Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [112]
Tobie said, ‘My lord. Tell us what you know.’
The man on the pillows sighed a little and moved. Then he lifted his hands once again. The monk interpreted in the same even voice. ‘I can tell you two things of my daughter. She bore a dead child before Nicholas. Between one birth and the next, I know of no indiscretion. And between one birth and the next, her husband Simon did not come near her.’
‘Then how do you explain it?’ said Tobie.
‘I cannot,’ the fingers said. ‘And having no land and no name, the boy would always have had to make his own way. He seems to have done so.’
‘But even a bastard,’ said Tobie, ‘may be introduced, these days, into noble society, can be educated to take his place with his peers.’
‘Tell that to God,’ the vicomte said. ‘Or to the devil who sent me my illness; or the greater devil who —’
The monk’s voice stopped, his anxious gaze on his master. The signing hands had interleaved and lay, not in repose but as a barrier over the heart; a pulse throbbed at his temple. With bitter reluctance, Tobie spoke as a doctor. ‘I am sorry. We must stop. He should rest.’ And realised as the vicomte’s eyes turned impatiently on him that he had committed the witless sin: he had spoken as if the man were not there, listening and able.
Gelis, oddly, was wiser; or obeyed some sudden intuition denied to Tobie. As he watched with knitted brows, she moved close and sank by the litter, holding the sick man’s eyes with her own. ‘What disturbs you now, through the days, through the nights, will still disturb you after we have gone. If I were Nicholas, rich and charming and powerful, clever enough to win through to success despite every assault, every adversary, would you not allow me to deal with your devil? You might even find that your devil is dead.’
The fingers unlaced. ‘Rich and charming and powerful?’ they said. The monk’s voice was flat, but the vicomte’s face expressed mockery. ‘But no longer lovable, because he kills rather too readily? Indirectly, you said.’
‘Not his family,’ Tobie said. The sick man’s eyes moved up to his face. Tobie said, ‘Jaak tried to kill Nicholas, and Nicholas only defended himself. He didn’t mean Esota to die. The St Pols have been consistently murderous, but in my opinion he has never plotted to kill them. He can be goaded. But I have seen him go to any lengths, face any danger, to avoid harming those he believes to be kin.’
The vicomte’s gaze returned to Gelis. ‘Then,’ the fingers said, ‘my devil would be quite safe from you, would he not, if you were Nicholas?’
Gelis’s eyes had grown very large. Tobie, watching her, was reminded abruptly of another sickbed, another time when he had stood and watched a duel like this, between a dying man and this obsessed woman, over Nicholas. Gelis said, ‘Your devil was Simon’s father, Jordan de Ribérac? Perhaps he came when you were ill. He denounced your daughter, and proclaimed her son as a bastard, and forbade you …’ She was reading his face. She said, ‘He forbade you to rear Nicholas, or have him fittingly educated? But you need not have obeyed him. Or your lawyers could have refused?’
She was guessing. The vicomte lay, his hands disengaged, his lids heavy, and invited her by his stillness to continue. Tobie, leaning forward, laid his fingers on the arched wrist and the sick man looked up at him, fleetingly, with the shadowed traces of a half-smile. Gelis said slowly, ‘He threatened not you, then, but Nicholas? And perhaps your two daughters and later, Marian de Charetty? Bring up this boy as an underling, or I will hurt you?’
The eyes assented.
‘And in any case, unable to speak, unable to write, you could do nothing. And now? Does he still threaten you?’
The hands remained still. The monk said, ‘The vicomte de Ribérac does not know of this partial recovery. It is one reason why we are here, and why the Prior does not easily admit visitors. Were we to communicate with my lord Thibault’s family, both he and they might well suffer.’
Gelis said, ‘Nicholas cannot suffer more than he has done already. It must be the same for Adelina. Can