Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [226]
THEY MOVED THE King’s brother to Linlithgow, and then to Roslin, from which, although closely supervised, he escaped. He was found again, with cries of pleasure, by Nowie, and cajoled into staying at Newbattle, from which he departed again. Since by this time the French envoy was at Blackfriars, the lord of Craigmillar Castle once more admitted John of Mar as his guest, but this time, on orders, locked him into his rooms. For the second time in four weeks, John of Mar fell into a frenzy, and Dr Andreas was called. The family chaplain was already there, to pray for the servant Mar had killed, and comfort the girl he had attempted to force. Dr Andreas sent for his Italian colleague, Tobias Beventini, formerly of the Charetty company, and for Nicholas. They arrived together.
Mar’s room was not the cell of a prisoner, it was furnished as for a prince, although the shutters were closed and there was a guard at the locked door. Inside, it smelled like a prison cell, for shock and pain led to incontinence, and Mar’s dress and his bedding were soaked. His hands were tied, and he was weeping, his eyes swollen, his red-head’s skin blotched. Tobie swore under his breath and went forward, but Andreas spoke quietly. ‘He is violent. If you untie him, he will attack you.’ And indeed, at the sound of his voice, the sobbing stopped and the bound man turned, painfully and malevolently, glaring at Andreas and then at Tobie. His eyes, reaching Nicholas, remained on him.
Nicholas said, mildly, ‘Do we want the doctors?’
Tobie made a cross sound. Mar kept his eyes open. Then he shook his head.
Andreas said, in the same quiet voice, ‘You need witnesses.’
‘No, I don’t,’ Nicholas said. ‘I need a blanket, and two chairs by the fire and—what? Something to eat? Something to drink?’
‘You will send me to sleep,’ Mar said. His teeth were chattering.
‘Not intentionally,’ Nicholas said. ‘We’ll drink from the same cup, and eat the same food. Tobie will bring it.’ He knew, all the time that it was being arranged, that he was being an idiot. He wasn’t a doctor, and what Mar needed were doctors. But while doctors were anathema, the patient might talk to a layman. The danger, as Andreas had hinted, was that anything might happen, and there would be no witnesses.
It seemed worth the risk. He went ahead anyway, talking in a rambling way all the time the door opened and shut until at last he and Sandy’s brother were alone in the candlelit room with the firelight in their faces, the young man wrapped in his blanket and sharing a bowl of sops in wine, passing back and forth from his freed hands to those of Nicholas.
After a while he said, ‘I’m going to be sick,’ and was.
Nicholas said mildly, ‘Well, that’s all right,’ and cleaned it up.
After another while, Mar said, ‘Will you stop talking?’
‘All right,’ said Nicholas. ‘Imagine I’m God. What do you want from me?’
Later, there was a mild scuffle which Nicholas, being large, resolved without injury. By then, he had started talking again, and once things had quietened, he produced the wine once more, made a little stronger. He could feel Tobie’s anxiety shuddering in waves through the door. Andreas, with a different outlook, had probably gone somewhere to sleep.
Eventually, Nicholas went himself to the door and tapped softly until it opened. The guard brought Tobie, who saw the two empty chairs and went straight to the bed, on which Mar’s body lay motionless, its eyes shut. He lifted its wrist.
‘It looks like sleep,’ Nicholas said, ‘but I think it’s some kind of a faint. He was rambling a lot. The trouble is partly this place. It’s linked with what happened before, with poison and violence and murder and all the Prestons’ various brushes with the occult, not to mention my divining. The trouble