Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [194]
It was simpler for her, for she had his translation of the main text before her, and it was only a case of finding the key. Even so, it was many hours before she knew what Nicholas had added, in that many-layered code, to his grandfather’s puzzle. And by then, she knew the words of the puzzle itself almost by heart.
The kernel of it had come ready-made, and there was little that was personal in it: words of solace, words of beauty, words of counsel culled from all the quarters, all the ages of the world. There was wit and irony, and some grains of rough humour: the spices of Thibault’s own mind that flavoured it all. Over and above that, the short addendum that bound it together was simply one of good sense and friendship.
We might have liked one another. There is no place for regrets. But it is not a bad thing to face life with a flower at the ear, as a dancer does, and this is my flourish for you. If you can read it.
She missed his other comment at first because it was attached to a classical quote, and itself in Latin. The excerpt, elegiac and simple, spoke of the poet’s grief over the death, by her own hand, of a dearly loved daughter. Thibault’s had added three sentences. What is harder than that to forgive? Harder even than hatred? Tell me if you know.
A long time later she began to translate, bit by bit, the reply which Nicholas had added; simple in content; ornamental only in its execution.
I shall keep your work for my son, who will pass it to his: yours is an evergreen flourish.
I have no daughter; I can make no comparisons; I cannot forgive.
We shall never know how our own lives, yours and mine, might have touched. But now my love has looked on your face, and in meeting her, you have met me, or part of the core of me that does not seem to alter. The rest is a bruised thing which passes from person to person, and which never seems whole. But perhaps time will cure that.
May your journey, when it comes, be a swift one, with happiness waiting, and friends.
It had reached Thibault, that letter, in the last days of his life. And deciphering the words of his grandson, the vicomte had given the order which had consigned all his possessions to Gelis … including that private note added by Nicholas, that steadfast declaration in cipher for which no translation was sent.
An exchange of messages between Nicholas and the grandfather he had never met, so he had told her, save as a child brought to a darkened sickroom, to kiss the motionless hand of a man whose face he could not see.
Complex minds; complex hearts.
Encoded messages.
Encoded love.
Then Gelis, mistress of self-control, put down her pen and broke into desperate tears, tears for herself, and for Nicholas, and for the chain which, unknown to her, had always been there.
Part III
POLOVTSIAN DANCES
Chapter 27
BEING ENTIRELY SURE of the powers of Providence, and reasonably sure of those of Nicholas de Fleury, the papal envoy to the ruler of Persia was unsurprised, after a stormy crossing of the Black Sea, to discover de Fleury waiting for him on the south shore, at a Christian house in the seaport of Fasso (Phasis, the ancients had called it). Sent for, he turned up at the religious establishment upon which the Patriarch had bestowed his temporary patronage. He was wearing a thick cloak against the searing chill winds, and below that, a quilted pourpoint and doublet instead of the dress of a Mameluke steward. Otherwise he seemed much as before, if less good-humoured. ‘How shouldn’t we meet? I left messages all round the coast. But the seamen said this was the