Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [102]
David Simpson, passing one day, called on Robin, but was regretfully turned away, on medical grounds, by Mistress Clémence. He did not trouble to return and Nicholas, informed, recognised it for the cynical nudge that it was. Comfortably surrounded by bodyguards, David was waiting. David had relied on the St Pols to make life insupportable for his victim but, failing that, might condescend to provoke Nicholas into action himself. As Nicholas, of course, was presently proposing to do for friend David. But not until Robin’s future was as secure as might be.
In all of it, he had the support of Tobie and Clémence. The medical care that had brought Robin alive from Nancy was still there, bolstered now and then by unobtrusive help from the Castle, from the circle of physicians who still, no matter what their ostensible offices, watched over the medical needs of the Crown. Soon, as Robin grew self-sufficient, Tobie would profit from a wider circle of interests, rediscovering the clients and friends of his previous stay. Now he was beginning to emerge from the nausea and weariness of the journey, and to rediscover the satisfactions of disagreeing, often, with Nicholas. He found the battles stimulating, and Nicholas quite often lost. Only occasionally would Tobie revert to the wretchedness that lay behind him, some of it evidenced in his concern for the other prisoner, John le Grant. Unhurt in a camp full of injured, alive in a field full of dead, John had at first retreated, as Tobie had, into the single-minded campaign to save Robin. That done, he had withdrawn into himself. Tobie had advised Gelis what to do, before he left.
‘What?’ had said Nicholas.
‘Nothing,’ said Tobie.
Nicholas himself, unmolested, began to move out of Edinburgh, to Stirling, to Dundee, to St Johnstoun of Perth. He, too, was interested in shipping. He was interested in currency. He talked to goldsmiths, and carried his findings not only to the Master of Berecrofts and Robin, but to the Councillors of the King. He began to know Argyll well, and understand some of his tongue and appreciate his subtlety. He held Avandale in the kind of respect that he had given, as a boy, to Adorne. But Avandale was royal, and you didn’t forget it, any more than you forgot the Orkney antecedents of Oliver Sinclair Royal, but without the royal flaws, as Bishop Kennedy had been.
So there was a lull. It wouldn’t be permanent, but it let him establish the groundwork of what he wanted to do. With the lengthening peace, the country had a chance to start building. In England, in France, in Burgundy, the effects of the Duke of Burgundy’s death, of the Duchess’s union, were surely being assimilated by now.
Even when the news came, in June, that Prosper de Camulio, the Papal Collector, had been arrested by the Milanese as a traitor and was not therefore returning to Scotland, it seemed to Nicholas that Simpson, with his own position to consolidate, would not change his tactics towards his victims just yet. Robin was slowly responding, Phemie was flourishing, Nicholas himself was doing what he had set himself to do. He beguiled himself with the idea that if Phemie’s child were born in July, he might even sail with her in August to Bruges, and spend time there with Gelis and Jodi. But that would excise two full months from his programme, and lengthen this interminable separation in the end. Also, David might follow him. It was Gelis for whom David was waiting.
All the time, Nicholas