Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [136]
‘No. Do you want me to lend you some money?’ Nicholas said. ‘I did better than you did out of the cockroach championship.’
Henry’s blue eyes gleamed. Then he said, ‘Go to hell,’ and walked off.
Up, and down. But his welcome back home, after the busy, talkative journey with Jodi, was worth it all. Ah, his welcome.
HIS FEAST DAY came and went, signalling that he was about to become a year older. On the Eve of St Nicholas, there was a Mass at the Abbey Church of Holyrood, and Sandy Albany gave a feast for him in the royal apartments. Ten days later, on the day he stubbornly maintained as the anniversary of his birth, Kathi provided a repast, pleasantly set out for him and for Gelis in the big upper room of her Canongate house, and shared with an amazing number of the persons whom he knew and liked best, including those who set to noisy music, on demand, the scurrilous words written by Robin on the underside of their platters. And among the adults were the children whose lives were now also part of his own: Margaret of Berecrofts, a rosy, formidable character of nearly three, in the patient charge of her adored Jodi, with Rankin pattering behind. And in an upstairs room, brought for the occasion, a wicker cradle containing within its muslin freshness a sleeping infant called Efemie Adorne, with her father’s hand pensively guiding its sway.
Leaving the room, Nicholas had found Kathi just outside, waiting to take him downstairs. He said, ‘He is glad to have her. I was afraid he would resent it.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Mind you, it’s some time since any uncle of mine had a close acquaintance with babies. If she wakes, he will rush out and be replaced by three nurses. Have you heard about Honoria?’
‘It’s going to be something crude,’ he said hopefully. ‘One of the dirtier bits from Davie Simpson’s selections from Ovid?’
‘You are having a good birthday,’ Kathi said. She negotiated the stair and halted on a small landing, whose window gave a view of Tobie’s wing and a courtyard. ‘Don’t you remember Loathsome Ben Bailzie, the assiduous suitor?’
‘No. I knew it was going to be a dirty story,’ said Nicholas. ‘Look. I can see Tobie crossing the courtyard. He’s carrying a duck.’
‘He’s carrying a goose. It’s your present. You must remember Ben Bailzie. He was on my marriage list. He was practically in my marriage-bed. You used to encourage him.’
‘Oh, him!’ Nicholas said. It was a goose. He said, ‘And there’s Clémence. She’s got a goose too.’
‘Well, remember,’ said Kathi with irritation. ‘The Bailzies all want to be rich, and no one ever wants to marry them, so they have a family policy of foisting parenthood on very young virgins of both sexes and then offering nobly to marry them.’
‘It’s a nice thought,’ said Nicholas. ‘But two geese? Anyway, if Ben Bailzie is the fellow I’m thinking of, I’d be amazed if he could seduce a virgin of one sex, never mind two. You aren’t thinking of oysters? They’d go well before geese, if there’s time to cook them before he arrives. Or maybe he’s come?’
‘No,’ said Kathi carefully. She put her hands on the window-sill and sat on it. ‘Honoria has come. Ben Bailzie’s daughter. He got a rich young virgin in the family way and then was reluctantly compelled to marry her. Result, Honoria.’
‘And I encouraged him?’ Nicholas said, dragging his eyes from the geese. ‘You mean, if I’d succeeded, you might be Mistress Katelinje, spouse of Bailzie and precipitate mother of Honoria? Margaret and Rankin wouldn’t like it at all.’
There was a silence, during which Katelinje Sersanders coloured from her brow to her throat, and Nicholas took a breath and then let it out slowly, for he had made the connection; had belatedly realised why she was talking this nonsense. And he was not in a good timber house in the Canongate of Edinburgh at all. He was standing in flickering darkness by the bank of a river, while behind him flames rose from the place of a would-be seduction, attempted by a fierce, lonely man recently dead. Pursued by the same lurid light, Robin, lissom, mobile, an anguished