Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [228]
‘But then, Nicholas would have told you,’ Tobie said. ‘There’s something else I want to say. Do you remember the nun you wrote me about? The one we heard of from Thibault de Fleury? His late-born little daughter was fond of her.’
She remembered. The nun was called Ysabeau, and was sister to Josine, the vicomte’s first wife. She had sent to the address Brother Huon had given her, and then to two other convents. The last one had been a Cistercian foundation in Scotland. She said, ‘We decided not to investigate further.’
‘Then you don’t want to hear what I found?’ Tobie said. ‘I was going to keep quiet. But now I’m not sure if I should.’
‘You mean I might not have to annul my marriage, because it was never legal in the first place?’ said Gelis with irony. She clasped her hands hard together.
‘No,’ said Tobie. ‘No. It has nothing to do with Nicholas’s birth. I hoped this Ysabeau might know something about that, but she only remembered the scandal. Eccles is a very small priory, and the Sister suffers from deafness, but she did tell me something. She remembered Thibault’s daughter Adelina. Blue eyes and red hair: wilful, pretty, intelligent. Walked out on her family with just enough to pay her way into a convent, but was transferred from one to another because of the trouble she gave. Finally parted company with religious life at nineteen, when she disappeared for a month and turned up with a baby, a daughter.’
‘A daughter?’ Gelis said.
It had become dark while they were speaking. The swallows flashed past the window, silhouetted in the moonlight; their shadows flickered inside the room, slashing across the white bed, the unlit brazier, the grim, ghostly features of Tobie. She rose to lift a candle and light it. A daughter. A daughter. Her fingers shook.
‘Fourteen years ago,’ Tobie said. ‘So it wasn’t Bonne. And Anna is black-haired, and German. She introduced herself to Julius in Cologne, and Julius adored her on sight. You were there. Then she committed the Graf’s business to Julius, and that brought her in touch with the Bank. Nicholas liked her as well. We all did. Kathi thinks she is the sister that Nicholas needs. And that is what matters, even if she is not the person she says she is: even if Moriz can find no trace even to prove she is German. Shall we go on talking?’
She turned and sat down. ‘There is more?’ According to Kathi, Nicholas had been devastated, afterwards, by what he had caused to happen to Julius. She had been sure, she was still sure, that whomsoever he took to his bed, it would not be Anna.
Tobie got up, walked to the window, and sneezed. He took out his kerchief and sneezed several times more, blew his nose and then, without asking permission, took the spill and lit all the remaining candles. Then he shuttered the windows, refilled their glasses, and sat and looked at her.
He said, ‘It’s something about Adelina, Thibault’s daughter. Clémence knows this, but no one else; not even Nicholas. I learned it years ago in Geneva, from Tasse, the little woman who lived near Montello.’
He stopped. Gelis said, ‘Drink. Don’t tell me, if you don’t want to.’
‘No. I must.’ But he drank. Then he resumed. ‘Little Tasse. She was a serving-maid in the house of Jaak de Fleury, the brother of Thibault. She worked there all her life. She remembered Nicholas; you could see that she loved him. She was fond of Julius. She knew Adelina. Even after Adelina had gone, she heard the rumours and she spoke to people who had met her as she moved from one place to another.’ He paused. ‘Tasse didn’t speak of a baby. What she heard was quite different, and she believed it. She said that because of her childhood, Adelina could never have children.’
‘Her childhood?’ Gelis said.
‘I think,’ Tobie said, ‘that that is all you need to know. But if that rumour is true, then the theory that Adelina had an illegitimate baby is wrong. Whereas Anna did have a child: the Graf’s daughter Bonne.’
It was hot now. Her eyes stung in the candlelight. Tobie had emptied his