was not interrupted by either listener until he mentioned Melrose, upon which Adorne caught him up suddenly. ‘Davie Simpson had been there?’

  ‘Supposedly on Newbattle business. Of course, it’s the daughter-house. I couldn’t find out why. Alec Brown’s kinsman the Abbot was away, and Alec and both his brothers have this love-hate relationship with Newbattle over the salt-pans and Bathgate. There was also some talk of John of Scougal, the laird, and a law suit.’

  ‘That wouldn’t be surprising,’ said Adorne. ‘They’re a litigious family. And friendly with your Alec Brown among others.’ Adorne was also friendly with Browns. He had lodged one of them in Bruges, when James had wanted him taught to master the lute. The tasks of a Conservator were multifarious.

  ‘Fertile ground for our Davie,’ said Nicholas. ‘Andro, both the Browns and the Scougals have sent sons to be Archers in France. Do they know anything about Simpson that we don’t? Do you know anything that we don’t?’

  There was the usual silence. Adorne said, ‘Nicholas. For the hundredth time. Simpson did nothing in France that could give us any hold over him. He contrived to leave the Archers when Andro did, in order to share a lucrative post with St Pol. Now that St Pol has turned against him, don’t you think he would have exposed any misdemeanours by now? I sympathise. We know that Simpson is planning something. We shall find out what it is. And meanwhile, there is the Star. It should be there by Christmas, Gelis says. It is at least appropriate.’

  ‘And Camulio comes when?’

  ‘The word is,’ Adorne said, ‘that the Reverend Father in God, the new Bishop of Caithness, will return to Scotland in the spring. So Simpson will act between now and then.’

  ‘Or, most likely, between Twelfth Night and then. Good,’ said Nicholas. ‘I think it is time we finally parted company with Davie Simpson. A public parting. The kind of parting that even the Princesses and Albany will have no qualms about. And then we can begin to bring them all into the fold.’

  ‘You have Albany now,’ Wodman said. ‘Or most of him.’

  ‘No one has most of him,’ Nicholas said. ‘Not even Sandy. But losing Simpson will be a beginning.’

  QUICK AS THEY were, it was late by the time Nicholas left, and reached his own home. Gelis forgave him.

  After she had forgiven him, she stroked him for a long time, causing him to sink into a beneficent calm. He thought, through the haze, that if he could stand it, he might even leave home more often. Then he laughed, and pulled on his shirt, and found them both something to drink, and asked about Avandale and Colquhoun. Then he told her what he had told Adorne. They had somehow settled back into bed, sitting folded together.

  ‘It was difficult. Inglis was a great help; Alec less so. Alec doesn’t care what happens, so long as he can trade. And I couldn’t act the schoolmaster to Sandy, or I’d lose him. I had to let him disappear, twice. That was when he met Archie Douglas Angus, Earl of.’

  ‘You had him followed? Did Liddell help?’

  ‘Liddell disappeared when Sandy did. I don’t know if he likes Angus very much, but that same Archie Douglas is Liddell’s landlord in Forfar. Angus rents out a lot of property there, next to Cortachy. And Angus’s wife is a Boyd, Tom Boyd’s sister. Adorne got some of their land.’

  Gelis stopped drinking. Her shoulders against him were moist. A drop of wine from the base of the cup made a glittering bead on the curve of one breast, and began slowly to find its way down. When he stemmed it with two broad, coddling fingertips, she trapped them against her. ‘No. Listen. Wasn’t the first Tom Preston killed at Forfar? At the sheriff court during a quarrel?’

  ‘Ask Leithie, Thomas the Second. Yes. Thomas One died five years ago. That was when Adorne had gone back to Bruges, and was about to be sent on Burgundian business to Poland.’

  ‘So the quarrel was over his land?’

  ‘I couldn’t find out. Someone in Edinburgh knew there was going to be trouble at Forfar and tried to cancel the meeting, but the message didn’t get through. Again, justice courts are notorious for dangerous squabbles, and Preston might have been killed by mischance. No one else died. Like everyone else, Preston had been raising money for trade by handing over recoverable assets to people he could trust to return them eventually. People like his own Craigmillar family, and James Shaw, with bits of the old Colquhoun lands of Sauchie. When Preston died, they got to keep them, of course.’

  There was a pause. Gelis said, ‘Jordan de St Pol’s wife was called Shaw.’

  ‘So are a lot of people. She was dead long before Preston was killed. I don’t think it’s relevant,’ Nicholas said.

  ‘But you don’t know for sure. Did you know that Bel’s last name is Erskine?’ She had not lifted her eyes to observe him. Her head pillowed against him, she was watching the pulse in his throat. The two joys of living with Gelis: the challenges and the love.

  Nicholas said, ‘Yes, I knew.’ He stirred his fingers within hers, so that this time she looked up. He said, ‘Gelis. I know what we agreed. The only safety for you, for me, for Adorne, for all of us is to be open with one another. To lodge a record, in triplicate, of everything that we do. You know all that matters about me, except for one or two secrets that aren’t mine; and nothing about them will ever worry you.’

  She held his gaze for a long time, and then smiled. ‘No other children with dimples?’

  With Gelis, there were no barriers now when he was conveying a truth. Shaking his head, he let his smiling eyes answer. Then he returned freely to nonsense.

  ‘How did you guess? Five in the Curia alone, all upstanding young priests.’

  It sounded flippant. No one else could know that something caught in his throat as he spoke. Something very small and remote, like a secret.

  It was strange, then, that she lay still at his heart, and didn’t smile, or retort, or embark, as only she could, on another complex, ardent, sensual triumph. It was strange and mortally comforting that, instead, she said only, ‘I’m here.’

  DESPITE KNOWI
NG WHAT everyone else knew, Tobie also was happy.

  His charges were well. The birth of Hob had transformed Hob’s young father. What had been done grimly before was now done with exuberance, including a robust way with his wheelchair which had added astonishing power to the muscles on his active side. With an attendant, he roved Leith and Edinburgh and even, with a contrivance of John’s, got himself on a horse. The attendant was as irresponsible as he was, and not much older; they got into scrapes from which Kathi would herd them both home, trying to sound stern while dissolving in thankfulness.

  Clémence assisted, while comfortably dividing her time amongst the infants Hob and Efemie, and the older children. She also regularly helped the Princess Mary, which meant that she could be continually astonished by the progress Jodi was making, while checking his lapses in manners. It made Jodi feel safe, if the casual visits of his father had not already done so. Tam Cochrane also dropped by, and bullied him.

  Now that he was less needed at home, Tobie had begun to establish a practice. Some physicians, preferring not to lodge in a great household, operated from their homes. Most followed the custom of Bruges and rented rooms in a tavern, which were also used by other professionals, such as scribes or lawyers or notaries. Himself, he liked the Argyll inn, because he admired the great Campbell who owned it. He claimed to be astonished at Clémence when she suggested that the chief attraction might lie with the hostess. But truly, you would search St Johnstoun of Perth and Stirling and Edinburgh before you found a brewster-wifie as good as Lang Bessie.

  It was an innocent dream, for a once-randy doctor. As a medical man, Tobie admired the splendours of Bessie, but that was all, for he was also part of a team. Argyll’s tavern made just the kind of meeting-place Nicholas wanted, when he needed John or Andro or Tobie to tell him what was happening, or to meet Colin Campbell himself, or Scheves or Whitelaw or Avandale outside their houses. Women couldn’t so easily come there, or Robin, but other places were found. It was like it used to be: a team of experts in Bruges. It was better than it used to be: for Nicholas was at the centre, well liked and well supported; with even Anselm Adorne content to be his partner. Burgundy had been too big; so had France. Tobie himself had once chosen Urbino. Scotland was like Urbino: it was the right size for them all. They could help, here.