Gemini (20 page)

It was unsigned, like the rest. Henry, by implication, should not have known who had sent them, but claimed to have glimpsed Simpson’s man at the door. For Nicholas, the contents of the cards were enough. This, like the previous two, contained only a few words in Spanish, which Henry might translate, but fortunately couldn’t interpret.

Henry said, duly translating, ‘
A thousand kisses from Ochoa
, again. Ochoa, your Persian wife, I think you explained. And the second time, your African mistress in Cairo. So this time?’

The article was heavy: a silver-gilt pitcher worth a great deal of money. Having registered as much, Nicholas heaved it over to Henry, who let it fall, as he had the two previous gifts, although this time with a fraction less confidence. ‘God knows. I called all my ladies Ochoa,’ Nicholas said. ‘Well, pick it up and put it with the rest. I give them all to you. You’ll get a better price if you beat out the dents.’

There was hardly a pause: the boy was quick. ‘I don’t want them!’ said Henry with surprise. His expression changed to remorse. ‘Uncle! You were training me to catch, and I didn’t try hard enough!’

‘That’s all right,’ Nicholas said. ‘I’m thinking of asking Davie Simpson
to call, and you can try catching them when he throws. Meanwhile, we are going to Haddington, you and I. Half a turn of the hour-glass, in front of the house, with the horses.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Henry.

‘Look across the road,’ Nicholas said; and waited until Henry went out, his mouth shut. Obliquely over the road was the house of Jordan de St Pol, to whom Henry had already appealed during the first days of his servitude. He had been sent straight back to Nicholas.

When in his right mind, Henry was afraid of his grandfather. Nicholas, despite his mild threat, knew that (unwisely) Henry felt no particular awe for the Archer he had known as David de Salmeton, who had joined his grandfather’s business, and left it abruptly after an unwise display of ambition. Anyone disliked by the lord of Kilmirren could be sure of Henry’s securest contempt. Kilmirren’s firm, called the Vatachino, had been allowed to disperse, but then so had its rival the Banco di Niccolò. Now, as everyone knew, Jordan’s income came from his estates and from distant Madeira; Simpson’s from his service to the Papal Legate Camulio, and that of Nicholas from desultory trading on behalf of his wife. The last, at least, being all too true. For the moment.

Preparing to leave, Nicholas gave some thought, briefly, to the problem of the silver. Henry did know that Simpson was hostile to Nicholas, as well as to Jordan, and that the so-called gifts were therefore some sort of challenge. To Henry, anything that promised trouble for Nicholas was spellbinding. To Nicholas, the messages were awesome in their effrontery, for Ochoa was not the name of a woman. It was the name of the Spanish sea captain associated with Nicholas’s African gold. The gold captured by the Knights of St John; deftly buried in Cyprus, and, rumour said, secretly removed, unknown to the Knights, by Davie Simpson. And these gifts and these messages were a brazen admission of the kind that only Simpson would make.
I have your gold. Try and prove it. Try and find it. You can see how rich it has made me—I can afford to toss scraps to beggars
.

And much more than that:
Shall we not have sport on your way to the block?

Wodman, experienced man that he was, had been surprised by the ambush at Bonnington, thinking it uncharacteristic of Simpson. Nicholas had affected to disagree but, of course, Wodman was right. David Simpson would try to protract the game—extend the separation from Gelis, for example, until his new-found marriage weakened and broke, or he was forced to bring her to Scotland. And if Nicholas left for Bruges, of course Simpson would follow.

He had already decided what to do. Dismissing the matter, he collected some papers, spoke to his manservant, who was also his clerk, and checked that Henry was already outside, receiving the saddled horses
from the groom, who came from a farm at Lochwinnoch. The groom was speaking, and Henry, fondling his beautiful roan, was smiling at him. The hour-glass emptied. Nicholas turned from the window and swept down.

B
EFORE BRINGING
H
ENRY
, Nicholas had several times recently visited the Cistercian Priory at Haddington; partly on business, for he wished to speak to Lisouris the carpenter and Conrad the physician, both of whom were often found here, and partly to make sure of the Prioress’s discretion. But no convent accustomed to training embryo princesses was likely to depart from discretion by discussing young women recently returned to their families. Phemie was spoken of vaguely but fondly by the kind nun of the Maitland family who had once helped teach the King’s little sister, and the various donations by other members of the family Dunbar were referred to with gratitude. Anything more personal was unthinkable.

The visit with Henry, when it took place, was of the kind Henry appreciated least: when, grimly carrying tablets, he followed his base-born uncle from field to workshop to desk, making notes of fells and fleeces and hides, honey and cloth in the piece. Paperwork bored him, and so did stock-rearing and inducing plants to grow in the ground. The pace at which artisans were trained to work also annoyed him: Henry had never known anyone who expected to cover so much in any one day—in any one ludicrously long day—as Claes the Bastard. Artisans also, it appeared, could operate on a meagre ration of sleep and no sex: after a furious row, in which the Bastard had entered Henry’s cubicle and flung out the girl who was (temporarily) resisting him, Henry had tried very hard—had paid—several unsavoury girls to lie in wait for his uncle, without success. The Bastard was probably impotent. The only thing Henry had enjoyed so far in his whole time as a student of management had been a bad-tempered afternoon in the field with Anselm Adorne’s nephew Saunders, who had run a battering course with him to test out a shield. In a place like Haddington, Henry couldn’t even enjoy being admired, when the only women were servants and nuns. It didn’t seem to stop dear Uncle Nicholas, who got smiles and even hugs everywhere he happened to go. It was obscene.

All the same, the young cadet of St Pol was the opposite of pleased to discover, halfway through the afternoon, that while he had been left counting stinking hides with the factor, Uncle Nicholas had temporarily vanished. Then Henry found out where he was and all his growing suspicions were confirmed.

•  •  •

T
HE STUD OF
the Knights of St John lay not far from Haddington, in rich well-watered meadows where mares could graze, and the choice stallions brought over from Flanders could maintain the line of stout, biddable horses bred to serve a militant Order. In truth, they were more in demand by the great lords and the royal household of Scotland, not to mention the better-off burghers, and selling them kept the Lord Precentor free of debt, if he had ever been close to it. Once, Nicholas had encouraged Anselm Adorne to breed horses, but that shrewd man had blandly abstained. He had been right: it would have lost him money. But not in Scotland, and not now. There was a lot of profit in horses, if you knew what you were doing.

Alexander (Eck) Scougal did. By-blow of an East Lothian family, he was built like a Tartar, squat and thick in the leg, with powerful shoulders and a stallion’s mane of black and white hair over a jutting nose that no Tartar would own. In the old days, Nicholas had bought nowhere else. Now, he had been through all the fields, looking at foals, and was sitting chewing a blade, watching Eck, on foot, put a whole-coloured two-year-old through its paces. It had pricked ears and a lofty trot of the kind that screamed breeding.

‘That would do you,’ Eck said, running easily after the horse to the left, whip in right hand, reins in the other. ‘It depends how long you’re going to be here.’ He receded. ‘Wa-a-alk on.’

‘I don’t know. What about the others?’ Nicholas called. ‘Would you sell off some mares?’

‘They’d cost ye,’ cried Eck. At the end of the field (Ha-a-alt) he changed hands, tried some commands, and came back at a different gait, cracking his whip to keep the pace even. He approached.

‘Then I’d need time,’ Nicholas called. ‘Unless you’d take something other than money?’ His voice, like the horse, lost momentum. He turned.

‘Knollys likes money,’ Eck remarked, turning too. He brought the horse to a halt, and stood looking.

‘Well, Uncle,’ said Henry. ‘And I thought you had no interest in horses?’ He had entered the gate and was leaning against it, with the ineffable grace—the blue, languorous gaze; the long limbs—that made the rest of mankind look like bison. He had left his jacket behind, and the spring sunshine lit his lawn shirt and unbuttoned pourpoint and the svelte line of thigh, knee and calf, where hose met the close-fitting edge of fine leather.

Nicholas allowed himself a long, baffled sigh. He said, ‘Horses? No. A waste of money. I told you.’

‘Really?’ said Henry. ‘Well, if you say so, of course. Then why are you here?’

Scougal opened his mouth, but Nicholas answered before him. ‘To get a horse for myself, as it happens.’

‘Like that one?’ Henry said with compassion. ‘Uncle, you’d fall off.’

‘Probably. Not like that one,’ Nicholas said. ‘Eck is training that one for himself. You should get him to show you some time what he does with it. Did you finish the hides?’

‘Yes. So where is your horse, Uncle?’ said Henry.

‘I didn’t see one that I liked. So we can go.’

‘Can’t I see the horses, Uncle?’ said Henry.

‘Why? You don’t know anything about breeding horses,’ said Nicholas. ‘Eck, I’m sorry I’ve wasted your time. We’ll see ourselves out.’

There were two more calls; one of them to the coal mines at Tranent, which provided fuel for the salt-pans on the coast, and for the Castle. On the seventeen miles back to Edinburgh and their final engagement, Henry tried to exclude from his awareness the voice of de Fleury, taking each of the day’s meetings in turn and summarising its course, his conclusions, and the action it ought to engender. Occasionally, the voice suspended itself, and Henry became aware that he was expected to comment, or answer. He amused himself at first with effusive apology, and then increasingly moved on to the facetious. Finally he drew up his horse saying, ‘Do you mind, Uncle? My head bursts with over-excitement. I really think I ought to make my way back alone and lie down.’

‘I do agree,’ Nicholas said. ‘Indeed, why not lie down here?’

There followed a few crowded moments, at the end of which Henry’s horse had galloped riderless into the distance, the Bastard had ridden on, and Henry himself was lying dazed in the road, with labourers pensively gathering to view him.

Since no horses came by, he walked back.

N
ICHOLAS CALLED, AS
appointed, at the great double Berecrofts house in the Canongate of Edinburgh with, instead of the liveried escort of Sinclair, Henry’s captured horse at his girth. He handed both mounts to the groom, and ran up the foresteps with his mind on something other than a business meeting with Sersanders and Archie. It had already occurred to him that, without Henry, he was free to discuss rather more than he would have risked otherwise. But that didn’t excuse what had happened. He couldn’t believe that he had lost his temper with Henry: something so predictable; so easy to avoid. But now that it had, it was for him to turn it to some sort of advantage. He cleared his mind, walking with Archie’s chamberlain to the bureau, talking about the Easter processions. They were almost there when a man came running to stop them. Master Archibald was in his private chamber with Master Saunders, and begged Ser Nicholas to come there on his own.

He
was
on his own. ‘What has happened?’ Nicholas said. The staff didn’t know. But he knew, as soon as he entered the room and saw the
letter between Archie’s hands. ‘Robin?’ he said; and sat down, as young Sersanders brought it to him to read.

He absorbed the contents in seconds, but did not at once speak. It was all very comprehensive, in Tobie’s crabbed doctor’s handwriting. He was used to Tobie in connection with other people’s written effusions: the list of accessible girlfriends in Milan; a recipe for camel-cough, or for a vile death on St Hilarion, or Famagusta. A document about the birth of a child. Henry, and Robin.

Archie said, ‘It’s all right. Read it again. Robin isn’t dead,’ and Nicholas looked up, disquieted to find that he had somehow attracted Archie’s compassion. Archie said, ‘I know you two are close. I’ve been thinking. There’s a house over the way. They could have that. We’d widen the doors for lifting him out And the same over here. Once up the steps, he could lie in Saunders’s office; run the core of the business; keep it all going. It’s not his head that’s astray. Ye don’t need your feet for a business.’ He paused. ‘And doctors don’t know it all. If the power comes back, he’s got ae leg. Like yon peg-leg Florentine. He could walk.’

He had assumed Robin was coming home, with Kathi and the children. The letter said nothing of that, or what was happening in Bruges. Sersanders said, ‘It came from Leith. The ship’s clerk had a few to deliver. Were you going back to the High Street?’

Coded message, which Archie, thank God, didn’t pick up. Nicholas said, ‘Eventually. I don’t suppose we need go on with this meeting just now. What do you say?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Archie of Berecrofts. ‘I don’t know. There’s more than ever to discuss, don’t you think? Now we can expand even more. Make a good like for these two little childer.’ His voice broke on the word.

Nicholas said, ‘Yes, of course. Let’s begin planning.’

It was dark when he left to walk up to his house in the High Street. Sersanders walked with him, for reasons other than courtesy. As Nicholas had divined, there was another letter from Tobie: it would be awaiting him there. And this one might have truths that Robin’s father had better not know.

He had expected to find Wodman at home, and was not sorry to learn that he was out. He remembered Henry only when he ushered Sersanders into his parlour and found the boy half lying there, disposed over a settle, freshly changed into velvet; the pure, pale skin showing its one violet bruise. The letter from Tobie lay open and thumbed on the table.