Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [127]
Bel of Cuthilgurdy turned her back on him and spoke to the porter. ‘Ye did quite right. He was anxious not to see me. But he’s right as well; if ye’d tried to stop me, I’d have got them to fire. What’s your name?’
This time, she had his full attention. He said, ‘Oswald, my lady.’
‘Well, Oswald,’ she said. ‘If he turns ye off, you come to me.’
INDOORS: ‘YOU CAME to purloin my staff. You see how my caution was justified,’ said the fat man. They were in the chamber she knew so well from the old days, when she had come across from her house to sit here with Jordan of St Pol and Lucia his daughter. And before that.
Bel said, ‘What did he say? What did Nicholas say that so angered you?’
The fat man sighed. Today, instead of his gown and swathed hat, he wore a cap over the long tangle of once-flaxen hair, and a linen shirt under his house-robe. He said, ‘I knew that was why you were here. When shall I ever persuade you that I cannot be angered by Claes? He may irritate me for the moment. He may inconvenience me, so that I take some pleasure in reprimanding him, in whatever degree the injury warrants. It is not impossible that I shall kill him one day, although I am increasingly moved to leave that task to the delectable David …’
‘Davie Simpson tried to kill me, the last time we met.’
‘But Wodman prevented him. Or the child’s bodyguard, as I remember. It won’t happen again.’
‘Won’t it? Can you tell me to my face that you haven’t made a pact with Davie Simpson to harm Nicholas?’
He gazed at her, mildly surprised. ‘Did de Fleury say that?’
‘No, he didn’t. I guessed, for I know you. It’s true?’
The surprise changed to a display of mild pleasure. ‘Simpson thinks that it’s true. Otherwise we might have seen some rather crude, precipitate action. Now the circumstances are right, and I am quite content to leave the perpetration to David, God’s Darling.’
‘But will he let you do nothing?’ said Bel. ‘He helped lift the charges that let you come back to Scotland. He proved you didn’t stash away French money, someone else did.’
‘I wonder who?’ said St Pol.
‘It’s all past. But I know you. You’ve come back, and there’s nothing to do, and you’re restless. And Davie won’t leave you alone. Whatever he’s planning for Nicol, he’ll implicate you. You expelled him, remember.’
‘So what is he planning?’ said the fat man.
Bel looked at him. ‘Ye ken what he’s doing. What Nicol did, for other reasons. The Court loves him. The King spends evenings with him at the lute or the dice; Mar goes whoring and hunting; the Princesses listen to French tales of illicit lovers, and let him translate Latin books he smuggles in for them. I’m told his delivery’s a treat. And away from Court, he’s using Newbattle to build himself a trading empire, so that he can invest the profits in land.’
‘It sounds familiar,’ St Pol said. ‘The Daffychino, would you say? He always thought he should be the head of my recent company. Fortunately, he hasn’t the brains.’
‘Sometimes,’ said Bel, ‘ye can do mair harm without brains than with them. If he brings you down, he brings Henry too. If he brings Nicholas down, he brings Jordan.’
‘Who, I am now told, resembles Nicholas more than he ever did. Henry is greatly relieved,’ St Pol said. ‘He always feared that Jordan was born of his father and Gelis. You were saying that Simpson is cultivating John of Mar?’
‘I was. And Mar—are ye surprised?—is pursuing a feud against Henry. If ye do nothing,’ said Bel, ‘ye’ll fall to Davie Simpson’s hand, one way or another, so soon as he’s got rid of Nicholas. And then he’ll step in, and add Kilmirren to Beltrees.’
‘Bel,’ said Jordan de St Pol. ‘As you know, I am a great admirer of your acumen. If possible, it improves with the years. I think your reading of the situation is flawless. I only wish to say that, if you have thought of it, then Claes certainly has. And that all you describe will only happen if Claes himself succumbs to David Simpson, which seems unlikely to me.’
‘Under normal circumstances, yes,