Authors: Dorothy Dunnett
He had paused for a moment too long; he was cold, and his concentration was lapsing. He had just realised it when a vicious blow, utterly unexpected, took him on the shoulder and side, and shook him free. The King.
Nicholas started to fall. He saw James’s face, red and white like the wall, the mouth beginning to open. The King shouted. Slithering, clawing, Nicholas saw that the King was sliding as well, that the violence of his blow had dislodged James’s own grip on the glistening wall. A shriek rose from below. Nicholas’s hands, raking down, found a crack: a moment’s purchase long enough to see, black on white, a past foothold and two marks for his hands. He chanced releasing his grip and, stepping rather breathlessly down, brushed the marks and settled precariously into them. James, kicking, was directly above.
So was the boy. The child Robin, his hair white with lime-wash and blackened with sweat, was clinging to the wall by the King, and the King had gripped him by the wrist, immobilising him, while he sought a hold for his feet. The boy’s face, bearing the other man’s shifting weight, was fierce with determination and pain. He said something. It sounded like, ‘Sir!’
Nicholas said, ‘I’m all right. The King will be all right in a moment. He’ll lose the wager if he gets any more help. Monseigneur? You’ll lose the –’
He ducked, missing the King’s kicking foot by an inch. The King’s other foot was firmly set in a crack, and the kicking foot withdrew and found another crack almost immediately. The boy’s wrist was released, and the hand that had gripped him stretched up. James was climbing again.
Nicholas watched him with some admiration. He probably deserved the throne. He shifted his own insecure grip, and prepared to climb again. The boy said, ‘No.’
He was above, and in his way. Nicholas said, ‘Don’t be tiresome. If I have to climb round you, I’ll fall.’ James was reaching the top storey, and the roaring had started again. The boy said nothing. Swearing, Nicholas pulled himself up beside him, his eyes searching above for new holds. He said, ‘I ought to kick you, too, as I go.’ He had almost passed when he glanced back and saw that the boy’s face, half hidden, was itself as white as the paint, and that he was holding by only one hand. The hand slackened.
Nicholas swore, crossly, in Greek. He took one step down and, holding one-handed himself, gripped the boy’s nearer arm. The boy gave a half-stifled scream, and Nicholas shifted his grip to his belt. There was rope there. Nicholas said, ‘If you faint like a cowardly turd, I will forbid you my house. Dig your feet in. Use your right hand.’
‘I can’t,’ said the boy. Sweat was glistening on his temples.
‘Yes you can,’ said Nicholas, knotting the rope. ‘Do you suppose that idiot girl …
Katelijne!’
The voice that answered him came from above, accompanied by the squealing of pulleys. She had been waiting. She must have run up inside, as any intelligent person would, of course, do. Nicholas was so busy manoeuvring the boy to the edge of the tower face that he hardly heard the violence of the noise from below, or the final concerted shriek as the whitened figure of James, King of Scotland, clambered triumphantly on to his roof, accompanied by the hysterical barking of dogs.
Dangling against the unpainted wall, when Nicholas finally reached it, was the object that very few people would have noticed, he supposed, unless they were fatally inquisitive to begin with, like himself. Like Katelijne.
He said, ‘She had some sense, after all. She’s sent down the plasterers’ hurdle. Come on. Your carriage awaits.’
They were halfway down when everything became illuminated: roofs and towers, men and women and dogs; when the Castle’s great inky shadow spread its skirts over a countryside and a town suddenly bathed in red light, as if a false dawn had broken forth from the coping of David’s Tower, or Hell had opened its gates. The basket fire on the roof had been lit by the winner, as sworn.
The great fire took hold, its flames leaping. Moments passed. Then, one by one, all round the spaces of night, dulled by distance to moth-colours, other fires appeared and hung burning, part of the great unseen constellation that waited, day and night, to be summoned to fire: Haddington and Dunbar; Eggerhope and Dalkeith and Hume, Fife to Stirling and the north; Tantallon to Berwick and the south. The balefires of Scotland, wakened to summon the lieges.
‘Why did I think …’ Roger said as, the cradle lowered, the boy was lifted out of the hurdle. ‘What made me think that whatever you said, you weren’t going to be first at the top of that tower?’
‘I was cheated,’ said Nicholas. ‘It’s all right: his arm got a crack in the fighting and the King’s grip finally did for it. Anyway, what to me are the windy plaudits of the multitude? That is, next time you
will do better at Florentine football, or else. Do I see Kathi? Kathi descended:
la quale è molto utile et humile et pretiosa et casta;
who is going, please, to get the bloody dogs out of the way before their tongues all turn white? Does lime-wash affect –’
He stopped, largely because the King was standing in front of him, slapping him on the shoulder. ‘You villain! Try to throw your King to his death! But here is the hero who stopped you. Robin of Berecrofts, I’m told?’
The boy’s eyes were open. He began to struggle up from where he was resting, but the King pushed him back masterfully, on the wrong shoulder. ‘No, no. My own doctors will visit you. And then we shall receive you, and see what can be done. You are old enough to hold a position. Yes, Nicol?’
‘He was courageous, my lord,’ Nicholas said. He remembered what he had said to get the boy’s head to clear. It had worked.
‘Then he should join some household that would train him. Do you not agree?’
The dogs were still licking Nicholas, and he pushed them aside. The boy’s gaze was fixed on his. Willie Roger said, ‘I think we all know, my lord, which household would be best. Nicol should take him himself. He has an army. A Scottish squire would embellish it.’
Nicholas had begun, a while ago, to realise that some such thing was going to be inevitable, if he were to continue staying close to the Berecrofts. Mistress Clémence ought to be pleased. ‘I should leave it to my lord King and to his family,’ Nicholas said. ‘But of course, I should have no objection.’ The boy’s pale face had crimsoned.
The King said, ‘Then that is settled. And now for the business I brought you for, and you cannot say, my friend, that it is not necessary. What you need – what we all need – is warm water.’
Very occasionally, when he was drunk, Nicholas came home talking, Gelis had learned. On this day, so exquisitely devised in all its features, it was his voice she heard first, as she waited fully dressed in the silence of the Canongate house where, at last, her son was at home, and asleep.
She had known since yesterday that something subversive was happening: the message had come from the Castle direct. The King, it appeared, requested the presence of young Master de Fleury this evening. He might be brought by his nurse, but not by the lady his mother. The note did not bear the King’s seal, but was brought by a man in royal livery from whom she learned that her husband had had a hand in composing it. The command was still, she was assured, that of the King.
She had been considering what to do when Archie of Berecrofts vaulted over as usual, and was casually helpful, as usual. ‘There’s a theory that barren bellies warm to other dames’ nurslings. Queens and Kings are like other folk: they want bairns.’ She had listened in silence, digesting that.
Then for reasons quite unconnected, Katelijne Sersanders had come: disingenuous, thoughtful, steering her way through all the shoals surrounding their past relationship in a way one couldn’t help but find disarming. She had left apparently undisturbed by the absence of Nicholas, who failed to make his expected appearance, and whose bed remained empty all night.
He had been kept by the King, so they said. He did not appear in the morning, and had not returned by this evening, when Mistress Clémence went off to the Castle with Jordan, reluctant and sleepy in velvet. She was glad when Archie’s boy offered to carry him, and she sent two men to escort them, with lanterns. The porter, gossiping, mentioned that the wee lady Margaret had gone up the hill with some ladies from Haddington. The Flemish lass had been with them. The one that brought Master Jordan’s new parrot.
The hours dragged. Bit by bit, the house quietened; the lights began to go out. No one came. It was later than Jordan had ever been allowed out before. Gelis walked from window to window, floor to floor. After a while she found a crooked shadow at her elbow: Pasque, snorting and grumbling. She was company. Gelis didn’t send her away. Twice she climbed to the top of the house and stood on the balcony that looked uphill towards the Netherbow Gate and the buildings of Edinburgh. The glow of the Castle, as usual, underlit the October clouds, and the wind turned her cold.
She was in her parlour when Pasque came running to take her out to the street, where folk were gathering to look at the glare to the west, steadily brightening. Govaerts, roused and running to join her, explained. ‘It’s the Castle balefire, my lady. It spreads the word that there’s trouble. The news can run from coast to coast before a courier has foot in the stirrup, and all Scotland can be under arms in two hours.’
‘What kind of trouble?’ said Gelis. ‘M. de Fleury is there, and our son.’
‘Armed ships in the estuary,’ Govaerts said. ‘Or word from the south that an army is crossing the Border. Or a mistake.’
‘You think it is a mistake,’ Gelis said. He was composed enough now, but running towards her, Govaerts had been hissing under his breath.
‘Zot! Zot! Zot!’
‘It would be strange if it wasn’t,’ Govaerts said. ‘This office has
better advance information than even the King.’ He cleared his throat. ‘They will put the fire out. That will cancel it.’
‘If they are sober enough,’ Gelis said. No one answered. After a few minutes, the light from the west became unsteady. After ten minutes it had gone. A sour, lingering smoke drifted downhill, and Gelis went in. Half an hour later, her son Jordan returned, asleep in the arms of his nurse. With him came her two servants and a filthy creature with her skirts round her knees, whom Gelis recognised, with misgiving, as Katelijne Sersanders. Then she saw the litter.
The girl said, ‘It’s all right. That is, Robin’s had his arm broken: M. de Fleury again, but it all worked out for the best. Is his father about?’ Her face was smeared with dirt and there were great circles under her eyes.
‘What happened?’ said Gelis. She sent someone for Archie and brought the small cavalcade into the house. Mistress Clémence, on a nod, took the sleeping child upstairs.
‘Nothing,’ said the Baron Cortachy’s niece. ‘That is, they took Jodi to Willie’s house, and by the time it was all over, they’d forgotten about him, and M. de Fleury told us to bring him back quickly.’ She stopped and then said, ‘The King was annoyed you didn’t go, but M. de Fleury explained. It turned into a sort of race, and I’m afraid we all got rather dirty. I’ve got to go back to Margaret.’
‘Wait,’ said Gelis. ‘I was invited?’
The expression in the fevered eyes altered. ‘Oh dear,’ said Katelijne Sersanders. ‘He didn’t tell you.’ She considered. ‘There would be a reason.’
‘There usually is,’ Gelis said. ‘No doubt he will tell me himself. Unless he is staying permanently at the Castle?’
The girl looked at her. ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you moving into the High Street tomorrow? That is, we shall all go back to Haddington in the morning, and the house is yours after that.’ She paused. ‘He didn’t tell you that either.’
Gelis said, ‘No. It doesn’t matter. I knew he had a house inside Edinburgh.’
‘Leased to the Prioress. He asked her to move. She wasn’t too pleased, but she has taken another. Look,’ said Kathi. ‘He may have decided to refurbish it. He could have planned to tell you everything yesterday, but the King didn’t let him come home. He can be very single-minded. I should find it most annoying, in your place.’ She suddenly smiled. ‘I’d better go.’
Gelis looked after her. For three years, it seemed, the pretty house Nicholas had bought for his wife had been occupied by the Prioress of Haddington and her household. Now, suddenly, the Prioress had
been asked to leave, and his wife was expected to live there. Once, the possibility had been mentioned, but he had said nothing since. She settled, for perhaps the last time, to listen for Nicholas coming home. But not, this night, in her own room.
The town was asleep when, finally, Nicholas de Fleury made his way down Castle Hill, down the High Street, through the Netherbow Gate (for a price) and towards the staircase that led up to his door.
Alonse, lighting his way, had not been especially helpful, although he gripped his employer’s arm once when he tripped, and twice waited, with resignation or patience, when various impediments made progress difficult. Alonse was the nearest thing Nicholas had to an automaton: that was why he had him. As time went on, Nicholas discovered that he was walking with a limp and tried to correct it. It was only his neck and arm which had stiffened.
The lamp at the stairhead was still lit, and so was the other, through the pend and over the door that led direct to his offices. The moon had come up: in its brightness, the wick flames burned ochre. The watchman came out, and answered his questions satisfactorily enough, his eyes curious. Alonse waited neutrally, lantern in hand, to learn which door he would choose.
He didn’t especially want Govaerts or the clerks to find him comatose in his room in the morning. He turned up the steps to the house and told the night staff and Alonse to go to bed. He waited until they had gone, and without taking a light, found his way to a sink and got rid of the rest of what he had drunk.
He hoped it was the rest. His clothes, still sodden from neck to feet despite the long walk, were now freezing as well, engendering spasms of shivering. The water at the Castle, as promised, had been warm, and it had been his own choice to jump into it fully dressed. It had provoked another blurred expression of irritation about his wife’s absence; but the girl they had got for him to bathe with instead was silly and eager and presented no more problems than he had ever met as an apprentice, full of ale and joyous lustfulness in the secret corners of Bruges.