Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [102]
‘Well?’ was all he had said.
And she had sighed and said, ‘Dr Tobias. Well, I am glad it was not some fool who would jump to conclusions. I see I must trust you.’ Turning the tables was a speciality of hers.
So they had retired to a little churchyard she knew, where they paid for two stools round a brazier and ate hot chestnuts out of a napkin, while she reduced him to the dimensions of Jodi. And yet that was unfair, for she did not expect him to have guessed that Nicholas, leaving, had sent to make a pact with her, and had sworn her to silence. She described it and ended, ‘So, as he asked, his wife and child have been protected. You have seen Jodi’s groom Raffo, and Manoli, my servant. The Lady pays them: I was allowed to select them. They are highly trained soldiers. They would not have dreamed of taking these posts without the extra gold I am permitted to draw upon.’
‘Nicholas left it behind?’ Tobie had said. When talking to Clémence, he had jettisoned, some weeks ago, the formal name of her employer.
‘He deposited it afterwards. There was a time,’ said Mistress Clémence, bursting open a chestnut, ‘when M. de Fleury hoped to send for his son, but then changed his mind. He knew, no doubt, his own failings too well. Now the money is being spent wholly to guard the child and his mother.’
‘Against what?’ Tobie had said. A pang shot through his jaw and he stopped chewing. She put out a palm and, astonished, he emptied his mouth obediently into it. She disposed of the sludge.
‘You eat too many sweet foods. You will end your days sucking up gruel. M. de Fleury’s disaffected family, I understand, are still exiled in Portugal. It is probable, I suppose, that his present fears concern the rival firm, the Vatachino. The Lady worked for them, and has now transferred her allegiance to your Bank.’
It was possible. Since Nicholas’s disappearance, the Vatachino had been singularly quiet, even that member of it who had already tried and failed to kill him in Cyprus. Since he had had him expelled from that island, Nicholas might well consider David de Salmeton a serious source of danger to Gelis and Jodi as well as to himself. But when Tobie asked Mistress Clémence, she shook her head.
‘A gentleman of excessive good looks, charming although not very tall, and last heard of in royal favour in Cyprus? I have been given no instructions, nor have I seen such a person. But, of course, now I shall watch.’
She sounded remarkably placid. Gazing at her, Tobie was struck by enlightenment. He said, ‘Wait a moment. Does this mean you are in communication with Nicholas? Have you known all along where he was?’ He felt himself becoming indignant.
She had smiled. ‘He is too astute for that, don’t you think? No. I send my accounting through a third person, and any reply, if it is needed, returns in the same way. He knows at least they are safe.’
It reminded him of something Gelis had said, in reply to an incautious comment of his. ‘No. He is not divining. He has not tried to divine since he left.’ And had added curtly, when Tobie was silent, ‘When he does, I can feel it.’
If you believed that, then now it made sense. Tobie said to the nurse, ‘So he doesn’t need to divine. You tell him everything.’
And Mistress Clémence, like Gelis, had treated him with impatience. ‘And you are a doctor? I assure him, in not more than a sentence, of the health of his wife and his child. I say nothing more, nor does he ask. You do not heal a wound by tearing it open.’
Later, back at the Bank, Tobie had drunk soup for his supper and closeted himself, for a brief spell, with Gregorio. He had not given Clémence away,