Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [188]
He unwisely said what he thought.
Sandy listened. Sandy said, ‘You know so much. I’ll show you. When I go to France, you go with me.’
‘I haven’t been invited,’ Nicholas said, after a bit. He had served the King of France once, and left him for Burgundy.
‘You are not a guest,’ Sandy said. ‘You are a servant. You are part of my household.’
He tried again. ‘I am a Burgundian, Sandy.’
Sandy produced an angry leer. ‘I think not,’ he said. ‘You come from Dijon. And now Dijon is French. I may be a guest of King Louis, but you, Nicholas, are his subject.’
Which was true, as it happened. He said something. The ship was due any day. Without Sandy, they would have the sense, surely, to stop firing. In time, the castle would fall, and all those who defended it would be punished. Without Sandy, one real problem with the management of the realm would be resolved. So long as France was impotent, it was not the worst thing that could happen, to have Sandy resident there. For Sandy would not be content. And France, importuned once too often, might just possibly send him back home. Upon which he might discover that to be Earl of March and lord of Annandale and Admiral of Scotland was not inconsiderable, especially as enthusiasm for his opinions might by then have shrunk.
To begin with, Nicholas thought he was free to choose: whether to go and help guide Sandy in France, and perhaps come back with him; or whether to stay and try and counter the harm he had done. He was free in one sense: he and his family were safe now from predators. He could leave them until autumn, say, if he must. Then he realised that Sandy had meant what he said. Whether he wished it or not, he was probably going to France.
He wrote the note to Gelis, but added a little more than he had done in the Berwick epistle. He left it in his room. He thought of Jodi, and Henry, and wished he could take them both with him. He felt Robin was settled, and Kathi; and that Adorne was prepared now for the decision he would have to make soon: whether to go back to Bruges or elsewhere. The rest of his company needed no nursing: Tobie and Clémence and John. Wodman was self-sufficient. Bel … Bel was her own law. And Gelis would understand, for he had talked all this out with her, as he had done with the others. No secrets, now. Or very few, and those he could carry alone. They need never be known.
He had been right. When the ship came, they bound him as he had been bound when he came, and he was forced on board with the borrowed clothes which were all that he had. He would be one of a household of ten. Later, Sandy had him unbound and delivered a series of warnings. Then they sat about talking, and drank a lot, and Sandy said, his face flushed, ‘Nicol? I’m glad that you’re here.’
Which meant that he had probably done the right thing. Although it seemed mad to have to revisit France as part of his personal programme of atonement for Scotland. He would forget all his Gaelic, for one thing.
Part III
Without kinrik to call a man a king
It is in vayne.
Chapter 23
Thus all thar moving cummis fra the king,
Richt as the rever fro the well can spring.
WITH NICHOLAS GONE, the Flemish colony in Scotland coalesced, rather as the Bank had once done during his frequent absences abroad. Yet they were not a single foreign community, as were the aliens in Bruges. Their advocate and adviser and judge was Anselm Adorne, now established as virtual Conservator, with Wodman, a Scotsman, beside him. And linking him to the merchants were his kinsmen: his nephew Sersanders, and the Scottish family of Berecrofts, into which his niece had married. And, of course, the astrologer Andreas, from Vesalia.
Then came de Fleury’s own circle: his lady from Zeeland, who continued his business; and the Scotsman le Grant, who dealt with guns and shipping; and Tobie the Pavian doctor, whose wife was French, and as welcome at Court as he was.
And lastly there were the merchants; every man with a house or a warehouse in more than one of the profitable ports: in Berwick and Leith, in Stirling