Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [212]
‘You’ve reassured Mar,’ Gelis said. ‘And that is surely worth something. As for Henry, you can never hope for too much. You know that. Godscalc would understand it as well.’
‘I know. I’m an idiot,’ Nicholas said. ‘And especially when there are so many other, attractive outlets to hand. One of the few advantages of excess is the rallentando it brings to normally urgent affairs. In place of prompt completion, there is an opportunity for leisurely courting, for subtle incitement, for—what?’
She didn’t answer. He made a stifled sound. She continued to do what she was doing. He gave an involuntary shout, and then repeated in his ordinary voice, ‘What?’
‘Nothing. Pick your own pace, rallentando,’ Gelis said. ‘But if you don’t mind, I’m making for prompt completion, sforzando. I’ll tell you what it was like.’
‘Like hell you will,’ Nicholas said, and crashed her over.
Making love, they always talked nonsense. Afterwards, if they spoke, it was heart to heart, whatever the subject, as if a passkey had been exchanged for a space. At other times, they lay without speaking, enfolded and silent, sharing comfort.
That morning, he was quiet, and she knew he was thinking of Henry. She was dwelling on something else: something that he had told her of his visit to Damparis. He had talked of it quite simply. ‘It confirmed what the family told you. Marian had a daughter, who was stillborn or died, and who was buried with her. She did not want me to know.’
‘And Adelina’s story?’ Gelis had said. ‘That the child lived, and was really Bonne, whom Adelina passed off as her daughter?’
‘There is no evidence,’ Nicholas had said. ‘I went to see Bonne. She could tell me nothing.’
Then Gelis had said, ‘She was younger when I saw her last. But she had no look of you, or of Marian.’ She paused and said, ‘Did you like her?’
And he had said, ‘Liking doesn’t come into it. If she is mine, she is for me to look after.’ But he had not spoken of friendship, as he had when talking of Henry.
She had said, smoothing his fingers with hers, ‘You need to know, and so does she, who she is. There is one step you could take, if you can bear it. The tomb at Fleury. If there is a child in Marian’s arms, then Bonne is not yours.’
And he had said, ‘I thought of that. I went to Fleury. I went to the crypt.’
He had stopped. Then he had said matter-of-factly, ‘I probably couldn’t have done it. I didn’t have to. The tomb doesn’t exist. The church was hit by cannon fire during the fighting, and everything burned to the ground. To below the ground. To ashes.’
His mother. His infant brother. His wife and her sister. And in his wife’s clasp, the little gift he had sent her. And, perhaps, their one stillborn child. He would never know.
Except that, as he had said and as she too believed, Marian would have told him. Had she left a living child, she would have bequeathed it to him, with love and with hesitant pride. If she had given a child to the world, she would have made sure that the child would have Nicholas.
He lay still. She had thought he was dwelling on Henry. As it turned out, he was thinking of nothing personal at all. When he suddenly spoke, it was faintly querulous. ‘Gelis, do you think Bleezie Meg could be pregnant?’
Her emotions disintegrated; then flew, just as quickly, to their proper places. This was Nicholas, not a child or a lunatic, although he could be both. She composed her face. ‘I could try to find out,’ she said gravely. But by then, he had reviewed what he had said and started to laugh, in the devastating way that brought her close to tears, she loved him so much.
Chapter 26
Bot so it be throw awentur he wyn.
THE IMMEDIATE CRISIS with Sandy was over; Mar had quietened. In Scotland then, to those negotiating the wolf-ridden currents in the stout barque of communal statecraft, it seemed that the year 1479