Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [124]
‘Explain what?’ said Tobie.
‘Well, that Nicholas would have dropped just as fast if he’d breathed on him.’
‘Why?’ said Tobie. You could tell that Tobie’s mind, to that point, had been on other things. Rigid with bandaging, Nicholas felt like Tam Cochrane’s collapsed buckram pillar. Lying flat in the dust. Reading ledgers. To hell, to hell with it all.
‘Why did Nicholas want you to hit him? To make Robin feel sorry for him,’ Kathi answered herself. ‘He’s gone grey again.’ She spoke calmly. Her eyes had darkened.
John said, ‘Nicholas?’ and Nicholas opened his eyes with reluctance. He was trying to breathe very shallowly. He even thought of dumb language, translated by Tobie, but his hands were trussed up. He said in a secretive voice, ‘It’s all right. I meant you to do it. Look, of course it’s all right if you want to go home. But Robin has a Sersanders wife; it would be dangerous. And if Kathi went, Adorne would have to follow them both.’
John was still masking his face with one hand. He wiped his lips with the back of the other. Nicholas said, ‘You saw what I didn’t see. He doesn’t want to be a merchant; he wants the excitement of war. You gave him back his dream, for a bit, and he came close to trying for it. If he decides against it, then it’s his own decision, not yours or mine.’
‘Based on a piece of play-acting,’ Tobie said. He sneezed furiously.
Kathi said, ‘But we are all acting, Robin included. We’re pretending to attitudes that haven’t yet come about, to bridge the gap until they do come about. Do you think Robin doesn’t know the trials, the humiliation that his dream would really entail? Now he has an excuse to stay. Now Nicholas must make sure that he creates a life for him that makes it worth while. War has a lot of different faces. Chivalry is one of them. Teaching is another.’
‘I could help,’ John le Grant said. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve. ‘Nicol, the hurt that ye cause.’
‘It was probably the only way,’ Kathi said. ‘But though we’ll all help, it’s Nicholas who will have to take the responsibility for Robin. And for himself. I gather you are grinding the faces of the poor once again?’
‘It was havers,’ said John. ‘I knew it was. I just thought he was making it up to punish Robin. And, by God, it did.’
Nicholas was looking at Kathi. She said, ‘Robin was badly upset. But mainly because he was the cause of your quarrel. You can put that right.’ She paused. ‘Why don’t we bring him in here? Tobie can take John away for something strong in a flask. And I might even go with them.’
This time it was Tobie who was trying to send worried signals. Nicholas heaved a sigh and achieved a small nod. Running an overdue personal check, he registered a splinted left arm, two bandaged hands, a pad at the side of his head and something truly terrible when he breathed, which was presumably another lot of cracked ribs. There was also a motley assortment of throbs and pangs from bruised flesh and strained muscles. The idiot had kicked him.
Of course he had. Nicholas had asked for it. The whole thing had got out of hand, that was all. John said, ‘I’ve made you the same as him.’
Nicholas said, ‘We all got into his hell for a short time. My fault, if you want to award points. Now we’re all going to get out. Including Robin.’
ROBIN SAID, ‘You don’t mind my lying here?’
The others had gone, and Nicholas had wakened to find himself still in John’s bed, propped with pillows, and Robin of Berecrofts equally propped at his side, gazing at him with his earnest schoolboy face and fall of fine hair and pellucid eyes. He wore shirt and hose, whereas Nicholas wore hose and bandages. There was a foot of space between them. The bed was a Genoese four-poster, its carvings running to cherubs. The hangings were silk, and all round the tester pranced dimpled infants with wreaths and pert fundaments. Robin said, ‘You look terrible.’
There was something in his voice. Nicholas looked at him. Robin added, ‘I hope John apologised.’ The candlelight flared, and his eyes glinted.
Nicholas said, ‘So did you. You took it bloody seriously