Gemini

by Dorothy Dunnett

  He did not know more than that.

  To an outsider, Nicholas had little cause to mourn Simon, a man who had shown him nothing but violence; who had stabbed and hounded him as a boy; who had, fatally, sent a man to oppose him in Trebizond; who had first sided with Gelis in her misery and then, persecuting her and Jodi, had come near to causing their deaths. Who had found it easy to blame Nicholas for the death of Lucia, Simon’s sister, and had done his best to kill him just before, in an agonising fight stopped by Adorne. Who had hoped to see Nicholas die in Madeira, and had taught Henry then, and ever after, to hate and despise him. So that Henry, too, over and over, had tried to cause harm to Nicholas, and to Jodi his cousin.

  So an outsider would say. But a son would try—had always tried—to understand Simon, a man of divine looks and all the physical attributes of knighthood, whose rearing had been blighted by the lazarhouse that was his home; by his hated, too-early marriage; and, above all, by the brilliant, absent, acerbic father who mocked his intellectual shortcomings and dispatched him rejected to Scotland, away from the golden arena of France.

  And a father would feel love and pride and agonising pity for Henry, so alone and afraid, and beyond all but the most tentative touch of the lunatic happiness: the stupid, profligate de Fleury happiness that might have been his if he, Nicholas, had had the imagination to step out of his role and care for Katelina, study her, strive to understand her as he had learned to do, finally, with Gelis.

  He had given Katelina happiness, too, in the end. Then she had died. I leave you my soul and my son.

  He had tried. Because of this implacable feud, his path and Henry’s had lain mostly apart. When they met, Nicholas had protected him as best he could, and tried to guide him a little, and staked his own life, as was only fair, in the process. It had not been sufficient. Henry would have been better with a father wiser than Nicholas, or more ruthless. The truth was that no rescue was possible while Simon lived, and his father. From these two, loved and hated and feared, Henry derived his coherent being: they represented all that he was, all he wanted to be. Subtracted from the St Pols, Henry would have found no highway to happiness. He would have ceased to exist.

  He had ceased to exist.

  On the pallet, his face was uncovered. Now, the features were stern: set in the timeless disdain of the dead. Before, the softness had said something different. Perhaps, with the last flicker of life, the boy had felt the touch of Simon’s gathering arms, and had seen the face of his father, come for him.

  The storm broke for Nicholas then. The black pillar of grief with its debris crashed upon him unawares, overwhelming in its ferocity; worse than the sorrow for his people at Nancy, for Godscalc or even for Umar and Marian; Felix; Zacco … reaching back beyond that, to a bottomless misery he could not remember; beating him down as he crouched. He wanted to scream. He could not keep silent.

  Anselm Adorne, hearing, set his lips but did not come near. Andro Wodman, forced awake, clenched his eyes to shut out the anguish.

  ON THE SAME day, Sunday, the twenty-first of July, 1482, James, King of Scotland, was riding south at the head of an army on his way to the Tweed, to confront the far greater army of Gloucester. He intended to save his proud town of Berwick. He was also responding, as royalty should, to the perfidy of Sandy his brother, who had joined the English he once claimed to loathe, and was leading them, insolently, cynically, against his own King.

  On James’s cheek was the red flush of his family; and behind him trod the files of yoked oxen dragging his guns, commanded by a bright-eyed Tam Cochrane, full of masonic fervour and deaf to the cries of his friends.

  Towards the south, it seemed to be raining.

  Chapter 42

  A man in yr suld no pvnicioun mak,

  For dreid that he exceid and tak a lak.

  THE HEAVY RAIN dashed into Edinburgh that evening, pelting upon Adorne’s courier as he raced with his dispatch to the Castle. He delivered it to Chancellor Avandale and the King’s uncle Atholl, who was now Governor of the Castle and all it contained: its armoury and its seals; its charter-house and its treasure; its wells of sweet water and its cellars of ceiling-high stores; its defensible walls reverberating to the roar of the livestock within. This was according to plan. Immediately the King took the field, his officers of state were to disperse: some to spread about the Castle and burgh; some to accompany the King.

  Indeed, the courier’s first port of call on this journey had not been the Castle. An able man of Adorne’s personal household, he had already been stopped, two hours south of Edinburgh, by the vanguard of the royal army, on its way to meet more troops at Lauder. The King was not yet with them, he was happy to find, so that he delivered his message, in full, to the Earls of Argyll and Huntly, with all the military detail he had memorised. He had Lord Cortachy’s leave. Lord Cortachy had instructed him to convey his message to the King’s statesmen and his commanders, but, under pain of death, not to the King.

  He had also been asked, on a lesser matter, to say nothing yet of the death of St Pol and his son. It was of minor importance, except to the family, and Adorne had wished, humanely, to tell Kilmirren tomorrow himself. The courier respected his master, and said nothing of it, even when seized outside Huntly’s pavilion by three Floory Land men—the priest, the doctor, the gunner—desperate for news of Nicol de Fleury. He told enough to set their minds at rest—that the man was safely back from his mission in England, but had elected to stay, reason unknown, on the Border. Master Wodman had taken a wound, but should be back in Edinburgh with Lord Cortachy in the morning.

  The three had been silent at first and then, he suspected, had made straight for their men and the ale in a way that their leaders would not have approved. Or perhaps, after what he had told them, Argyll and Huntly would concede that there was something to celebrate.

  They were pleased at the Castle as well, although they interrogated him for a long time, and he was glad when they let him retire, leaving the Chancellor and Archbishop Scheves and Master Whitelaw and the Abbot of Holyrood to assimilate what he had told them. He was particularly glad not to be at Lauder when the King finally got there. It hadn’t looked much of an army to him: more of an arbitrary medley of companies from different parts of the country, all with different masters and different objectives and different grievances. They said, and he knew it for true, that you could hardly hold a burgh court in Scotland without a fight breaking out over something. They would never get near the enemy, that little lot. They’d be too busy fighting each other.

  A FEW DOORS away, Avandale’s voice had become very level. ‘Darnley isn’t there. The King is almost at Lauder and Darnley hasn’t arrived. What has happened? They had enough warning?’

  ‘Rain,’ said the Archbishop. ‘They have to come from Lochmaben. It’ll slow everything down. Gloucester too. And the guns.’

  Whitelaw grunted. There was nothing to say about the guns that had not already been said. The great ordnance, thank God, was still in the Castle. But despite all they could do, Cochrane had persuaded Cathcart and the rest to take the medium artillery with them. He had designed the carriages, and fashioned the balls, and planned the trajectories, just as he had constructed the defences of Berwick. Whatever anyone said, he was going to put his work to the proof. He was going to save Berwick for the King.

  The fight over the guns had been lost. As a result, their artillery was exposed in the field, instead of where it would be needed. Darnley’s absence posited an even greater disaster. The King was marching to war with a quarrelsome, incomplete army, and nothing between him and annihilation but the golden tongue of Argyll, the broad-spoken persuasion of Huntly, the short admonitions of Buchan his uncle, and James’s own understanding, if it ever dawned, of the odds now against him.

  They had always known that he would hurl himself south without thinking. Given time, he would sometimes reconsider. It was thanks, one supposed, to the slowness of the guns that he had progressed initially no further than So
utra. By now, crawling to Lauder, he would be aware of the power of the English army and the sparsity of his own. And Argyll, fortified by the news from Cortachy’s courier, could give him an honourable reason for retiring. Sandy was not the traitor he seemed. In return for little more than free reinstatement Sandy would abandon the English and come back to his brother. He had said so to de Fleury in York. He had written it down.

  It might be enough. Taking counsel; setting his mind to what he was being told, James might well, at his best, take the responsible action of stopping the march and electing to return to his position of strength, there to negotiate. It was what they had hoped, even before de Fleury had supplied concrete evidence that it was possible. But since a nation’s security cannot depend entirely on chance, the King’s ministers had made a further provision, these many weeks past. If the King marched, and if the English attacked on the east, the Warden of the West March would bring his men to join the King’s host. And if, having joined him, the Lord Darnley found the King’s position untenable, and the King deaf to the advice of his officials, he would return him to Edinburgh by force.

  John Stewart of Darnley had agreed. He had undertaken to perform, if necessary, what was an act of high treason because he, too, was a Stewart; second cousin to both King James and Avandale; kinsman to the three royal uncles; claimant to Lennox and grandson of the first seigneur of Aubigny. Darnley would bring with him men from the greatest families of Lennox and Ayrshire and Renfrewshire. Afterwards, he and they would be sure of indemnity.

  But if he did not come, who would stop the King?

  ‘Where is de Fleury?’ said Whitelaw. ‘Where is Adorne?’

  ‘You heard the courier,’ Avandale said. ‘Adorne will be here tomorrow; de Fleury cannot be long delayed. Their usefulness, we agreed long ago, lies in Nicol’s relations with Albany, and Adorne’s with the King. This still obtains, whatever happened in York. We do not wish the Burgundians to play any part in removing the King into custody. They know this.’

  ‘If de Fleury has disappeared, it hardly matters,’ the Secretary said. ‘So who will stop the King? You are confident that somebody will?’

  ‘I shall make sure that they do,’ Avandale said. ‘A little more rain, Will, would help, if you are praying. A thunderstorm, even. Let’s make it unpleasant for Dickon and Harry Percy and all those brave Englishmen crossing the Tweed. Come.’ He slapped his hands on the board and stood up. ‘Let’s go to it. If we can’t meddle ourselves, we can send someone who will. Archie, you spoke of de Fleury? Has anyone told his wife that he’s safe?’

  The Secretary got up, removing his spectacles. ‘Adorne is coming tomorrow.’

  ‘Of course. But he has achieved prodigies, Nicol, and has been lost to his folk for a month. Someone should tell them tonight.’

  • • •

  A CHAPLAIN WENT, braving the rain, and paralysed the de Fleury household by chapping insistently on the front door at midnight. When the door finally opened on a firm, compact man with a stick, the chaplain in turn was alarmed. Then the man, a superior servant called Lowrie, fetched his mistress, and the chaplain received his reward in Gascon wine and raisins (great grape, not currants), and a comfortable chair, and the anxious services of a tall, dimpled child with courtly manners, who put his arm round his smiling lady mother, and brought her a kerchief when her tears trickled into her smile.

  EARLY NEXT MORNING, forcing her way down the sluicing gutters to Kathi’s house, Gelis presented her bulletin: Kathi’s uncle was well, and would be back by late morning; Nicholas was safely in Scotland but still in the south; Andro Wodman was hurt and would be brought to the Floory Land by Adorne’s men.

  During all this recital, Kathi, sitting firmly by Robin, had gone very pale and then flushed. ‘Damn you,’ she said.

  ‘I know,’ Gelis had replied, with a scowl. Robin had given a laugh.

  Jordan, who had come with his mother, looked surprised. Margaret was not there. Everyone younger than himself had been bundled off to their homes in the country, along with their valuables. Those who didn’t have homes in the country sent their children to friends and dug holes for their silver. Some got permission to store their goods in the Castle, or one of the other stone towers. Robin was here because people thought him a cripple, when he was as capable as Jordan’s father, or nearly.

  Robin’s wife said, ‘I’ll go across and prepare Saunders’s household. Perhaps they’ll let us have Dr Andreas from the Castle. Uncle will have to go there first.’

  The demoiselle’s brother was at Linlithgow. Dr Tobie was with the King. Jordan had wanted to march with the King, but he had promised his father to stay. He had been taught how to fight. Robin had trained him, and his friends. If the English army marched into Edinburgh, the militia would stop them. Jordan and his friends were in the militia. Rankin and Hob were still babies.

  While the women talked, Jordan stayed with Robin. He wished to ask about hackbuts. Sometimes Robin’s attention wandered, as it did when he was tired.

  Andro Wodman arrived just before midday, brought to the Floory Land by one of Adorne’s men, who immediately left. There being a shortage of fully grown men, Jordan crossed the road to help his mother and the demoiselle Kathi, who were putting Master Wodman to bed. Lord Cortachy had gone straight to the Castle, but was supposed to come soon, with the doctor.

  Master Wodman had been hurt in the thigh, and was feverish. He kept trying to talk. He had grown a black beard, which made his squashed nose look worse, and his cheek-bones were red. He had saved Jordan’s life once. He was the best man Jordan had ever seen with a bow, apart from his father and Robin. When he did manage to speak, it was to say what they already knew: that Jordan’s father and the demoiselle’s uncle were safe. He added that Jordan’s father had been to York and back, and had spoken to the Duke of Albany and the Duke of Gloucester, and had found out what they were likely to do. It would be of great help to the kingdom, and Jordan could be proud of what he had done.

  The demoiselle Kathi was sitting beside Master Wodman’s bed, wiping his face. She said, ‘You went with him too, and helped him to get out. That was pretty useful as well. I’m glad it was worth it.’

  She was smiling, but not with her eyes. Master Wodman wasn’t smiling: he was looking up at Jordan’s mother with lines like bricks on his brow. Jordan’s mother said, ‘But there was a price to pay, Andro? You were wounded, and Nicholas hasn’t come north?’

  ‘He had something to do,’ Master Wodman said. Then he suddenly shifted, and swore, and took Jordan’s mother by the wrist so hard that she slipped from the bed quietly and knelt, her wrist still in his hand, looking down at him. She had beautiful hair.

  Master Wodman said, ‘You’ll hear when Adorne comes. He wants to tell Kilmirren himself. Simon and the young lad—Simon and Henry are dead.’

  Jordan frowned. His cousin Henry had gone to war with his father, as Jordan would have done, had his father been here. His cousin Henry’s campaigns had always seemed rather grim, but he had never been wounded. His cousin Henry had bullied him once, but not now. Henry had belonged to the Royal Guard. He jousted. He sailed. Jordan said, ‘Forgive me sir, but are you sure?’ His mother looked at him.

  So did Master Wodman. He released his mother’s hand just as suddenly, and then gazed at her, and at the demoiselle, taking his time. Then he said, ‘Forgive me. It’s true, but that was no way to tell you. What happened was … There was a skirmish. Simon and the boy had come down to the Tweed to—to—’

  ‘To scout,’ Jordan’s mother said. Her voice was quiet, the way it was when she was slowly tracing something wrong in the counting-house.

  ‘To scout,’ Master Wodman said. ‘They had followed some rumour … They happened upon us just as we were escaping. The English shot Henry.’

  ‘And wounded you,’ the demoiselle said. The cloth in her grip was oozing water.

  ‘And me. The river was flooding. The boy fell from the bank. His father drowned trying to save him.’

>   ‘Simon drowned?’ It was his mother.

  ‘Nicholas found them together. They were dead. He nearly lost his own life, swimming after. Simon did lose his life. He was brave.’

  ‘And Nicholas?’ his mother said. Transfixed with horror, Jordan hardly noticed what a long gap there had been.

  ‘At the Abbey in Kelso. He left us to take the two coffins there. We don’t know what he will do. Adorne said he must decide for himself.’

  ‘He would be distressed,’ Jordan’s mother said. It was an odd, unmanly thing to impute to his father. His father wouldn’t be upset over Simon, who had made such a fool of himself in that fight with the puddings. Jordan was distressed over Henry, but Henry was his cousin. Had been his cousin. And now he was suddenly dead, like Raffo, and Captain Astorre.

  As it happened, Master Wodman didn’t answer. The demoiselle, maybe thinking as Jordan did, abruptly said, ‘Never mind. We mustn’t tire you. Gelis, I think Robin ought to hear about this. Do you think Jordan might go and tell him? He and Robin understand one another very well. Jordan? Would you?’

  Leaving, he tried not to show his relief. He blew his nose, crossing the road, and prepared what he was going to say. He thought again of the pudding fight, and unexpectedly remembered Simon’s big sword, the one he had never been permitted to use. Now it was really his. He felt pleased, then ashamed.

  He spent some time with Robin, and answered the door when Master Julius called to speak to the demoiselle. Jordan explained she was with Master Wodman and why, and asked him in, but he was in a hurry. Jordan watched him go, and returned to what he had been doing. Julius knew the St Pols. Jordan liked Julius. If his father was really upset, perhaps Julius could help him.

  ACROSS THE ROAD, Andro Wodman was sleeping. He had talked erratically for some time, relating the truth that he had kept from the boy, but would not withhold from Nicholas’s wife, and Adorne’s niece. Simon had gone to kill Nicholas. A malicious rumour had sent him—an anonymous letter, some said—but he would have seized any excuse. It had not only robbed him of life, but the lad had died too, believing the man they pursued was a traitor. And so the wilful feud had come to an apogee, with none but Nicholas and the old man still on the board, far apart, solitary: Nicholas tending his dead, and the old man, all unawares, about to learn that the house of St Pol was now finished.