By then, Nicholas had forged some sort of relationship with the men of the garrison, and with Ellem of Butterdene the captain, who would carry the burden of all that Sandy did now. They were loyal, but they were not foolish. Butterdene said, ‘I know. If we fire, they will fire back. But what else can I do? Refuse him? And there are others who feel as he does. They can’t join us now, but one day they will. This stand will further the fight against England.’
Nicholas said, ‘They don’t want to fire against you. Those guns are there simply to invite his highness to stop. In my view, they would not even prevent him leaving for France. They know that France can do nothing.’
It was reported to Sandy, as he expected, but did no good. The guns began firing one dawn. He heard them from his room. Later, Albany sent for him up on the battlements, where he was made to look across and see what damage had been done. Avandale’s banner still flew, but the field of tents on the rising ground opposite showed a haze of smoke in one corner, and scurrying men. It reminded Nicholas of other places, other battles, other sieges that he would rather forget. Of his own tent in flames, because of Henry. He said, ‘What did you hit?’
Sandy said, ‘We were aiming at the gun-carriage. There.’
‘I see the gun-carriage. What did you hit?’
Then it came out. ‘They shared a pavilion next to the guns. They knew the risk.’
‘They didn’t know you were going to start firing for the first time at dawn. Who, Sandy? Who was in the pavilion?’
Wallace of Craigie, the answer was. Ironically, the man who had told Blind Harry all he knew about Albany’s great hero, Wallace.
‘And?’
‘I wouldn’t have wanted it,’ Sandy said. ‘But he had a finger in a good many pies, and those ships of his weren’t above a spot of piracy. His wife was a cousin of Cortachy’s mistress, wasn’t she?’
‘Who?’ said Nicholas repetitively. But he guessed. Sir John Colquhoun of Luss, Gelis’s recent host: dead.
He unwisely said what he thought.
Sandy listened. Sandy said, ‘You know so much. I’ll show you. When I go to France, you go with me.’
‘I haven’t been invited,’ Nicholas said, after a bit. He had served the King of France once, and left him for Burgundy.
‘You are not a guest,’ Sandy said. ‘You are a servant. You are part of my household.’
He tried again. ‘I am a Burgundian, Sandy.’
Sandy produced an angry leer. ‘I think not,’ he said. ‘You come from Dijon. And now Dijon is French. I may be a guest of King Louis, but you, Nicholas, are his subject.’
Which was true, as it happened. He said something. The ship was due any day. Without Sandy, they would have the sense, surely, to stop firing. In time, the castle would fall, and all those who defended it would be punished. Without Sandy, one real problem with the management of the realm would be resolved. So long as France was impotent, it was not the worst thing that could happen, to have Sandy resident there. For Sandy would not be content. And France, importuned once too often, might just possibly send him back home. Upon which he might discover that to be Earl of March and lord of Annandale and Admiral of Scotland was not inconsiderable, especially as enthusiasm for his opinions might by then have shrunk.
To begin with, Nicholas thought he was free to choose: whether to go and help guide Sandy in France, and perhaps come back with him; or whether to stay and try and counter the harm he had done. He was free in one sense: he and his family were safe now from predators. He could leave them until autumn, say, if he must. Then he realised that Sandy had meant what he said. Whether he wished it or not, he was probably going to France.
He wrote the note to Gelis, but added a little more than he had done in the Berwick epistle. He left it in his room. He thought of Jodi, and Henry, and wished he could take them both with him. He felt Robin was settled, and Kathi; and that Adorne was prepared now for the decision he would have to make soon: whether to go back to Bruges or elsewhere. The rest of his company needed no nursing: Tobie and Clémence and John. Wodman was self-sufficient. Bel … Bel was her own law. And Gelis would understand, for he had talked all this out with her, as he had done with the others. No secrets, now. Or very few, and those he could carry alone. They need never be known.
He had been right. When the ship came, they bound him as he had been bound when he came, and he was forced on board with the borrowed clothes which were all that he had. He would be one of a household of ten. Later, Sandy had him unbound and delivered a series of warnings. Then they sat about talking, and drank a lot, and Sandy said, his face flushed, ‘Nicol? I’m glad that you’re here.’
Which meant that he had probably done the right thing. Although it seemed mad to have to revisit France as part of his personal programme of atonement for Scotland. He would forget all his Gaelic, for one thing.
Part III
Without kinrik to call a man a king
It is in vayne.
Chapter 23
Thus all thar moving cummis fra the king,
Richt as the rever fro the well can spring.
WITH NICHOLAS GONE, the Flemish colony in Scotland coalesced, rather as the Bank had once done during his frequent absences abroad. Yet they were not a single foreign community, as were the aliens in Bruges. Their advocate and adviser and judge was Anselm Adorne, now established as virtual Conservator, with Wodman, a Scotsman, beside him. And linking him to the merchants were his kinsmen: his nephew Sersanders, and the Scottish family of Berecrofts, into which his niece had married. And, of course, the astrologer Andreas, from Vesalia.
Then came de Fleury’s own circle: his lady from Zeeland, who continued his business; and the Scotsman le Grant, who dealt with guns and shipping; and Tobie the Pavian doctor, whose wife was French, and as welcome at Court as he was.
And lastly there were the merchants; every man with a house or a warehouse in more than one of the profitable ports: in Berwick and Leith, in Stirling and St Johnstoun of Perth and Montrose; in Aberdeen and far up in Orkney. And did you go abroad, you would find the same names and the same faces, or ones very like them, attached to well-built family houses in Veere and Bruges and Antwerp, Lille and Middleburg. Such men did business with that bonny wife, Gelis, and had no cause for complaint; no more than had their own wives (more’s the pity). It seemed to them all, just, that without Nicol something was missing, ye ken? A kind of good humour. He was a great asset, Nicol, once he got going.
Other resident foreigners were less free with their opinions. There were not so many. The short-term Italian physician; the German gunner. Men like Bishop Hepburn of Dunblane, whose unpronounceable real name was Herspolz. The biggest faction were the French: the skilled artillerymen and scholars and builders who came for some appointment or other, and often stayed; the old families, long settled in Scotland, who still sent their sons, through the generations, to serve the French Kings. The families connected with Newbattle Abbey.
By now, it was fairly clear which individuals sympathised, however discreetly, with France, and which—mainly the traders—had found the peace more to their liking. Both elements, for different reasons, found some satisfaction in Albany’s absence; both were puzzled by the actions of Nicol de Fleury. According to some, he was a hostage; according to others, he had been seen raiding with Albany, and far from trying to stop him from leaving the country, had actually plotted to join him. Now he would come back with Albany, leading a French army to take over Scotland.
The Council, echoed in an unconvinced way by the King, let it be known that Nicholas de Fleury had proved a valued mediator between his highness and his royal brother, and was acting even now in the best interests of the realm. Jamie Liddell, now released from the Castle and returned to the stewardship of Sandy’s Scottish possessions, said very little. He had long been afraid that de Fleury’s allegiance was to the King, and to a continued accommodation with England. But he had been a good friend to Sandy.
ON THE SECOND day of June, Ki
ng Louis of France was at Château-Landon, Fontainebleau, from where he ordered the merchants of Compiègne to meet the merchants of Paris on business, and decreed that the merchants of Lyons should convoke with his officials in Lyons in three weeks. He moved to St Cyr, to St Denis, to Vincennes.
On the nineteenth of June, from Coulommiers, the King sent to enquire how fared the leopard that the Duke of Ferrara sent him in April. He summoned Nicholas de Fleury. ‘You know about leopards?’
‘I have hunted with them, sire.’
‘You shall hunt with this one, and give me your opinion.’
On the twenty-fourth of June, from Villenauxe, Nogent-sur-Seine, the King sent a courier to Sigismond, Duke of Austria, to notify him that, with regret, the King was stopping his pension.
‘One cannot,’ he said to Nicholas de Fleury, ‘condone, in a pensioner, the blatant support of one’s enemies. The man is a Judas, a prince aux trente deniers. On the other hand, one knows how to recompense friends. You fought at Nancy when the Bastard of Burgundy was captured? But now that he has joined us, what does he not have? Castles, towns, seigneuries, a comté. What more could one wish?’
Nicholas agreed, with some warmth. Now was not the moment to mention that the same Bastard Anthony had just married his son to Wolfaert van Borselen’s daughter, thus hedging his bets in a subtle van Borselen style that filled Nicholas with yearning.
Louis said, ‘And, of course, there is Jean, son of Louis de Gruuthuse, once so admired by this youth Maximilian that he created him knight. But brought in chains as my prisoner, he saw his errors at once, and now is a chamberlain, a knight of the Order, Prince of Struheuze and seigneur of Avelghem, Espierre and Ussé, Seneschal of Anjou, and soon to be the husband of my niece. Do I seem a generous master to you?’
‘I am dazzled, sire,’ said Nicholas. It was true. If he looked dazed, it was because he was locked in calculation. All that, and the old fox was also paying bags of money annually as bribes to the King of England, for one thing. When Edward sent the Princess Cecilia’s dowry to Scotland, it had come warm from the King of France’s annual subsidy. Which must annoy the King of France quite a lot.
Put together, his interviews with Louis might appear like a growing romance, but in fact he had been sent for only occasionally since his separation from Sandy in Paris. Welcomed by proxy and handsomely installed with his suite at the Sign of the Cock, rue Saint-Martin, Sandy had immediately collapsed into his bed, and had hardly noticed when the King had sent for the sire de Fleury to ride south to his travelling household. In any case, he had William Monypenny to look after him.
On joining the royal party, Nicholas, a long-time admirer of Louis’s acumen, contented himself with playing the simpleton, leaving Louis to guess whether he was Albany’s promoter or King James’s spy. Louis studied the problem, then, rather than waste time on it, threw open the bidding with a blatancy which was an attraction in itself. Indeed, the chance to observe Louis held, for Nicholas, far more fascination than the prospect of wealth and advancement.
He did not say so, however; and when, the weather increasing in heat, the King remarked on his plans to take his Savoyard niece Louise to Dijon, Nicholas refrained likewise from comment. They moved from Vitry to Méry to Nemours, just south of Fontainebleau. There the King sent for M. de Fleury once more, and honoured him with a discourse on France’s great future: the submission of Franche-Comté and Brittany, the conquest of Picardy, the harrying into compliance of the Duke of the Tyrol, assuming that the young Duke of Lorraine would let his troops pass, as he had done for the late, tragic Duke Charles. And, lastly, there was hope of a pact that would usher in peace for a century with England.
After which, wiping his hands (he had been feeding his dogs), the King observed that there was a rumour of plague in Dijon, and he would be grateful if the sire de Fleury would travel ahead and investigate. It was near his grandfather’s comté, was it not?
It had been a lesser honour, a vicomté. It no longer existed. He had been given another lure. Another chance. Another option.
He went.
DIJON HADN’T CHANGED its name since its conquest, like Arras, but a third of its population had gone. Some of them had been replaced by Louis’s nominees, and a number of Burgundian officers had actually stayed to serve under France—they had known Louis, after all, when he was the Dauphin. There had been a popular rising against them, and some had been killed, but the rising had failed. You could see the battering the town had sustained: the capital of all Burgundy was at present too small for its walls, which enclosed great patches of rubble and weeds, rustling with wild and tame animals. It was also very quiet, with an air of artificial orderliness about the areas where town life still carried on. There was no plague.
When he had seen all he wanted to see, Nicholas produced some coins which no one knew that he had, and endeared himself to his escort by procuring for them the unlimited hospitality of a tavern for the night while he went to pay a visit to an old mistress at Damparis. In four days the young equerry, his two soldiers and Nicholas had discovered a great deal in common: the men-at-arms still could not quite understand how his French came to be as normal as their own.
He did not explain that he was not an expatriate Scot, but an expatriate Dijonnais, whose mother had married a Scot, who had disowned her. He had lied about seeing a mistress, but not about going to Damparis, which was thirty miles south of Dijon, and just outside Dole. The manor he meant to visit had belonged to the seigneur of Damparis and his wife, who had nursed his own first wife when she died. Eight years ago, the same couple had been actively kind to the child of his next marriage, but he did not know whether they still lived. Only he had reason to believe that the house was still there, and that someone was living in it. And if there were, he had a question to ask them.
Dole, the capital of Franche-Comté, was in a worse case than Dijon: it had been virtually burned to the ground. He found an inn and methodically bought something to eat, and ate it. Then, rather slowly, he rode the few miles south-west to Damparis.
It was still there: the lodge, the courtyard, and the fine, turreted house in which Marian de Charetty had died so long ago. Marian, the brisk Flemish widow who had taken him into her business as Claes the apprentice, and then had given him the standing he needed by marrying him. She had been alone when she fell ill, travelling south; and had stopped here, at the home of friends of her sister. He had not known. She had sent him to Trebizond, and he had come home triumphant, to lay at her feet all he had earned, in recompense for her trust and her love. And found she had died.
He had set out then, a boy of twenty, to find this place, and speak to the kind people who had cared for her. He had learned enough to be sure that her death had been tragic but natural, and that she was buried in Dijon, beside her sister and his mother, in the crypt that served their linked families. His life had touched those of the owners of Damparis again, when Jodi had stayed in the neighbourhood, and Nicholas had taken him to his grandmother’s tomb. Then Enguerrand and Yvonnet de Damparis had opened their house to the child and his nurses, and had made them all welcome. His last enquiries had been made a year later. More recently, Gelis had come, he had been told; but he did not know when.
It did not take long, now, to learn that the two he was seeking were dead. The porter was graphic. The old seigneur and his lady—ah, the amiable couple they were, known and esteemed by all. How it would have broken their hearts to see what had happened to Dole! Their nephew’s widow had been hard put to it, as it was, to prevent the whole house from being entered and ransacked, but her workers had helped her, and even these foreign rascals could see that it would serve them better to make friends rather than enemies in Damparis. And yes, the demoiselle was still here, and always glad to see visitors, for the big house was lonely, and she was a lady who enjoyed cheerful company …
He had not given his own name, but saw, as soon as he was shown in, that it would have made no difference. This was a talkative women of s
ixty, childless, widowed, and largely ignorant of the minor details of the family she had married into. She wanted to hear all about the countries he had visited as a trading friend of the dear Monseigneur Enguerrand, and delivered, in return, a detailed account of all the terrible days of the French attack, and of what had been taken, and what had been burned. Only then did she cast her mind back to happier days, and the generosity of her husband’s uncle and aunt. Yes, she remembered the tale of the poor Flemish lady who died. A lady of many friends, to be sure: two of them at least had come to visit her, and express their gratitude for what the sire Enguerrand and the lady Yvonnet had done. The poor lady. The poor child.
‘Monsieur?’
Nicholas had looked up. ‘I beg your pardon. You mentioned a child?’
‘Indeed. A daughter, they said, brought too soon into the world because of her sickness, and soon to leave it as she did. The pity!’
‘I am sorry. You are saying that an infant, a daughter was born, but did not survive?’
‘So I heard. And the lady herself was dead and buried soon after, with the child in her arms, and something her husband had sent her laid with them both. Is it not touching?’ the widow cried.
She could recall nothing more. What she had told him, she had told Adelina—Julius’s late, inquisitive wife. Gelis had tested it, since. Even then, he didn’t wish to believe it: he had to try and find out for himself. But now, slowly, he was close to accepting that it must be true. Marian had not wanted him to know that he might have had a child, who was dead. She had not wanted him to grieve over her death, in the belief that he had helped cause it. She had sent him away and, pregnant, had set out on that journey so that, if the child failed, he need never know. The letter that, dying, she left him had contained only words of gratitude and of love. And Enguerrand and Yvonnet de Damparis, receiving his visit, had obeyed her last request, and told him nothing at all of the birth. Only this sole successor, their nephew’s widow, knew of the rumour; but not of the promise of secrecy.
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