Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [128]
‘Of course. The cripple, and the all-too-vigorous helpmeet. Between the spearpoint and the sword-edge indeed. Are they subject to breeding impulses, do you think?’ asked the fat man. He had finished the mutchkin he had been drinking when she arrived. She had refused refreshment. ‘Is it merely a transient pairing, or are they proposing to multiply?’
‘I have no idea,’ said Mistress Bel shortly. ‘So what will you do?’
‘I thought I had told you,’ he said. ‘I wish my importunate Claes to be chastised. I am delegating the task to David Simpson. If it is beyond Simpson, he will die. If it is not beyond him, he will still die, for I shall kill him myself … What was it you said of me always? That I wasn’t worth the baptism water? And what are you worth, Mistress Bel? Standing on a revolving lectern, complaining? Have you told Claes anything?’
‘No,’ she said. Then she added, ‘I have told him my son’s dead.’
His face changed. He said, ‘I should have begun—I failed to speak of it because of other things. Forgive me. I was very sorry.’ He paused and said, ‘Where will you live?’
‘At Stirling,’ she said. ‘And in Edinburgh at your house, if I may.’
‘Or here,’ he said. ‘Simpson will not sell back your own, but there are—what shall I call them?—the family rooms here.’
‘You may need them,’ she said, ‘if Simon comes back.’
‘He won’t,’ he said. ‘I have forbidden him.’
She said, ‘Then why don’t you go back to Madeira yourself? You need a business to run.’
‘I also like watching puppets,’ he said. ‘Tell that to your friend Claes, when you see him.’
‘And what else?’ said Bel. ‘You never said what you’d do if Davie died, and Nicholas didn’t.’
‘God at his eye-window knows,’ said Kilmirren. ‘I haven’t decided. I like to surprise myself.’
‘I THINK,’ SAID Gelis, ‘you should do something about Davie Simpson. Are you as uncomfortable as you look?’
‘Wait,’ said Nicholas. ‘No, that’s worse. I am doing something about Davie Simpson.’
‘What?’
‘What he’s doing to me. Upsetting his schemes where I can.’
‘It doesn’t seem to be very effective,’ Gelis said.
‘It isn’t. That’s the whole idea. Then he launches a really big scheme to display his infinite superiority.’
‘Like Fat Father Jordan. He created the Vatachino expecting to crush you before he got rid of you.’
‘That’s right. He doesn’t have many original ideas, David. It’s no good.’
‘I know it’s no good. It’s too soon to try. But at least, whatever you did, it’s made Robin happy. Tobie says he’s transformed.’
‘Well, I bloody wish I hadn’t done it,’ Nicholas said.
• • •
TOWARDS THE END of that year, free at last from restraint, Nicholas recognised this period of incoherence for what it was: a bridge that led from the catastrophe of the Duke’s death to a new and as yet dimly realised future. He had come to Scotland with clear objectives but had not yet attained them, partly because he had been side-tracked by circumstances. And now he seemed committed to something much more challenging and protracted, with responsibility not only to his own family, but to the men who had left Bruges to join him. He was not short of plans. He faced the future in a state not far short of euphoria. But, imperatively, he must talk to Adorne.
Gelis would have had him do this at once, but instead, Nicholas had waited. He had made his reconnaissance. Adorne must do the same. Only then could there be any profit in talking.
In the end, it was Adorne himself who approached him, by means of a gift—a high-tempered, light-footed horse of the kind Nicholas had watched die in the lists at the Vespers rehearsal. It was brought, with an invitation, by a groom in Cortachy livery whom Nicholas sent back, rewarded, with an answer. Presently, he made his way down the High Street to the substantial house to which Adorne had now moved, together with Dr Andreas and Andro Wodman. There was enough space, in its several storeys, to house a young child and its nurse, as well as public rooms and offices and service quarters. It