Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [107]
Nicholas, beginning to speak, was overridden by Tobie.
‘John?’ said Dr Tobias. ‘John has come to Scotland?’
‘He decided, eventually,’ Andreas said. He was already moving towards Nicholas, who was standing quite still.
Nicholas said, ‘What others?’
‘Your wife and son,’ said Dr Andreas. ‘Forgive me. Of course, you couldn’t know; I had forgotten. Adorne and I left the ship to come here. Your wife and son have gone with le Grant and their servants straight to Edinburgh. They will be there when you reach it.’
The doctor had taken his arm, as if something in his face gave cause for alarm, or as if he, Nicholas, were Adorne. At the door of the chapel, the hangings parted as a small person quickly emerged and looked about. Kathi, hunting him. She darted over. ‘Nicholas! Gelis and Jodi were on the same ship.’
‘I’ve just heard,’ he said. ‘Why?’ His voice cracked.
‘It doesn’t matter why,’ Kathi said. ‘You can protect them. They’re here. They’re here.’ She looked round. ‘Tobie?’
‘I’ll go with him,’ said Tobie. ‘Sir Oliver, you don’t mind if some of us leave? M. de Fleury’s wife is in Edinburgh.’
He didn’t say, as he might have done, And so is David de Salmeton, who has been waiting for this. And the brat St Pol, who has already once tried to get rid of Jodi. And Robin, who is not ready, yet, to share his protectors.
Kathi, with the aid of a groom, was dragging over Adorne’s horse, and Andreas’s own. ‘Take these. They can come back with yours.’
Her voice was not cracked; it was fierce. Nicholas drew breath, and walked across, and curled his hand over hers as it lay on the reins. He said, ‘I’ve just realised what you said. Gelis and Jodi are in Edinburgh.’
Oliver Sinclair studied de Fleury. He had a remarkable facility, the Burgundian, for switching expressions. The light in his face was reflected, Sinclair observed, in the young woman’s; the light, still mixed with the pain.
The young woman, Adorne’s niece, said, ‘You should listen.’
FOR GELIS, DISEMBARKING and travelling to Edinburgh, this was not a first marriage she had come to consummate, nor even a second: she and Nicholas had already marked with a few days of desperate happiness the end of their war of eight years. Since then, five months had gone by, and she could bear it no longer. Adorne’s departure had presented an opportunity. Against orders, blindly rebellious, she had come. So we, from evil thorns, shall harvest grapes.
The day seemed as radiant as her mood. Seagulls gleamed; the sea whispered over the bar; banners rustled in the warm breeze. John, subtly provoked by his old mistress the ocean, had arranged the disembarking with abrasive efficiency and a touch of reluctance that gladdened Gelis’s heart. Then they set off, John and herself with their servants on horseback, and Jodi riding beside her, sharing a saddle with Manoli, his friend and his bodyguard, whose presence, with John, was meant to reassure Nicholas. Look, we are safe. Between you all, how could we possibly come to any harm?
A boy of eight remembers a place where he once lived with his father and mother and Mistress Clémence who used to be his nurse, and kept a parrot, and played in gardens, and slid on ice, and got sweetmeats for being ill, and marchpane from his wee Aunty Bel, and sat on the knee of a man called Whistle Willie in the Queen’s room up at the Castle. Jodi said, ‘Will we see Whistle Willie?’
‘Yes,’ said Gelis.
‘Will we see Aunty Bel?’
‘Yes. I hope so.’
‘Will we see Robin? Will he be better?’
‘He’ll want to see you. He is better, but he has to lie in his bed.’
Silence. ‘So who else will I see?’
They had been over all this a dozen times. She had told him, on Nicholas’s advice, that his silly cousin Henry was up at the Castle, so that Jodi would never even see him. She had told him that they would visit Dr Tobie and Mistress Clémence very soon. She had told him that Henry’s fat grandfather sometimes came to Edinburgh, but that he was too old to harm anyone now, and Jodi had to be sorry for him. She had explained that Robin’s