Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [105]
Something of his humane purpose must have come to her. He saw her swallow. Gelis said, ‘I’m sorry. Go to Montello, of course, if you want. Write to Nicholas, if you wish, when you have been. Or go and join Nicholas.’ Her eyes were bright, and her fists folded tight in her lap.
Tobie said, ‘I thought I was part of your household. If you want me, I’m with you.’ He considered her, sharing her trouble, as he had shared the long, dreary pilgrimage which had begun with the disaster at Trèves and had ended here in Venice. On that journey, he had not mentioned her husband to Gelis, for he knew he could not fully comprehend what she felt. For himself, all he would allow was that the focus of a consuming interest had gone; a source of fascination and study that had begun fifteen years ago, at an unsavoury turning point in his own life. Gelis had been a child then.
Her partnership with Nicholas, when it came, had been a physical one so intense that its reverberations were evident still, underscoring, undermining all they both did. Perhaps Nicholas would succeed in securing something to match it, but Tobie suspected that Gelis would not. With the loss of Nicholas, Gelis was left with an intellectual life, nothing else. And unlike Kathi, she was not made to support it … Kathi, to whom Tobie had been and was doctor, consultant, but also devoted companion and friend.
He had no similar bond with Gelis. He felt pity for her, and admiration and even occasionally lust. But he did not understand her, or she would not allow him the means. And he knew she had never tried to understand him. He simply applied, therefore, his general experience of humankind, and acted accordingly.
Tobie said, ‘I still think someone should go to the monastery. It would only be a day’s journey there, and another day back. Would you come with me?’
She frowned, but her hands had loosened a little. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Tell me later,’ he said. ‘I expect Jodi is waiting for you just now.’
GELIS REACHED HER DECISION that night. Two days later, in the cool of the dawn, she and Tobias Beventini left Venice together, with two servants and four men-at-arms, and took the road that led north, towards the looming range of the Venetian Alps with, behind them, the peaks of the Dolomites. By the time the sun was high, its heat beating down on their straw hats and dust-covered cloaks, they had reached the ancient provincial capital of Treviso, with its frescoed houses, and its cathedral, and its brick church dedicated to San Niccolò. Here, as in every trading town, the Bank had clients and correspondents but today, by mutual consent, the Lady and the doctor avoided them. Instead, they passed the midday hours resting in the shady garden of a small tavern, with the waters of the little Sile running at its foot, and the scent of flowers mixed with the dung of the stables. They were given pork in jelly, and curds, and sipped wine, and let the time pass in silence. The heat dwindled. Tobie said, ‘They tell me the road gets steeper from now on. The place is on a hill?’
‘On one of a little group of low hills, covered with trees. Oak. The Bosco del Montello, owned of course by Venice: we are still in the Veneto. The Carthusians are supposed to pursue lives of silence and simplicity in the wilderness, and this was presumably the nearest that this lot could get. It’s about as wild, I suppose, as the Cartusia outside Perth.’
‘Perth?’
‘St John’s town of Perth in Scotland. The first King James built a Carthusian monastery there, prodded by his cousin Bishop Kennedy and his English Queen, who was a granddaughter of John of Gaunt. It still has the occasional Prior from Ghent, and organises some of its finances through the Carthusian convents in Bruges, much supported by the Adorne family. That is why Anselm Adorne’s brother became a lay monk at Montello at the end