Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [315]
Julius and he rarely spoke, and the others were careful. In fact, the situation was a little better now than it seemed. Against his expectations, Julius had kept him to his word about a fight on the journey from Ghent. It had taken place, but with poles instead of swords; and although they were both shaken and stiff the following day, nothing serious happened. Julius had won.
That night, alone with Nicholas in the dark, Julius had suddenly spoken. ‘Was Anna a whore? Did she sleep with others? Did she sleep with you?’
Nicholas had claimed as much, he recalled, in Tabriz. He had been angry with himself, as much as with Julius. Nicholas said, ‘I have never lain with her. I have never touched her. I told you a lie.’
‘But she asked you,’ Julius said.
It would do no good, this time, to prevaricate. ‘Yes, she did,’ Nicholas said. ‘It was part of the punishment, that was all. On the day she chose to destroy me, I was to be told who she was, and be appalled by what we had done together. Not that she was unwilling to get rid of me earlier, if chance offered.’
The other pallet had creaked. Julius spoke, with a kind of dull horror. ‘If she was Adelina …’
‘You know what happened to her as a child. And to me. It helped her, when she grew up, to blame me. She hoped to remind me of it all. Jaak and Esota. Adelina and me.’ He did not enjoy speaking of it. He had never spoken of it before. It was true, so far as it went. But what had consumed Adelina as Anna, and what might have consumed him had he let it, was not a manufactured attraction. Between them, something had called. That was where the tragedy lay.
After that, Julius had been silent, and in the days that followed, had not raised the subject again. But although he was remote, he was no longer an enemy. He was a man wrestling with anger and doubts, who had a new future to find.
Nicholas accordingly left him alone. But Robin sometimes rode at his side during the short daylight hours, dark with buffeting snow and crowded with difficult work: the incessant scouting and foraging; the short, fierce clashes with outlying marauders; the daily detail assigned to road-clearing and barricades, and to the securing and rationing of food and ice-melted water. The forgework on horseshoes and armour. The repairs to the freezing, splitting fabric of the camp and its furnishings, and the task to which all the rest appertained: the slow, sparing firing of cannon at Nancy’s crumbling walls so that the Lorrainer marksmen were reduced, and quiet and sleep were impossible. And meanwhile, the besiegers had to be seen to: to be kept in health, to be heartened and exercised.
In a month, Robin had somehow absorbed the sense of all that, and could be seen to be what he was, which was not a merchant nor even a squire, but a man to whom a battlefield was a natural place to be: a place of orderly management, with corresponding opportunity for the quick-witted, and excitement, and perhaps glory. He was good with other men. With Nicholas, he spoke only of war, gleaning from him all he could tell of foreign countries and weapons and tactics. He said, once, stopping himself apologetically, ‘I’m sorry. You must be sick of it, sir. But I can’t believe that I’m here, and with you.’
‘And when it is over?’ Nicholas had said.
And Kathi’s husband had said immediately, ‘What will you do? Surely they will let you stay now? You could take this army anywhere.’
With Tobie and Diniz, who were not enchanted with war, there was a hardening of perception as the snow thickened and the degree of privation increased. By then, Nicholas had had his ducal audience in the Commanderie, and had visited the Bastard Anthony and his brother and the other captains — de Bièvres, Lannoy and de Chimay, Jacques Galeotto and Josse de Lalaing. Diniz Vasquez had been in garrison once in North Africa with the Grand Bastard and Baudouin, and Simon de Lalaing and his son.
Because of his Portuguese blood, Diniz saw more of the Duke than the rest, and he had come