Gemini (78 page)

He listened to what everyone had to tell him, inside both his own house and several others, and including friends who accosted him outside taverns. Then he set off, with John and Moriz and Gelis, back to Edinburgh. Before he went, he had a brief exchange with his own chief skipper, Mick Crackbene. At the end of it, Nicholas had walked away and turned back.

‘You said your Ada couldn’t read?’

‘She can now. I taught her,’ Crackbene said.

Gelis had overheard. ‘What was all that about?’

‘Ask me later,’ Nicholas said. He wished he meant it. He wished she
didn’t know that he didn’t mean it. At least she knew—he made sure that she knew—that after Eccles and Malloch, he found it a shattering relief to be back.

In Edinburgh, he saw Robin, left a message for Tobie, and was collected by Adorne for a swift session of the King’s inner council, without the knowledge of the King. It was held, for that reason, in the house of the Abbot of Cambuskenneth in Aikman’s Close, which led off the High Street just a little downhill from his own house.

They were all there when Nicholas entered with Adorne—eight men of good age, distributed about a low-ceilinged, wainscoted room in their autumn doublets and robes, and guaranteed a fast, incisive meeting with Abbot Henry in the chair, which he was, despite the presence of the highest officers of the kingdom. Years as part of the procuratorial team representing Scotland at Rome, years close to the royal Court at Stirling as Abbot of the wealthy monastery over the river had made Henry Arnot a highly visible statesman, known to churchmen and politicians alike. Small, quick, sharp-featured, round as a pomander, Arnot made chancellors tremble by the speed of his oral delivery, which Colin Argyll once calculated to exceed that of a hodful of hailshot dropped from the spire of Durham Cathedral. In languages other than Latin, it was even quicker. He knew Adorne and his oldest son well. His cousin was married to a Brown of Couston. He commissioned music from Whistle Willie. He was a confidant of the Queen.

M. de Fleury was invited to mention anything relevant to the kingdom’s condition, following his findings in the Borders and Leith. He did so.

The company was asked to consider short- and long-term projections and policies for the war with England, taking into account the King’s views on Berwick, and the fact, just made public, that Louis of France had suffered a second seizure.

He didn’t need to elaborate. Alec Brown had been killed because the King had discovered he was still working for and in England. So were half the other merchants in Berwick. But to the King, Berwick had become a symbol, a token, an obsession.

The English war had declined because of the winter, but also because England was being challenged on too many fronts. Now one threat was receding.

Drew Avandale spoke to Adorne. ‘Seaulme. I can see France trying to buy peace with England. Can you see them attempting the same with the Duchess of Burgundy? Would Maximilian agree to a truce?’

‘If it were unknown to England,’ Adorne said. ‘So my correspondents think.’

‘So do the traders,’ said Nicholas. ‘It would free England to invade us
next spring. But whatever the King may wish, men are going to hesitate to die over Berwick.’

‘What would they die for?’ said Henry Arnot.

He was answered by the other Abbot, Archie Crawford. ‘Until now, the King, or what the King represents. If that is to continue, the King must hear advice. If that does not continue, in my opinion the country would still unite for one reason only: to drive out an overlord.’

‘And will the King hear advice?’ said Argyll. ‘Or are we here to look for a successor?’

‘Hardly, when I am sitting here,’ said Drew Avandale. ‘Colin, we don’t have time to waste. We have a grown king, with young sons to follow him. There may be some who would like to replace him, but if we act as we should, there will never be a faction with popular backing to oust him. We have to find ways to guide him, that is all. Will? Seaulme? Archie?’

It was Adorne who replied; Adorne who, as a charming and experienced foreigner, had been allowed as close to this young King as anyone. Adorne said, ‘It is time to ask the Queen.’

‘So I happen to think,’ Avandale said. ‘So, I think, do we all. Abbot Henry? You know her grace better than anyone. Stirling is the home of her children, and where she spends much of her time. She has been trained well; her brother rules Denmark; she is no stranger to statecraft. Would it place too much burden upon her to bring her actively into our plans?’

‘She is half there already,’ said Henry Arnot. ‘She has her own court, her own advisers, her own views. She is loyal to her royal husband, but knows of his difficulties. She would respond. But whoever visits the Queen is bound to lose the King’s trust. You must choose carefully.’

There was an hour more. At the end, Avandale and the others went off, and the Abbot, neatly entrapping the Burgundians, invited them to his room for a dish of cheese and imported olives and pasta, which he thought a Genoese might enjoy, while continuing to talk about bullion.

Much of the recent discussion had been about money: tax-raising, coining and, finally, storage. Mints and treasure chests required stout stone houses. In Edinburgh, coins had been pressed in the stone house Adorne had once leased from the Swifts. The tiled house in his care at Blackness had been used as a royal storehouse and mint. The Precentor of the Order of St John hoarded treasure at Torphichen, as his counterpart in England stored the war funds of the English King. The Abbot of Holyrood had confided half the church plate of the monastery to another Swift, chaplain Walter, who had a stone house in Edinburgh. In his reprobate days, Nicholas himself had used part of his premises in the Canongate to mint illicit coins. In places like Berwick and Edinburgh,
the merchants’ valuables, the coining-irons, the garrison’s wages were kept in time of war, in the castle, not the town. But gold was hidden everywhere; and so were jewels; and expensive garments; and documents worth more than the gold. And faced with an invasion, you had to know where.

Expatiating, the Abbot of Cambuskenneth had noticed his liturgical hour-glass. With an exclamation, he bounded from the table and lit a candle, still declaiming at speed. Nicholas assumed, since it was broad daylight, that this was a prelude to prayer. The Abbot said, ‘You had finished? Ah, good. Follow me.’ Since Adorne willingly got up and did so, Nicholas left the table as well.

Instead of leading them to the chapel, the Abbot took them down to a cellar. Below that was another. It was full to the echoing roof with large boxes. ‘How careless of me. He will be waiting. Now where …?’ said the Abbot, to himself.

Adorne, smiling, took the candle from him and touched the flame to others planted about the large, uneven chamber. Nicholas said, ‘You’ve been here before.’

‘I haven’t had time to tell you,’ said Adorne. ‘We were only shown it the other day.’

We
. A muffled banging echoed from the end of the cavern. Adorne said, ‘Abbot?’

‘I hear it,’ said Henry Arnot. ‘Ah. There they are. Good.’ He delved into his skirts like Lang Bessie and lifted out a prodigious steel key. It didn’t bleat. Holding it, the Abbot trotted past what he had been looking at, which was a stack of brass handguns.

‘What!’
said Nicholas.

‘The Queen thought she should have some,’ said Henry Arnot over his shoulder. ‘Not my field. I needed an expert.’ There came the squeal of the key, and the rumble of a door beginning to open, followed by the Abbot’s voice showering someone with apologies. The someone came in, punctuating the flow with short, Teutonic reassurances. You could tell who it was, under the dirt, because he strode through the low door without stooping.

‘Oh!’ said Father Moriz, gazing at Nicholas.

‘It’s all right; you don’t need to worry; he’ll take them,’ said Abbot Henry. Adorne, damn him, was looking entertained.

‘Nicol will?’ said Father Moriz. He sounded cautious. Placed in the candlelight, he coughed as the Abbot pattered round him, shaking his tippet and banging off dust.

The Abbot gave him a final blow and stepped back. ‘Your M. de Fleury. The Council’s secret adviser to the Queen.’

Father Moriz’s pleased exclamation coincided with Nicholas’s
fevered disclaimer. He scowled at Moriz, and at Abbot Henry, and finally at Anselm Adorne. ‘When did that happen?’ Nicholas said.

‘Before you arrived at the meeting. I’m sorry,’ Adorne said. ‘I know you’re tired of handling people. But—’

‘No,’ said Nicholas.

‘You speak her language. She likes you. You would have access to the young Princes—’

‘No,’ said Nicholas. ‘What
am
I, bloody Ada?’

Moriz was examining the guns. Rare in the company of Henry Arnot, there was a short silence.

I want the teachers sprung of your line to help instruct the poor fools sprung of mine. I mean to match you, child for child
.

Except that they were not just his children: they were all children.

The Abbot said, ‘Well now, Nicol: don’t be daft. You’ll forgive me if I call you Nicol? They told me in Stirling you’d jib. Your friend said that, if you did, I was to send you to see her and get sorted.’

The little bugger. ‘My friend? In Stirling?’

‘You’ve got so many with that kind of relationship? She’s been away, not wanting to court lawyer’s questions. But if you were to go now, with the guns, you would find her. Bel of Cuthilgurdy. Who in Heaven’s name else?’

Who, indeed. She had been hiding from Julius. Moriz, who would realise that as well, had turned and was looking at them both. Nicholas said, speaking slowly because he was thinking so fast, ‘Of course, being in Stirling, you would know her.’

Arnot nodded to Moriz. ‘Have you seen all you want? Shall we go?’ And, picking up the original candle, continued to Nicholas: ‘Not as her confessor, more’s the pity, but as a real friend to the monastery. Not all mothers feel that way, but she was happy for John. I can’t tell you how sad we felt when we lost him.’

Adorne looked puzzled, but Moriz was genuinely astonished. He said, ‘Bel of Cuthilgurdy’s son was a monk at Cambuskenneth?’

The Abbot said, ‘No one mentioned it? Of course, the Charteris family now have the title, but after John’s father died, Bel was generous with her gifts to the Abbey. It was kind, for they were young, and not very long married.’

Adorne still conveyed friendly interest. He said, ‘I was told she had grandchildren.’

He looked at Nicholas. Nicholas returned a blank face, behind which was sheer mutiny. Moriz said, his grating voice oddly subdued, ‘So perhaps she married twice. We should not probe. But, my friend Nicholas, for your own peace of mind, I think you must agree to go to Stirling to see her, at least.’

‘And since you are going,’ said Abbot Henry, ‘you might place us all in your debt by taking a few crates to a warehouse? The goods may be removed from here by night. It is an old smugglers’ route. The cellar tunnel leads to the Nor’ Loch. We discovered it when we acquired the house for the monastery.’

A smugglers’ route, Nicholas would wager, that had seen a few barrels of illicit French wine bundled in by repentant sinners. No wonder there was a gleam in the Abbot’s bright eye. And he had induced Nicholas to go to Stirling with the handguns. And see Bel. And, undoubtedly, get involved with the Queen, whether he wished to or not, although that would not, to be accurate, be Arnot’s doing. Umar cast a long shadow.

He found he was no longer resentful, but mysteriously lighter of heart. What was being asked of him was difficult. It was bloody unfair to plunge him into yet another quagmire of intrigue when he was barely disentangled from Albany. But it was the kind of adventure, the kind of risks that he loved. And he was good at working with people. And it might make a difference, at that.

It was time to go. Moriz and the Abbot were chattering amicably on their way to the ladder. The light travelled with them. Adorne extinguished the cellar candles and stood, without immediately following. All Nicholas could see was the fairness of his face and his hair and his hands. Then Adorne moved thoughtfully over and surveyed him. ‘We place a great burden upon you, Nicholas. It is as well that you have these broad shoulders.’ He rapped them lightly, half smiling; then, spreading his fingers, ushered him after the others.

It was when they had all four climbed from the cellars that Nicholas heard someone sneeze, and uttered an unthinking, ‘Bless you!’

They all looked at him. The Abbot said, ‘Well, thank you, Nicol, but why?’

It seemed that no one else had heard anything. The ghost of Tobie, perhaps. Or of some master smuggler long dead, athletic enough to have swum over the loch. Or nothing at all; in which case he, Nicholas, had left an unused blessing about. From him, blessings wouldn’t carry much weight: his forte was giving advice, and you couldn’t leave that behind you. And even if you could, there were some people who never took it.

B
EL OF CUTHILGURDY’S
town house in Stirling was built of timber, and lay with others at the foot of the castle rock, which was so like that of Edinburgh. It was a district favoured by well-doing burghers: their neatly thatched premises with stables, bakehouse and well-head were set in swept yards and pleasant patches of grazing and orchard and herb-garden. The enclave was central enough, without being subject to the
dusty traffic on the ridge leading up to the castle, or deafened by the clamour of the riverside wharves. Dame Bel’s house was not held in her name, and Nicholas, having duly delivered his crates, would hardly have found his way there without Adorne’s written direction.

Adorne, of course, had seen quite a lot of Bel since she took to visiting his little daughter at Haddington. So had Kathi and Tobie, for the same reason. Even Jordan had called at the Priory once or twice, accompanying Sersanders, or Robin. From wherever he encountered Bel, Jordan always returned with a minding and some new, funny tale of her doings. He no longer called her his aunt, but there was an attachment, clear to see, between the boy and the elderly woman. Only Nicholas, absent in France during Bel’s stay in Edinburgh, and carefully absent ever since, had seen less of her than anyone, and had listened without comment to the reports that he heard. It was Julius who wished to excavate the St Pols and their attachments. He preferred to forget.