To Lie with Lions

by Dorothy Dunnett

  It was not Jamie’s fault, as his courtiers would gravely explain, before bursting into suppressed laughter. Jamie had been known to rise from his table, wife in hand, in the middle of dinner; or skip off during a dance; or disappear in the course of a hunt, dragging Margaret. Margaret, wearing her steady smile, always went with him. She never conceived.

  His sister, aged eleven, had several theories which she aired again on the journey to Edinburgh. ‘She doesn’t like what he does. Sandy knows what he does. They used to share the same girls.’

  ‘Then he’s probably very good at it,’ Kathi said. Their servants, riding about them, could hear perfectly what they were saying.

  ‘But I wager that they would never do it that way in Denmark. Anyway, he broke the church rule.’

  ‘My lady …’ began Katelijne warningly.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Everyone does, everyone knows. You can’t be married and keep off for ever. He started a year ago. He told Sandy.’

  ‘She must have been frightened,’ said Kathi.

  ‘I don’t know about frightened. She was angry: she gave him great scratches. But of course, she couldn’t complain once the time came. Six months. She hasn’t conceived in six months. She’s fourteen, and childless.’

  This wasn’t about James and his disappointments. Kathi knew what it was about. She said, ‘My lady, your turn will come.’

  ‘When?’ Margaret said. ‘The King of France has a son, the Duke of Burgundy has a daughter, the King of England has babies, and all of them have to wait until James gets a baby on Margaret, because his baby’s marriage has to come before mine. It isn’t fair,’ Margaret said. ‘I want to be married.’

  ‘You will be,’ said Kathi. She had already told Phemie what Robin, in his young, calm way had told her. Thank God, this Margaret was too young as yet to conceive. Bleezie Meg, the farm laddies called her. She was a Stewart.

  Slightly feverish with laughter, like the courtiers, Kathi visualised her forthcoming unscheduled encounter with Nicholas de Fleury placed side by side with a crisis of dire royal carnality, and wondered if he could handle it. She was happy to think that, on past form, he could. Then she remembered the child.

  Although she had accompanied her mistress many times to the Castle since August, Katelijne had always avoided M. de Fleury as she had until now avoided his wife. As with his wife, she had not been above snatching a look at him. Unlike the lady Gelis today, he had always been formally dressed, in cap and doublet or pourpoint or jacket. Apart from that, she could only describe him in negative terms: that the exhaustion of Venice had gone, and the despair and the anguish, if they were there, were invisible. Will Roger had said he was happy. He had his son, and his wife. The whole shabby business might be over at last.

  The King’s lodgings were in David’s Tower and the men were still there, it appeared. To Margaret’s disgust, she was expected to join the ladies in the Queen’s parlour, where someone was singing and someone else was playing a spinet. Kathi was thankful to see Willie Roger, an expression of martyrdom on his face. He began to cross over to join her, but she was forced to sit between Margaret and the Queen. There were six or seven of her grace’s own attendants already there, most of them pretty young matrons and most of them in varying stages of pregnancy, which was why they had been selected.

  As a very active small person herself, Katelijne Sersanders always felt depressed beside Margaret of Denmark, who possessed a pale clear Nordic face with plucked brows, and a pretty pink mouth, and white polished hands, and opulent shoulders half concealed by the round modest neck of her gown. She was given to hennins, perhaps because high veiled cones were less easy to shed than more approachable headgear. They were always bound with massive bands of great jewels, and she always looked as if her head ached. If it did, there were no compensations. According to Meg, the apothecary and Dr Andreas supplied the King with her dates every month.

  Meg was going to give trouble. Expecting a grand occasion, she was discovering that there were no guests, no great lords; no one, in fact, but the present company, soon to be joined by the King and his brothers and by M. de Fleury, with whom they had been attending to business. From the subdued levity around her, Kathi judged that the business had been going on for some time, and was liquid in character. She engaged in stilted conversation with the Queen while watching the door. Will Roger went back to the spinet and played as if filling in time.

  The Queen, catching something of the surrounding atmosphere, suddenly began to explain the delay. ‘All last night they talked business. These are great events. This will be a year the world will remember. You know my lord is to lead a Scottish army to France?’

  She was as bad as the other Margaret. ‘My lady?’ said Kathi. ‘Perhaps this is not something to speak of in public’

  ‘These women have none but base tongues,’ the Queen said. ‘Messer Nicol is to make my lord a war leader. Like Alexander, King Arthur, Charlemagne.’

  ‘Ghengis Khan. Mehmet the Conqueror,’ Kathi said.

  ‘They are not Christian!’ said the Queen.

  ‘No, of course not. Your husband will be a great Christian warrior. M. de Fleury is arranging it?’

  ‘M. de Fleury will lead his own army. My lord the King will seize back his loyal Brittany, the land of his fathers!’

  ‘His aunt married the Duke,’ Kathi said.

  ‘He will take back Saintonge!’

  ‘Where?’ said Kathi.

  ‘He will become Duke of Guelders, his mother’s heritage!’

  ‘I thought the Duke of Burgundy had been promised the dukedom of … it doesn’t matter,’ said Kathi. ‘You mean he is going away? My lord your husband?’

  ‘Soon!’ said the Queen. ‘Messer Nicol is arranging it. As soon as they can build us some ships, and the Three Estates can vote us some money.’

  ‘When the apricots come,’ Kathi said. She didn’t translate it into Danish. She sat furiously sympathising with Gelis, tied to a man who did this. She was so angry that she missed the opening of the door when it came, and only when the music died did she turn her head and catch sight of the glimmer of white in the entrance. Then she saw that Mistress Clémence was being brought in, her hand steering a small boy in skirts.

  The Queen jumped up. The Queen said, ‘I will bless no more children! Take it away!’ Her voice trembling, she had shouted in English. Below her, all the wired, nodding heads turned.

  Kathi stood quickly too. She said, ‘It is the son of M. de Fleury, madame. He has not come to be blessed. It is M. de Fleury’s son, come to join him.’ Across the neatly tiled floor, beyond the spinet where Roger had risen, the child stood looking up. He must have been wakened to come: his round face was drained of all colour and his eyes were enormous and black.

  The nurse said, ‘Madame, we shall wait somewhere else.’

  The King had sent for the child. He would not be permitted to leave. Kathi moved, but already Whistle Willie was speaking. ‘Or, your grace, he could sit here by his nurse until his father arrives. This is a boy who can play on a whistle. He could play the spinet, I am sure.’

  A cooing sound made itself heard. The Queen’s ladies were much attached to young children. The nurse waited, her hand on the boy’s shoulder. The Queen hesitated, then sat. She said, ‘He may stay.’

  The Princess Margaret said, ‘For all the good it will do, he might as well go back to his cradle. But you were right, Kathi, he’s Nicol all over; he can’t be another man’s after all. Is he going to scream?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Kathi said, since it was the answer Meg wanted. She saw the grey-black eyes rest on her and on Roger, then wander; Jordan’s expression, of dazed resistance, was fixed. Mistress Clémence knelt down beside him and spoke. The words, which Kathi couldn’t quite hear, were in French. The nurse waited; the child nodded; then, guiding him forward, Mistress Clémence settled herself on the chest beside the musician, and set the child on her knee. He leaned his head into her shoulder and Whistle Willie, conductor of soul
s, had the wisdom to turn his back and ignore him.

  The Queen discussed what Master Roger should play and agreed, when Meg suggested it, that it might be pleasant to dance. The little matrons rose, chattering, and took each other’s hands, deciding what to do, and how to do it. After a while, the child unburied his head and looked up. Once, the Queen, passing by, touched his cheek and smiled at him. She was the same age as his Robin. He smiled back. Kathi thought of a very bad Greek word the parrot had taught her. Then she began to watch the door again as she danced.

  Chapter 11

  IT WAS THE scene which Nicholas de Fleury came upon presently when, opening the door, he stood aside to let the King enter, along with his brothers Sandy and John and their households. He received an immediate impression of a great deal of movement and laughter: it was not a very large room, and it was filled with a number of young women, dancing. They stopped and, turning, sank into curtseys; Nicholas scanned them.

  The music, which had also stopped, had been provided by Whistle Willie, of course, who sat looking straight at him. Not far from him, Kathi – Katelijne Sersanders, whom he should have met yesterday, if the King had allowed him to leave. Whom he had not met since Venice, when she had decided to help to free Jordan. Next time, she might just as easily offer her services to Jordan’s mother: Katelijne Sersanders had very flexible prejudices, or an enlarged sense of fair play, depending on your viewpoint. Just now, she was glaring. He supposed he knew the reason. It had nothing to do with a broken appointment.

  And there, of course, superior as ever, was Clémence of Coulanges, seated on a stool and restraining his son by the arms until the ladies rose from their salute. Then Jordan broke away and came speeding towards him. The child’s face was red, but not swollen. Nicholas said, ‘What a good son I have. You have kept mademoiselle company until I came. Have you danced?’

  ‘No,’ said the child.

  ‘Well, we shall dance now,’ Nicholas said, bending to lift him.

  Mistress Clémence said, ‘He is perhaps heavier than you think.’

  He smiled, the child in his arms. He said, ‘I see my young friend Katelijne is of the same opinion. I shall be careful, mademoiselle.’ He knew it was apparent that none of them was quite sober. The King had been persuaded to put on his pourpoint again, but his shirt was visibly torn from the last bout of horseplay, and the young men of the chamber were worse.

  It had come to swords in the end, and he had had to get Liddell to help him calm it down. The euphoria of war, or hopes of war. It might, at least, divert young James from his other obsession. He walked forward. The girls were coy, the men drunk. Using all his masks, all his voices, God help him, he could exhaust them and get Jordan home. And himself.

  Truth to tell, it was tiredness he was fighting, rather than anything else. It had been a long thirty-six hours. The worst of it had been at the end, when he had had to explain that his wife was not coming.

  Little Bell and Guthrie and Hommyll and even Liddell had been half amused; the King had not. ‘We commanded your son, and the lady Gelis your wife.’ The royal complexion, less freckled than Sandy’s, still ebbed and flowed with his temper. He was nineteen, and had as yet no issue to prove his virility. He said, ‘You know why.’

  Nicholas said, ‘Perhaps my lord has forgotten. My son will be here, but Gelis suffers still from her accident. The break was a bad one.’

  ‘I see,’ said the King. ‘We thought that she might be sick of a child. Of another child.’

  ‘Alas, no,’ Nicholas said. ‘Perhaps your own good fortune, when it comes, will restore ours.’ He could hear John of Mar murmur, then giggle. He wished, fleetingly, that he had not intervened, years ago, to prevent the young bastard’s eye being skewered.

  ‘In three years?’ James remarked. ‘You have managed one birth in three years? Your case is worse than our own. We told you. Your wife should have come. And now we have this potion from your own doctor, it seems, or his family. It surprises us that you have not tried it, or recommended it to us before.’

  ‘My own doctor?’ Nicholas had repeated. He had none at the moment. Andreas looked after the Princesses at Haddington, and Scheves treated the King. Pierre de Nostradamus served King René alone, and King René had been driven to Provence.

  The King said, ‘Your army’s doctor. Tobias. The nephew of the greatest physician of Pavia, who treats our uncle of France for his ills. You told me about him, and I have sent for this fertility potion. It has come, straight from France.’

  ‘Dr Tobias has brought it?’ Nicholas said. Tobie had left after Venice, vowing never to come near him again.

  ‘No. I did,’ said Andro Wodman, coming in. He bowed to the King and his brothers and turned. ‘Dr Tobias wasn’t involved. We asked for the recipe from his uncle. His grace asked me to make you a copy.’

  He held something out, and Nicholas took it. Across the paper smiled the face he had last seen at Angers, at Ham: the broken nose; the thick, heavy hair; the short neck. Andro Wodman, former bodyguard to Louis of France; former Archer with Jordan de Ribérac. One of them must have sent him. Louis at least would be impressed by today’s news when he heard it. His secret envoy de Fleury had persuaded King James to lead an army in person to France. When the apricots come.

  All the same, it was as well that Crackbene had gone, and the moneyers. Nicholas laughed aloud. He said, ‘Thank you. I must think who to give it to. And how is the vicomte de Ribérac? I assume that you brought him.’

  ‘I wish I had. No, I came with Monypenny, the other grand lord serving two masters. Like yourself.’

  ‘No, I have three,’ Nicholas said. ‘Four, if you want to count Burgundy. You have come to join in the swordplay?’

  ‘He has business elsewhere,’ said the King. ‘And we have to join her grace the Queen for some music’ His face was still clouded, and his vexation flared again in the Queen’s room, even as he watched Nicholas with his son. He said, ‘The lady van Borselen should have been here. We are displeased. Tell her.’ Then he touched the boy and said, ‘A fine son. He likes water?’

  ‘I am afraid he cannot swim,’ Nicholas said.

  ‘No, no. Warm water. Come. We shall dance. Take a partner. My lady, here is Nicol.’

  The boy clung. Kathi Sersanders said, ‘He can dance with us both. He could even hold one of us up. Bouton, did you look at the cage?’

  ‘You have met him? Since Venice?’ Nicholas said. ‘I haven’t thanked you for what you did there. You will probably live to regret it.’

  ‘I met him through Mistress Clémence,’ said the girl. She was dressed with exceptional neatness, her hair-caul ribboned, her sleeves tight to the knuckle. The few jewels she was permitted were exceptionally fine. She was Adorne’s niece. He could see the coloured specks in her eyes, she was so angry. She said, ‘I believe I regret it already.’

  He said, ‘It was unavoidable. Jordan is going home soon.’ He had picked, reluctantly, the only language he was sure no one else but themselves could understand.

  ‘Before the warm water?’ said the girl. Here, the Arabic sounded ridiculous. She had flushed. ‘Before or after you lead an army to France?’

  It was unexpected. Considering the implications, he said something impolite under his breath. Now he knew why she was angry. The child said, ‘I speak to the parrot.’

  The girl’s face changed. Nicholas looked down at his son. ‘You have heard the parrot say that? Well, only parrots and fathers say that, never Jodi. There is Kathi’s hand; there is mine. Now we shall dance.’ It closed the conversation with Kathi. He would have to reopen it some time, but certainly not now.

  They parted soon enough and presently he was able to restore the boy, heavy-lidded and fractious, to Mistress Clémence. Will Roger said, ‘I heard what you told her to do. It won’t work.’

  ‘Yes, it will,’ Nicholas said. ‘We’re all sick of your playing. I want some real action.’

  ‘Games?’ said Roger. ‘Kathi has some good ones. Nicol, be careful
with Kathi.’

  It surprised him. ‘She must be better now,’ Nicholas said. ‘Anyway, she’s sober, and I’m not.’

  Once before, when they were all three years younger, he had got the children of the royal family into trouble on Leith sands. Now two of the three present were married, and James had experienced the weight of his position, and carried the authority to match it. It meant that sometimes, they felt the need to break out. It meant that when they did, there was no one to gainsay them.

  The crown of the Castle rock, on which the royal lodgings were built, was not large, but many people lived in its towers, and crammed the lower offices that crowded round the hall, the chapel, the arsenal and the barracks, the archery ground and the stables. Ringed by its stout walls, the Castle of Edinburgh stood above the smoke and noise of the town, and its own smoke and noise affected only itself and the angels, which was fortunate.

  The party spilled outside after the first few games, and the next barrel of wine had been broached. The men by then were all in their loose shirts and hose: the current wager had to do with a ball, bouncing between them. The Queen trotted among them, not quite screaming like Meg, but with her eyes bright and her face heated. Her brother’s friends, you could imagine, played rough games sometimes like this in the snow, on the sands, in the forests. She had begun not to notice when James, between vicious attacks on the ball and his rivals, set his hand at her waist, or pulled her running close beside him.

  Nicholas noticed, in between fending off the same vicious attacks, and worse ones from Sandy and John. So did Kathi, sprinting beside him. Neither commented. Nicholas said, ‘I still want to thank you for Venice. I have something for you.’ A brick sliced through his hair and he ducked. He had lost his cap and her hair, short like Gelis’s, had escaped from its caul.

  ‘That was John,’ the girl said. ‘He doesn’t like you. Whatever I did, it was for Gelis and Jordan as well. I don’t want anything.’