Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [159]
She had been on her way to bed. Her hair flowed over her bedgown, and his mind’s eye saw below the hair, and the gown. Then he saw, as she stood looking at him, that her eyes were wet, and her face tracked with tears.
Nicholas walked away from her and turned. He said, ‘I am sorry. You shouldn’t be here.’
The door had closed. She stood before it, the tears running, and said, ‘Are you never lonely? Are you never lonely because you are happy, and have no one to share it with?’ And coming forward, she dropped on a seat and said, as if she could not help herself, ‘Talk to me of Jodi. I wish Jodi were mine.’
The early childhood of her own daughter was over: Bonne’s life in a convent was now separate from that of her mother; and there was no one to nurture. Nicholas knew how skilful Anna could be with the young. He remembered her sure understanding when dealing with Henry; with the unacknowledged son she did not know he possessed. He remembered her perception on other long-past occasions which had nothing to do with the young, such as a moment in Bruges when they had faced one another, and she had recognised his exhaustion, as not even Diniz had done. He said, almost at random, ‘Who can own Jodi? We belong to ourselves. We possess no one. It is by being alone that we learn.’
‘Who told you that?’ Anna said. ‘The Greeks, the Muslims, the humanists, the emissaries of the Pope? None of them is alone, as we are.’
‘I am not alone,’ Nicholas said; and standing aside, let her see the smoke feathering up from the brazier. The scent was different from hers. He said, ‘I shall be asleep before you are in bed. Shall I give you some?’
She rose. For a long moment, they faced one another. Then she said, ‘No, Nicholas,’ and turned slowly, and left.
As soon as her footfalls had died, he raked out the pastilles and dismantled the embers until the brazier was black. The sickly smell faded. He stood at the open window until the cold made him shiver, and then closed it and turned back to bed. He had smothered the fire, for this one night at least.
THE SHOCK OF ISOLATION struck Gelis in Ghent that December, when she realised that the chain of communication between herself and Nicholas was now stretched too far. The smooth, informative messages from the Black Sea to Venice, to Bruges, could not be expected to seek her out where she was now, or where she was going. The informative messages which latterly had contained, here and there, a comment, an allusion, a fragment of gossip which were for her eyes alone, and which brought back, in a flood, all that once she and Nicholas had shared. And she had begun to reply in kind. She had begun, out of longing, to refashion the chain that once had linked them, but now it ended in nothing. She had lost Nicholas, and she had sent Jodi away. It had been necessary to keep the child safe, but she mourned the lost routines, the high, swooping voice, and the pattering step. For a year, she had been close to her son as never before, and had come to understand and to value him. Now he, too, had gone.
For a year, she had also been occupied in restoring the fortunes of the Bank, and now in something much greater, in planning the growth of the Bank within the duchy. But she had not realised until now how much she had come to rely on the motley collection of men and women who had been the friends, the family, the long-suffering partners of Nicholas, and who had been willing to lend to his wife some of the tolerance he had so wilfully forfeited.
Now she was alone, if anyone could be alone in Ghent, moving between the vast garden palace of Hof Ten Walle, the home of the Duchess and her step-daughter, and the grim walls of the Gravenkasteel, prison, law court: and mint, where the high officers of state — Chancellor Hugonet