Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [178]
The burning pages blackened and dropped. Gelis crushed them with a sure hand, and put the ashes away, keeping nothing. Then she went to find John le Grant, walking scrupulously, like a prisoner taking the air.
IN CYPRUS, the treasurer of the monastery of St Catherine’s, Mount Sinai, newly returned from the Crimea, visited his fellow monks in the Karpass and then travelled south, in order to sail to the Syrian coast. On his way, he made certain calls, although with difficulty, since the Venetians, who now controlled Cyprus, preferred the Latin church to the Greek; and the Queen’s uncle Marco Corner owned the largest sugar concession outside that of the Knights of St John. They were, of course, a capable family. Another Marco Corner had once been in prison in Tabriz.
As a result of his travels, Brother Lorenzo sent two letters, one by fast boat to Alexandria and the other to the director of what was still called the Banco di Niccolò in Venice who would, he understood, pass on the unfortunate news in private to Bruges. He also compiled a report, which he hoped to deliver in person, advising the Sultan at Cairo of the condition of the Arab and Muslim population of the Crimea, with particular reference to the Mamelukes. Then he returned to his abbot.
IN SCOTLAND, the boy called Jordan de Fleury attained his sixth birthday in the absence of his father, whom he had not seen for fourteen months, and his mother, whom he had not seen for three.
Although occasionally querulous, Jodi was not gravely disturbed by their defection, having at his side the formidable person of Mistress Clémence his nurse, who had been with him since birth, and the reassuringly irritable attentions of Dr Tobias his physician, who tended to be wherever Mistress Clémence was. It further added to his sense of security that he was living in exactly the same house in the Canongate, Edinburgh, once owned by his father, with the difference that it was now part of the Berecrofts assembly of lodgings and offices. Best of all, his friend Robin, who once used to live next door, now occupied the same building with Katelijne his wife, who had grown very fat and who, Jodi had repeatedly been told, was expecting a baby.
Jodi kept out of her way. In his view, when the baby saw how fat the lady was, it would leave. He had been afraid that Robin would leave. The biggest gift he was to have for his birthday, arranged by his mother and Robin, was a regular master-at-arms to give him lessons. Master Cuthbert would not, of course, be with him all the time, as he taught other people. The baby, however, was bound to be impressed.
THE CARE DEVOTED to the upbringing of the de Fleury child did not escape the notice of the merchants of Edinburgh, none of whom knew the reason for its father’s departure, despite intensive questioning of the Berecrofts family, including Kathi Sersanders and her brother. No one had been quite blate enough to quiz Anselm Adorne himself, the lass’s uncle, when he made a brief visit to Scotland, seeing to his lands and his duties as Conservator of the Scots Privileges in Bruges. And whether a body spoke out with his questions or not, he never got any answers, devil take it. Even Will Roger, the King’s own musician, got his neb near nip-pit off by the puggie-faced doctor with the bald heid. Nicholas de Fleury was establishing a new business with some papal nuncio east of the Baltic. No one could say when he’d be back.
Not even Will Roger, who loved Nicholas and did his best to spoil his son, knew that he was not coming back. And of those who did know, only perhaps Dr Tobias recognised that in the rearing of Jodi, they were collectively compensating for a ridiculous feeling of guilt, and for the vacuum left in their lives by his father.
The exception to all this remained Adorne. His sickening visit to Poland had, it seemed, given him no reason to like Nicholas any better, or to condone what he had done. He would not comment on what had happened to Julius. He was kind to Jodi, as he would be to any