Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [141]
AFTER THE FIRST, involuntary separation because of the Marie, it became more normal for Gelis to work apart from Nicholas from time to time, as well as closely with him. She found she needed both. It still left her breathless, the speed and precision with which Nicholas acted, the volume of energy which compressed itself into each hour. She took his place sometimes, at meetings in the High Street, in the Canongate, in Leith, and was fully accepted, as she had been in Bruges: many women—Cants and Yares, Prestons and Williamsons—helped to run family businesses in every degree, from manufacturing the goods down to shipping them. She made herself get on well with them all; then suddenly found that she liked them.
She worked with Nicholas, twice, on small dramatic productions which echoed the great one that he and Roger had once created for the King. These were also for the Court, with the difference that the Court was to perform them.
It was part of the design, in which they all played a part, to influence the King and his brothers and sisters in small ways which were not open to their official counsellors. The King, for example, was prone to bursts of activity between periods of relative quiescence. Whereas his counterparts on the continent moved their courts to remote regions daily, hunted, interviewed envoys, held council meetings, dictated letters by the score to their local commanders, James would possibly rally his forces and leave Edinburgh if some trouble broke out in the north or northwest, but was as likely to leave Colin Argyll to deal with it. Most of the time, he went nowhere if he could help it, except to hunt, and filled the evenings with indoor social pursuits in which gambling and drinking played a fair part. At the same time, he had shown in the past a vivid interest in pushing elaborate claims to lands in France and in Guelders, much as his father did when even younger; and was the first to offer to mediate in any high-level dispute overseas. The only time he displayed an interest in building and furnishing was when foreign envoys were due, and, to that end, he had become deeply anxious to make money. Some of the ways in which he did it were questionable.
Will Roger said, ‘He’s timid. All his bishops, his merchants, his foreign-trained statesmen bring him back tales of the glories of fifteenth-century civilisation, and the fearful blots like poor, boorish Vienna. His grandfather married his daughters all over Europe. The Kings of Scotland have always been courted by everybody because they can make trouble with England. Now he’s at peace with England, and he wants to make his mark, but won’t take advice. Play-acting, he needs.’
‘I thought you said kings shouldn’t do it,’ Nicholas had said. They had come together, as usual, in a room off Trinity College Church, and Bishop Spens had come across from his new hospice, with smears on his robes.
‘I said the confident ones shouldn’t,’ said Whistle Willie. ‘It gives away how well trained they are. They’ve got to be. It’s like being a bishop. They’re on show all the time. They’ve got to be trained how to speak and to dress and to walk, but it’s got to seem natural. Yes, Bishop?’
‘Well, everyone has to act in this life: it’s good manners,’ said Thomas Spens. A clever, incisive man, he would never tread boards himself: age had given him a stoop like the crook of his crosier. ‘But part of James’s trouble is envy of Sandy. You’ll have to write a play with no parts for young brothers. How is Sandy, Nicholas?’
‘Restless,’ Nicholas said. In front of Gelis, he didn’t always go into detail about how he was handling Albany. It was another form of