Gemini (18 page)

W
ITHIN THE TOWN
, nothing of all this was known in advance. Within the Hospital of St John, time stretched out, and Katelijne Sersanders occupied herself with dogged persistence: rallying the frightened women; setting the carpenters to work; making up the beds that might be needed, should the inevitable happen. She had sent Arnaud home to his wife and, after demurring, he had gone. She did not see how, after all this, it could end in anything other than gunpowder and bloodshed and misery far into the future for Bruges. And in the midst of it were the prisoners, freed at last to face such a homecoming. She did not allow herself even to conjecture that Robin, alive and well, would still be among them.

When the cheering began, she unbarred the door herself, shaking, to permit one of the servants to slip out. When they let him in again, he was too excited to speak. Then he told them that the fighting had stopped. The lord had come alone, and stood at the Gate, and promised Bruges all that it wanted. And the prisoners had arrived and were entering first. The lord had read out all their names, and the husband of the lady Katelijne was among them.

Then the cart had turned in under the archway, with Diniz and Gelis and John le Grant, mounted, beside it, and Tobie was already beside her, talking in a kind, chattering voice about Robin. A long, tiring journey. A bed. A quiet room here, in the Hospital for a day or two, before going to the Hôtel Jerusalem. If she liked, he would have Robin installed, while she took and saw to this list he had written. It itemised drugs that were needed; certain ointments from the Dispensary. If she waited there, he would come to her directly.

Silently, she took the paper and went.

The Dispensary had been cleaned out and swept. She found most of the things on the list, but they did not reveal a great deal by their properties. Tobie would know as much. Tobias Beventini of Grado, friend and physician to armies, had dealt, through the years, with many hundreds of widows and wives; and knew that he had conveyed enough for the moment. She was to see Robin in bed; not before. The others, they told her, had gone. Clémence, too, would be waiting. She thought how tired Tobie had looked, and was stricken.

When he came, she had found some wine for them both, and made him sit.

He smiled a little. ‘I am being cosseted.’

‘It is about time,’ she said. She looked down, and then straight at him. ‘The wounds are as Nicholas said? Or did he not tell it all?’

‘He didn’t know it all,’ Tobie said. He waited, and then spoke with simplicity. ‘Nicholas thought he saw Robin die. He is experienced and, ordinarily, he would have been right. The shots should have killed. But Robin is young, and he is here for you, alive. He is here, and he is going to survive. Do you understand that?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And whatever you are going to tell me, it doesn’t matter.’

His face altered a little. ‘I know that, my dear. Here it is. There were several shots. The first was as bad as we feared, and has lost him one leg. The others hit higher. They could have killed, but they didn’t. He has his sight, and his speech, and his hearing. They didn’t alter his intellect by a shred. But they have deprived him of movement, from shoulder to foot, on one side.’

‘On which side?’ she said.

‘On the left. The side of the leg he still has.’

‘Is he in pain?’ Kathi said. ‘No, how silly. Of course.’

‘It is getting less. It will go.’

She said, ‘Does he wish that he’d died?’ and was surprised when he laid his hand on hers.

Then he removed it and said, ‘Yes, at first. Then he remembered you, and the children, and us. I think he is grateful, now, that he didn’t. But he needs time.’

And us
. She thought how wise Tobie was, in some things. Dear as she was to Robin, and he was to her, they shared their trust and their friendship with others. She said, ‘Is he ready to see me?’

‘For a little,’ Tobie said. ‘Then he must sleep.’

He took her to Robin’s door, but she went in alone.

He lay on a low pallet bed, looking up. Tousled brown hair; deep eyes; wrist- and finger-bones frail on the coverlet; and the young, young face full of calm.

‘Kathi,’ said Robin of Berecrofts. ‘I’m so sorry. I can’t walk.’

‘I know,’ she said, and sat carefully down, and slipped her hand into his, which tightened a little. The other was under the cover. She said, ‘If you can’t suffer it, then you needn’t. But we all hope that you’ll try. Will you try?’

‘It’s why I came back,’ he said.

Then she laid her cheek on his, and stayed there, her hands curled at his neck, her weight where nothing could harm him. When she kissed him, he closed his eyes, and did not open them again for a long time.

O
N
F
RIDAY, THE
seventh day of March, 1477, an orderly crowd, ranged below the balcony of the sugar-spun Hôtel de Ville of Bruges, heard read out in French and Flemish a solemn undertaking, on behalf of the Duchess and Countess of Flanders, to return to the town all its communal liberties, its commercial monopolies, and its lordship over Sluys and the other towns of the Franc, including superiority over the commune, now the new town of Middleburg. This was followed by a joint announcement by the Deans of the trades, to the effect that their members, having laid down their arms in their guild-houses, were now free to disband. The bells rang, the crowd dispersed, and those who had lost money by neglecting their work over the past few days returned to their workshops and tables, while preserving their privilege to meet, as had become the custom, to further develop their opinions over an ale-pot in their parlours and taverns.

Anselm Adorne ceased for a while to frequent the Poorterslogie at the top of Spangnaerts Street, but took the chance, over several days, to visit his son Maarten’s Carthusian convent, to call upon his daughters similarly immured in Sint-Andries and Steenbrugge; to visit his youngest son Antoon, who was training for the priesthood, and to confirm that his married son Pieter in Ghent was still safe. He knew that his eldest son Jan, in Rome with Cardinal Hugonet, was frustrated as ever, but secure. Elizabeth and Marie had good husbands who would protect them. And of course, first of all, on the very night of the rising, he had gone to comfort Arnaud, of whom he was proud. Arnaud’s wife was of the good blood of the Nieuvenhoves, but frail after the birth of her daughter. It did not look as if she was preparing for another infant just yet.

The rest of his time, Adorne of Cortachy spent in conference with Louis de Gruuthuse and the other officers of the Duchess and of the town. When he could not avoid it, he went home.

In the recesses of her mind, his niece Kathi registered his absence, and understood it, and was grateful for the prayers that she knew had begun, and would continue, wherever her uncle had friends. For the rest, the King of France and his armies might be ruling Bruges from inside the White Bear, for all she knew or cared.

At first, Robin remained at the Hospital and, hour by hour, Tobie taught her how to care for him. While Tobie slept, John le Grant took his place at her side. It was as if he could not keep away; as if, weary as he was, his only relief lay in maintaining the same dogged routine that had kept Robin alive through the long weeks of their joint captivity. It was Tobie who persuaded him that Robin belonged to his wife, and that John should seek proper rest and recuperation in the Hof Charetty-Niccolò. Then, also at Tobie’s suggestion, Kathi brought her invalid back to the Hôtel Jerusalem. There, better than her own house, she could keep the children’s household apart, and the nuns who looked after her uncle were at hand. So, too, was Mistress Cristen, the children’s own nurse, and Clémence came often, in between the visits of Tobie. At first, indeed, Tobie had continued to stay all day, every day, until she took him aside and asked what he thought she was doing wrong. John le Grant and Gelis, who never came without sanction, were the only other persons she admitted. This was not a matter for communal management. This was between Robin and herself.

She knew, because she understood him so well, that now was not the time to be bracing and jocular. It was not the time, either, to be tender and warmly compassionate. They were two people with a difficult problem, in a situation which involved, or could involve pain and resentment and anger, or at the very least an unending affliction of petty embarrassments; leading to lessening confidence, a growing sense of inadequacy.

They held no soul-searching talks; they did not need to. They took the situation and worked at it together. Then, at the end, they would admit the public. In those days, it was their friends who wept, not Kathi or Robin.

T
HE DAY AFTER
he came home from Nancy, Tobie wrote a letter, with Kathi’s consent, to Robin’s father in Scotland, and another to Nicholas. He hoped Nicholas was alive to receive it, since no one had heard from him since he left. But then, it was still barely March.

It was still early March, and the repercussions of the Duke’s death had not stopped. Going about her business, with the silent company, on occasion, of John, Gelis brought back fragments of information to add to that already reaching the counting-house. It was, as ever, from Ghent, where the departure of the Dowager Duchess had been followed by an upsurge of French-fostered suspicion. Who were these men, asked the Gantois, who were making pacts in the name of the state, but without its sanction? Causing towns to surrender to France, arranging unsuitable bridegrooms for the Duchess, betraying their office? Once more, executions began: of minor malfaisants, or former unreliable officials who had abused the town’s trust. Gruuthuse rode between the two
towns, and Adorne, it was known, was deeply anxious once more about his son.

‘They won’t do more,’ Gelis said. ‘Easter is coming.’

Easter was coming, and the Governor of Bruges sent to Middleburg to import cannon and gunpowder. Easter came, and the people of Ghent, invoking the law, arrested not an elderly alderman, but the great and learned ducal Chancellor William Hugonet, lord of Saillant, Époisses and Lys, Viscount of Ypres, close confidant of the little Duchess and her father; staunch adviser at Trèves; saviour of the Duke’s reputation in crisis after crisis. And with him, they had arraigned another of the Duchess’s suspect inner circle, the Knight of the Golden Fleece Guy de Brimeu, sire de Humbercourt, who led the élite squadron of ordnance at Neuss and who, with Hugonet, had taken part in the negotiations with France, and so could be blamed, however groundlessly, for the consequences.

Arrested them, questioned them for six days on the rack, found them guilty, and, on the third day of April, hanged them on the public scaffold in Ghent, which also saw the slaughter of the papal protonotary, the ducal Treasurer for Ghent, and sixteen other servants of the late Duke.

The news came to Bruges, accompanied by a summons to action. Now is the time to clear your town of the miserable agents of ducal corruption! You too have been exploited! You too have been asked to shed your blood for your country while those noblemen laugh in their palaces, who took your money, took your young men to die for the whim of the Duke! Act as Ghent does! Refuse to fight until your town has been cleansed! The burgomasters of those years, the Treasurers: all, all must pay!

This time, hearing the roar of the crowd, Gelis van Borselen did not go seeking help, because no help could reach Bruges in time. On the other hand, the waterways were now clear, and the Hof Charetty-Niccolò had a boat that could be carried down to the canal and launched, with herself and John le Grant and eight armed men to propel it. She had left Jodi behind, in a house that was full of men, and well protected, and in no danger of serious attack. Diniz had never held civic office. In the Hof Charetty-Niccolò he was safe, and so was she, wherever she was. She was a van Borselen.

The walls of the Hôtel Jerusalem were manned, but she was recognised and allowed into the grounds. In the house, they were met immediately by Kathi. She said, ‘Go back. The town guard is coming, and we are not to defend ourselves, or resist. Our men are there only in case others try to burst in.’ She was without colour, her eyes enormous as they had been in the Hospital.

Le Grant said, ‘Where is your uncle?’

‘Here,’ said Kathi. ‘They are coming to arrest him. They have found
some authority; he says it is necessary to let the law take its course. He is here to surrender, so that there will be no reason to harm the rest of us.’

‘You have a boat,’ Gelis said quickly. ‘We have ours. We could take you all and escape.’

A little of the starkness left Kathi’s face. She said, ‘Thank you, but no. We should be caught, and it would only cause bloodshed. And there are the children, and Robin.’ She paused and said, ‘You are such good friends, to have come. I’m sorry to seem ungrateful. I thought Uncle should escape too, but he won’t. He says he will stand by his record. After all he has done for Bruges, they will surely be ashamed, and release him.’

John le Grant said, ‘I don’t understand how they can make a case of any kind. Is he the only one?’

‘No. He isn’t the only one,’ Kathi said. ‘They’re rounding up the magistrates, the burgomaster who worked with him—Paul van Overtweldt, Jean de Baenst, Barbesaen … everyone in office when the Duke was raising money for his wars. My uncle gave money himself—do you think they have forgotten the forced levies? Two hundred, two hundred and fifty pounds he paid for the Duke’s wars out of his own pocket. Even Dr Andreas had to pay.’ She broke off. ‘They’re not all mad. He has only to stand up in court, and it will all be judged in his favour. But it would be best not to be here when they come. Please go, John. You saved Robin for me. I can’t let you do more. He’d blame me if you did.’

John le Grant was red-headed, and Scots. He said, ‘I’ll go if Adorne tells me to go.’

‘You know he will,’ Kathi said. ‘Not to resist is our best protection. And as someone who fought at Nancy, you can speak for him better outside prison than in it. Do you want me to wake him, do you want me to disturb Robin so that they may both tell you that?’