Gemini (27 page)

Henry said, ‘What do you think you are doing? You can’t keep me for ever. You can’t keep me for a day—I’m due on duty tomorrow.’ There was puzzlement mixed with the rage. ‘What’s it got to do with you?’

And then enlightenment. ‘You’re going to bring him. You know who he is. You’re going to bring him and let him do what he likes.’

‘I know it’s John of Mar,’ Nicholas said. ‘And that it’s because of what happened at the Vespers. I’m not going to bring him. I’m going to tell his brothers to deal with him.’

‘The King? Of course, he’d listen to you!’ Henry said.

‘Or Sandy Albany, for preference. If they control Mar, I’d have to undertake that you wouldn’t revive the quarrel by challenging him.’

‘You expect me to accept this without challenging him?’ Henry said.

‘It’s a rule,’ Nicholas said. ‘Everyone is excused from challenging princes. He is brought to order by his family, and honour is satisfied. And if you refuse, I’ll tell your grandfather all about it tonight.’

He cut the cords, neatly, as he was leaving, and got the door shut and locked before Henry could blunder towards it. Henry shouted in a painful, muffled way for a while, and then stopped. Nicholas lay in bed listening. He had meant what he said. He had to go to see Avandale in the morning, and Avandale would do what was required. Nicholas hoped not to have to tell Jordan de St Pol before then; afterwards, it shouldn’t be necessary. It would be known soon enough that Mar had initiated a cowardly attack, and had been reprimanded by his royal brother. A challenge would be forbidden. Of course, it wouldn’t end there. Mar would try again. But Henry wouldn’t be here.

Towards dawn, Nicholas fell asleep at last, but not for too long. Today was his meeting with Avandale. Today he had to take Adorne’s letter, and Kathi, to Roslin.

Today was another day without Gelis, and Jodi, who did not have golden hair and blue eyes, but who had learned how to show love, and receive it.

And still it was not safe. It was not safe for them to come.

A
LL THE WAY
to Roslin with Kathi, Nicholas did what he never did, and presented her with a detailed report on all his activities.

This marked a nerve-racking departure. It also represented the aftermath of a short, stormy scene with her brother who, after a night spent largely pacing the floor, was still in no mood to condone the wiles of some sluttish nun who had trapped his ageing uncle into a lucrative marriage. When Nicholas appeared, he received the full blame. If Nicholas bloody knew, why hadn’t he told Sersanders? If Nicholas bloody knew, why hadn’t he stopped it?

It was vain, at this point, to reiterate that the lady was an earl’s daughter and richer than their uncle Anselm. Kathi had shut him up finally by recalling that if their uncle were to be executed, there would be no problem at all. Then she had ridden off, grimly. Catching up with her, Nicholas had called across, ‘I shouldn’t worry. He’s going to be so busy soon that he’ll want to recruit the child as extra staff when it comes.’ And, dropping his voice, had proceeded, as they rode, to invite her into the innermost sanctum of his planning.

It sounded smooth, but it went across the grain of all his old habits, and must have been difficult. As her own perceptions cleared, Kathi also discerned that something had happened that he wasn’t telling her: when she asked about Henry he brushed the subject aside. In every other way, however, she revelled in sharing his mind.

All of the background she knew: she had been on first-name terms with the royal kindred since her earliest visit to Scotland. But now she listened hungrily to all Nicholas had to say about recent developments:
about the loyalties and lucrative projects of Sir Oliver Sinclair
(Nowie?)
of Roslin; and about Sandy Albany, who was divorcing Sir Oliver’s sister, and whose dislike of the English peace was shared by his royal sister Margaret. From time to time she interrupted the fast, close-packed report with questions which he answered at the same even-voiced speed. She had forgotten, attuned to the sickroom, what speaking to Nicholas was like when he and she were alone.

‘How will it help, if Sandy thinks you’re spying for him in Berwick? If I go back to Meg, won’t it increase the rift with the King over the English peace?’ Then she said, ‘Ah, I see. You need to know what Sandy is plotting. And you also need to know what the King thinks. If I’m at Court, I can tell you.’

‘You might also tell me what David Simpson is doing,’ Nicholas said. ‘He has worked very hard to recommend himself to the King, but has been a little hampered so far by his papal connection with Camulio. Now that Camulio’s gone, he will want to strengthen his grip.’

‘
Now?
Not
while?
’

‘An informed guess. And I’m not throwing Robin and you to the wolves. You’ll be safer from Simpson the closer you are to the Court. Whitelaw and Avandale and Argyll will look out for you. There are some others as well: officials, advisers, doctors. I’ll tell you who they are.’

‘You’ve discussed all this with them?’ It was like the Play. It was like unwrapping the canvas, and opening a coffer of dazzling secrets.

‘About Simpson and Albany, yes. I saw some of them this morning. It’s important, of course, that none of the royal brothers and sisters know that their councillors discuss them with foreigners. These are the men who have kept the kingdom steady for twenty years, they mustn’t lose the King’s trust.’

‘And Tom Yare is in touch with them?’ Kathi said. ‘So why do they need you in Berwick as well?’

‘They don’t,’ Nicholas said. ‘But Albany thinks he does. And Liddell and Purves and one or two others. I had to choose whether to associate with the King or with Albany, and I had some influence with Sandy to build on. The pity is that there is no one except Davie Simpson attached to the King and, indeed, the Queen.’

‘But James has his personal merchants, and he trusts Avandale and the rest, surely?’

‘He needs someone closer than that. The … the boon companion,’ Nicholas said.

She waited. When he didn’t go on, she said, ‘A dangerous role. Do boon companions ever die in their beds?’

‘Do they want to?’ he said. And because he had followed her thought, ‘Whatever kills me, it is unlikely to be Albany’s excess of affection.’

‘Where have you lived?’ Kathi said. ‘Excess of affection always kills.’

Then they were at Roslin. For an hour, for the first hour since January, she had thought of something other than Robin.

N
ICHOLAS, SENDING AHEAD
, had arranged that they should see Phemie first, before anyone. Phemie herself accordingly had some small warning, and received them, labouring up from her chair in the sunny room, her eyes moving from Kathi to Nicholas, but resting on Nicholas. The cordial, wimpled colleague of the Priory had gone, but the same positive mind read his smile. Few men could radiate happiness as Nicholas could. Phemie opened her arms and he moved forward and caught her and hugged her. Then he set her apart and looked down. ‘Phemie? He is so delighted. He loves you. He has written to you.’

Later, when she had read the letter, they talked about Seaulme Adorne, and about the rising in Bruges. Listening to what she was told, Phemie was disturbed, but not unduly apprehensive. Men like her uncle, Kathi said, might be subjected to a token imprisonment but, by now, it might well be all over. Of course, Phemie could not travel at present, but had begun to speak of joining Anselm after the birth. It was only two months away. He might even travel to fetch her. Then she asked about Robin.

There, Kathi held back nothing, but balanced the bad news with the good. He could never walk, but could be strapped in a chair. One side would always be dead, but the other was not, and the living intelligence that made him was unimpaired. Kathi was in Scotland to stay, but her life henceforth would depend on Robin’s determination to rediscover his place in the world. Phemie, she thought, understood.

Then it was time to open the door, and announce Phemie’s news to the world. For whereas yesterday she was an earl’s daughter, illicitly pregnant, today she was the promised wife of Anselm Adorne, Baron Cortachy, and could now quietly reshape her life.

Nicholas stayed for a while, as did Kathi. It was partly because Phemie wished it, and partly to savour the moment when Nowie was told. Consummate performer that he was, Sir Oliver moved from relief to chaste satisfaction, expressing delight at his dear cousin’s choice, mixed with the faintest censure for the gentleman’s hastiness. He gave her his blessing. It was even possible, since he had certainly guessed it all beforehand, that the satisfaction was genuine. Reminded of recent events, Kathi murmured to Nicholas at her side, ‘You made her very happy just now.’

‘I wanted to,’ Nicholas said. ‘I knew how she felt.’

‘How?’

‘When I first heard I had a son.’

He spoke very softly. It was so unlike him that she thought at first she had misheard. She said, on a light breath, ‘Where were you?’

‘In a convent. I left. I was thinking about him when they attacked me, or I should have escaped. Abrupt awakening.’ He gave a laugh, still very soft.

‘Who attacked you?’

‘Men of Jordan’s. Jordan de St Pol. It doesn’t matter. But I know how she feels.’

He said nothing more. Kathi thought crossly, No one knows. No one knows what has happened to him. He hardly knows himself. Only this moment of happiness suddenly came back to him now, because of Phemie.

Then she had to step forward, for Betha rushed in, followed by young Will Crichton’s mother, another cousin. And that was only the beginning. As word spread, the castle would fill up with relatives. No one, dear God, could say the Dunbars were not well connected. Among her second cousins, Phemie counted some of the King’s staunchest friends in the north-east. The Earl of Moray was once a Dunbar; a Dunbar was Keeper of Darnaway Castle. Phemie’s sister Cristina had married into a family that held the rents of all the royal fishing on Speyside, for which at Lammas each year they had to present to the King three and one half lasts of salmon,
full, round and sweet
.

So Nicholas had told her. The same rights, of course, obtained in salmon rivers elsewhere. Tom Yare held tack of the River Tweed fishings for life. The Knights of St John held salmon rights in Peterculter, Aberdeenshire. Monasteries, great and small, all had their privileges: the extraction of salmon, which then required to be salted, barrelled, and shipped to their markets. Andrew Lisouris, that peripatetic carpenter of noble birth, shipped down the King’s salmon with timber from Darnaway forest for barrels, for building. Timber often accompanied salmon, and coal, to fire up the salt-pans.

The keys to the future of Scotland, Nicholas called them: what would weld guild-brethren together, what would fill the royal Treasury; what would draw the eyes of the siblings from England; what should occupy, above all else, the attention of the Berecroftses and Robin. And now Phemie and Adorne would be at the heart of it. And their child.

Before they left, she overheard a single exchange between Sinclair and Nicholas which was not about salmon, or timber.

‘Adorne is in prison?’

‘He was, in April. Gruuthuse and the little Duchess were determined to have him released.’

‘I am told,’ Sinclair said, ‘that the Duchess ran crying into the square when they executed Hugonet. It did not stop them … You know that Albany has begun a consanguinity divorce against my half-sister? Ostensibly so that he may marry the Dowager Duchess?’

‘But your reading is different?’ Nicholas had said.

‘I may be wrong,’ said Nowie Sinclair. ‘I am sure that if a miracle happened, Sandy would bed the Dowager with equal delight. But if she declines, he is then free in the marketplace.’

‘But not as the heir to the Scottish throne,’ Nicholas said. ‘King James has two sons.’

‘Both called James. How fragile is life. How unpredictable is life,’ Sinclair had said.

R
ETURNING TO
E
DINBURGH
with Nicholas, Kathi allowed the conversation to find its own level, and soon it dwindled to nothing. Ahead lay the long, rolling range of the Pentlands; beyond the plains to the right lay the sea. From time to time she glanced at Nicholas, who was riding at a hard, steady pace, his face absent. They passed Newbattle, and rode down and up from Dalkeith. She kept what she wanted to say until they were close to the green crag beside Holyrood, and the Castle shone, small and clear on its rock.

‘Nicholas? Why did Jordan allow Henry to join you?’

Then, he glanced across. ‘I told you. I threatened him.’

‘And he agreed meekly. I know. So Henry is spying for Jordan?’

‘And I am feeding him false information. Yes, all of that.’

She hesitated. ‘I thought he tried once to claim you molested him.’

‘In Bruges, when he was young. It didn’t stick. He’d look a fool trying it now: an armed Royal Guardsman unable to escape the advances of a man twice his age?’ His voice lightened a little. ‘In fact, it’s the other way round. He was kind enough to mention that his wittier friends had accused him of falling in love with me. I won’t tell you what answer he gave them.’

‘It seems to me,’ Kathi said, ‘that you won’t tell me anything. I
am
able to direct my weakened mind to subjects other than Robin: I’ve proved it. Now I want to know what is wrong about Henry.’

‘John of Mar tried to kill him,’ Nicholas said. ‘Avandale and Sandy have gone to see Mar, and I have locked Henry up, until he agrees not to challenge him.’

It had been the only way to get an answer. With Nicholas, you didn’t do that very often, and it hurt. ‘I am suitably abashed,’ Kathi said. ‘That, then, was what you were doing this morning. Was Henry injured?’