Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [105]
John le Grant spoke. ‘Of course it’s nonsense. A pendulum never saved anyone, or visions or prayers that I know of. If anyone was sending messages to Nicol, they didn’t do him much good. Or Robin: Or Astorre.’
‘I agree,’ said Andreas. ‘But do we blame the unseen for what happened? No one is consciously trying to reach Nicholas from beyond the barrier of life. If such intangible transmissions exist, they are involuntary, and harmless. Should we not be thinking of Lord Cortachy, rather than this?’
‘I was. I am,’ Gelis said.
‘Then pray,’ said Dr Andreas. ‘John does not agree, but for the rest of us, there is comfort in prayer.’
The word came later, from the courtroom over which Anselm Adorne had himself presided so often, before judges who once were his equals or underlings, and now were not.
The prisoners Anselm Adorne, Jean de Baenst and Paul van Overtweldt had all been tried, and found guilty. The last two were stripped of all they possessed, and immured in a monastic community, to be separated from their families until death. Anselm Adorne was disgraced. His punishment was to walk in solemn parade, dressed in mourning before all those he had deceived; and to be excluded for ever from all the public activities of the city of Bruges.
‘But his life!’ Gelis said. ‘He has his life?’
‘They all have their lives. Through the intervention of the Zwaer Deken, the Council of Grand Deans of the Guilds.’
‘And Phemie can come here then? They can be married!’
It was Diniz who said, ‘Gelis, he is disgraced. Don’t you understand? After two hundred years of his family’s service to Flanders, he has to walk like a beggar before his own people, apologising for something he didn’t do. He can never hold public office. He can belong to no clubs, no societies, and soon will lose all common ground with his friends, and become an embarrassment. They might as well have killed him.’
‘That is going too far,’ said Andreas. ‘Time may bring a change. He is not incarcerated. He is not in a convent. He must face something, for sure, that I would wish on no man; but his reserves are profound. With a new young family to accompany him, he can go on to make a new life.’
‘Here?’ said Gelis.
‘It would take time. But yes, why not here? Or with the van Borselens at Zeeland, or with his son Jan in Rome or in Naples? Only Genoa, for an Adorno, would be unwise. He could survive anywhere else, and return when he pleases.’
She looked at him dry-eyed. ‘I am afraid to go and see him,’ she said. ‘I think he will think as Diniz does. Two hundred years in Flanders. That great house, freely lent to the state whenever the state wished to borrow it. That magnificent church, draining his personal pocket, built on Flemish soil as a replica of the Holy Sepulchre, to the glory of God and this town. All his illustrious forebears; all he has brilliantly achieved to make them proud of him; all to end in this. He will think, too, that they might as well have killed him.’
‘No,’ said Andreas. ‘He is stronger than you know. You have travelled with him in times of adversity. During these last weeks he has accepted you as a friend. But you have not stood in opposition to him, for example, as your husband has. Your husband knows the measure of Anselm Adorne.’
EUPHEMIA ADORNE WAS born into the world in the last days of June, and was carried to the private oratory within the Castle of Roslin, where she was baptised. As the child of an unmarried mother, she was privileged to be received into the Church by the compassionate hands of the churchman-physician who was to be Archbishop of St Andrews, and she was held at the font by her first cousins, Anselm and Katelijne Sersanders.
From there, she was returned to her cradle, while those who had attended her walked over the bridge and climbed, in silence, the winding, tree-shaded path to the unfinished church of the Sinclairs, where the northern door was hung with black and white and grey linen. And inside they knelt, still in silence, before the