Gemini (114 page)

It was odd, watching the expressions crossing Julius’s face: impatience; defensiveness; hurt disbelief; peevish annoyance. At the end, annoyance mostly prevailed, although he persisted—out of habit, you would say. ‘That’s in your imagination, but even if it wasn’t, didn’t we have good times together? And why are we fighting if we’re kin? Am I not Simon’s full cousin? Come on. This is nonsense.’

Nicholas said, ‘I could only be related if I were Simon’s son.’

‘Well, of course you are,’ Julius said. ‘Only there’s no proof. I’ve searched, but there isn’t. Not, of course, that you mind. What hurt and mystified you was the rejection. Why should anyone hate you so much that they hounded everyone near to you? Don’t you know?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Nicholas. He didn’t want to hear. Especially, whatever he guessed, he didn’t want to hear it from Julius.

Julius looked him up and down. ‘Well, surely. Wodman could tell you what all the old Archers knew. Simon got your mother pregnant, and since she was wealthy and titled, your grandfather forced him to marry her. When the child was born dead, Simon was delighted. But meanwhile his father had found out about the peculiarities of Jaak de Fleury, and he was told that old Thibault was the same. When you were born, it gave him a perfect excuse for claiming adultery, and repudiating both the marriage and you. He thought you were tainted.’ He paused. ‘You thought that was just an excuse? It wasn’t. He loathed you. You must feel the same about him. So do I. I’m your family, Nicholas. Now we can say so. Now we can kill the old man together.’

There were voices everywhere outside, now. The window flashed with gold from newly lit lanterns. Voices echoed through the rest of the
building: only the Prioress’s wing, where they both were, was quiet. He had been told only what he had already guessed. This was the man who had brought about the deaths of Simon, and Lucia, and Henry, and who had tried to get Adelina to kill him in Moscow. This was the man whom Kathi had valiantly brought him to confront.

‘No,’ said Nicholas. ‘Pick up your sword.’

He should have remembered that Julius was adept with a knife. It came flying, just before the thrower vaulted forward, sword in hand, and followed up with a swing of the blade. Nicholas ducked. The knife struck the panel behind him and, before he could grasp it, shot skittishly behind a great cupboard. Staring after it, Nicholas barely saved Julius’s blade on his own, and hurriedly twisted away, moving nimbly sideways and backwards, among all the furnishings whose places he had memorised: the stools, the coffers, the towel-stand, the lectern, the haphazard piles of books. A globe. A crucifix fell, shattering the flask of wine, and Julius laughed. It had begun.

It had begun like the Floory Land battle with Simon, except that this was a much smaller room, and Nicholas had no dear acolyte, now, to push trestles into the other man’s way. Then, Julius had been unaccountably unable to help him. Then, he himself had exulted in the childish joy of the fight. Now, if he did not weep, it was only because he was too old to weep.

It didn’t matter. It had to be done. Nicholas lifted his sword.

He wanted steel between them: that was his mistake from the beginning, given the size of the room. Julius had a one-handed sword but Nicholas’s was of the kind that fitted his height and his build: its blade three feet long, its grip suited to his large hands, the right close to the quillons, the left settled next to the pommel. With that kind of weapon, you fought with your arms fully extended, the point facing forwards. A downwards cut from a sword of that weight could slice through cheek, neck and shoulder. A horizontal sweep, one hand pushing, one pulling, could cut a man nearly in half. Since he meant to kill Julius, that was how he intended to do it. It was simpler in that neither of them wore armour. Julius had an open doublet over his shirt, and below that, only hose and light boots. Nicholas was dressed in two garments only: his hose and the shreds of his shirt. His feet were unshod, which was why Julius had laughed when the glass smashed.

He knew, of course, that Julius was shorter, and lighter, and had a more flexible sword. He also had the wit to use the terrain: to make a rampart of a desk; an impediment of every light piece of furniture. He took particular care, where he could, to limit the space where a great sword could be swung. Julius could not afford to be struck, even once. He began, quite effectively, to secure himself.

‘Poor Goliath!’ he said. His blade darted and flickered. ‘Do I see
regret on your face? Do you wish you had told the girl to bring help? You could call, but I fear no one would hear you.’

He had his back to the window. Nicholas said, ‘Take a good look. It’s too high to jump, and there are too many people.’

‘My dear boy!’ said Julius. He moved, and his blade came from the right and the left. Nicholas parried the first, and flung himself out of the way of the other. Before he could lift his sword, his way was blocked by a prie-dieu. And as he thrust that aside, there was a sudden, unbelievable blow on his steel that almost wrenched it out of his hand. With his free arm—his injured arm—Julius had hurled something—a heavy box—at it. And now, his arm soaked in blood, he was leaping at Nicholas.

There was no time to bring the heavy sword up. He left it and rolled, gritting his teeth. Julius’s blade cut down to where he had been and then dragged itself out of the wood as Julius, gasping, kicked the great sword out of reach.

‘As I was saying,’ said Julius. ‘Who has need of a window? All I have to do is kill you, unlock the door, and escape.’ He brought his sword down again, hard, as he spoke, and it screamed across the surface of the Prioress’s best silver tray, snatched up a second before to deflect it. Then, because there was no alternative, Nicholas did what his young son had once done. What Gelis had done for him, twice. He slammed the great candelabrum to the floor and then, before Julius could move in the darkness, swung the full weight of it against the other man’s injured arm, and then against the opposite wrist. Its fingers opened, and Nicholas dragged the sword from them.

‘Escape where?’ Nicholas said. Julius had moved, crying out. Nicholas turned. The dim rectangle of the window revealed itself to his widening eyes. He could see nothing yet inside the room. Holding Julius’s sword in the darkness, he was as handicapped as he had been with his own. Then he heard the other man’s irregular, painful breathing.

The blow had hurt. Julius, swordless, was twisting his way to the door. He hadn’t answered; but Nicholas knew what he was doing. Once outside in the glimmering chaos, he could make his way to the shore and a boat. There were countries other than Scotland.

Nicholas said, ‘The key isn’t there.’

He heard Julius rattle and slam at the door, and curse; and then begin to make his way purposefully back, avoiding the flecks of light from the window. His footsteps stopped on the way, and then resumed. He was quite close when half the timber ceiling was lit by a sudden new glare from outside, and Nicholas saw his handsome, stark face, and his hand, sweeping up the deep box of sand from the escritoire. Then the grit struck Nicholas in the eyes, and he was blind, as men are in the desert, when the sand-demons come.

He cast down his sword, and Julius flung himself upon him.

Now, against all his instincts, there was no steel between himself and Julius, and no space. It was as it had been in the salt-pans long ago, fighting with Simon. It repeated, flesh to flesh, the moment when the blood tie had spoken. And added to that, in this place, was the worth of twenty-five years of silent, unending guardianship. Nicholas had recoiled from his father. Now he did so from Julius; and Julius struck his neck with the edge of one hand, and then used the heel of his hand on his chin. His injured arm held in reserve, he was setting himself quite industriously to kill. To redeem, in his view, twenty-five years of tedious injustice.

The sheer, blinkered conceit of it suddenly cut through all that had seemed complex, and roused Nicholas from his stupor. He conceded that it might well be too late: that Julius had an advantage that could not be overturned. He thought it worth trying. He took a second to scrub an arm across his closed, streaming eyes. Then he set to respond to the attack: to evade the chopping, gouging, strangling hand and the agile, oppressive body. He reached some conclusions. In the glow from the window, some of the furniture would be visible to Julius. Nicholas was blind. Sightless, his head ringing, his bruised muscles protesting, he was fighting not only a man but a room: crashing from one punishing obstacle to the next as he struggled to rise, to evade the strong fingers and the dragging lock on his limbs. Julius might be bleeding, but he could see, and his brain was clear, and he had, by his position, prevented his adversary from using, so far, his advantage of weight.

So that had to be dealt with. Nicholas couldn’t see, but he could devise a strategy against the holds he could feel and, gathering himself, did so. The surge that brought his shoulders from the ground thrust Julius backwards; the next effort twisted the lock on his lower limbs until the untoward pressure actually threatened to snap Julius’s own leg. For a moment, it almost seemed that Julius, wild with indignation and anger, was about to hold on through the pain and let it break; but he fell back at the last moment, gasping, and Nicholas pulled free.

And bumped his head against something.

And, rising half stunned from that, met Julius’s flying body again, and crashed with him to the floor, rolling over and over in what space there was.

Then it became very dirty and difficult.

They both knew the tricks of the trade. They knew each other. From rough sport, from contests, from war, Nicholas was familiar with every inch of Julius’s body; as Julius knew his. Only he had the advantage of knowing how Julius’s mind worked. Unable to detect incoming blows, twice Nicholas invited them, moving his guard so that Julius made for his face or his neck, offering a chance to grip his hand or his wrist. After that, Julius was wary. In turn, Julius protected his arm, and made the most of his spread hand and his elbow, his knees and his booted feet. The two
men travelled all the time: sometimes on the floor, sometimes half risen, sometimes upright; hand to hand; shoulder to shoulder. Once Nicholas, tumbling, found a towel under his hand and clawed it briefly into his eyes. After that, he kept his lids screwed as before, but he had some sight on one side. He could see the window, and objects between it and him. He wrestled back towards the door, enlarging his view, and profiting from it a little, as if by accident. It brought him close to the glass on the floor, but at least he could see well enough to rock with the long, grazing kick that was meant to end with a stamping jump on his toes, which would have brought him to his knees.

Listening, it seemed to him that Julius was tiring, and knew it. He had lost blood. Even with Nicholas dead, he still had to find the key: he had had chance enough to confirm that Nicholas had it nowhere about him. It would take him a while: it lay out of sight on a very high ledge. Now, Nicholas could almost feel the resolve with which Julius gathered himself, and came at him.

The window had brightened. Without that, Nicholas would never have seen the gleam on the floor that was his dropped sword. Julius noticed it at the same time. On his face there flashed the look that all his friends knew: a distillation of greed, and satisfaction, and boyish pleasure. A wish, even, to share the success. You felt, even now, that he longed to tell someone, and laugh. He stooped.

Nicholas lifted his powerful arms, his hands united as if in intercession, his gaze on the nape of the other man’s neck. His shoulders widened. With all the force of his body, Nicholas de Fleury slammed his palms down on the other’s bent head, driving his face as with a mallet towards the knee set like a coining-iron to receive it. Then, as Julius staggered, bloody and crouching, Nicholas pulled his head back, and struck him down to the floor He used the edge of his hand on his throat, as had been done also to him. But he was stronger than Julius.

In extremity, Simon had still kept his looks. Julius, his face ruined, had not. That it so happened had not been intentional. It was a fact, if it mattered, that Julius would not have cared to live with a face that was less than agreeable.

Nicholas, standing above him, strained his sight and was able to distinguish that Julius was not quite unconscious, but lay frowning up at him, breathing irregularly. Even then, behind the pain, there was no real awareness in his look: just disappointment and anger.

Nicholas lifted his sword, and finished what he had done, with one clean, competent stroke.

He had taken the life of a cousin of Simon’s. It was like killing Simon. There was no difference at all.

That was when he remembered Tasse, who had served Esota de Fleury and Thibault his grandfather, and who had nursed Marian his
wife when she died. And he thought that perhaps he was wrong; and there was a difference.

B
ECAUSE THE NUNS
worked carefully, it was some time before the chapel was fit for its mourners, and the Mass was ready to start. They had placed Anselm Adorne nearest the altar, and his great-niece not far away. Eight and fifty-eight years old, the faces bore no particular family resemblance, except that lent by death, and the chill of the snow. Margaret’s features, with the loss of colour and life, appeared still and flat. Of Adorne’s, nothing was visible but the firm chin and sensitive lips, the straight nose and the tips of his lashes. The rest was swathed, to conceal what had spilled on the ground.

Halfway through the Mass, the slow, brooding voice of the choir found a new luminosity. Kathi, her face in her hands, filled her palms with tears, in thanks for something she did not deserve. She passed Nicholas, as she left at the end, and looked to see if he was hurt, but he did not seem to be. He was wearing a cloak. Outside, he caught up with her, and she stood still. Around her, others hesitated, and then left them alone. The snow had started again. She felt like part of the snow, looking up at his face in the darkness. She saw then that his face was marked, and his eyes veined with blood, as if recently recovered from injury. He said nothing. Then she saw that she must make him speak. She said, ‘Is Julius dead?’