Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [300]
He was with Gelis again. She was not going to die: he would see to that. But even so, he had her avowal: he could see in her face the same smothered radiance that suffused him. Whatever came to them both, they were together. I would walk over now, she had said.
But now, he must not look at Gelis; he must act. Nicholas sat up as best he could and, exhibiting incoherent amazement, exclaimed, ‘Anna!’ The name rang round the hold, and the cloaked woman standing alone on the decking before him smiled with pleasure and spoke.
‘Would you have preferred David de Salmeton? I am sorry. He has gone, I am told. Some unexpected change in his plans.’
Gone? He could not ask where. This was not about David de Salmeton. He frowned at the mocking, shadowy face, and spoke sharply. ‘They were your men? But why?’ The chain clanked with his changing position and he gave it a short, angry tug, confronting her with his bound hands. ‘What’s this, Anna? Another performance? Is Julius coming to run me through, this time? And what is Gelis here for?’
He glanced at Gelis when mentioning her name. She was pale, but watching him with composure. He was reminded that she was now a woman of business. In three years, she must have learned to recognise and deal with the critical opening moments of a negotiation. She had also worked with him before, on certain projects in Scotland. It might be enough. Anna and he had never performed together as part of a team. She would always either be her own mistress, or yours.
Julius’s wife looked round for a box, pulled one forward, and sat on it. Beneath the cloak, she was wearing an exceptionally beautiful gown; as fine as the robe of occasion Gelis wore, and the cap confining her hair was decorated with jewels. Her smile, a little pitying, had widened.
She said, ‘We have surprised one another. I didn’t expect you in Ghent. Julius has gone off to Bruges to challenge you to a fight to the death. I’m sorry, Nicholas, I’m afraid I had to tell him what you did to me.’
‘I didn’t do anything,’ Nicholas said. ‘I’m sorry if you thought that an insult, but it isn’t Gelis’s fault. May she go?’
‘You haven’t been listening,’ said Anna. ‘I said that I thought you and Julius were in Bruges. It was Gelis I wanted. I didn’t know you would come rushing to trap David de Salmeton with a singularly feeble plan for a decoy. But now I have you both.’
Gelis said, ‘Why do you want both of us?’
‘Wouldn’t you like to die together?’ said Anna.
‘Die?’ said Gelis. She sounded disbelieving, but not entirely unfriendly, as a well-brought-up young woman would, on finding another in the grip of sick fantasies. Gelis said, ‘Is it because I didn’t come to Caffa, with Jodi? You felt we all expected too much of you, alone in the Crimea with Nicholas. And it was his fault that Julius was hurt and couldn’t be there.’ She paused and said, ‘I can see that. I’m sorry.’
Anna’s eyes were on Nicholas. ‘And you? Can you imagine why I should want you both dead?’
‘I don’t think you do,’ Nicholas said. ‘Wouldn’t it make life rather dull?’
Anna laughed. Her cloak, already unhooked, slipped from her shoulders, and she let it fall. She said, ‘When I heard they had captured you both, I thought I’d dress for you. I even washed out my hair.’ And she raised her hands and unpinned and drew off her cap.
The hair that fell to her shoulders was not black. The strands that coiled, damp still, over her breast and her back were of a colour that even a dyer’s apprentice would find hard to compose, although a jeweller might. Her hair was not red. Blood was red. This was the vermilion of a cardinal’s tassels, seen through an eyeglass of amber.
Within this cascade of fire, Anna’s eyes had remained fixed and distended on his. ‘Well?’
Well,