Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [112]
It was Andro Wodman, the veteran Archer, who diagnosed the root trouble and, one day in the Berecrofts house, put it to Nicholas, who had called. While Adorne remained with Andreas in Roslin, the double house in the Canongate had become home to several new people: the home and offices occupied by Sersanders now housed John le Grant as well as the Conservator, and opened its doors to the frequent visits of the sailing-master Crackbene, and Dr Tobie. At present, the inhabitants were merely a coterie. They were also, you might say, a company in embryo, awaiting instructions from two very different men.
Both of these, for personal reasons, were at present preoccupied; and the Conservator, like Kathi, was not censorious. Nevertheless, when Nicholas, crossing the road, raised the problem of Robin, Wodman gave his opinion. ‘Of course he’s moody. That’s because you and Tobie are wrong. Robin doesn’t want to talk about business at all. He wants to talk about war. So does John. They just don’t realise it.’
John wasn’t there. John, since his return, had resorted to the same pugnacious isolation he had adopted, according to Gelis, in Bruges. Nicholas stared at Wodman, whose damaged nose, since the oysters, lent a hooting quality to his lightest remark. ‘You think so?’
‘I’ve seen it before. You’re the one they’re afraid of. You’ll have to take the lead.’
By now, Nicholas knew that there were men who were afraid of him, because he intended them to be. Applied to John or Robin, it was mad.
Except that, God knew, fear took different forms, and arose for different reasons. Pride, for instance. He said, ‘Then I suppose I’d better go and talk war to them.’
‘That’s right,’ Wodman said. He had looked grim. ‘Hold an inquest.’
He hadn’t said any more, and presently Nicholas left. Thinking it through, he realised how right Wodman was. He had led Robin through such an interrogation at Berwick, but that was not enough. Men subjected to horrors require to talk about horrors, but also to try to find in them some meaning. Men whose imagination, fired by chivalry, still idealised war didn’t want to be offered some well-meaning substitute: now this is all you can manage; forget all your dreams.
That was Robin’s private misery. John’s must be different. John’s wars had been like his own, the happy exercise of a gift for ingenuity, with no particular bias, reprehensibly, towards either side. Until—a little older, a little less footloose—John had found and respected Astorre’s company, and had also discovered a reason to think about causes.
Unlike Robin, John had other passions. He could take to the sea, or make a name with his devices. But he also needed first to digest what had happened at Nancy, to pass this immovable block through his spiritual gut and get rid of it.
Kathi, when Nicholas took the idea to her, was unimpressed by the metaphor, but examined the theory in silence. In the end she said only, ‘I wonder. If you want to do it, they’re in there together just now, Robin and John, talking about the price of slab iron. It wouldn’t be hard to go in and alter the subject. It might help them. It might put them through hell on the way. It might do that anyway, and not help them.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘That’s why I asked you. I may have been doing the wrong thing all this time.’
She shook her head. ‘You couldn’t know. None of us could. What Robin needed at first is not necessarily what he needs or wants now. If we have fenced him in, you can show him that there is a gate in the fence.’
‘I’ll go to them,’ Nicholas said, and got up. ‘There are a lot of possibilities, you know. All we have to do is to find out what he wants. Then, I promise you, I’ll see that he gets it.’ He paused, and winced.
‘I know,’ Kathi said. ‘Apart from a body replacement. Nicholas, be careful. Of him, but also yourself.