Gemini (81 page)

‘Which would be disastrous?’ Gelis said. ‘To you? To us? To the world?’

‘No. It would just be sad,’ Nicholas said. ‘Otherwise, it’s of no importance whatever. Bel knows of nothing that will show me to be of legitimate birth. No one does.’

‘Oh. Good,’ said Gelis. She willed him to begin to laugh, and he did. Then she willed him to jump up, and he did that, too.

B
Y THE TIME
Julius came back from the Borders, the fighting at Berwick had stopped, and all that was going on was the usual exchange of vicious raiding by the normal denizens of each side of the frontier, which continued into the New Year and increased the hardship already caused
by bad harvests. Being Julius, he had a large, fresh fund of personal gossip, but no actual news of what Sandy Albany was up to in France. Nor had anybody else.

To please the King and themselves, Nicholas and Willie Roger filled the weeks before Christmas with the preparation of several small musical plays, aimed chiefly at children, and one large liturgical work by Whistle Willie, with the voices of his friends as his instruments of experiment. As at the time of the great play they once created together, the houses of the various friends and associated members of the projects became littered with paint and paper and illogical artefacts, and untrustworthy artisans such as Big Tam Cochrane and John le Grant and Nicholas himself were to be found in corners with heaps of wire, whistling and cursing.

The differences between now and ten years before were, however, also impressive. Then, they lived in houses that were chiefly offices, and occupied by their lessees or owners for only a few months at a time. They were ornamental and reasonably comfortable: suitable for entertaining and for meetings, and with room for a family. But someone who lived here for five years, and came to spend time in other homes, to frequent centres of learning, and to keep company with men of literary or artistic or musical interests, would gather about himself the products of all these encounters; would have to find room for books, and for pictures and for instruments, and a workshop or office for his own experiments, as well as a table he would not be ashamed to offer his guests. A man who hunted and shot with his friends would have hounds, and horses, and birds. A family man, whether in business or not, would require clerks who paid his debts and collected his income, together with the great circle of his suppliers: the builders, the merchants, the fleshers, the bakers; the water-carriers, the smiths and the lorimers. He would know by name or by sight everyone who lived in his town, and in business, in sport or at his fireside, would rub shoulders daily with most of them.

All the men who had once belonged to the House of Niccolò, including its former owner, now lived in homes which possessed a permanence which the peripatetic life in Flanders had never encouraged. The exception was Anselm Adorne, whose beautiful Hôtel Jerusalem in Bruges had been a testament to generations of culture, and was paralleled by nothing he had attempted in Scotland. Either he did not wish to try; or else his busy life was sufficiently served by his homes in Linlithgow and Edinburgh and Blackness, which were handsome enough, and his use of the Berecrofts house in the Canongate. And certainly, within these parameters, his entertainment was princely; as he himself was entertained, as he always had been, by men of consequence. His daughter, a silent, merry four-year-old, flourished in Haddington.

Nicholas saw his own twelve-year-old daily, but the other son not at
all, until the time he took delivery of his new ship at Leith, on a lowering day of wild weather which had frightened off pirates and allowed the
Jordan
, in all its three-masted glory, to plunge round the coast and come to rock in the river.

It was the latest of several ships he now possessed. He had given new names to them all. Ships did not have long lives, and there would never be another
Ciaretti
. Of his acquisitions, one was a converted Hanse fishing vessel, and two were useful Biscay-type trading ships he had picked up at a sale. His flagship, the
Fleury
, was the merchant vessel he had renounced when he gave everything up, and which Gelis had paid to recover. The
Fleury
mattered, because of that. This one mattered, because it bore Jordan’s name: the first public manifestation of the young Jordan de Fleury, not the old Jordan de St Pol.

Because of that, it was Jordan his son who was first on board, and Jordan who, once high on the poop, noticed his cousin Henry caught, vexed and impatient, in the press of people on shore. Since Christmas was close, and the Border fighting had slackened, men were coming back to their houses in Edinburgh. Returned to Kilmirren House with his grandfather and Simon, Henry came across now and then to see to his horses. There was a piece of St Pol land near Dunbar which offered good grazing, and removed the stud from the orbit of Simon, who disapproved of the venture. This information (of course) came from Julius via Sir James Liddell of Halkerston in the Mearns, who had a house in Dunbar. It was the only piece of information Liddell seemed to have supplied, in the long evenings Julius spent with him.

The crowd on the wharf were all friends, come to help Nicol celebrate his new vessel. Knowing what was expected, he had opened and stocked up a warehouse with ale, and something to eat with it, and in due course they all packed themselves in, and there were some mock speeches and a lot of coarse jokes. Nicholas, playing his part, assumed that Henry had departed in a cloud of malignancy; until he suddenly saw him outside, looking searchingly up at the ship. At its name. Of course, hell and damnation: at its name.

Nicholas started to leave. As he began to move from person to person, he saw that Gelis had reached the door and was already walking over to talk to her nephew. She spoke, and it looked as if Henry asked her a question. He looked superb, but not dangerous; not with Gelis. They went on talking. Nicholas, half-emerged, hesitated.

Gelis had seen him. She called across. ‘You know more about this than I do. I was telling Henry that he should try another sail with you all. But not in this weather.’

‘It’s a challenge,’ Nicholas said. She had spoken, thank God, as if she had never heard of the scene with Muriella. Nicholas, too, adopted a level that Henry would recognise: vaguely impatient but not at all unfriendly.
He said, ‘Do you want to come on board and look? It’s roomier than you’d think.’

‘I’m sure,’ Henry said. ‘No, thank you. I hear you’ve been to Elcho. The nuns have reformed Muriella then, have they?’

Gelis stayed quiet. Nicholas said, ‘It was Bonne I was going to see. After the pike fishing,’ He didn’t look at Gelis.

Gelis said, ‘It isn’t fair. He’ll believe you.’ Magnificent Gelis.

Nicholas said, ‘Well, he ought to. It’s true.’

‘That you went to see Bonne?’ Henry said. ‘Or didn’t you?’ He was looking at Gelis, his expression somewhere between pity and contempt.

Nicholas said, ‘I didn’t really go to see Bonne. Or not especially. I was at the Lake of Menteith for the pike—’

‘So you say,’ Gelis said.

She staggered slightly as someone bumped into her. Unbelievably, it was Jordan. Incredibly, he was making for Henry, whom he had last met, in brutal circumstances, at Muriella’s house. He addressed Henry, regardless. ‘I told them you were here. Has he told you about the pike fishing?’

He had caught the word. Jordan was trying to do something, and Nicholas could only hope he knew what. He picked up his cue.

‘Nobody believes it,’ Nicholas said. He made it sour.

‘That’s because you explain it inadequately,’ Jordan said. Henry’s long lashes batted.

Jordan said, ‘Let
me
tell him.’

It didn’t take long. Nicholas hadn’t believed it himself when Rob Colville had first described the whole farce, and then had actually got them to come back to Doune and take part in it. It was a fishing competition for pike. The fishing was done by local geese, with baited lines tied to their legs. Once the goose was dumped in the water, it beat across the loch to the home of its master, hooking its fish as it went. As the goose-owners lived all round the loch, it ensured a good, thorough fishing.

‘I don’t believe it,’ said Henry; but beneath the scathing tone, there lay something more natural.

‘We got
soaked
,’ Jordan said. ‘It’s stupid really, for fully grown men.’ His two wayward dimples contradicted him.

‘It sounds it,’ said Henry. ‘Did you catch anything?’

‘We won!’ Jordan said. ‘We brought these two geese from home …’

‘We got another one,’ said Nicholas in an apologetic aside. Something told him that Henry had been treated to a graphic account of Simon standing in mid-street wringing the neck of a goose. Henry was biting his lip.

‘And they both hooked a fish?’ Henry said. He could still manage a drawl.

‘They hooked each other,’ said Jordan. ‘But no one else hooked
anything, so we won. They weren’t hurt. It’s really funny. Of course, it’s silly as well. You should come with us next time and see.’ He caught Henry’s eye.

‘You’d have to lend me a goose,’ Henry said. His sole dimple appeared, and was banished.

That was all. A crowd suddenly arrived to collect them, and Henry walked off.

At home, Jordan tried to explain to his father. ‘I hadn’t forgotten, but he doesn’t know that I heard him at Malloch. Unhappy people are cruel and tell lies. You never see Henry with friends.’

‘He probably kills and eats them,’ said Nicholas encouragingly. ‘All right. I know what you mean, and it’s kind. Keep trying. But don’t forget: unhappy people aren’t always consistent. Don’t get hurt.’

I
N
K
ILMIRREN
H
OUSE
, an unwise friend mentioned the occasion to Simon, who later carried the news to his father. ‘He’s called the ship
Jordan
!’

‘There is no law against it, so far as I know,’ observed his father. ‘But you say Henry was there?’

‘Talking to de Fleury and the boy. Someone saw them. He said nothing to me.’

Jordan de St Pol eased his weight in the chair, and the chair emitted a groan. ‘I sometimes think,’ said the lord of Kilmirren, ‘that your technique with that youth could be improved upon. He should be married by now.’

Henry’s bachelorhood was becoming a nuisance. St Pol had spoken to three families, who had expressed guarded interest. Henry displayed no enthusiasm for marriage, but a great deal in the maidens under discussion, who reciprocated with zeal, to the distress of their parents. The best method with someone of Henry’s looks was to sign the parents up first, and tell him about it later on. Then he could do with the girl as he pleased.

I
N TIME OF
war, every winter is precious. It is the close season; the time when men return home to their families, and celebrate Christmas, even in scarcity, with glad hearts. It is a time for acts of liberality.

Anselm Adorne took his little deaf daughter Euphemia from her convent at Haddington and travelled with her to Stirling to visit the old lady, Bel of Cuthilgurdy, who had made the opposite journey so often to teach, in the way she had learned from the deaf Scottish Princess Joanna. With him he also took Mistress Clémence, the splendid Frenchwoman who had been married to Dr Tobie from his house, and who had nursed Jordan de Fleury from babyhood.

It was an unusual thing for him to do, and Mistress Bel bided her time, entertaining the child and making Lord Cortachy welcome, before Clémence, whom she knew very well, offered to take the child, well wrapped up, to run and slide in the meadows.

The child was very like Phemie, with her direct gaze and abundance of energy; and constant care had given her a confidence denied to most of her kind. A child of many mothers, she was happy with Clémence, as Jordan had been.

‘Jordan was lucky,’ Lord Cortachy said. ‘And now he has his own father and mother, which he appreciates to the full. It was about that, in a way, that I wished to speak.’

‘Jordan is very attached to them,’ Bel remarked. ‘And now, I hear, there is a ship bearing his name. I know who’ll mislike that.’

‘It is rumoured already,’ said Adorne, ‘that Simon de St Pol has taken extreme umbrage; especially as Henry his son apparently had said nothing of it. They are at odds with one another, as usual. The youth ought to
be married, but every arrangement so far has failed. Not because the maidens don’t like him—the opposite!—but their land-owning fathers are shy. Kilmirren thrives in good times, but Simon is not a disciplined man, and the same could be said of the boy. No one offers an heiress to a potentially run-down estate, or to a hapless life in Madeira, at the end of the day.’

‘Not while Monseigneur is alive,’ Bel observed. ‘But I agree. Those bonny blue eyes have been conquering girls since before his voice broke, and his elders have been daft not to curb it. Fortunately, Efemie’s too young, and so is Kathi’s wee Margaret. Whoever they get for the lad, they’ll want her in the marriage-bed quickly.’

‘It should be an interesting Yule,’ Adorne said. ‘Were you thinking of coming to Edinburgh?’

‘Not with all that going on,’ Bel said caustically. ‘After your sixtieth birthday, it pays to be selfish, in my view. And yourself? You’re not staying in St Johnstoun of Perth?’

He took a moment before he replied. ‘I’m not sure. I’m going to see Master Julius’s step-daughter at Elcho. Nicholas wishes to invite her to stay with himself and Gelis for Christmas, but I think he is unwise. Her arrival from Germany caused trouble with the St Pols and with me, as Father Moriz has possibly told you. It might happen again. Julius apparently doesn’t want her in the Canongate house. It’s a dilemma. Like young Henry, she ought to be married.’

‘From all I hear, she’s too poor to be considered for Henry,’ she said. ‘Why does Julius not want her? Because she reminds him of his wife?’

‘I think certainly so. And Nicholas, of course, feels responsible because Bonne’s mother was a de Fleury.’ He paused. He knew, from Kathi, she assumed, what the other possibilities were. He said, ‘I don’t know if you’ve met Bonne?’