Gemini (25 page)

‘Drunk pig-wives,’ Nicholas said. ‘They’ll never remember who put them up to it. Is my lord going home? Henry is waiting.’

‘So I see. And Mar?’ Jordan de St Pol enquired. He rose to his full height and gazed at Nicholas. Simpson, smiling, had gone.

‘He knew one of the pig-wives,’ said Nicholas. ‘One who is less particular than Lang Bessie.’

‘So I suppose I should ask, where is Bessie?’ The pursed eyes never left Nicholas’s face.

‘I think,’ Nicholas said, ‘you would have to ask Willie Roger. Or even Dob Cochrane, if he’s well enough. I’m sure Dob Cochrane could tell you.’

‘Thank you. I am sufficiently answered,’ Kilmirren said. He paused. ‘I am sorry about the horse. It was misused. The boy should be thrashed.’

Nicholas, too, had seen the pretty, Persian-trained horse, lying where it had dropped, and where it would never display its young rider’s beauty again. He said, ‘You have to break eggs to cook them.’ He saw a flash of contempt, and the other man went.

He had expected, then, to run down and join the exuberant, arguing crowd round Whistle Willie. Instead someone was coming quickly
towards him. Sersanders, followed by Archie of Berecrofts. Sersanders cried, ‘Nicol! Archie’s just heard. He’s come! Robin’s come! He’s at Berwick!’

Behind him, Archie’s healthy, good-natured face was a mixture of crimson and white. He said, ‘So I’m away. Are ye coming?’

Nicholas grasped his shoulder and shook it, relief and pleasure tingling through his own blood. He said, ‘Of course I am. Try and stop me.’

A little later, when they were shouldering their way through the Horse Market, Nicholas asked a question of the Master of Berecrofts. ‘The message … did it say who else Robin had with him?

Archie stopped. ‘Man … I’m sorry. I should’ve told ye at once. Your lady’s not there. She stayed in Bruges as you told her. But Kathi and the children are with him. And Dr Tobie and Clémence.’

‘Then he’s being well looked after,’ Nicholas said. He gave a large smile, and began moving again. ‘And it’s all that we hoped for. He’s home.’

W
AITING
IN BERWICK
, Robin was frightened.

Kathi guessed, and perhaps Dr Tobie suspected, but no one could have known for sure. The pride that kept the sick boy alive saw to that. And there was nothing that even Kathi could do to alleviate it. Robin was afraid to meet his father, for his father’s sake. He was afraid to meet Nicholas for his own.

Kathi also felt pain. In the five days of their stay so far, she tried not to project upon this abused and struggling harbour, the wide, shoaling river, the green hills, the foreboding that came whenever, as now, she had time to think. She, more than perhaps his other friends, had been responsible for releasing Nicholas into this arena. Three months had passed since then. On what happened now depended not just Robin’s future, but the future for all of them.

After they all first arrived, they saw little of Crackbene or Yare. Tobie had stayed, and taken time to persuade her to leave Robin sometimes and walk out with Clémence and small Margaret and occasionally that active lady, Tom Yare’s wife, to see the trading-vessels unload at the wharf, and the sea-fishing boats coming in, noisy with gulls, to meet the flashing knives of the gutters. Then they would stroll by the swift stream that turned the town’s mills, and through the portals in the massive walls to the fields beyond, with early flowers in the new grass, and patches of arable heaped with dank, salty seaweed. Past the walls and the great ditch were those other walls, which encircled the castle where the Almoner Leigh would stay after the final great tournament. Once, she and Clémence, carrying Margaret, walked along the riverside and watched the small wooden cobles laying the sweep of net that would bring in the salmon.
Contra Nando Incrementum
—against the stream we multiply—
was a local fishing-town motto. Very soon after that, they turned back, for she never wanted to leave Robin long, or the baby.

The baby was now a year old. Robin had wanted sons, and she had given him only this one. She had braced herself one day, and asked Dr Tobie a straightforward question, to which he had replied in the same way. It was not impossible. But it could only be done if—as Tobie had said, with the delicacy doctors kept primed for these times—Robin surrendered his sovereignty.

She understood. She also understood that, whether he was physically ready or not, she must wait until his pride would allow it.

Towards the end of the period, she was too uneasy to stay away, and remained in the large, comfortable house, talking to Robin or reading to him. Outside, the yard was busy with horses most days: every time she heard a fresh clatter of hooves, she felt Robin grow still, and made desultory conversation until the riders’ voices told that they were strangers. Until the fifth day, about an hour before noon, when Kathi strayed to the window and was looking down as four horses came in: two travellers with two grooms. The grooms were nothing special. The men—she knew, without even seeing their faces—were Robin’s father and Nicholas de Fleury. Archie dismounted heavily and looked up. Nicholas said something, and Archie looked back at him, as if caught by surprise. Then he moved forward alone. Nicholas also glanced up at the windows, but it was no more than a flicker, after which he turned back with the grooms to the stables. They were all talking. It struck her to wonder if Crackbene was there, out of sight somewhere.

Robin spoke her name from the bed.

She turned and said, ‘Do you have second sight? It was your father.’

He couldn’t even be propped up: not yet. He could only turn his head and look anguished. ‘But Nicholas,’ he said. ‘I heard Nicholas.’

She crossed and knelt, smiling. ‘You heard Nicholas being tactful,’ she said. ‘He has retired, to leave the field clear for the family. May I stay?’

She had hesitated even to ask. He saw it and, as ever, understood the reason, and gave her one of his sudden smiles. He said, ‘I think you’d better, don’t you?’

And then his father was standing in the doorway, his hands loose, his eyes on his son’s face, saying, ‘Oh, my laddie! Thank God, thank God, ye’ve come back to us!’ And somehow he was on the floor by the bed, Robin in his embrace, and they were both weeping.

Which was the best way of all.

Kathi stayed, her eyes wet, through the first of it: when Archie, recovering, took a stool, and Robin asked questions, and his father began to explain, in a torrent of eagerness, all that he had prepared for his homecoming. Only, after a while, Kathi saw Robin’s eyes flicker towards
her and away. Smiling, she backed to the window and sat there, without looking round. A few moments later, there came the rattle of purposeful footsteps and a bang on the door, which opened on Nicholas.

Robin’s eyes left Archie and his pale face coloured deeply. Archie, looking round, got up from the stool and gestured, offering it. Settling into his face was the first distillation of the last fifteen minutes: an expression of pride and relief and, above all, joy. It did not go unnoticed, Kathi thought; nor did her own presence. But the odd, intent look on Nicholas’s face was only for Robin. Nicholas said, ‘I’m so bloody sorry. And so bloody glad.’ He sat down.

Robin’s lips trembled. He said, ‘That about sums it up for me, too.’

Nicholas studied him. ‘So what happened? I saw you shot. How did you get there? And what happened next?’

While Robin was speaking, Archie quietly made for the door. Kathi made to rise too, but a glance from Robin asked her to stay. The door closed, and she came and sat down on the other side of the bed, so that she could listen to all Robin was saying. She hadn’t heard it before. No one else had dared ask him. At one point, speaking of the battle, his colour high, his eyes bright, Robin suddenly burst into tears and lay gasping, before lifting the hand that could move and wiping the wetness away. When he removed the hand, he was smiling. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so happy.’

‘We’ll soon alter that,’ Nicholas observed with casual fondness. Ceaselessly, from the first moment, he had dispensed boundless, ineffable comfort. Only Kathi had seen, at that moment, that Nicholas’s hand had clamped shut like an animal.

The same tightrope that she walked, hour by hour. Is this right? Is it wrong? Have I destroyed him?

After a while, she went and got her hostess, and wine came, and the others—Tobie, Crackbene, Archie again, and Tom Yare himself. She stayed until the noise was at its height, and only lingered on her way out when she heard Robin ask about the tournament. The answer, in Nicholas’s inspired re-enactment, wrung comedy out of elements she could only imagine with horror: the presence of both Simpson and Jordan de St Pol, of the boy Henry and John of Mar. It rose to a climax.

‘Pigs!’
This time Archie was weeping with laughter.

‘Oh, we’ve got pig-wives in Berwick,’ said Tom Yare. ‘And muggers. They bring round the mugs frae the piggeries. Terrible rough types they are. Jump on ye for your purse.’

‘They’ve got them in Bonnington, too,’ Nicholas said. ‘Andro and I nearly lost more than our purses. But our muggers were oyster-muggers, it turned out. Mongers. Mussel-men with a nasal impediment. Which reminds me. Did you know that oysters like to be sung to? Repeatedly?’

‘The more you eat? Responsorial chants?’ Robin said, wheezing.

‘With hockets,’ said Nicholas. ‘And they appreciate double-sexed love songs. Come on, Tom.
Ah! I die; ah! I die; ah! I die …
I’ll sing it. You follow me.’

‘You’re drunk,’ said Tom Yare cheerfully.

‘I am only drunk to my oysters,’ observed Nicholas superbly, against Tobie’s wail of resistance. ‘Sing. This is your scalp-mail. Until you’ve paid it, no beds.’

She left, shutting the door on the laughter, and had a small weep herself, in seclusion, because she too was relieved, and proud, and full of joy.

H
E CAME TO
speak to her late in the evening, when the house was quiet and the men were dispersed, thinking of bed. They were to sail in the morning.

She had said good night to Robin, and to Tobie who shared his room in this house: they had found a bed for Archie nearby. Crackbene was on shipboard already. Here, Kathi slept with Tobie’s wife Clémence, but she had gone first to the children’s room and found Nicholas already there, his doublet over one shoulder, gazing down at her children. Cristen, her nurse, stood smiling beside him. He looked up.

Boundless, ineffable comfort, dispensed hour after hour, with intervals for fast-talking planning and others for vulgar hilarity. Until now, there had been no sign of effort. He smiled and said in a low voice, ‘I hadn’t seen them since January. One a Berecrofts, one an Adorne. That seems fair.’

The children slept, plump and healthy and beautiful. ‘They are too young to understand about Robin. It’s a blessing,’ she said. ‘Clémence is not using her room, if you wanted to talk.’

The nurse smiled at Nicholas as they left. Another of the friends he made so easily, when he wanted to. It was not the case with his own servants, with whom his relationships were even, but distant. But then, moving about, he had been surrounded these last years by strangers. And loneliness was another name for self-sufficiency.

Walking from one chamber to the other, she wondered what he needed to say, and what she dared say. He had spoken to Clémence, and would have all the news about Gelis and Jodi. For the rest, Tobie and Crackbene between them had told him everything else: about Bruges; about Robin; about her uncle. She knew as much from Tobie, who had drawn her aside and said, ‘In case you find yourself in private with Nicholas … I’ve given him your uncle’s letter for Phemie. He was very thankful to have it, but extremely concerned for Adorne. I told him all you and Gelis had done.’

‘Gelis more than any of us,’ Kathi had said. ‘I’m glad you told him.’

Now it was almost the first thing he spoke of when they entered the small, empty room. Even before he found a seat for her, he drew her round and said, facing her, ‘You are tired. I shan’t keep you. I just wanted to ask if there was anything more I could do or say now that would help.’

‘About Robin? You saw him come alive today,’ Kathi said. ‘That’s enough for the moment.’

He still stood. ‘And about your uncle. I’m so sorry. I would have stayed in Bruges if I’d known.’

‘I know. But you were here, for Phemie.’

‘She did need someone,’ he said. ‘Most of all, she wanted to hear from your uncle. But now? Do I tell her he’s in prison? I think I have to. She would hear.’

‘Do you want me to see her and judge?’ Kathi said. ‘You don’t need to be careful. I do have room for someone other than Robin, and she was a very good friend.’

Nicholas said, ‘I didn’t want to ask, but it would mean a lot. You might want to see her alone. You might want to take her the letter. Or your brother, once you have told him.’

‘Saunders?’ she said. ‘I think Saunders might need some time. This is not the way he wants to think of his uncle. But I can deal with all that, I think.’

‘Can you? Or shall I?’

‘Goodness, no. This will be an Adorne affair in his eyes. I could always manage Saunders. Well, nearly always. So,’ said Kathi with finality, ‘I think you and I should see Phemie together. Then she can be sure, if anything happens, that at least she has one Adorne to rely on, as well as you.’ She paused: ‘Are you standing because you’ve ridden too far, or because you want to get away fast?’

Then he pulled a face, and seated her on the only chair while he found a cushioned coffer for himself. There he rested back on the tapestried wall, as he had when he was a prisoner in her uncle’s house, and she had visited him. She said, ‘We are all tired,’ and he answered, ‘I know. But meeting you is like being rewound.’

They had known each other ever since she was fourteen. Their minds had always been close. She felt an ache because it was so much simpler to talk to someone whose eyes—over-large and sleepless and direct—were on the same level as her own, and whose whole, co-ordinated body was an extra instrument of subtle communication. His physical presence was one of the instantly memorable things about Nicholas. In another man of his background, the unusual height, the powerful shoulders and limbs, might have seemed uncouth or unwieldy, but through his adventurous life, he had been moulded to grace by many hands. Against that, the broad-blocked face, with its large eyes and repertoire of expressions, had
nothing classical about it, or even remarkable, unless it were the two deep dimples, absent now, and the scar given him as a boy by Jordan de St Pol.