Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [290]
He looked at her, his lips shut. She said, ‘Everyone knows at least a little, barring my uncle. If you want to blame someone, blame me. Also Gelis and Tobie and John. Within the company, the secret is out. It needn’t become public; it’s enough that my uncle knows that David de Salmeton is coming, and his precautions will serve against both. But you must realise that there is no need to escape. You are not alone any longer. We are here.’
‘You are mistaken,’ he said.
And, her eyes full of pity, Kathi said, ‘No. We have proof.’ And told him everything.
At the end, she did not touch him, as Anna had done, so that he took his own time to lift his head from his hands and look up at her. Her face looked pinched.
He said, ‘You do know everything, don’t you?’
‘Tobie is a doctor,’ she said. ‘As I tell it, the story sounds bald, but he spoke of it all with compassion. He understood Esota. He understood Jaak and the girl. He made us all see how it happened.’ She paused. She said, ‘She is beautiful, and has so many gifts. You must, many times, have felt close to her.’
‘She knew who I was,’ Nicholas said. ‘She begged me to give her a child.’
‘But—’ Kathi began. She sounded stricken.
‘I know,’ Nicholas said. ‘It was meant to sicken me, later.’
It was late. The brazier glowed. Despite the warmth, he felt stiff, and his arm ached. He remembered, abruptly, what else had happened today. He said, ‘The news about Jordan de Ribérac. Does anyone else have to be told?’
Her face was hollow: she looked as tired as he felt. She said, ‘About the Vatachino connection? My uncle and Wodman won’t make it public, I’m sure. Someone ought to tell Diniz in confidence, and perhaps the rest of the Bank. Who else is there? Ah! You don’t want Gelis to know?’
He said, ‘She will have to know. I should like to have the chance to tell her.’
‘That should be easy enough,’ Kathi said. ‘She’s shut up in Ghent. She won’t hear anything there. And Jordan de Ribérac must be the least of her troubles.’ Her eyes scanned him, in the way Tobie’s did, and her voice became sober and quiet. ‘Don’t leave us,’ she said. ‘Between us, we shall see this finished, as it should be, without shame.’
‘It is too late for that,’ Nicholas said. ‘But yes, I shall stay. I have seldom found my private life the subject of a company project before.’
The words made her check as she rose, and he was sorry, but found it impossible to add anything normal. She bade him good night, her eyes clear, and went out, leaving him the candle, and the brazier, and the half-open door.
He shut it, and went to lie on his bed.
THE COLD DEEPENED.
In the Hof Ten Walle at Ghent, the lady Gelis van Borselen was seated on the floor with her son, companionably mourning a broken mechanical toy, when Clémence entered. Drawn to her feet by her expression, Gelis joined her. ‘News of Tobie?’
‘There is always news of Tobie,’ Clémence said, which was indeed true. ‘This is news of your husband. Good news. Come and sit. Now. Your instinct was right, as we knew it would be. He is alive. He is well. He is in Bruges.’
It was all there was to know, and it was only a whisper, not to be repeated; not to be told even to Jodi for safety’s sake. But hugging her resistant son later, Gelis returned to the whisper over and over. He is alive. He is well. He is in Bruges. And soon, please God, they would face one another again, and say what should have been said long ago.
IN THE DUKE’S CAMP at Nancy, all incoming news paid its debt to distance and snow, and the fate of Nicholas was still an unresolved question. Tobie, penning his regular letters to Ghent, had said a great deal about discomfort and boredom, but less about the Duke’s increasing irascibility; the temper that had killed a man, against all the chivalric code, for carrying news to the besieged inside Nancy, so that Duke René, to save face with his allies, hanged one hundred and twenty Burgundian prisoners in retaliation.
Robin, reared on dreams of