Authors: Dorothy Dunnett
He was content that the money was being spent in his yard (with the promise of permanent compensatory improvements). The more money the King lavished on this, the less there would be for any nonsense such as leading armies to France. Duke Charles had just made a pact against France with his new allies England and Aragon. It was not a bad thing that de Fleury was here, and Adorne, the other Burgundian. God forbid that Charles of Burgundy should surround himself with clever men.
When the actors were chosen and the rehearsals began, advertised by the clang of the bell, the Abbot lingered to watch the men hurrying to and fro, their rolls under their arms. The rolls so carefully copied in his own cloisters, each man’s part on a strip. Sometimes de Fleury came himself, brandishing the traditional baton of the Protocolle, the man who carries the book of the play and directs it. The Abbot armed himself nowadays for his exchanges with the Burgundian. De Fleury, said Bishop Tulloch – and he agreed – was both a fathomless danger and an ally worth having. It made for stimulating encounters. The virtues of bourgeois
cortesía
.
The musicians practised where they had begun, in the collegiate church of the Trinity, learning the music as it was written. The singers had been joined by a child of fragile beauty called John, the son of one of the actors who, like his father, appeared on the recommendation of the Abbot of Holyrood. Roger, who suspected everyone’s musical taste but his own, heard the child once, and that night changed three pieces to accommodate him. His sister, equally angelic, was too young to sing but was given a role as a cherub. As for Will Roger himself, his condition varied through all this time between a state of violent happiness and violent anxiety. He forgot to eat, until the nuns noticed and began sending down baskets.
In the High Street of Edinburgh, one of the few mansions unaffected by theatrical madness was that of Anselm Adorne. There, in his office, Adorne quietly conducted his business with the men who slipped in, sometimes after dark, to talk to him or bring him dispatches. Martin of the Vatachino saw him there, or, with discretion, in Martin’s own house in the Cowgate. However occupied he might seem to be, Anselm Adorne did not now underestimate Nicholas de Fleury of the Banco di Niccolò. And neither did his nephew, Sersanders.
His niece Katelijne he preferred not to involve. She was busy enough in all conscience, running to the Prioress’s house and her duties over the street, or to de Fleury’s house to interfere with the Play, or here to sit with Margriet, with or without the two Sinclair cousins, Betha and Phemie. He himself did not impose his presence on that part of the house which was women’s business. All Margriet’s women friends came to see her; the Queen sent small gifts; and the lady Mary, Countess of Arran, sometimes seemed to live in Adorne’s house as much as her own.
There was a more settled look now to the Countess – something of resignation, perhaps; and she had made her peace to some degree with her brother. After the first weeks as guest of de Fleury, she had been allowed to move to the monastery of the Greyfriars, not far away. The children visited one another, and she seemed to prize the company of both Nicholas and his wife. She had also recovered her affection for Margriet. If she had blamed the Adorne family once, she did so no longer.
To her husband, Margriet seemed better. Adorne spent time with her, when the others had gone, and sat hand in hand, and read to her, which she always liked. She had never been interested in music, so he set his own lute aside, and devoted himself to what would please her best. He had brought Dr Andreas to live in the house, just to be sure. She did not speak of Nicholas any more, which was as well.
The house of Nicholas, across the street, was – by his own decree – the centre of the whole enterprise of the Nativity. To it, in the early days, came the groups of powerful merchants, the craft-masters, magistrates, lawyers: the men of title and office whose support, guidance, licences, local knowledge, and participation he was going to need. Later, it was the technicians who came to confer, when the rooms the lady Mary had now vacated became a drawing-office, and the stone-lined chamber whose purpose had never become clear suddenly turned into a storehouse of volatile powders and precious metals beaten into strange shapes.
Gelis had been consulted. It made sense, she supposed, that the Ca’ Niccolò in the Canongate should be left undisturbed, to continue trading in privacy. She herself was an excellent organiser. In a project like this, which was something like planning a war, she could become its quartermaster, handling the accommodation and feeding of the multi-national brood which wandered arguing uphill and down between her house and Holyrood, and even assisting the Abbey to provision the performance itself, when engineers and performers, guards and musicians and the spectators themselves required to have access to food.
What she could not yet guess was why Nicholas was doing it in this way. His own capacity for planning was unquestioned, but so was his instinct for good business. It was clearly useful to dazzle the King and to make a killing from all the Bank was procuring. The rest, however, didn’t make sense: the wholesale dedication to this one little project of the Bank’s senior technicians, and – more wasteful by far – the personal undivided attention of Nicholas the padrone himself.
He had never fully explained it, even at the beginning when, seated uninvited in her room with Jodi self-attached to his knee, he had asked whether she would like to help plan it. All she gathered then was that he had offered to furnish a play, and was now expected to produce one for Christmas. He had sounded, if anything, resigned.
She had resisted involvement at first: it was not any plan of hers to assist him. She changed her mind, in the end, for several reasons. For one thing, the prospect of an early departure of the Boyd family had seemed wonderfully appealing. It also appealed, she observed, to Mistress Clémence.
Later, she heard rumours of a wager to do with Willie Roger, but she doubted if that was the whole story, or his approach to her that day would have been different. She remembered, for what it was worth, that he had been firmer than usual with Jodi. Except when carried, Jordan de Fleury was not encouraged to put his arms around Nicholas. It was a confiding habit he had, of showing open affection
to everybody, and Mistress Clémence did not usually check him, unless she thought him too forward. She did not check him that day, nor intervene, of course, when Nicholas did.
In the weeks that led up to Christmas, Gelis was present at most of the gatherings held in her house. During those meetings she sat, largely silent, watching Nicholas manipulating people: so inoffensively sure; so good-natured; so deeply autocratic. Away from the conference table she watched him handling the staff of her house; and the boy Robin and Archie his father, who dropped in most days; and Jodi’s nurses; and Jodi. The weeks went by and Jodi, whistle in pouch and wearing the large knitted hat from which he would not be parted, wandered talking in English and French from house to garden to workshop, breathing heavily as he drew crosses and windows on two inches of paper with Tom Cochrane’s graphite; standing thumb in mouth watching John le Grant fashion two little wheels in order to make a number of others revolve. He stopped holding his arms to be lifted, and spent less time with his parrot, except for four days when Nicholas was away.
They said Nicholas was divining, and indeed reports confirmed that he had been in the west to fulfil some commission connected with minerals. He took Alonse, but not Robin. Everyone, returning, was very secretive, and she caught the end of a peppery clash between Nicholas and the priest, Father Moriz, who was generally stationed at Holyrood. In divining, obviously, Nicholas was open to rebuke by the Church. It did not seem to disturb him: he looked cheerful, as if glad to have the interruption behind him, and turned the unflagging energy once again upon his labouring colleagues. He spent a little time, as was usual, with Jodi, but made no excuses and gave no appearance of making amends for his absence; after a short, sulking interval, the relationship was as it had been before. Nicholas was an expert with people of any age, and planned for the long term.
It was then, moving up to the date of performance, that he engineered a moment alone in a room with his wife. She came to it bearing a list. In conference, they had been discussing a mountain of details: chains and straw for the streets of approach; turf to mask the trap-tops; ale for the erectors of awnings; and a request on behalf of the pulleys for a supply of pork fat from the butcher. Someone reported the theft of their piss-flasks and tournesol, which deprived them of blood. Blood was discontinued.
‘Grass,’ Gelis continued, proceeding down her column of
dubia
, ‘for the donkey called Abraham. When am I going to see all these performers?’ No one had been allowed near the rehearsals.
‘Not until the day, and by paying full price. Guild rules,’ Nicholas said, shutting the door. They were alone.
‘No special family rates?’ Gelis said. Her heart beat like a drum at a hanging. She had always admitted the force of his physical presence, but had found methods, in public at least, to resist it. She had been less prepared for the strain of being coupled, however briefly, however selectively, with his mind. On shipboard, his companionability had been a veneer; here, it was genuine. For the space of this project, she, too, had become part of his team, and had been treated to the same magical mixture of mischief and concentration. For nearly two months, she had fought against the enchantment. It was temporary, temporary,
temporary
. When the Play was done, it would stop. She would stop it.
But now, she thoughtlessly followed his mood. She said, ‘Family rates and good seats. Or I’ll ask Willie Roger to smuggle me into the Trinity. I could begin singing the tunes so that people don’t want to hear them again.’
‘That for certain,’ said Nicholas. Then, perhaps regretting the insult, or the joke: ‘You’ll hear enough of them afterwards to deafen you. Joy plays the organ and Memory works the bellows and the Suffering Servant hangs himself from the bell-rope. I wanted to ask you something about Jordan.’
‘Young or old?’ Gelis said. She stayed calm.
‘Both are continually in my thoughts, but in this case the younger.’
‘He calls you Doc-Doc,’ Gelis remarked. ‘It began while you were away.’
He smiled immediately, forgetfully using both dimples. ‘Origin, Pasque, I should guess. A local nickname. Not obscene, to my knowledge.’
‘Doctor?’ she guessed. She was curious.
‘More like Odysseus polymetis, the sort of knave who makes deals under carts. I am flattered, I think. Gelis, I should like to take Jodi somewhere when all this is finished. Bel of Cuthilgurdy is here. Here in Edinburgh.’
She looked at him. Since they had resumed their notional life as a family, he had always asked permission, like this, to take Jordan away. It was part of the unspoken pact. If he did so, so must she. But this time, she had to consider his motives. Bel, neighbour and friend to de Ribérac’s family, had been close to Nicholas and to Gelis in Africa, but had since lost her trust in them both. An affectionate visit from Nicholas might well re-attach Bel to himself, while underlining the transgressions of Gelis. Odysseus polymetis, indeed. Gelis said, ‘Where is Bel staying?’
‘In de Ribérac’s house. I noticed smoke, and asked who was there.’
‘Fearing, of course, it might be Fat Father Jordan or Simon. My
dear! What a bad moment it must have been!’ Gelis said. ‘A nasty bite for the ass called Brunellus. I have no objection to your taking Jordan to Bel’s. She will mother you both.’
He said, ‘I want Bel to see him, that’s all. He needs godparents.’
‘Godparents?’ she echoed. A pain ran through her and vanished. She said, ‘You are thinking of a sort of insurance policy, as with a ship? If we sink, Bel of Cuthilgurdy will rescue your offspring? A regular contract, I suppose, with negotiated increments annually. Or is that risky? She might dispose of us both and lift the money.’
‘Would you consider Bel as a guardian for Jordan?’ he said.
She said, ‘You are serious.’
Nicholas said, ‘You raised the subject yourself, after Hesdin. I know Bel is close to the St Pols, but I trust her. And Mistress Clémence would go with her, if you agree. She is very good.’
‘She is very good,’ Gelis repeated. Then she said, ‘What is this? A tragic revelation? You perceive yourself as a vessel of death? I shouldn’t expect to need Bel even if you were to perish tonight, to the ruin of four hundred men and a donkey. Wolfaert and his wife would rear Jordan with their own children. A van Borselen upbringing, away from anything Simon could do.’
‘Simon might frequent Bruges,’ Nicholas said. ‘Henry might be sent to train in some ducal household.’
‘They are back from Portugal?’
‘Not so far. But they won’t stay for ever. Shall we agree on a compromise? If you outlive me but pine from remorse, Jordan will go to Wolfaert in Veere on your death. If I survive, then I may ask Bel to take him.’
Since it began, she had been growing more puzzled. She had plans for after the Play. She thought she knew his. There were always risks in his life, but none that quite explained this sudden ordering of his affairs. She said, ‘Nicholas? What are you expecting?’
‘A genteel argument,’ he said. ‘Otherwise nothing of note, even though I am in your room, and we are married.
Virginité voluntaire
, like Mary and Joseph. How timely.’
‘What are you afraid of?’ She refused to be deflected.
‘Or might there be a delicious, remote possibility of
union charnelle
if I suggested it? Does it move you when I soak a bed, or shut the door firmly and sit down like this? Would it move you if–’
‘It would not move me, except to make me depressed, if I had to bear your whole weight here and now on my bed.’ She snapped, in response to that insulting, deliberate voice. By no remote chance did he mean what he said. The end would not be permitted to happen that way, and he knew it. She said, ‘How can I discuss Jordan’s
future unless you tell me what threatens it, and how soon?’ She paused. ‘You want me to think you are going away after Yule.’