Gemini (19 page)

‘No,’ said John. ‘If you’re sure.’ Since he came back, he had changed.

Gelis said, ‘John has to go. But, Kathi, would anyone object if I stayed? An innocuous female? Would you mind?’

‘No,’ Kathi said. ‘Please stay.’

John le Grant went, silently, taking Diniz’s men. Gelis waited to make sure that he did. Then she turned back into the house, where Kathi waited. She said to Kathi, ‘Does Robin know what is happening?’

Kathi said, ‘It would be rather hard for him not to know.’ It sounded like a rebuke, and she caught herself suddenly. ‘I mean it’s best, if you think of it, to tell him everything. He isn’t fond of being protected.’

Of course he wouldn’t be. Gelis thought suddenly of how he must feel, a man helpless in the presence of another man’s crisis and even, by his impairment, preventing the other from flight.

But no. Adorne had stayed not because of Robin, but because he was a magistrate, and had spent his life upholding the law. He must trust the law to uphold him now.

They stayed in the public rooms, she and Kathi, from which the road could be watched. They talked, in a desultory way. Occasionally Kathi would leave, to reassure the rest of the household, to visit the children and presumably Robin. Gelis thought that Adorne was in his own room, and was startled when, drifting over the courtyard alone, she opened the door of the church and, walking into the quietness, found him there.

He had been kneeling at the altar, alone. He raised his head with composure and turned. Then he said, ‘Ah Gelis, my dear,’ and rose to his feet.

He did not look very different. The fine bones of the face were perhaps starker than usual, and the amusement gone from his mouth and his eyes. But the well-cut doublet in rich, sober cloth, the velvet cap on the crisp silver-fair hair were the choice of a well-born man of authority, not a self-seeking petty official. He wore none of the emblems of the King of Scotland or the Doges of Genoa, but only a crucifix. And he knelt in the church whose foundation stone he had laid as a child, before the bonewhite sculpture of the Passion; beside the rectangles on the floor where his wife’s sarcophagus and his own would eventually lie, if mob rule did not first destroy both his home and his church.

Gelis said, ‘I didn’t mean to disturb you. Forgive me.’

‘No. Stay,’ he said. ‘You have come to be with Kathi? I am glad. But it is dangerous outside. You might have been better in Scotland after all. Although I still think that Nicholas took the right decision. He must deal with those who have threatened you, or who would use you and your son as a weapon. And here, anyone from Veere will be safe. Have you heard from Nicholas?’

There was a cross-stool by the wall which he held for her, before taking another himself. He was not booted, like a man about to ride far: his calf and thigh, extended in the fine hose, were shapely. She wondered how often Kathi was brought up now by something as trivial. Robin, loose-limbed and agile, would never wear fine hose again. She said, ‘Nicholas? No. But they will tell me if a ship comes with a letter.’

‘It might come into Veere,’ Adorne said. ‘Send to Wolfaert. He will make sure the message comes quickly, no matter what’s happening. You wouldn’t go to Nicholas then?’

‘No,’ Gelis said. ‘It would only make it less easy for him. And I want to be here.’

‘I’m glad you are,’ he said again. He had been listening. ‘But now—’

Behind her, the door had opened again, to the sound of booted feet. It must have been what he was waiting for when she came. A man started to speak. Adorne rose. He said, ‘I know why you are here. I am coming. Only let me take leave of my niece. The lady with me is leaving.’

She stood beside Kathi and watched as he left. She said, ‘He will be
back. They will let him go. Nicholas will come and plough Flanders with salt if they don’t.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Kathi said. ‘It is what I was thinking as well. I suppose it is a tribute to something. Simple, childlike, hot-headed justice, which everyone expected of Claes. But he does things rather differently now. And in any case, he’s in Scotland, doing them to David de Salmeton and others, I hope.

T
HE LETTER FROM
Nicholas did come to Veere, and was sent by her cousin Wolfaert to Gelis by courier. By the time she received it, Anselm Adorne had been in prison for some time, and facing, with his fellow accused, a process of questioning which did not rule out the possibility of torture. The date for a tribunal had not been fixed. To all the protests and demands of the ducal officers, the magistrates simply replied that there was a case to answer at law, and that the law would decide.

Well, they would see about that. Wolfaert van Borselen would see about that. Sitting in her room in the Hof Charetty-Niccolò, breathing shakily, with the packet in her hands, Gelis thought of all the times that Claes, the happy-go-lucky apprentice, had been beaten and thrust into the Steen by edict of Anselm Adorne. They had been on opposite sides, Nicholas and Adorne, many times, but Nicholas had never borne grudges for punishment he knew he deserved. In those days, he tolerated even undeserved punishment with good humour. But not now.

At first she gripped the packet without tearing it open, deferring the moment, euphoric only that he had written, and so must be safe. Then she cut the strings and unfolded the outer paper to find, surprised, that inside there was less than she thought: a small note of one page for herself, and a larger one folded in half, and covered with a very fine drawing of a fox and a dog and two hares, signed by T. Cochrane, and obviously destined for Jodi. Well, thank you, Tam Cochrane. Without you, he would have sent a much smaller package. She unsealed the note to herself.

It was in code. Busy Nicholas. Market secrets already?

She was good at codes, and hardly had to look up anything. It was one particular to themselves, so that she translated the last few lines first, which proved to be the only personal ones in the note, but which could hardly have been more specifically personal. She flushed, and choked to herself as she read them, because he would know very well the disturbance he was causing. She hoped he felt as frustrated himself when he wrote it. Then she deciphered the rest of the letter and sat, deep in troubled thought, for a long time. Finally she turned back, with rather more care, to Master Tam Cochrane’s generous drawing.

It consisted of more than one folded sheet. Sealed between them, and freed only by a very sharp knife, was another note, addressed, in handwriting she did not recognise, to Anselm Adorne, Baron Cortachy.

Gelis rose and went to find Tobie’s wife Clémence, whose wisdom she respected, and who could keep a secret, as he could, to the grave. Clémence went out. Later that day, it became known that Lord Cortachy seemed unwell, and Dr Tobias had undertaken to visit him. His visit was short. Leaving, he made his way, as might be expected, to the Hôtel Jerusalem, to reassure the sick man’s niece, Katelijne.

To Kathi he said immediately, ‘He isn’t ill. It was a ruse, to let me hand him a letter from someone. This letter. Your uncle wants you to see it.’

He watched her read it: young Kathi, whom he knew so well, and who had shouldered the burdens of others all her short life. And then Robin. And now, this.

He had found before that men of a certain class, of a certain birth, were careless in the matter of bastards, as servants were not. Or were hungry for heirs, even base-born ones. Or sometimes a girl would fib about taking precautions, in the hope of a child. Or yet again, sometimes love, or lust was so intense that the experience was supreme; the consequence nothing.

Whatever the cause, the consequence now was painful to contemplate. Phemie Dunbar of Haddington Priory was with child by Adorne, and would give birth in July to a bastard child whom everyone would know to be his. Dispensation could not be summoned in time, even if it were deemed proper to give it. And support from Adorne there would be none, for he was here, and on trial for his life.

Kathi said, ‘Where was he when he read it?’ She hadn’t looked up.

‘Alone,’ said Tobie. ‘I paid for a room.’ He had been inescapably there as Adorne read the letter. The doctor had stared hard through the bars of the window until he heard Adorne force his breathing under control. Then Tobie had turned and said, ‘What do you want done?’

‘Or undone?’ Adorne had said. His lashes were wet, but his face was as disciplined as his voice. And had added, ‘I would have nothing undone. I would have made her my wife. I will do it still.’

And Tobie had said, ‘Then will you give me a letter for her? And do you want Kathi told? No one else knows, but Gelis and Clémence.’

‘They should all know,’ Adorne had said.

After that, he had written a letter, a short one, with the writing materials that Tobie had brought. Tobie had been shown it. A formal acknowledgement of the child, and of responsibility for its upbringing. A promise to marry. And words of love, no less believable for being restrained. When he had finished, Tobie had said, ‘I have some bad
news. Barbesaen has confessed on the rack, and has been condemned. He is to hang.’

‘And so may I?’ Adorne said. ‘You are asking who will look after the child?’

‘No. I shall, or I shall find someone. Leave it to me.’

The man had been whiter than white, but still intent on mustering his thoughts. ‘At least, not Kathi. She has enough. She ought to go away as it is. I have told her already. If they turn on me, they may turn on her next. And Robin should be with his family. If he can travel?’

‘He could sail,’ Tobie said. ‘But they wouldn’t go.’

‘They will, if I make them,’ said Adorne.

N
OW
,
TELLING
K
ATHI
, Tobie awaited her answer. He could see her weighing it up. She knew Adorne, and his pride. She knew when to override it. She also knew Robin. She had children, in a town full of danger. And there was something else which Adorne had not asked of her. There was Phemie and her child about to be born. Adorne’s child, Kathi’s cousin.

After what seemed like a long time, she said, ‘I think we should leave, if he really wants it. Does he?’

‘Yes, Kathi, he does. He has a hard way before him, and it will be easier if he treads it alone.’ He thought, saying the words, that it was what Nicholas in Scotland had also chosen. Then he said, ‘Gelis will be here, with all the van Borselen power to help him. Gruuthuse will move heaven and earth. Andreas will be back, as a friend and a doctor. And he has his family.’ He ceased speaking. Adorne’s family. His older family. But not, of course, his eldest son Jan, who was employed in Rome by the brother of that Chancellor Hugonet who was now dead, executed in Ghent. Who remained obdurately at Rome.

Human nature, that was all. One had to understand it, and tolerate it, and try to forgive it. Tobie said, ‘It may be a son. He deserves one.’

T
HE SAME SPRING
dutifully visited Scotland, and winced from the spectacle of Nicholas de Fleury, exporter, who no longer envied Tam Cochrane, being fully extended unsupervised in a theatre of his own choice, with a cast of thousands and an unimaginable profusion of Secrets. Those who believed they knew him were filled with foreboding. The few who did know him (including two women) carried in silence an anxiety bordering on pain, since it was they who had released upon Scotland this masterless man; they who were trusting him, in order to prove that he now had a master—himself.

To an unbiased observer, there was no evidence as yet, either way. In fact, below the surface of his intense and soul-satisfying preoccupation, Nicholas was quite aware that monsters lurked. That in Bruges, Anselm Adorne would have received Phemie’s letter, and must be preparing an answer. That Gelis and Jodi were there and not here, where he wanted them; and that the parting might be a long one. He was conscious of the absence of news from and about Robin in Nancy. In Scotland, he knew, because he visited Roslin, how Phemie was faring. He also knew, because he suffered him daily, how Henry was nursing the venom that one day would erupt, and would force Fat Father Jordan into action. He knew, although he had not yet met him, that David Simpson had opened his campaign, because of the presents.

These had begun to descend on him in March, just after he had leased a house in the Lawnmarket of Edinburgh, and another in Leith, with a warehouse for his gathering cargo. Henry had been sardonically happy to be free of the monastery, although Wodman had objected, especially when introduced to the spacious, timber house near the head of the Bow, with its service buildings and stable behind, in the terraced ground that plunged down to the Cowgate. It was on the opposite side of the
road from Kilmirren House, Henry’s home, and a shade further away from the Castle.

The altercation between Wodman and Nicholas delighted Henry, coming upon it as he dutifully entered the house, fresh from guard duty one day, and negligently unstrapped his armour, his eyes dancing, his golden hair lit by the sun.

‘Dear Uncle. Poor Andro. He’s afraid he can’t protect you, but really, you ought to be safe. One steward, one manservant, two grooms, three people to wash and clean and cook for you—does your wife pay for them all? You must be a true Flemish stallion, Uncle Claes, between the sheets. But can you keep it up? And if you can’t, what will you use for money? Mind you’—changing mode, since Wodman had left and Nicholas was paying no attention—‘you could always sell the silver. David Simpson’s sent you another piece. What are you doing for
him
, Uncle, between the sheets?’

And sure enough, on a table, was an opened parcel, with silver gleaming inside it, and a note.

‘Damned if I can remember,’ Nicholas had said. ‘What does the note say?’

‘For your eyes only,’ was the dulcet reply. Henry’s insults, in the early days, had a schoolboyish quality that reminded Nicholas sometimes of his own boyhood, to his annoyance. In Henry’s case, it was misleading. Behind the crudity was a dogged bulwark of incohesive and violent emotion, liable to break out in any form, against anyone, but mostly against this man to whom he owed all his present humiliation. He watched Nicholas lift the card from the parcel.