Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [310]
They were clothed, just, by the time the door to the bedchamber crashed open. It hardly mattered, even though Gelis sat, and he stood by the window. Nicholas could imagine how it all looked; the strewn chamber; their ruffled hair and enlarged eyes and flushed skin. Love, that irrational passion that diminishes a man’s responsibility for his actions, as the laws of Venice maintained. And quite rightly, too.
Anna. Nicholas looked at Julius, shouting, and remembered what it had been like, eight years ago, when Gelis, young and maddened, had cheated him. This was different. But whatever happened, Julius’s life was being sundered today.
Julius was crying: that was the first shocking thing: far worse than seeing the half-unsheathed sword he was trying to draw, hindered by Diniz and one of his soldiers. It was evident that he no longer wished to challenge Nicholas to a duel, but simply to kill him. It was not even a furious regenesis, Nicholas thought, of the husbandly outrage in Moscow. Julius now looked possessed: a man who would not believe, could not believe what he had been told of his wife, and who could only expunge what had happened by violence. It hardly mattered, now, whom he killed. At the moment, he wished to annihilate Nicholas.
On the face of it, there was reason enough. Had Diniz and Gelis not known what they did, they might have been convinced by Julius’s incoherent accusations as he stood, pinned by the arms before Nicholas, cursing him with a vocabulary never before applied to him by the good-natured, exasperated tutor, bear-leader, practical joker of their joint youth. Nicholas bore it; bore being addressed as offal, traitor and pervert; bore being castigated as a lecher who tried to excuse himself by blaming his victims.
Nicholas said nothing. It was Gelis who sprang to his side, and interrupted the flow. ‘Julius. It is true. I was there. She tried to kill us.’
‘So you say,’ Julius said. ‘So, of course, all the van Borselens will say, and Louis de Gruuthuse.’
‘You should thank him,’ Gelis said. ‘Because of him, Anna was allowed to stay in his house, instead of in public custody. Julius, she committed these crimes. You didn’t know. You are not to blame. But don’t blame Nicholas either. He was her principal victim.’
‘Anna. You called her Anna,’ Julius said. ‘So that at least isn’t true. The lie that she isn’t the Gräfin.’
He had stopped struggling, and Diniz had slackened his grasp. Nicholas wondered why Diniz had come, and not Father Moriz. Beside him, Gelis drew closer, and he felt the touch of her hand. Nicholas enfolded it with his own, astonished, thankful, stupidly conscious that he had brought Julius close to death, and now had what Julius had not. But this had to be done. Nicholas said, ‘She married the Graf. But her real name is Adelina de Fleury.’
‘No,’ Julius said. He was shivering. He continued to shiver and exclaim while Nicholas spoke, as gently as he knew how, piling fact upon fact, calling upon Gelis and Diniz for corroboration. At length, Nicholas managed to speak uninterrupted. He said, ‘Defend her if you will. She is your wife; she is lovely. But she is wicked. She wanted me dead. She persuaded the Genoese to stage the death of Ochoa, when she believed she had the secret of the gold, and she wanted to silence him. When you were both expelled from Moscow, she made the plan that went wrong, and killed de’ Acciajuoli instead of me. Last night, she deliberately trapped Gelis, and would have disposed of us both, but for Wodman. She sent you out of the way, to leave her free to do it. But eventually, of course, she meant to kill you as well.’
Julius tore himself free, but not to attack. Instead, he dropped into a seat as if he could no longer stand. ‘It isn’t true,’ he said. ‘Or if she did try to hurt you, it was because you seduced her.’ But his voice no longer rang with conviction.
‘And Gelis?’ Nicholas said. ‘Why do you suppose Anna should so dislike her, in that case?’ He paused, choosing his words. ‘Anna’s ambition led her to marry you, but she always wanted more