Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [172]
‘And the Earl of Angus?’ Nicholas asked.
‘Probably. Archibald. Purves. Jardine of Applegarth. There are a number of good friends whom he’ll call upon,’ Avandale said. ‘Your David Simpson left him with a few unwelcome ideas. It is really rather unfortunate.’ He looked puzzled.
Sometimes the Chancellor was explicit. Sometimes it was all done with silence, and charm. Nicholas said, ‘Do you want me to follow him?’
And Avandale assumed a conjectural look, as if assessing a new kind of taste, and said, ‘We leave you to do anything, my dear Nicol, that you think to be wise. But we should rather like you to come back to Edinburgh.’
We. Argyll had been out of town, as Drew had. It was serious enough, then, to have brought them all back.
But of course it was.
Avandale left almost at once. Nicholas gathered his party and vacated Beltrees that same day. They would rest at Paisley that night, and next morning he would race on alone, leaving Gelis and Tobie to follow with Robin.
There was no one in Beltrees when they departed. Semple had taken the guards, and there were no servants left to tend the glorious chambers with all their exquisite treasures which their owner could no longer enjoy. The doors were locked, the shutters closed, the gates barred, and the churned mud of its mishandling left around it. Arriving, Gelis had looked down upon a glittering travesty. Departing, in the low afternoon light, she was thankful to leave it behind in the darkening hollow, this detritus of gold leaf and obscene gargoyle, with the old, seemly tower standing raffish and shamed in its midst.
They were a mile away when the thunderclap came, which set the horses kicking and stamping and caused Tobie to look back and swallow.
Thunder had not caused the black smoke that blotted out the red sun at their rear. Nor was it the lurid glare of the sun that mounted the sky, broadening and brightening, and then blasting again into fury.
Where, in this douce countryside, was there a place of terror like that; a mine powerful enough to erupt in that fashion, or to burn with such fury?
There was one place.
Gelis spoke in a whisper. ‘The kegs in the vaults? Why was the gunpowder there?’
Tobie looked at her. She said, ‘And slow-matches. I saw slow-matches, cold.’
‘Simpson meant to set them,’ Nicholas said. ‘Once we had arrived and his own men had gone.’
He had dismounted to soothe Robin’s horses, and answered without looking up, his arms on the back of one shivering bay. ‘Semple thought he probably intended to stay and die with us. You, and Robin, and Tobie, and Wodman and me. And Henry, of course, as it turned out. Next to St Pol, he would have been pleased to take Henry with him.’
The smoke rose. Another explosion reverberated through the air, and another. Those would be the stores. Then, as the heat took hold, there would be the other objects that would turn white, and melt, and explode. The painted glass and the majolica tableware and the tiles. The tapestries would singe and then burn; the silks flare. The carved chairs and coffers would burst into crackling flame, and the plaster ceilings blacken and fall, as the rafters caught fire, and the precious things from one room crashed down to the inferno below.
There was no human life there; there were no animals. Only a fortune in gold, converted to inflammable artefacts.
Someone spoke, very low.
‘I take my refuge in the Lord of the dawn
from the evil in what He created,
and from the evil of the dusk when it envelops,
and from the evil of witches who blow on knots,
and from the evil of the envier when he envies.’
Robin said softly, ‘Nicholas?’ And Gelis, dismounting, went to her husband, who stood smoothing the warm hide of the horse, over and over.
She said, ‘Come here.’ And when he turned, folded him into her arms.
He spoke presently, his lips in her hair. ‘It was built for all the wrong reasons. I should have destroyed it the first time. But instead, someone else came, and made it worse. I couldn’t leave it at that.’
She released