Authors: Dorothy Dunnett
The news came in April to Scotland, where Nicholas de Fleury had several homes. The high-born ladies of Haddington Priory were especially shocked. ‘A baby so young! He snatched the child from its mother and vanished! What will the poor lady Gelis do now?’
A letter from Bruges had acquainted them with the news. ‘Sir Anselm declares,’ said Phemie Dunbar, to whom it was sent, ‘that the lady Gelis was quite wild in her despair, combing Venice for news of the boy. Sir Anselm grieved for them all, and so did young Katelijne, but they could do nothing about it. We are to give the news to Sersanders his nephew.’
‘So what will the lady Gelis do now?’ said Betha Sinclair her cousin.
‘In her place,’ said the lady Phemie, ‘I should wait.’
‘Obviously. M. de Fleury will tire of the child,’ the Prioress said.
‘No,’ said Betha. ‘But I’ll make you a wager. When he’s ready, he’ll make sure his lady wife knows it. And if she wants the boy, she’ll have to come to him, not the other way round.’
‘How terrible!’ said the youngest nun, her face rosy.
Most importantly of all, the news came that same month to Picardy, where the armies of France faced the armies of the dukedom of Burgundy across the banks of the Somme. Trivial though it might seem, the report caused each ruler to act.
The Duke of Burgundy sent for his captain of mercenaries. ‘I am disappointed, Astorre. Your company is serving me well. But I am told that your patron has vanished – fled, some are saying, to the detriment of his Bank. Is this true?’
Captain Astorre had fought under better men than the Duke, including the Duke’s own late father. He employed his comfortable voice. ‘My lord Duke, you well know that Master Nicholas turned his back on the gold of the East in order to help you settle this quarrel with France. No doubt he or his officers will come to tell you themselves, but I can assure you of this: the Bank stands in good name, and I and my men have all the arms and silver we need to keep our bond to the Duchy of Burgundy.’
As it happened, the Duke knew this was true. It didn’t lessen his annoyance with the vanished Nicholas de Fleury.
In the castle of Ham, over the river, the King of France sent for his fiscal adviser. ‘You were in Venice. Indeed, my dear vicomte de Ribérac, you have been absent these two months when we needed you. Now we hear this troublesome banker is to support Duke Charles instead of ourselves. Or has he some other patron in mind? We are told he has vanished.’
One could seldom tell, within such a volume of flesh, whether Jordan de Ribérac was disturbed. His voice remained mellow. ‘Monseigneur is well informed. M. de Fleury has left his lady wife, and wishes apparently to deny her access to their son. The situation will resolve itself. The Bank is secure.’
‘We spoke of this before,’ said King Louis. ‘You were unable to bring me the child.’
‘I have not given up hope,’ said Jordan de Ribérac. ‘A banker’s son reared at the Court of France might prove a jewel of some price. We speak of maintaining Lyons, reversing the Tyrol, seducing Savoy, keeping Scotland in thrall. My lord knows what de Fleury has done to our harm.’
‘He may be reconciled to his wife,’ said the King. ‘He may have many more sons. Where is the lady?’
‘Searching for him, of course,’ said the vicomte. ‘But I am told that latterly she has abstained from her quest, no doubt recognising that her husband cannot remain absent for ever. She is on her way to Cologne, I am told, with the company notary Julius.’
‘A comely man?’ said the King.
‘A man who has found a fortune and a place in society through the success of the Bank. But not, I understand, an athlete of the bedchamber.’
‘Perhaps his tastes will now change. Tell me again about the redoubtable M. de Fleury. He is a kinsman of yours?’
The vicomte did not sigh, but the cost of his restraint could be glimpsed. ‘He is a bastard of my son Simon’s dead wife. My son Simon, who keeps my castle in Scotland.’
‘I remember,’ said Louis. ‘Then if he comes here, I expect you to bring him to see me. I speak of M. de Fleury, not your son.’
‘I have sent my son to Madeira,’ said the vicomte; and this time he exhaled like a jet from a pudding.
Of the three people who. all this time knew where Nicholas de Fleury
might be found, two had been trained to distrust him, and one was too young to hold an opinion.
Several weeks before the baby (now kidnapped) was born, Clémence de Coulanges had come to serve Gelis the mother, and had stayed to tend mother and baby. Convent-reared, convent-trained, Mistress Clémence was a lady as well as a nurse, even though her parents (report said) had neglected to wed before dying. Her elderly amanuensis Pasque was neither a nurse nor a lady, but, grumbling, fetched and carried and washed, and chivvied the wet-nurse when the time came to hire her.
Pasque was in the last resort respectful of Mistress Clémence, who held herself upright as a hat-stand of wood, and had been born, you would say, middle-aged. Pasque was even more in awe of her employer, the lady Gelis van Borselen, who carried her babe with the spunk of a countrywoman, even though the child was her first, and a desperate burden. It did not seem right to Pasque that the Lady’s husband should stay so long overseas, and never ask for her.
It seemed downright cruel that the Lady gave birth to her fine son alone, struggling in agony hour after hour, while her husband neither sent nor tried to come till weeks after. And by then even Mistress Clémence knew that something was wrong, although the Lady never offered a confidence. It was Madame Margot, the Lady’s companion, who told them that the lady Gelis was afraid that her husband would take against his new son, and so the boy must be hidden.
And concealed he had been, sometimes in this house or that, but always with Mistress Clémence and old Pasque to look after him, and his mother too, when it was safe. And it even seemed that the Lady’s fears must be right, because the husband did actually come, and bring a troop of armed men to the convent, and try to torture the servants, Heaven preserve us! But the child had been taken away, and was safe, of course, with his nurses.
Then the Lady had followed her husband to the Holy Land, so they were told, to soften his heart towards her and the child. From that she had come back full of hope for the future, only to be betrayed by her so-called friend Margot. So the father, Nicholas de Fleury the torturer, had been able to kidnap the baby at last, and have his nurses brought to the ship where the child was, and demand that they serve him.
Nicholas de Fleury. Pasque would never forget the day she first set eyes on him; neither would Mistress Clémence, for all she planted herself on the floor of the cabin, chin up and hands clasped at her apron, as if about to complain to a tradesman. Being small, Pasque stood behind.
He was a very big man, M. de Fleury. She had seen smiths of that build, although none buttoned up to the chin in his pourpoint like this one, seated at a tidy chart-desk like a clerk, with pen and paper before him. He didn’t rise. His voice, smartly outlining his proposals, alarmed her by the excellence of its Burgundian French: they had been told he was Flemish. His hair was brown like the child’s, but there seemed, at first, no other resemblance that hit you. His eyes, although of the same grey, were big and fixed and bright as a drunk Marseilles monkey’s. Pasque had edged closer to Clémence.
He said, ‘I recognise you have long served my wife. I am not asking you to be disloyal to the lady, but to extend the devotion you have shown since his birth to my son. For that, I am prepared, as I have said, to improve your fees and maintain your conditions of service. If you wish anything more, you must tell me.’
‘Thank you,’ had said Mistress Clémence, in the bold way that Pasque would have called cheeky. ‘A little clarification, perhaps? We are still, so far as I know, in the dame de Fleury’s employment. When the child returns to her care, she may well accuse us of breaking a contract.’
‘The child will not return to her care,’ said M. de Fleury. Pasque shuffled.
‘I see,’ said Mistress Clémence. ‘Then, monseigneur, I have to ask you what prospect we have for the future, with a broken contract behind us? What are your plans for the boy?’
‘To rear him myself, with your help,’ said M. de Fleury. He paused. He added, ‘It is even possible that the lady my wife may join us one day. Should that occur, I am sure she would feel nothing but gratitude for your continuing care of her son.’
Mistress Clémence said nothing. Sometimes her silences maddened Pasque. M. de Fleury waited and then produced a curious smile. Two dents appeared in his cheeks. Pasque stared at them.
He said, ‘I am buying your commitment to Jordan de Fleury, not to me, Mistress Clémence. Be his friend, and when the day comes to part, I shall see that you both lack for nothing. I shall write it into your contract, if you wish.’
Be his friend
. Pasque grinned to herself, even as Mistress Clémence narrowed her gaze. Mistress Clémence said, ‘I am a nurse. I train a child in my own way. The dame de Fleury has been pleased to support both me and my methods. I should expect the same freedom at least.’
‘You would have it,’ he said. The two dimples had gone.
Then Mistress Clémence glanced round for Pasque’s nod, and said in her firm voice, ‘In that case, monseigneur, we agree.’ And just as
she spoke, they both heard a high voice outside: a child’s voice; the voice of a child calling their names.
Upon that, M. de Fleury had opened the door, and there stood Jordan de Fleury, thumb in mouth, his upturned eyes swimming about like two fish-floats until he saw his own
Clemme
and
Paque
. The thumb trailed down at once over the sopping wet chin, and there were the two shining front teeth and the dimples, growing deeper and deeper just like the father’s. And now there was no doubt about it. Here was a man and his son, and whatever was to come, Pasque and Mistress Clémence were contracted to serve them.
Although she had exacted the best terms she could, the decision, for Clémence de Coulanges, had been unavoidable. She owed it to the child she had reared for two years, and who still required her protection.
Against what, she was not as yet certain. Her view of the Lady differed slightly from Pasque’s. Every nurse knew what reliance to place on the claims of quarrelling parents. Consistently the mother had hidden the child – perhaps from fear; perhaps because of threats from the father. Or perhaps from nothing but shame, because the boy had been conceived far too soon.
Naturally, as the child grew, its precise age was no longer apparent. Yet it had remained out of sight, however far off its father might be. And this frightened lady had abandoned her son for four months, for six months at a time.
Mistress Clémence did not believe in according blame lightly. She could judge the depths of anguish to which M. de Fleury had now subjected his lady. She saw that there was some sort of battle engaged between husband and wife. It was for her, with Pasque’s help, to ensure that the child came to no harm from it all.
She did not realise, at the start, that M. de Fleury intended to keep them at sea for five weeks. Fortunately, she was impervious to the motion of vessels, nor could she complain of her quarters or treatment. A meeting was called, at which she explained the child’s routine and requirements, while a quartermaster made notes, like a commissary preparing for war. Everything she asked for she got. She enquired at which hours the child should be brought to his father, and was told that the boy should be kept out of sight unless summoned.
‘I knew it!’ said Pasque, when informed. ‘The man is set on chastising his lady, and the baby is nothing!’
‘Then we should be thankful,’ Mistress Clémence replied. ‘At least M. de Fleury has not abstracted the child in order to disfigure or harm it.’
M. de Fleury himself, she had seen, bore a scar: a thin white line many years old, which scored his face from eye to mouth on one side. She studied him whenever she could, for much of a man’s nature by thirty could be judged from his body and face. It struck her, in those early days, that the well-dressed M. de Fleury looked jaded, bleak as a mercenary returned starving from war – although, of course, he had not come from war.
His upbringing was not easy to guess. To carry such muscle and bone he had not been stinted in childhood; but then masters made sure of strong servants: the broad hands knew how to handle a sword, but might be equally at home in a workshop. Somewhere he had been taught to hold himself properly; or perhaps it was a trait born of pride. A straight back was worth more than a smile; she believed and taught that herself.
This man did not smile. She registered the bulk of brown hair, professionally cut to dip under his cap, and the broad jaw and strong neck within it. The face was Burgundian; that curious mixture of races in which, here, the broad mask of the Low Countries predominated, although the austerely drawn nose hinted at some strain of Latin or Celtic. The whole was dominated by the pellucid and widely set eyes which in a boy’s face might spell merry innocence, but here produced the immense leaden gaze which had so alarmed Pasque. His skin was pale, unless you counted the faint jaundiced tint left by last year’s Egyptian sun. She thought, if he made a threat, he would fulfil it. She could detect no wish to be liked, or to like.
The ship that carried them all was a small merchant vessel with no passengers but for themselves and the servants of M. de Fleury. Such a ship was almost independent of shore, carrying livestock and water and plentiful food with her cargo. There was a cow, milked every morning.
M. de Fleury had been true to his edict, and had made no effort to see them. For the first day, in any case, she had kept the child quiet. Although it was February still, the waters of the Gulf of Venice were kind, and the boy slept to their motion. None the less, she assembled the ropes she had asked for, and by the time the child made his first journey on deck, she had arranged a composition of lashings among which he moved, a little uncertain, his brown hair flicked by the wind, his eyes round. That day she saw M. de Fleury in the distance, talking to one of the seamen. He moved off shortly without looking round, but she saw the child stand and gaze.