To Lie with Lions

by Dorothy Dunnett

Tilde laughed. ‘Well, it’s a theory. So what does Nicholas think of his wife? He chose her.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the girl said. ‘But in Alexandria, he was told she was dead, and it was as if –’ She stopped. She was frowning.

  ‘As if?’ prompted Tilde.

  Kathi turned. ‘He loved your mother. What did he do when she died?’

  Tilde felt herself flush, and then recollected it was Kathi she was talking to, who censured nobody, and helped whom she could. Tilde said, ‘He tried to come home to us, but we wouldn’t have him. We were stupid. He went off on his own for a long time, until the Venetians caught him and took him to Cyprus. With Primaflora.’ She spoke without thinking. In Cyprus and Rhodes, the lady Primaflora, now dead, had briefly been married to Nicholas. She had been a beauty. She had been a professional courtesan.

  ‘That was when and how he met Primaflora?’ Kathi had stopped eating, her eyes unfocused again.

  It occurred to Tilde, for the first time, that indeed, that was how the affair with Primaflora had begun. She said tentatively, ‘And so … It must have been terrible. Was it terrible? What did he do when he thought Gelis had died and left him as well?’ She drew a shocked breath. ‘Was he glad?’

  The speckled gaze, refocused, was minatory. ‘Couldn’t stop laughing,’ said Kathi. ‘What are you talking about? I don’t really think he’d go through all that with her in Africa and then marry her, without feeling something when he heard she was dead. The point is, what? She wasn’t your mother, so of course it was different.’

  Tilde said nothing. The girl said after a bit, ‘He seemed to be lost. He cares about something, but Dr Tobias isn’t sure either what it is. It may just be that his plan had been spoiled. His future may have depended on this intricate duel with Gelis, and he had nothing to put in its place.’

  ‘Not the child?’ Tilde said. ‘After all the efforts to find it?’ She was not eating now. In passing encounters, in exotic places, this little girl had seen more of Nicholas as he was now than anyone else. Tilde thought the girl’s view over-simple, but it had a clarity about it which she trusted. Adorne possessed it as well: this gentle, unsentimental appraisal which did not stop him from correcting and chastising those whom he perceived to err.

  ‘He would have thought of that eventually, I expect,’ Kathi said. ‘As it is, Margot believes that the nurses have been with the boy all along, so the child hasn’t suffered. And if M. de Fleury is planning to have his wife join the baby again, it sounds as if he means a reconciliation. But he may not make it easy, and Gelis will have to find somewhere private to wait where she can be sure of getting his message. It will be very hard for her, because she’s been stupid. As you say, people are.’

  Tilde was silent. ‘And after they are together?’ she said. ‘Where will Nicholas go?’

  ‘It depends what he wants,’ Kathi said. ‘Not a hot country for the sake of the child – and he has walked away from his business there anyway. To Bruges or Venice or Florence if he wants to humiliate Gelis. If he wants to appear, briefly or permanently, like a family, then to somewhere more distant, like Scotland. He can do what he likes there. And he had planned to go back.’

  Tilde found she had shivered. She said, ‘But he couldn’t. Simon and his father live there. Simon won’t stay in Madeira and Lagos for ever. And he must hate Gelis now.’ Forgetting her sticky hands, she picked up the baby and laid its face to her cheek. It began to mouth, its eyes closed, and she dabbed kisses on it.

  Kathi said, ‘I should trust M. de Fleury to hold his own against M. de St Pol and the vicomte. They won’t harm your baby, Tilde, she’s a girl. And really, Gelis has been terribly punished, and is going to have a hard time. She will need all her strength if the reconciliation is going to work.’

  ‘I don’t want it to work,’ said Tilde abruptly.

  ‘I know. But maybe he does,’ Kathi said. ‘Give her a room. I shan’t come. Let her stay.’

  Later, talking to Diniz, Tilde was not sorry she had agreed, although Catherine was harder to convince. Then Gelis came, a white formal stranger who became from that moment a white formal recluse, making brief, silent forays to houses which received her with neutrality: that of Tommaso Portinari of the Medici Bank; of the Baltic merchants; and, very briefly, that of her cousin in town.

  Occasionally, seeking common ground, Diniz would take her into the counting-house and let her listen and watch. She recognised the messages coming in from Cologne but made no offer to handle them. Although not physically ailing, she seemed as tired as if she had travelled a long way for many years. Anger with their unwanted guest turned to a pity that was not expressed either, for it was not invited. The brutal silence lasted a month; and then the messenger came with the summons which caused Tilde to fall silent, and look at her husband. But Gelis, hearing, simply rose and said, ‘It is time, then,’ and went steadily to complete her arrangements. When she came to leave, there seemed nothing to say that had meaning. They were Nicholas’s family, and she was not. She was whiter than when she had come, with circles under her eyes, but was quite composed, thanking them.

  Just before leaving, she had asked Diniz and Tilde to her room and had brought out and handed over two parcels. One contained a child’s golden pendant of Italian workmanship. The larger enfolded a silver-gilt object: a warming-apple.

  ‘The pendant is for Marian your daughter,’ Gelis said. ‘The apple was always meant for your family. If your daughter one day has to leave you, give her the pendant, and keep the apple for Nicholas. He will find her for you.’

  ‘He gave you the apple,’ Tilde said. She remembered the precious object brought by Claes with such care from Milan, and never presented to anyone. He must have been very young. Claes, not yet Nicholas. She remembered Gelis, loud and baleful and triumphant, showing it off. Her sister Katelina had been angry.

  ‘It was always meant for your family,’ Gelis repeated, with her sister’s anger.

  In Dijon, M. le bouton de Fleury began to make his desires known in Burgundian French, instead of the Blésois, the Blois tongue of his nurses. His voice, swooping from high to low, could be heard in every part of the fortified farmhouse his father had taken for him, so well defended that even the bullies of the vicomte de Ribérac had been unable to bribe or beat their way through.

  Since he had arrived there in May, his father had visited him twice – possibly a mark of affection, and certainly one of efficiency, since it meant twice setting aside his affairs to make the long, hard ride to and from the north. Whatever his motives, Clémence de Coulanges welcomed the reinforcement to her rule, and the benefit to the child. His mother lost, the boy needed the reassurance of his father’s interest, and the father, unlike most, did not bribe or cosset or ignore, but treated the toddling boy of two and a half years as friend, companion and page. Mistress Clémence, who did not believe in spoiled children, was by turn impressed and suspicious.

  The rest of the time she spent sparring with Pasque who perceived in M. de Fleury’s absence the perfect opportunity for a quick foray abroad to display their darling Jodi in Coulanges. Mistress Clémence did not lack the gift of command, or she would never have controlled princely nurseries. She was more relieved, however, than she would have admitted when the running battle was arrested. Instead of their attempting to go to Coulanges, Coulanges came to Dijon in the form of a chance visit from her own Chouzy cousins.

  Entertainment at the farm was forbidden, but M. de Fleury had already taken them, when first they arrived, to the hospitable home of friends of his first wife. Enguerrand and Yvonnet de Damparis had several times invited the child back, impeccably guarded, and had won Mistress Clémence’s approval by filling the house with other children for Jodi’s inspection. Childless themselves, the couple – it transpired – were friends not so much of M. de Fleury as of Marian his first wife and her sister. Both were buried here: the sister who had married an old man and made Dijon her home, and Marian de Charetty who, taken ill, had paused there on a journ
ey and died.

  The child had been taken to both tombs. In general, Mistress Clémence understood the importance of teaching children the lessons of mortality, but thought that a crypt below ground was no place for a boy quite so young, even though M. de Fleury made nothing lingering or solemn of it, but simply talked to the child as they walked with their lamp, hand in hand. It seemed that his own mother Sophie was buried there, which made the lapse more comprehensible – indeed quite understandable, had M. de Fleury been an old man. Mistress Clémence had made no attempt to take the child there a second time, and the boy had asked no questions about it.

  It was not a nurse’s place, either, to question; but, on joining the family, Mistress Clémence had made it her business to learn all the popular gossip about her charge’s father. M. de Fleury’s mother, buried here, had been Sophie, daughter of Thibault, vicomte de Fleury. Report said that the vicomte, still living, had long since been taken away to be cared for, and his only daughter by a second, late marriage had been placed in some convent. The family home, now in ruins, had sheltered Sophie de Fleury for seven years from the birth of Nicholas to her death, still in disgrace. Simon de St Pol had never accepted M. de Fleury as his son, as Jordan de St Pol had rejected him as his grandson. The true father had never been named.

  It was an old scandal. There seemed no bitterness, at least on the de Fleury side, although there was with the Scots-French St Pols. People said that old Thibault de Fleury had done his best for his grandson while in health, and the girl, Adelina, was probably better off as a nun: the title carried no money, and the estate was tied up in debt from some family concern that had failed.

  Mistress Clémence had thought, from the excessive time M. de Fleury spent examining his grandfather’s property, that he had a mind to restore it. Nothing, however, seemed to come of it, and she sensed that the family friends around Dijon were not displeased that this should be so. They were polite to M. de Fleury, as well as fond with the child. Yvonnet de Damparis especially asked after the servant who had nursed Marian de Charetty in her last illness. The name Tasse was unknown to Mistress Clémence. It appeared that the woman was in pensioned retirement, arranged for her by Master Gregorio, the lawyer who had attended her mistress’s burial.

  Mistress Clémence listened, surprised. Knowing better than most the value of old, trusted servants, she deduced that Tasse was unused to small children, or too old for M. de Fleury to bring back to serve his new son. Then she remembered that it was the lady Gelis who had chosen Pasque and Mistress Clémence herself for young Jordan, and that a servant loyal to her husband would not then have suited her plans.

  It reminded Mistress Clémence that a difficult phase of her contract was now approaching. She and Pasque had successfully accomplished the transfer from the mother’s employment, and had no complaints about their new patron. But everyone knew there was nothing worse for young children than two quarrelling parents, the prospect they all must presently face. Very soon, M. de Fleury had said, Mistress Clémence would be asked to bring Jordan to Hesdin, where he expected his wife to join him forthwith. His plans after that would depend on events.

  And that was certainly true. Whatever the rights of the case, the mother had been forcibly deprived of her child for four months and might arrive with some sort of mandate to seize the child and cancel the marriage. Or she might do worse than that. Mistress Clémence had seen other clever, solitary girls who repressed all emotion until it exploded in blows, or steel, or self-destruction. She herself intended to support neither side nor allow Pasque to do so, but she would certainly shield the child from distress. She had not been responsible for the upbringing of M. de Fleury or his lady, but come what may, she would make a respectable citizen of this petit mafflu, their little Bouton de Fleury. When the summons came, in mid-June, the child and his nurses were ready.

  The command dispatched by Nicholas de Fleury to his representatives in the Tyrol arrived a week later, and received a more guarded welcome. John le Grant had no wish to witness the terminal encounter between Nicholas and this dangerous girl he had married. His colleague Father Moriz, whose acquaintance with Nicholas was shorter, reminded John of their obligations to the Bank. Nicholas had been absent since February, and consultation on alum and silver, on gun-casting and mining was imperative. He did not mention what his own personal remit to do with Nicholas was. As usual, their common deep professional interest carried the day. They carried out their instructions, took their leave of the Duke and the Duchess and set off in the heat of late June for the Somme, bearing a material gift for the child and several intangible ones for the Banco di Niccolò.

  In the same heat, in the north, Nicholas de Fleury, machiniste, fatiste, Master of Secrets, set the last of his chiselled wheels spinning and crossed into Burgundian Artois where lay his mercenary troops under Astorre and his present titular employer, Charles, Duke of Burgundy.

  He felt satisfied. Happiness was something different; generally fleeting and born from the unexpected, like the wheel of angels in Angers. Contentment came from intellectual satisfaction. There was something in between, which he had recently felt, but then he had been ill, or at least not himself.

  The audience before him was the last, and perhaps the most important, but he was not at all apprehensive. Everything he had done, ending with this, had been precisely planned. It was appropriate, if unnecessary, that this, the second wing of his triptych, should have brought him to the acme of artifice, the Duke of Burgundy’s palace of Hesdin in Artois. Unnecessary because there was no danger, here, that he would be received as a man imported to mend the ingenuities. The Duke and he had done business already. It was known that the Bank, to oblige Burgundy, had withdrawn from a lucrative proposition in the East. More particularly it would be known that, at this moment, the sieur de Fleury came to him warm from the embraces of Louis of France, who had equally failed to seduce him.

  It was true, so far as it went. Nicholas had ridden from Ham directly to Hesdin, crossing the Somme, then crossing the Authie without attempting to halt at the Burgundian camp and appear to consult with his captain. Instead, a few miles short of Hesdin, Astorre himself had slipped unseen into M. de Fleury’s small cavalcade and briefly ridden along with him, under a ceiling of night clouds shot through with crackling fireworks and flushed with the red light of bonfires.

  ‘They’re happy. York on the throne. The French’ll be sick. How was it at Ham?’ Astorre said. He was riding where his good eye, not his sewn one, could observe his employer. His beard had turned black.

  ‘Just as we hoped. The army stays for the season in Burgundy. High pay, reasonable weather and no fighting. A lot of comforts in camp?’ Nicholas said.

  ‘Anything you want. It’s like a town. You’ll be sorry your lady wife’s coming so soon. Or maybe you’ve grown out of all that.’

  ‘Do I look dead?’ said Nicholas.

  Astorre grinned. ‘And the boy? You’ll turn him into a banker?’

  ‘If he’s good enough,’ Nicholas said. ‘If he isn’t, I may just have to pay some poor troop of soldiers to keep him out of my way. He’s got hands.’

  ‘I’ve made him a sword,’ Astorre said. Above the dyed beard, a touch of pink coloured his cheek-bone. He said, ‘Body of God, I don’t know who taught you. No fighting because of some truce? The Duke wants the Somme valley cleared, and he’s hoping for a great English army to help him.’

  ‘Will they?’ said Nicholas.

  ‘Boyd says yes, but who knows. He’s with us in camp, waiting to kiss you. Tom Boyd, Earl of Arran. The lad you helped get out of Scotland with his wife the King’s sister. They’ve landed on Adorne.’

  ‘I know. I arranged it. So now York is back on the throne, are the Boyds going to settle in England?’

  ‘Earl Tom’s not so sure, but his father wouldn’t risk anywhere else. I’m told Adorne isn’t so keen.’

  ‘Why not? He must be desperate to get rid of them all. Unless, of course, he thinks the English will plot with
the family, and Scotland will blame him. So what else? Tell me more. What about Guelders? Paris? Anjou? Brittany …?’

  Astorre talked, and he listened. Outside Hesdin they parted, and Nicholas rode on thoughtfully to his meeting. In Ham, he had been greeted by Jordan de Ribérac. Here, he would be delivered first to the Chancellor and his lawyers and clerks. Nicholas knew Guillaume de Hugonet from several meetings in Brussels. He could guess his present agenda, and knew how he wanted to adjust it to his own. After that, Hugonet would report to the Duke, and Nicholas would have his audience. Hugonet was pedantic and humourless, but he was the third member of his family to serve Burgundy, and had been with Charles since he was young, as had his brother. He generally knew what the Duke would accept, and how to present it.

  It happened much as he expected. Nicholas had been in Hesdin before. It was one of the three houses in Flanders large enough to contain both the Duke and the Duchess. Margaret of York was at present away, supervising the victory feast acclaiming her brother. Nicholas was therefore spared the need to mention his wife and his son, although Hugonet, greeting him, asked out of courtesy. The Duke had forgotten Gelis had ever served as a lady of honour.

  There were two sets of talks, and might have been more had other business not been so pressing. The English success of King Edward had led, as at Ham, to urgent consultations behind guarded doors. The meetings moved politely through the areas of desire and contention; the quicker because he had brought no lawyers or clerks of his own, which was new and surprised them at first. It was noted that the mercenary troop of Captain Astorre had eighteen months of its contract to run, and was prepared to complete it. An advance payment was discussed for the cannon presently being made in the Tyrol, and for the gunners who would accompany it. It was noted that, from the following summer, the Bank’s own master gunner would be available for hire, at a price.

  They proceeded to loans. He proposed changes; they were opposed; there were some expected concessions. He was reasonably satisfied.