Authors: Dorothy Dunnett
‘I suppose so. St Vincent,’ he said. ‘I’d begun to notice I’d gone rather far. I did try to surrender the game. Now I have. Could you consider Scotland as something apart? Something I had to do for myself? Against Jordan de Ribérac and his family, not because of you?’
‘Was it?’ she said. ‘Or wasn’t it both? Wasn’t it your trial piece, your masterpiece which had to be perfect, no matter what? And mightn’t you do it again, just as blindly, somewhere else?’
‘It was beautiful,’ Nicholas said. ‘Wheels are beautiful. I probably should. But it was against the others, against the St Pols, to begin with. You didn’t harm us as they did.’
‘Us?’ she said. She tried in vain to study his face in the gloom, thinking of something that the vicomte had said.
That trollop, his mother
.
Nicholas said, ‘I grew to hate the St Pols, not you. And you changed: you said so. Gelis, what did you want? When we were playing the game, what did you want for your reward?’
‘What was your wish?’ she asked. She felt weighed down with grief, like someone speaking alone at a graveside.
‘Mine?’ he said. ‘But you know it. To spend my life with one person: with you. To respect you and have your respect; to trust you and deserve the same trust. And by night, to lie at your side,
so that I may give her my love, my dear love, ki mon cuer et mon cors a.’
Who hath my heart and my body.
He said, ‘And yours?’
She lifted her wet face from her hands. She said, ‘The same, of course. But you can’t do it. You can’t do it, Nicholas. I thought we were matched, but we’re not. Show me how I can trust you, show me how I can respect you after this.’
She stopped. She said, ‘No one is innocent. I betrayed you as well. But not on this scale. I cannot live with you. I couldn’t live with you now.’
The bond was broken. The bond they had each, she believed,
thought to be inviolate, no matter what happened. Inviolate even in death, as he had proposed in the wilderness. She had understood his sudden despair. It was as nothing compared with what he had brought on them now. What he had brought on himself.
There was a long space. He said, ‘Will you take Jodi?’
She replied with another question. ‘What will you do? Nicholas, they won’t follow you now. None of them.’
‘Julius might,’ Nicholas said. She could see him slowly thinking aloud. ‘And Astorre. Not John. Not Tobie, after Volterra. Not Gregorio. Not Diniz. Not … Father Moriz. Not you. Not you. Not you.’
‘Not me,’ she said. ‘But we can share Jodi between us.’
‘Do you mean it?’ he said. Once, he had disclaimed any interest in a child reared by his wife. It had been part of the game. Then, he had been sure that Gelis would never leave him. As she had been sure.
After a moment he added, ‘Clémence saved us all. Clémence and Tobie.’
‘You should thank them,’ she said. ‘Will you stay here? Or not?’
He said, ‘I had better go. It should be known that the marriage has ended. You will have a better chance on your own.’
‘But you will tell me where you are going?’ she said.
‘Of course, when I know it. In any case, I shall see you tomorrow. And we have to arrange about Jodi.’ He stopped, and then said, ‘Did you burn the certificate?’
She said, ‘Watch. I am doing it now. Nicholas, Jodi will never change into someone like Henry. That was Katelina’s doing, not yours.’
‘Poor Katelina,’ he said.
Once, she would have been consumed with resentment. Now she watched the vellum blacken and burn, and then rose and unlocked the door, and went to find and send him their son, with Mistress Clémence.
He had closed his eyes. Jodi roused him, demanding tearfully from the doorway that his father should see him to bed, while Mistress Clémence, firm as ever, pointed out that other people also grew tired, and that instead, his father would tell him a story.
Nicholas told him his story, making room for them both in the chair, and stopping to answer the small, whispered questions. Has the boy gone? Is he coming back? Where is the fat man? But after a while, the old familiar tale exerted its power, and when the child spoke at all, it was to repeat an old joke, or an old verse in the usual places. Soon after that, his eyes lifted and fell.
Nicholas stopped, and smiled at the nurse, and said to Jodi, ‘Bed. When I come back, what would you like me to bring you?’
‘Where are you going?’ Jodi said.
‘That depends on what you want,’ Nicholas said.
A little later, Mistress Clémence returned without the child, and took a seat at what could be called a deferential distance. He said, ‘I wanted to thank you.’
‘Dr Tobie helped. Will the vicomte return?’
‘He is going to Madeira,’ Nicholas said. ‘But I am leaving as well. My wife and I are to part, and the boy will live with his mother, not me. I hope you will find you can stay with her. We owe you a great deal.’
‘But you will visit?’ she said.
‘I don’t think I can,’ Nicholas said. He had begun to realise it.
She said, ‘I will bring him, my lord.’
‘I should like that,’ he said, ‘and my wife would be grateful. She wishes, as I do, that the boy should grow knowing us both.’ He paused. ‘You used to call him a bachique. That is Blésois, surely.’
‘You would hear it at Chouzy,’ she said.
He said, ‘I heard it in Edinburgh.’
Tiens! Tiens! Comme c’est gars bachique
, the old woman had said.
She said nothing. He said, ‘If you know her – if you ever meet her – tell her that I am sorry.’
‘For what, my lord?’ the woman asked. She had neither mentioned a name nor asked for one.
‘She will know,’ Nicholas said.
There was an interval, from which he emerged to find the nurse speaking. ‘It is dark, and there is a disagreeable press in the courtyard. Would you like me to find you an escort?’
He had come with John le Grant. He would not be returning with John le Grant. Nicholas said, ‘Have you someone in mind?’
She returned his slight smile with another. ‘Anyone of the required competence,’ she said. ‘An astrologer might serve best of all.’
The small joke surprised him. He admired her for it, for of course she, too, must despise him.
Later that evening, when they all knew the truth, Tobie left Adorne and the rest, and went to tackle the seigneur de Fleury in Gelis’s parlour. He thought of him by his title since he was in the process, for the last time, of excising this particular man from his life. He was also rather drunk (as was John), because the excision was painful.
The parlour was empty. When he went to look for Gelis, as eventually he did, that brave girl Katelijne Sersanders was with her. He took them both back to the room. It was still in fair disarray, but Jordan de Ribérac’s chair was upright still. The cushion was an
uneven patchwork of scarlet, and the back and one arm glistened with blood. Caught in one side was the tie of a small person’s bedrobe. Gelis looked at it, and then without speaking walked out of the room. Tobie stood and looked after her.
Kathi said, ‘Jodi was brought in to see him. Mistress Clémence would notice something was wrong.’
She was pale. She had been pale ever since he had told them about Nicholas. ‘I didn’t know,’ Tobie said.
‘He wouldn’t expect you to. Are you going to leave him? Again?’
‘I should never have come,’ Tobie said. ‘And you should forget him. He has destroyed your whole future. How could he? How could he do that, after Iceland?’
‘He saved my brother. He cares for some things. The Play mattered,’ Kathi said. Gelis had come back.
‘It wasted money, that was all.’
‘No,’ said Kathi. ‘And he returned when Zacco called him. And he didn’t sell Iceland.’
‘What?’ said Gelis. She stood as if shackled by weariness.
Kathi turned. ‘Denmark needs money. A little urging from Nicholas, and King James would have bought over Iceland, without means to feed or maintain it. He didn’t.’ She stopped, looking at Gelis. ‘Where is he?’
Gelis said, ‘Someone came to take him back to the city. He could be dead of his wound. He could make himself die. He could kill himself.’
Kathi said, ‘No, he won’t. He isn’t like anyone else. He doesn’t think he is important enough for any disaster to matter. What you have to hope for is that all this havoc teaches him something.’
She looked at Tobie with angry impatience. ‘You know what he does. He invents, and then allows the invention to swallow him. What he did in Scotland is the most amazing thing he has ever achieved. He’s still torn between pride, and an awful awakening. He has to reach the conclusion that he must never do it again.’
‘How?’ said Tobie.
‘I don’t know,’ Kathi said. ‘Perhaps walking away from him is the best thing.’
The man they were discussing was at sea. He had been there for a long time, it seemed; jolting, swaying, rocking. At other times, he was on the bank of a river, and in pain. When he struggled, a. man held both his wrists and seemed to be scolding him. He had seen the man at Angers. But he wasn’t at Angers.
For a time, stupidly, he thought – woe now to the chickens, woe to the blind lion – that he could not see. Then he realised that it was merely night, and he was lying in grass by the bank of his previous dream and drowsy, as if full of poppy, or drunk. A man bent and touched his wrist, but was simply feeling his pulse. His body was bandaged, and hurt. When several men crossed and started to lift him, he made no protest, for he thought he knew where they were taking him.
It was a surprise, therefore, to find himself in a barge, not a carriage. A magnificent barge, it was true. A ship. A ship fit for an Emperor. All the time he lay looking about, he expected to see Violante, princess of Naxos. Violante, Medea. A carriage, a beautiful woman.
A beautiful woman.
Not you, not you, not you.
‘The Emperor bids you welcome on board,’ said Ludovico da Bologna. And all the ghosts vanished, and reality stood at his shoulder.
Long after he knew where he was, Nicholas lay watching the lamps drop behind, over the glittering swirl of the water. The night was clear and very bright: he could see the network of vines on the hills, the mathematical hills of the Moselle, which produced so many exquisite solutions.
Trèves was behind in the darkness, taking its rest before the extravagant, difficult day when the Duke would ride for the last time from St Maximin to the Archbishop’s Palace, there to receive not a crown, but (he thought) the Emperor’s effusive farewell.
Soon, the city would stir. Soon, the smoke would rise into the air, the bakers and cook-shops would put up their shutters, the flash and nod of plate armour and plumes would begin to show themselves in the streets. The musicians would don their tabards and shake out their trumpets, and the horses would stand to their grooming. The Duke would don his heavy pearled robes. The Duke, who yesterday had smashed the stools in his room in his rage, would today have repressed every sign of offence, so that the populace should see not an insulted vassal, but a great lord in his magnificence, tolerating the puerile eccentricities of a man no longer fit for his office.
And some time about then, before the procession set off, a white-faced man would come rushing into St Maximin, and the news would flash from stone to stone, room to room until finally, and slowly, it came with leaden feet to the throne of the Duke.
Monseigneur, one must advise you not to go to the city this
morning. Monseigneur, we must humbly suggest that you disband the procession. Monseigneur, the Archbishop’s Palace cannot receive you. Monseigneur, the Emperor’s quarters are empty. The Emperor’s officials have gone. The Emperor has disappeared, and so has his blond son Maximilian. The Emperor has fled during the night, boarded a ship, and is on his craven way back to his heartland, leaving a mountain of unsettled bills, and his uncrowned ducal guest to make his own common way home.
This was the ship. In its interior the Emperor and his son, so far as Nicholas knew, were peacefully sleeping, far from the incandescent rage of his vassal, who had expended three months, fifteen thousand men and a fortune upon nothing, unless you counted a minor duchy which he already possessed.
The Emperor had abandoned the Duke, but he had not abandoned the Duke’s adviser and banker. Nicholas had expressed a willingness to serve the Imperial court: the Duke in his own interests had sanctioned it. It had not been envisaged, at the time, that the Emperor was about to make Burgundy the buffoon of Europe. But Nicholas could not be blamed. He was here, by permission of Besse.
By permission, of course, of the Patriarch of Antioch. Others had had a part in his silent abstraction: faces floated in his unreliable memory; his wound had received expert attention. He had wondered, vaguely, why he was considered to be worth the expenditure. He supposed that he knew.
Ludovico da Bologna, Patriarch of Antioch, had left Rhodes to come to the west to raise men and funds for the next Crusade, the next onslaught, the next attack on the Turks. The Pope had renewed his commission. The Duke of Burgundy, receiving Guelders, had offered gold and ten thousand men to lead a Crusade to the East, and had made the Patriarch his ducal counsellor and representative. The Emperor was now receiving his solicitations. The Emperor and Nicholas de Fleury.
Nicholas lay, watching fish. They approached, touched the glass, and swam off, scowling. The Emperor’s barge always held tanks of live fish.
His injury, and how he received it, would have been of no interest to the Patriarch. The Patriarch wouldn’t know, any more than the Emperor, that he had endangered his Bank for the sake of an obsession, or that he had lost the allegiance of all his chief officers. On the other hand, he had gold in the East. And Julius wouldn’t mind what he had done. Nor, he supposed, would the patrician Anna.
It was not all, surely, so terrible. Roger could go back to England, Adorne’s kinsfolk to Bruges. Hamilton would take care of Mary. Bel had connections abroad. Henry was safe.
He would never live with Jodi and Gelis again. He had always been sure, whatever happened, that Gelis would stay. He had been wrong.