Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [165]
‘Yes it is, since you made me free Simpson,’ Henry said. ‘He might escape you. I’ll see that he’s taken.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ Nicholas said. She could make out his eyes as he said it. And the deepened lines by his mouth, and the deliberate set of his shoulders, moving only to the gait of his horse. She could make out woodlands from moor, and then sky from a line of low hills in the distance. In a long black hollow, water glinted. By the time they reached it and turned their horses up the slope from its banks, points of light could be seen, and the shapeless smoke of newly stirred fires, grey in the darkness.
She knew where she was, for she had taken this way to Beltrees with Bel. The path they were climbing led to the ridge above Simpson’s castle, which had once belonged to Nicholas. And the dark blur they had passed at the loch-end was Elliotstoun Castle, the home of the Semples.
It was empty. They knew as much from Wodman’s second scout, who had discovered it lightless and unresponsive when sent ahead to find out what he could. The same man, casting about, had found a herdsman to tell him that a party of horse had arrived some hours since, and made its way up the same ridge they were climbing, followed after some time by a single rider.
It could be anyone. They had to believe that it was the detachment carrying Robin, followed by Simpson himself. In which case, Simpson’s plan had succeeded. He was locked in his tower, waiting to bargain with Nicholas.
Nicholas said, ‘I think we dismount. Henry, you glitter. Stay here with the horses and Andro’s man. Gelis—’
‘I’m coming,’ she said. They spoke in murmurs. The harness chinked, and was still as the tired horses drooped. Their footsteps sank into grass. It was so quiet that a raucous pulsing of gulls’ cries was shocking. A blackbird uttered a query, and was answered, and far below, on the water, a line of duck rose with a paddling splash. Tobie trudged up the slope with her, and they lay down beside Andro and Nicholas at the edge of the ridge. Below, she recalled, was a gentle hollow, sunlit by day, but a pool of darkness by night. Beyond was the sky, free of cloud to the south and east. The stillness before dawn in the country; the hour that refreshes the soul.
Of course, they were expected. Approaching, they had put out their torches, but the sound of their horses would carry. Simpson’s scouts would have seen them, and reported back to the fortress. We can negotiate. There is only a handful of men, and a woman. Gelis closed her eyes, and opened them, and looked down not into darkness, but into the searing bright bower of elfland, standing open, and vile, to receive her.
She choked. Then Nicholas’s hand closed over hers, and she looked again, with her mind.
The tower of Beltrees lay like a courtesan in its gardens below her, coruscating with light; garlanded with lanterns; set with lamps and torchières and candelabra which sparkled and flickered and danced in the clear, icy air. A whimsy; a seemingly innocent gesture; a welcome from a dangerous man who wished to indicate that he, and he alone, was master here. She understood. Her heart slowing, she set it aside, and studied the buildings.
She had last seen this place as Tam Cochrane had designed it for Nicholas: the old keep restored and embellished; and the guest-houses, chapel and hall added in harmony with it, spare of ornament and simple in line, round three sides of a square. All the extravagance had been reserved for within.
Now she saw what David Simpson had done, through the architect he had employed in place of Tam. Cochrane’s refusal no longer surprised her. In remaking Beltrees, Davie Simpson had debauched his own tastes to achieve a work of outrageous vulgarity. Now the walls, patterned, coloured and gilded, had grown upper storeys with lavish dormers encrusted with foliage and offensive grotesques. False chimneys, gnarled with sculpture, rose into the sky. The stables