Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [101]
As much as she could, Kathi shared in it, and absorbed the news that came from abroad, much of it from men who still worked in the disjointed establishments of the former Banco di Niccolò. Julius, the handsome lawyer, wrote from Germany and so did his partner Father Moriz and Govaerts their deputy. According to Julius, all business was suffering in the interregnum between the old Duke and the little Duchess’s new husband. According to Moriz, Julius had become the most popular widower in Cologne, to the amazement of his step-daughter Bonne who, of course, was still mourning her mother. They both expressed anxiety about Adorne, and about Robin.
News came from England: the King’s brother Clarence was under a shadow, and both royal marriage proposals were politely turned down. Meg was free. Kathi, who had made a first, cautious response to the cordial invitations from Court, found that Meg still possessed the attributes of eight, and assumed that Kathi was permanently fourteen. It was quite pleasant, in a confused way. The older sister, Mary, was absent, but Meg presented her to the Queen. It was less pleasant to be called Katelijne Sersanders of Bruges: the crippled Berecrofts boy’s dame, you remember? The Queen, however, had retrieved her good-sister’s gaffe with some skill, and when addressed in her own language, had expressed pleasure, but not the painful relief of her first years. She had been twelve years old when she came from Denmark to Scotland.
Will Roger dropped in. Once he brought a large hearty choir, and made it sing under Robin’s window. The children cried. Brought indoors, choir dismissed, he performed on the whistle and drank, and exchanged stories with Nicholas, so that Robin’s head switched from the one to the other. Robin said, ‘I’m supposed to have soothing music.’
‘Well, if you’re out of your head, I’ll give you it,’ said Whistle Willie, his grey hair on end. ‘But if you’re not, please excuse me. I get enough of that in the Castle. That young Johndie Mar is a devil.’
‘With drink?’ Nicholas said.
Kathi got up from her stool. ‘Do you remember Hugo the painter in Bruges? Hugo vander Goes? Dr Andreas said he’s having to go into a monastery. He drinks, and thinks he can’t paint, and they play soothing music to help him. He’s doing Canon Bonkle’s altar-piece.’
‘It doesn’t sound as if he’s doing it,’ Robin said. ‘So why is Willie playing up at the Castle? Are they all moody?’
There was a little silence. Kathi glanced at Nicholas and said, watching him, ‘Dr Andreas said something in Bruges. Something he suspected, or divined about their health. He didn’t say what it was.’
‘So come on,’ Robin said. ‘You’re the diviner. What’s wrong, Nicol?’ He had taken, recently, to this style of addressing Nicholas, and no one had commented, least of all the man he used to call ‘sir’.
Nicholas said, ‘Short tempers, poor concentration, varying amounts of intellectual capacity. They’re very like one another. Ask Tom Yare’s friend Scheves. And a streak of lunacy, if you want to throw in John of Mar.’
‘And the recently excommunicated Archbishop Patrick Graham, whom your kind offices elevated,’ said Willie Roger. ‘He went clean crazy, and thought he was the Pontiff. And he was a second cousin, wasn’t he, of the King’s?’
‘Is,’ Nicholas said. ‘Sad things are happening to him even as we speak. So who’s mad in your family?’
‘Me,’ said Willie Roger. ‘When I don’t get what I want. And what I want is that, sung immediately.’
That was a piece of hideously difficult music, scribbled on ecclesiastical vellum. The composer, said Willie, was one of the Arnots. Nicholas sang, and Robin became very silent, so that they went back to chaffing again.
Nicholas, too, spent this time observing and learning. Henry de St Pol, returned to the home of his grandfather, did not go out until his face healed. After that, he divided his time between his guard duty, his new stud, and Leith, where he had begun to take a keen interest in coastal shipping.