The Unicorn Hunt (60 page)

The words, in a child’s mouth, made her spin round upon Simon. He said, ‘He eavesdrops. He was brought up by sluts. A St Pol does as he is told. You were told to stay at the inn.’ He had the boy by the arm. The boy looked at him with hatred.

Gelis said, ‘Henry? There is no half-brother here you need be jealous of. There never will be another. I will promise. Simon, will you promise too?’

‘What are you talking about?’ Simon said.

Gelis said, ‘That Henry will be your heir, and no one will ever supersede him. That is all he wants to know.’

‘Well, he ought to know that already,’ said Simon. He had become rather flushed. He addressed the child, glaring: ‘Do you want to go to Scotland? Just tell me.’ The child was silent. ‘Because if you don’t, you’re behaving in just the right way. You’ve insulted your aunt. Apologise.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Henry remarked.

‘You heard what she said. You’ll leave her baby alone.’

‘If you say so, my lord father,’ said Henry.

‘Get out,’ said Simon.

The child looked at Gelis, and left.

Gelis found she was shaking. She stopped herself. She said, ‘Dear me. Perhaps your father was right, after all.’

‘About what?’ Simon said. He was breathing fast, his eyes still on the door.

‘In offering to recognise Nicholas as his grandson. Your son.’

‘What?’ Simon said. He said it quite slowly.

She raised her brows. ‘You didn’t know? Your father offered to purchase my child. In return, he would recognise Nicholas as your son. Nicholas would inherit Kilmirren and Ribérac, and young Jordan would follow, not Henry. Unhappily, Nicholas wouldn’t agree.’

‘That’s impossible,’ Simon said, and half laughed. She waited. He said, ‘My father
proposed …
’

‘Ask him,’ she said.

‘And Nicholas
turned down the offer
?’

‘He tends to take the long view,’ Gelis said. ‘I suspect that, once your father had got what he wanted, Nicholas would not have lived very long. And, of course, he hasn’t seen the child, as I said. He has persuaded himself he has a use for an heir. Certainly he has money to leave. Are you not pleased about that?’

He was untangling his thoughts, pacing fretfully. ‘I should be, if you were parting. But you’re not. You may have other children.’

‘Was that what Henry interrupted? A precaution?’ she said. ‘Then you heard me give him a promise. He will have no rivals born of me and his father. I think you should leave.’

Simon looked up. He came across to her and held both her hands. He said, ‘Forget Henry. Promises to children mean nothing. Gelis: Katelina tried to please, but you cannot doubt which of you is more gifted. You are wasted on Nicholas. Come to Scotland, to me.’

She thought. ‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘When I have been to Alexandria.’

Gelis van Borselen was aware, since she had not been invited to Alexandria, that to arrive there would take some ingenuity, and that there was therefore a great deal to do. But before she embarked on her preparations, there was one visit she felt compelled to make time for.

Margriet van der Banck, arranging the Hôtel Jerusalem for royalty, was pleased to see her, but unable to speak more than two consecutive words without breaking off to admonish, encourage, direct or sometimes chastise the flock of helpers who – hammering, sweeping, painting; climbing stairs with stools and chests and hangings; or staggering towards the kitchens with boxes of platters and pans – were turning the residence of Anselm Adorne into a place fit for the Scottish traitor Thomas Boyd, Earl of Arran, and his wife, the King’s sister.

The distraction of Dame Margriet was in fact a convenience: it prevented any but sporadic references to the little baby, and Dame Margriet’s gift to the little baby, and the absence of the little baby’s father. In any case, Dame Margriet did not dwell on the baby’s father, who – Gelis remembered – had been ungrateful enough to wound Anselm in some scuffle in Scotland. Anselm was back now, of course, from his second trip – so successful! The young King so charming, so generous! – and was preparing for the difficult meetings he was to arrange for the spring and the summer: meetings which would decide once and for all the trading arrangements between Scotland and Flanders. Who else could do it but Anselm?

Anselm Adorne himself, discovered in his office guiltily attempting to work in the face of the tempest of renovation below, cleared a seat for her and said, ‘I have no doubt that you have come, like the rest of Bruges, to see the parrot. It is on the floor above, with my niece Katelijne. How are you, Gelis?’

‘Chastened,’ she said. ‘I thought, after the way Nicholas treated you, that you ought to know that he was going abroad. He is, but not until next spring. I am sorry.’

He touched her hand. ‘Nicholas and I are not enemies. Oh, I know what happened in Scotland. He did what he did in desperation, not out of cold blood. I won’t deny’ – he smiled – ‘that he is a stimulating opponent. He had a scheme for a stud farm which would have ruined Metteneye and myself if I hadn’t guessed what his object was. But I should never wish him ill, Gelis. He is a rare individual. Cherish him.’

‘Do you need to tell me? I married him,’ she said; and gave him a smile. ‘I must go. You are busy. It cannot be welcome, this visit. You have leave of the Duke to entertain the Princess and her husband?’

‘What do you suppose?’ said her host. ‘So long as the visit is private, and the Duke is not involved. The problem will arise, I imagine, when it is a question of baptising the infant. Ah! You did not know that the lady Mary is about to bear her first child?’

‘No,’ Gelis said. Wolfaert had said nothing of that – fearing, perhaps, that she might be moved out of pity to offer her services. That, then, was why the homeless pair had been forced to end their hapless wandering; to seek a place for the birth worthy of the Princess’s – rank, and where the child would receive public acknowledgement. She said, ‘Does King James know of this? Will he not regard you as shielding a traitor?’

‘I have consulted King James,’ said Adorne mildly. ‘His first reaction was just as you say. But he is fond of his sister, and she will not leave Thomas Boyd. And few others in Flanders could take her. One would not wish such a dilemma, for example, upon Wolfaert.’

She felt herself flush. She said, ‘Wolfaert did not send them to you.’

Adorne looked contrite. ‘My dear! Did you think that I imagined he would? No. They came because no one else could suitably give them asylum. Or because they had a little advice.’ He tilted his head. ‘Have you never wondered – were you never told who contrived their disappearance from Scotland?’

There was amusement in his voice, and some irony, and a hint of weariness. She lost all the air in her lungs, and recovered it slowly. ‘
Nicholas?
’

He laughed. ‘It is, I imagine, a fairly safe wager. And to think I forgave him my injury! Indeed, I received his magnanimous assurance that he owed me a favour. Do you suppose that this is it?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Gelis. ‘But, speaking even as his wife and a partisan, let me say that I hope you will balance the score. Ser Anselm, I must go. Should I see the parrot?’

‘Yes! Yes, of course,’ Adorne said. ‘And Katelijne. You will remember her as a child – and, to be sure, she is still small for her age, and troubled by weakness – but I have to admit, although she is my own niece, that there are elements in her that Margriet and I find quite extraordinary.’

‘She has no husband arranged?’ Gelis said.

Adorne smiled. ‘Talk to her, and then tell me what I should do. Perhaps she should wait for your son.’

The parrot had red and blue feathers and was in a cage, talking Greek. That was the first jolt. The second followed immediately.

Beside the cage was a stack of striped linen edged with old-fashioned reticella embroidery. Crosslegged on the floor next to that sat the girl Katelijne, paintbrush in hand, giving her undivided attention to an immense carved receptacle with a hood. Her eyes, in the kindest phrase, were over-focused, and her tongue adhered to her upper lip like a bat.

Gelis moved. The tableau dissolved. The girl jumped to her feet, hauling down her gown which had been tucked round her hips. Her eyes adjusted. She said, ‘Oh, it’s a woman, thank goodness. I thought it was my uncle. How do you like it? Their cradle.’

She did not say whose cradle it was: the arms of Boyd and the royal arms of Scotland made explanation unnecessary. It certainly, thought Gelis, was not for herself. Small and slight as a leaf, with loose brown hair and hazel eyes in a pale, earnest face, Katelijne Sersanders looked no more than fourteen years old – even less. The age Gelis had been when she found out what her sister and Nicholas were doing.

Gelis said, ‘I’m sorry. Your uncle sent me upstairs, I think, to get me out of the way. It was a bad time to call. I’m –’

‘Oh, I know who
you
are,’ said the girl cheerfully. ‘Gelis van Borselen, dame de Fleury. You
are
lucky. Aren’t you lucky, married to that idiot of a man? Isn’t it
awful
?’

‘You mean Nicholas?’ said Gelis equably.

The girl gave a peal of laughter. ‘No, the cradle. I hope you had a nice one. He couldn’t wait to get home and see the baby. Is it nice being married? Do sit down.’ She cleared a book from a stool, swept her paints to a tray, scampered her fingers down the edges of all the piled linen and deposited it in three different stacks on a shelf, was sworn at by the parrot, rolled up some sewing and
brought over the brazier, swore in unison with the parrot, picked up and slapped away some music, and sat down with a thump on the predella. ‘Is it nice?’ she repeated. She had a smile that darted about, quick as a fish.

‘Being married to an idiot?’ Gelis said. She felt breathless. The parrot was cackling.

‘We all thought he was wonderful,’ said Katelijne. ‘You nearly didn’t get him back. Those poor golfers! The marijuana seeds in the wine! Staggering about with the mirror for Hearty James! The dog-races … and I can’t imagine where he learned to cheat like that at cards. Was it your jew’s trump? I hope you didn’t mind that he gave it to me. It was a wager.’

‘It wasn’t mine,’ said Gelis. ‘Did he play it?’

The girl laughed. ‘He liked the drums better. But you mustn’t think he caused mischief all the time. He learned. He built. He found out about farming. And the music – well, he probably told you.’

‘You tell me,’ said Gelis. The parrot made a remark.

‘It needs Whistle Willie,’ said the girl. ‘I can’t describe it. Not just his voice. But some people carry about music buried like that, Willie says. Sometimes no one ever knows that it’s there.’

‘Whistle Willie?’

‘Will Roger. You’ve heard of him.’ Katelijne was looking at her. The girl said, ‘Perhaps you haven’t had much time together. I’m sorry. Can I tell you anything more? He did miss you.’ She was eight years her junior and spoke as an equal. But this child had never shared a bed with Nicholas, nor thought of it. The girl said, ‘I do apologise for the parrot’s being so drunk. My cousins have been giving it wine, and it shows off.’

Gelis said, ‘Like my husband, it seems. I was glad when he came back from Scotland. We were all concerned over the quarrel he had with St Pol. Sometimes Nicholas loses his temper.’

The mouth gave itself a judicial screw. ‘He can be very
silly
,’ the girl said. ‘You must lose patience, too. The fight with M. de St Pol was quite unnecessary, and then he lost his head. My uncle was hurt. He didn’t plan that, but he made pretty sure that M. de St Pol was going to have an uncomfortable time in other ways. Did he tell you? About buying up Kilmirren land, and smothering his ground with corn-marigolds? Then later they found the Kilmirren hides stank, and the cows all gave diuretic milk?’ The girl’s face had turned pink. She said, ‘I’m sorry. It shouldn’t be funny.’

‘It sounds fairly typical,’ said Gelis dryly. ‘What would he have done had he been well?’

‘Oh,’ said Katelijne. She paused. ‘You know what happened? At Henry’s age, children are stupid. Your husband pretended thugs were responsible. M. de St Pol should be grateful, in spite of everything.’

‘Was he really hurt?’ Gelis said. ‘Nicholas?’

The direct eyes studied her again. ‘It was a knife wound close to the heart. You can’t blame the child,’ the girl said. ‘But Dr Andreas was concerned for a day or two. The shock to the body; the shock to the mind. But you know Dr Andreas.’

Gelis remembered Andreas of Vesalia. She said, ‘The shock to the mind?’

‘I don’t know what it means,’ Katelijne said. She seemed to hesitate. She said, ‘He thinks your husband has dreams.’ The parrot gabbled.

Gelis manufactured a smile. ‘Most people do.’

The girl was looking down. She said, ‘You don’t know Dr Andreas predicts the future? He studied at Louvain: he claims to recognise others who have the same arts, or are possessed of similar powers. He thinks your husband is one.’

Gelis said, ‘I have never known any man as earthily human as Nicholas.’ She spoke as to a child. The parrot squawked and spoke too.

‘I don’t understand either,’ said Katelijne. ‘But he went straight to the river. He found the body. He knew it was dead. And other things, Dr Andreas says. Was there a library, once, he was afraid of?’

Silence. Some little time later, Gelis realised she had not replied. She said, ‘I don’t remember. My dear Katelijne, I think both you and Dr Andreas attribute more to my husband than you should. He is in the Tyrol, engaged in some very unromantic commercial activities.’

‘Divining for silver?’ said the girl.

Gelis said, ‘Prospecting for silver, I’m sure. The divining, I am told, is in the hands of some charlatan or other who claims to be equipped to find anything.’

She stopped smiling, for the girl was looking at her strangely again. The girl said, ‘There was a diviner, but Cavalli said that he died. They were seeking another.’

Gelis said, ‘Katelijne! Are you well?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said the girl. The smile flashed. ‘Dame Margriet will tell you it’s time for my rest. I’m so glad you came. Will you wait? There’s some music Willie sent, and these notes, when you next see M. de Fleury …’