Gemini (77 page)

Muriella crossed to stand between Henry and Jordan and when they sat, sat between them, taking Jordan by the hand. Henry looked at them both. Bonne gave her hand to the three men and sat between Nicholas and Julius, remarking, ‘Forgive me for not being present to welcome you. I had no idea you were coming. How gallant!’

‘Your stepfather was anxious,’ said Nicholas. ‘He has some suggestions to make. Then I shall take you north with me tomorrow.’

‘It seems a little sudden,’ said Bonne, after brief thought. ‘In fact, I have been invited to stay for a month, and have accepted. No. I am most grateful, but tomorrow is out of the question.’ She looked from one man to the other. ‘Unless, of course, you wish to use coercion. I have no rights of my own. I know that.’

If she had shown a trace of passion, Nicholas would have applauded. She merely looked firm. Against her vivid maturity, her strong brows, her self-possession, Jordan seemed like a child. Henry, closer to her own age, was viewing her with stony intolerance. Muriella, who still held Jordan’s hand, looked both eager and shocked. Her lips had parted.

‘War is sudden,’ said Julius. ‘Tomorrow.’ It could be seen that his nostrils were white.

Bonne said, ‘M. de Fleury? I am really not sure which of you has the casting vote.’

‘He does,’ said Nicholas. ‘That is, he will hold the necessary conversations
with Master Malloch and Sister Monika, and I shall supply any coercion required to detach you tomorrow. Or my groom will. He is a married man, and will not be at all rough.’

Suddenly, Henry had caught a note in Nicholas’s voice, and a light entered his own eye. He said darkly, ‘She’ll go. She just likes her own way. You should try living in the same house for two days.’

‘That,’ said Nicholas, ‘is ungallant. It is also discourteous to your host. Bonne, I know you appreciate Master Malloch’s kindness, and don’t wish to disappoint him, but I think you have no alternative. May I take it that you will come?’

‘Yes,’ said Bonne, frowning a little. ‘But to where?’

T
O WHERE
was
, at intervals, the question of the evening: through and after the meal, shared by Sister Monika, and in between the pleasant music they made afterwards, with Nicholas and Malloch in harmony, and Muriella’s sweet voice entwined with her brother’s. John Malloch, entering late, was an elongated, dust-coloured version of the golden child he had once been, serene in manner and grey-blue of eye. Willie sweated and played, Julius looked bored, Bonne and her chaperone embroidered, and Henry sat sulkily watching Muriella. When she asked Jordan to sing, and then, laughing, began to sing with him, Henry lay back, a little drunk, and kept interrupting. John, smiling, tried to divert his attention, but Henry got up and walked out.

Soon after that, they reached agreement with Bonne over her future. First, a Cistercian convent within reach of Edinburgh, at which Sister Monika might, if she approved, eventually remain. Next, as soon as might be arranged, an appointment in some gentle household, as a preliminary to an arranged marriage. The household and the marriage to be selected, from a short leet, by Bonne.

Nicholas, who had not expected to manage the business in public, was thankful to have it over and to be able to think of something else. He had not actually cursed Julius aloud. None of it, of course, bothered Willie, and Jordan had sat absorbed through it all, when he wasn’t being commandeered, in that enchanting lisp, by Muriella. Eventually, she was sent off by her father to do something, and Jordan came back and beat drums for Willie. Nicholas, vaguely uneasy, made an excuse and left the room himself.

He heard Henry’s strained, angry voice almost at once; not that it was loud, but because he would know it anywhere. When another young voice replied, he knew he was listening also to Muriella. They were in the room above, leading off the turnpike staircase he was climbing. He stood where he was.

Muriella was angry as well. She was saying, ‘You’re not my husband! I’ll speak to whom I want! He’s a polite boy. I hate you!’

‘He’s a baby!
Jo-dee
!’ Henry mewed the name like a kitten. ‘He wets the bed. He’ll make you his mammy. If you want a baby, I’ll give you one. You want a man. You don’t want a piddling baby with a goat for a father! Do you know that Nicholas de Fleury isn’t de Fleury at all? He’s a by-blow. No one knows who his father was. His mother was a tart and his wife is a worse one—did you know that she slept with my father? Do you know that half the cripple Berecrofts’s children were sired by Nicholas de Fleury, not Berecrofts? Do you want to play with a boy whose father is dirt?’

Heigh-ho. Those who eavesdrop never hear good of themselves. With some difficulty, Nicholas de Fleury, by-blow, produced and dwelled on this piece of philosophy. The effort almost made him miss a slight noise. He turned, fast, on the step.

Below, his face set and sick, stood his other son, Jordan. Nicholas said, softly and sharply, ‘Go. Go outside, down to the river. I’ll come.’ For a moment, he thought the boy would refuse. Then he spun round and went.

Inside the room, Muriella was speaking. ‘… care? Your father’s a worse goat than that, everyone knows. Jordan isn’t the same as his father. He’s not a bastard. He’s
kind
. You’re not a bastard, but you make fun of me.’

‘I don’t!’

‘You sneer at everybody! You tell fibs! Jordan doesn’t wet the bed!’

‘How do you know?’ Henry’s voice hardened. ‘
Muriella!
How do you know?’ Nicholas moved.

The girl’s voice said petulantly, ‘I just know. I haven’t been in his bed.’

‘Then he couldn’t give you a baby,’ Henry said. His voice softened. He said, the cajolery mixed with a kind of off-hand complacency: ‘Look. You like to look, don’t you? Go on. You like it when we do it?’

A moment passed. The girl said something, obscurely. Her voice was shy.

‘And there
you
are, now. And me. Isn’t that nice? I’m going to give you a baby,’ said Henry, in a soothing voice broken by hurry.

Which was when Nicholas, sick to the heart, encompassed the stairs and, not quite in time, crashed back the door.

They were on the floor, rosily geometrical, and fully and rhythmically conjoined. Henry, blind and deaf, could not at once stop; Nicholas pulled him off and sent him sprawling. ‘Dress!’ The blue eyes, glaring at him, were like those of a madman, what with near-coition and fury and anguish.

The girl was bare from the waist, her legs thin and white, the place between them apricot-coloured. She was sobbing. She said, trying to bring her skirts lower, ‘Don’t look!’

‘Why? Is there more to see?’ Nicholas said. When the boy, part-laced, came at him like a fiend he slapped him hard on the face and then flung him back in a corner. The girl tried to run for the door.

‘Later,’ said Nicholas, grasping her arm. He pushed her into a chair, and set his back to the door. He said to her, ‘Shall I call your father?’

She stared at him, speechless. Henry said, ‘Do. We’ll deny all you say.’ He was still breathing in gasps.

‘All right,’ Nicholas said. ‘We’ll call Muriella’s father, and if she says this didn’t happen, we’ll ask a physician to attest her virginity. Yes?’

‘No!’ said Muriella.

‘I don’t mind,’ Henry said. ‘She’s been with plenty of others. I’ve never touched her. I’ll tell them.’

She didn’t quite understand. ‘I haven’t!’ she said. For a moment, she just sounded indignant.

Henry said, ‘You’ve been with Jordan de Fleury, his son. You told me. He wets the bed.’

She stared at him. Nicholas said, ‘You’d swear to it? That she and Jordan are intimate?’

‘All the time. Everywhere,’ Henry said. In the midst of the horror, Nicholas ached for him. Always, always, no matter whom it hurt, Henry lied to cover his sins. Perhaps it was in his nature, or instilled by the Church. More likely it had its roots in a very old fear: the dread of his grandfather’s mockery; and later, of Simon’s. Other people solved the problem by admitting to everything.

Nicholas said, ‘Then I’m afraid you’d still be proved wrong. Jordan is too young to be anyone’s lover just yet. It’s just as well, isn’t it? You do realise, both of you, that if Muriella became pregnant, you would have to marry? Exactly as your father did, Henry? Unless, of course, you really plan to spend your lives together. But it seems a little early to force Muriella to choose. Especially the kind of coward who will deny everything and put the blame on the girl. Do you want to marry him, Muriella?’

‘No! I hate him!’ she said.

‘It didn’t look like it,’ said Nicholas dryly. ‘Or is it just the attention of the opposite sex that you enjoy? I think it is. I think it is someone’s duty to have a serious talk with your father and perhaps your confessor, and suggest they find a husband for you immediately.’

‘I wouldn’t marry him!’ said Muriella.

‘Then I shall tell them exactly why it is necessary,’ Nicholas said. ‘I shall tell them in any case, if Henry comes near you again. Henry, you will leave here tonight. I don’t care what excuse you invent. Muriella, you
are coming north with Bonne and myself, and you will stay in whatever convent your father may choose. The excuse will be the war, but by the time the war ends, you will be married. Do you hear?’

‘Who are you? Who are you to say so?’ said Muriella. She was weeping again.

‘A goat,’ shouted Henry. ‘An old rutting bastard who can’t bear to see young people getting more than he does.’

‘I thought the premise was that I was getting too much,’ Nicholas said. ‘Never mind. Put me down as someone who happens to know what this kind of thing leads to, and who is going to stop it, whatever you do. And Muriella: you will not meet Henry again. You will not expect to meet Jordan either.’

She was scarlet, her face swollen, her voice choked, but she still managed to speak. ‘There isn’t any point, is there?’ she said. ‘If he’s just a stupid boy who can’t do anything yet.’

B
Y THE TIME
Nicholas appeared downstairs, and made small talk, and bought himself time to walk down to the river, the sun had almost gone, and he felt as drained as the landscape in the withdrawing light. The wind had dropped, so that the sound of the water was clear and level and soothing. As he walked down through the grass, a grazing horse lifted its head and watched him, and a rookery at the top of some trees lobbed out some brickbats of sound, and fell silent again. A jaundiced line of swans trundled from one bank to the other, as if pulled on a wire. Jordan was sitting, low on the bank, watching the water. When Nicholas dropped at his side, he didn’t speak.

Neither did Nicholas. He hadn’t even thought what he was going to say, or not say. He didn’t have the gall to compare this exhaustion, this access of mental paralysis, with what was Robin’s daily portion.

In the end, it was Jordan who spoke. He said, ‘It’s all right. I know it’s not true.’ After a moment he turned fully round and repeated it, touching Nicholas’s hand where it lay on his updrawn knee. ‘Father?’

It was not a form of address Jordan used very much now. Generally he called him nothing at all, unless formal custom required it. To everyone else, his father was Nicol. Jordan said, ‘Father, you can’t do everything for everyone. It’s all right.’

Nicholas looked at him. It came to him that all the time he had been agonising over what Jordan had heard, Jordan himself had been fretting over what he, Nicholas, must be feeling. To Jordan, whether or not Henry had spoken the truth hardly mattered. His father had been vilified, and he wanted to comfort him.

Nicholas took the hand and lay back on the grass, carrying it with
him in both of his own. Jordan dropped back beside him. His hair, which was long and brown, lay flattened under his wide, sunburned cheek. His eyes were on Nicholas.

Nicholas said, ‘It’s all right for me, too. People say silly things. You don’t need to heed them. I was troubled about you and Muriella.’

Jordan’s brow wrinkled, in a fine little print under his hair. He said, ‘I was silly there. She belongs to Henry, doesn’t she? She was just using me to make him feel jealous.’

Nicholas smoothed and bent the flat fingers. He said, ‘I think she likes you both, but there was something of that in it, yes. In any case, she’s too young to be serious. She’ll go off to finish her training, and then her father will choose her a husband. By that time, you should have met twenty more. The world is full of nice girls. That’s one of the good things about it.’

‘I like Margaret of Berecrofts,’ Jordan said.

‘I know. So do I,’ Nicholas said. ‘And remember, I’m a fountain of wisdom on girls. Anything you want to know, or to tell me, just come.’

‘You think you know everything?’ Jordan said. ‘You’ll find it’s the other way round. One day, you’ll just come to me.’ He sat up and, retrieving his hand, leaned on it, smiling.

Nicholas said, ‘I think I have done, today.’

He was thinking about it when Jordan, bending suddenly, gave him a fierce, intent kiss on the cheek, releasing it slowly. Then he disengaged and jumped up, as if returned to himself, his face full of unexpected, raw happiness. He said. ‘Then come on, old man. Race you back to the house.’

They ran like demons. Nicholas won.

T
HE TOWN OF
Berwick-upon-Tweed was invested that autumn; its walls battered by guns and its harbour closed to supply ships. The siege lasted two months, and then was called off because of the cost and the weather. The citadel was of course untouched, and the townspeople had mostly remained, knowing that the attack couldn’t last long. The besieged had been slightly better fed than the besiegers. There had been two very bad harvests: it made you wonder sometimes what was happening to the weather these days. Julius took part in the skirmishing, and enjoyed himself so much that he stayed till November.

In Edinburgh, the King hanged Alec Brown, outlawed Peter his brother, and offered Leithie Preston a vast sum, which he refused, as a reward for bringing back the wine-ship from Orkney. Nicholas, freed after a murderous journey with two hostile girls and a nun, found Leith in an uproar, and John le Grant in a timber yard, smashing things. He took him back to the Leith house with Gelis. Father Moriz was there, waiting to hear the news about Bonne. Nicholas informed him, in two words. He had already told Gelis all she needed to know.