Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [92]
‘I did,’ he said. ‘Look what happened.’
She was exasperated. ‘Then take advice.’
‘Anna’s?’
‘If you are going where she goes. Or you have talked to Cailimaco.’
‘The hyacinth of Cracow.’
‘All right. But a learned man with a circle of sages and writers and artists who speak the same language as you. Nicholas, you see how they are struggling to find a new régime after the Knights. They have to teach these young boys how to rule, and keep their frontiers safe against all their neighbours. You could advise them.’
He was lying back in his chair, his eyes closed and both dimples showing. ‘Redeeming my soul after ruining Scotland?’
‘If you like.’ She wanted to groan.
‘Or ruining Poland? I might.’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘If you can’t control your own whims, then you might. In which case, you had better go off to Tabriz with the Patriarch, and give Jodi up. By the way, if he loses his mother, what then?’
‘Bel would take care of him,’ he said. ‘Or the van Borselen. Or you and Robin might, if you would. But you will have your own.’
‘If need be, we should make him our own,’ Kathi said. Looking at him, she found herself swept by inappropriate pity. She said gently, ‘You were not much older, were you, when your mother died? How did she die?’
His eyes were still shut. He had been seven years old, she had heard, when his grandfather had sent him to Jaak de Fleury. De Fleury and his wife had since been killed, and the grandfather ruined. The paralysed grandfather who had to be paid for.
Watching him, the closed eyes, the closed face, Kathi thought of her own mother, lost early to illness, but leaving her daughter and son tended and happy under the tutelage of their godfather Anselm Adorne. Nicholas had exchanged his mother’s home for something much harsher, had heard his mother reviled as a whore and repudiated by Simon, her fine Scottish husband. Small wonder that it had led to this: talents squandered, friendships in ruin, love cast away. And now, by the depth of the silence, she realised that she had asked a question of greater weight than even she might have guessed. How did she die, Sophie de Fleury, when just a year older than this, her second and only living son?
‘You don’t want to know,’ Nicholas said, as if she had repeated her question. He opened his eyes. ‘I should make you drink your own wine.’ Curiously, his face, although hollow, was serene. He added, ‘Or would you then give birth to Endymion? Robin wouldn’t mind. I have never seen a sane man in such a state of ecstasy. Have you chosen a name? Robert? Archibald? Anselm?’
The wine had worked, she saw, as she intended. He would sleep when she had gone. She said, smiling, ‘Or Margriet or Katelijne or Louise. Or what do you think of Aerendtken?’
‘Ask the Patriarch,’ Nicholas said. ‘He’ll tell you to wait till it’s ripe, and then boil it through twelve Ave Marias. Oh Christ, I’m going to sleep and I haven’t said what I wanted to say.’
‘Then say it,’ she said. She rose and came to him, sinking down by his chair, and trapping his hand in both her own before he could stir. ‘What was it?’
‘I am sorry,’ Nicholas said. ‘That was all. I am sorry. I am sorry.’
She swallowed. ‘I think you ought to be. But show me, don’t tell me. Show Anna. You have a great deal to make up to Anna for. Nicholas?’
He opened his eyes.
She said, ‘I have something to tell you. Nicholas!’
He smiled, his eyes closing again. ‘Tell me tomorrow. Kochajmy się,’ was all she caught.
Having brought him the respite, it seemed unfair to attempt to disrupt it. She kept his hand for a while, contemplating the broad palm and strong fingers that could both preserve life and take it away. She wondered if he would adopt her advice, or even