Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [222]
Jodi stared up at him from the rubble. The wall hurt his elbows and bottom. The roof-mender stood with Raffo’s sword in his fist and said, ‘I’ve done this once, and I can do it again. You’re not leaving this house alive.’
‘Yes, he is,’ said Aunty Bel. ‘He’s right. He has a protected position, and it’ll be his word against ours. Forbye, it’s my fault. I was putting off time. I knew that Raffo’d send a lassie to fetch you. I had no right to let it get so far.’ She was trembling.
‘That was my mistake, not yours,’ said the roofman. ‘Leave me to deal with it, and take the boy to young Robin’s and stay there. There’s a lot that needs doing.’
After that, Jodi didn’t see what happened, for he and his wee aunty helped each other down the back stairs, and brushed off some of the powder, and left by the back door with two big men of the roof-mender’s to guard them. Except, of course, that he was not a roof-mender, but Uncle Sersanders’ friend Master Wodman, using that as an excuse to get in.
Before he got taken out of the room, Jodi scrambled up and went over to Raffo, but someone had put a cloth over him, and he didn’t look as if he were coming just yet. Jodi spoke his name, for he was supposed not to leave him, but turned away when his wee aunty called.
Chapter 31
GELIS VAN BORSELEN abandoned the Bank, her army and the Duke and Duchess of Burgundy that June in order to haunt the river and barge-ports of Bruges, awaiting the shipping from Scotland. The Duke raised camp at Neuss without catching her attention, and marched south to Luxembourg, ready to invade young Duke René’s Lorraine without her pained protestations joining those of John and Astorre. She failed to join the queue seeking speech with Chancellor Hugonet when it was announced that a meeting of the Estates of Flanders and Brabant would take place in Bruges in July, to be addressed by the Duke.
She did take heed, not being deaf, dumb or blind, when, at the instigation of his brother-in-law (absent in Luxembourg), the King of England (thirty-one and running to fat) arrived in Calais with fifteen thousand mounted archers, fifteen hundred lances, the flower of English nobility (including, reluctantly, the King’s brother Richard) and the Scottish Lord Boyd, parent of Thomas. The plan, to re-occupy France with the help of Burgundy, seemed somewhat weakened by the Duke of Burgundy’s absence on the way to Lorraine, and even more by the fact that the King of France was now attacking the territory of Burgundy, putting Dijon in peril.
Gelis did notice that. Putting up in a house near the Town Hall at Damme and riding back and forth to the sea-wharves at Sluys, she still kept enough sense to have word sent to her daily from Bruges. She had never really expected to discover an inheritance at Fleury for Jodi, but she would like to see it stay Burgundian. Nicholas had sold his wares cheerfully to every ruler in turn, but had virtually decided, she knew, that the Bank’s future lay with that of the Duke of Burgundy. It was what she was trying to consolidate, with the respectable backing of Diniz and Moriz and Govaerts. Well, they now had to manage without her.
Sixteen years ago, on this canal bank at Damme, although she did not know it, there had occurred the fateful meeting with a wooden-legged daemon which had brought Nicholas and her sister together, and had led to his first marriage, and to his acquisition of the Bank. Seven years ago, and burned into her memory, was her own arrival from a sojourn in Scotland, and the silent Nicholas awaiting her, his grey eyes dark; and the look on his face when he saw her. And then the avowal. And then their marriage.
In meeting her, you have met me, or part of the core of me that does not seem to alter. He was not here, seven years later, but he had written that to his grandfather. And he had left her his son to guard.
In July, on the anniversary of her wedding, a ship from Leith sailed into Sluys. The master, who brought ashore the first boat, was the Bank’s own man, Michael Crackbene.