The Unicorn Hunt (32 page)

Yet Nicholas had offered to make it a de Fleury, and rear it.

Margot did not believe that, although Gregorio did. That was why she had come here in the first instance – because she did not believe that a man like Nicholas would tamely accept Simon’s child as his own. Nor would it matter if it were not Simon’s child, but a substitute, a poor changeling brought in to deceive him. Sooner or later, Nicholas was going to retaliate, and Margot meant to be here. Not to stand between husband and wife. Not to protect this distant fair girl, oppressed and silent, whom she hardly saw and whose private torment she could only guess at. But for the child, if there was to be a child.

A solitary woman, she could offer small help, except for what comfort her presence might bring. She did not expect the girl’s confidence, and did not receive it. But the weeks had been made to pass, and she had been tolerated, and thus was present, now the moment had come. The moment when Nicholas de Fleury would enter these rooms and, after nearly eight months, speak again with his wife.

She might have known that he would not honour the bidding. He came, indeed, the day after his arrival, but at first light, when the lamps still burned in the yard, and the grooms were breaking the ice in the troughs and the smell of warm bread and smoke lingered under the eaves. The gates were already open, but he dismounted and stood, in the way only Nicholas stood, while the porter trod through the crackling slush to announce him. Instead of tomorrow, he had come through the night.

Indoors, the line of light under his wife’s door went out. Gelis had heard the voices and crossed to her window to look. Margot continued to stand watching from hers. There was little to see. He was alone and anonymous, his harness and cloak outwardly undistinctive, his face an obscure patch between hat-brim and scarves. Then the porter returned with the guest-house master, and their shadows moved up the path to the door, which then closed. He would be greeted hospitably, and offered rest and refreshment, for he was barely ashore and dry-shod from the sea. Presently, amid the chatter of servants and nuns you could hear, quiet and sociable, the sound of educated male voices below.

The lamp in the next room had been rekindled. The door between presently opened and Gelis van Borselen stood there, her face in shadow. She said, ‘Ah. You are up. He seems to be here. Do you mind keeping your room? I shall send if I need you.’

It was an order: Unless I say so, don’t speak to him. It was also something more, and worse. All that was said in one room could be heard in the next.

Margot hesitated. Then she said, ‘I should like to send word to Gregorio.’

‘Write a note,’ Gelis said. ‘I shall give it to him before he goes.’ And she turned to walk back to her room.

She wore, half fastened as yet, the undergarment of one of last summer’s gowns. Margot thought, as the door shut, that she looked cold in it already.

The journey, being at night, had taken longer than four hours to accomplish. Nicholas had chosen to set out twelve hours too early, knowing that Gelis would count this as one of his options, and would be prepared. The ease with which he was admitted confirmed it. It meant, of course, that she had been forced to keep vigil too.

On the way, he had occupied himself with a long, complicated piece of strategy to do with current rates of exchange for gold bullion. Between formidable ladders of numbers, the tracks of his
mind kept presenting him with blocks of fragmented poetry. When it first happened, he followed the verses to the end, as his consciousness yielded them. When others took shape in their place, a painful jumble, he forced a return to his numbers.

Now and then, he fell asleep in the saddle: something that could happen in battle-lulls, but rarely elsewhere. This was hardly a battle. All he was doing, in practical terms, was settling a claim over property. He had to pursue a missing object, identify it, and take appropriate action.

He arrived at the convent. The guest-master, gazing slightly past his ear, offered him hot spiced wine, with speeches of welcome.

Refusing, Nicholas asked with equal courtesy after the health of his wife and the child.

‘Ah!’ the guest-master said, glancing past the other ear. ‘But that she must tell you herself. A wife’s prerogative. Shall I send to see if she is ready?’

‘If you would,’ Nicholas said, sipping water. He hated water. One day, when all this was over … For a long time he had been saying: One day, when all this was over. For, of course, it had to be over, one day.

Then he was upstairs, and his escort tapped on a door, and left him as someone remarked, ‘Please come in.’

Please. (‘
Bear it? Kill it? Rear it?
’) Please was an improvement.

He went in and closed the door behind him. He locked it slowly and, turning, tossed her the key. ‘Unless you want to be interrupted,’ he said.

Regardless of anything, it was her face he looked at first. He had no idea what to expect. Dislike, of course. Probably something very much stronger: hatred, contempt. Possibly fear, although she would disguise that. Or worst of all, juvenile triumph.

But not that, no. She was not juvenile. She had planned it, she had carried it out, she would carry this out. She could do it in several possible ways. He saw, looking at last, that his recollection of her face was quite exact, and that she had chosen to appear firm and calm, but for a hint of impatience.

He looked down then. She wore the gown she had worn, newly landed from Scotland last June, on the day of their sudden betrothal. He remembered the close-cut ellipse of the neck, sedately matched to the beauty – the new-ripened beauty – it covered. He recognised, forcing his thoughts through their channel, the expensive fabric; the excellent seamwork. It fitted now, from bodice to hem, as it had done before.

He said, ‘You must be cold,’ with a calmness equal to hers.

The shutters were closed, and she had brought in extra candles and lamps. Instead of the first hours of a cold winter dawn, it might have been the eve of some extraordinary Feast of the Church. Or a doctor’s tent at the edge of some battle.

It served its purpose, the light. It outlined her body, confirming what the gown had already announced: that she was not thickened with child. It showed next her firm, fair-skinned face and set mouth and pale eyes hardly defined except by their lashes and brows, unexpectedly brown. She plucked her brows, unlike her late sister, and her hairline was fashionably high, the hair light as chaff, and bound and netted as befitted a matron.

She looked like a figure of spiritual authority, rendered upon painted glass. She was five years younger than he was: twenty-four at the most. He could not read her face any longer. He doubted if she could read his.

He had left his cloak below, and his sword, although he had kept his dagger for various reasons. He laid aside his hat and gloves and sat down, as one could say was his right. In a leisurely way, he glanced about him. Then he returned his gaze to where she stood. There was no point in greetings or courtesies: it was a matter of business. He said, ‘Is there news, or should I come another day? I put off several meetings.’

He had set the level: she maintained it. ‘You need not have come at all,’ Gelis said. ‘You walked out of our last conversation. I was disappointed.’

‘You want to resume it?’ Nicholas asked, gently surprised.

She lifted her hand to her cheek. She said, ‘I am only a woman. Perhaps you would strike me again.’

‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘Since it suited your purpose so well the last time. What were you saying when I left?
Whatever you want, I shall do it?
I came to give you my answer.’

She said, ‘You think the offer still stands?’

‘Offer? I thought,’ he said, ‘it was a promise. In fact, you made the same one a few hours before at an altar. So have you borne a child, Gelis, since we last spoke?’

‘Let me remember,’ she said. This time, she let him hear the anger. He was surprised that she expected him to react.

He said, ‘You know why I have come. I am prepared to bring the child up as mine. I told Gregorio.’

‘I heard,’ she said.

‘So there are arrangements to be made. I cannot discuss them until I know the child exists. We can make this quite brief. It would suit me.’

She stood, looking at him. He realised that of course she had considered, many times over, what his first words would be, and how he would say them. She had not expected, perhaps, how he looked. He knew he looked different. She said, ‘I thought we ought to meet face to face. I wanted to tell you myself. It seems, you see, that I was mistaken. Tragically, there never was any child.’

It was not going to be brief.

He said, ‘Why then did you announce it and stay here?’

‘To escape you,’ she said.

‘I see. So why send for me?’

‘I thought I told you. To see your face. To talk to you in a place where you couldn’t harm me. There never was a child. I was lying. To the world, my doctor made a mistake.’

He said, ‘Then you had better explain it to Simon. Preferably in a room like this with some nuns. Whatever you do, he’ll slaughter your doctor. He thinks you are increasing his stock.’

‘You’ve spoken to Simon about …?’ She stopped herself quickly.

‘As you were hoping, I’m sure.
He
didn’t think you were lying. And there is Margot as well. Margot would have left if you hadn’t been pregnant. So you were pregnant. Or you have to prove otherwise.’

Move; pause; move; check; move. She said, ‘I could strip for you, but it’s cold. Or there is a small, well-known test for strayed nuns. Infallible, too. Milk is a commodity of which Nature is astoundingly wasteful.’ She waited, her hands usefully poised.

Nicholas reclined where he was. The chair-back was cushioned. He contemplated her for a long time at his leisure until she realised he was going to do nothing. Then she dropped her arms and threw his key on the table. She wore a half-smile.

‘Oh, no, no,’ Nicholas said. ‘I’m not going to assault you; I leave all that to Crackbene. And you would have stripped if there was nothing to see. So there
was
a child, I deduce, and we can go on, but quicker.’

‘Crackbene?’ she said. ‘What has he done? Has he done something to Simon?’

‘But quicker,’ he repeated with patience.

‘What has happened to Simon?’ she said.

He had thought better of her. She had thought it all through, surely, when planning it. He changed his position with indolence, folding his arms and lifting his chin in the air, so that his eyes almost closed.

‘You want to know the consequences of your scheme? Simon was alive when I left, but I don’t hold out great hopes for his future. Lucia is dead. Henry will die if I say so. Jordan is extremely uneasy, and is likely to come and put to you all the matters we have just been discussing, not excluding the test for lactating nuns.
I will not wait any longer. Did you bear a child?
’

‘Yes!’ she said. ‘It is dead.’

The lamps flickered. Wheels rumbled out in the yard. Somewhere, someone was singing. His lids remained nearly closed, because he told them to. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said. ‘You could not hurt me with a dead child.’

‘I lost it!’ she said.

‘You would have provided a substitute. Without it, there was no point in scheming.’

‘You are so sure,’ she said. ‘So sure you know everything. All right, listen. Listen. Open your eyes, damn you, and listen.

‘I have had a child. Eighteen days ago. It was half-human, sexless, a freak. The nuns will tell you. They buried it.’

His eyes were open by then. He sat up, and clasped his hands gently. He said, ‘Why not say so at once?’

‘It was you,’ Gelis said, ‘who taught me to delay what will give the most pleasure.’

Her eyes were searching and bright. His thoughts flickered, random as lamplight, and then became still, before the brightness of her eyes.

Nicholas drew a breath and said, ‘No!’

He rose before she could stop him. The candles streamed as he passed. He crossed the room to the inner door: the door that was shut but which showed light underneath it. He flung the door open and saw what he had guessed he would see: the invisible witness to all that had happened. Margot, who had deserted Gregorio for this.

She cried out, and he dropped his hand without touching her. Her face was drawn, the natural comeliness dimmed with fear and anxiety. He said, ‘I won’t hurt you. Come in. Will you come in?’

She was looking beyond him, at Gelis. He turned his head to Gelis as well, the standpost hard at his back. Then he straightened and left it. He came back to where Gelis stood. He said, ‘We should each tell the truth. Let Margot come in and sit. Both of you, listen. Lucia is dead, but I didn’t kill her. Henry will come to no harm. Simon is being punished, and is also bearing your punishment: I presume that is what you intended, and I make no apology. Gelis, I shall not kill the child, or renounce it. Neither
will Simon claim it. If it exists, there is nothing to fear. So tell me. Is there a child?’

‘Yes,’ said Margot.

Gelis said, ‘No. He is tricking you.’

Nicholas said, ‘Margot?’ The lamps burned; he felt his lips crack.

Margot said, ‘Be fair. I can only tell you a little. A child. A child born alive, and still living.’

‘A son or a daughter?’ he said.

‘No!’ said Gelis again. She rose, her face livid.

Margot said, ‘A son. That is all I can tell you.’

‘That is all,’ Gelis repeated. She stood before Margot, as if her shadow could silence her. ‘That is all. Go away. Nothing more.’

‘And here? He is here?’ said Nicholas softly.

‘No,’ said Gelis. ‘No, he isn’t.’

‘Margot?’ he said.

She stood beside Gelis. She said, ‘No. He isn’t here.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter. The place isn’t so large. Look, it is daylight.’

He rose and passed the two women. Margot’s arm was round the girl’s shoulders. He laid hands on the shutters and parted them. Then he set the window ajar and rested beside it, the air on his face. Presently he said, ‘The singing. What is it?’