Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [232]
Kathi took no sides at all, nor did Gelis. The most miserable part of the exercise was introducing the possibility to Robin. Although he could sit, and there had been a faint easement in one stricken shoulder, Robin was now as he always would be, without the use of one side. Frustrated, currently immured by the weather, he had fallen into one of his rare fits of rebellion, when he fought the world as well as his disability. This, one did not treat with sport or diversion, but by becoming an intellectual football. Having floated, at second hand, the subject of his departure, Nicholas waited a day and then hopped and skidded over the packed snow down to the nursery in Kathi’s house. There, having swept Hob on to his back, and played a short, violent game with a screaming Margaret and Rankin, Nicholas left the room and presented himself, breathless, at Robin’s wheelchair.
‘How kind,’ said Robin. ‘What will they do for proper sport, once you have gone? So have you decided? France, or Venice, or Burgundy? Or even the Duke of Lorraine?’ His jaw was knotted through the fine skin.
Nicholas sat down with a bang. He said, ‘I’m going to find the man who took your leg off. And then I’m going to ask him to take off the other one. Will you stop this? I may not go away. If I go away, I’ll come back. And if I don’t, you have a life of your own. We’re not bloody married.’
Robin went very white.
Nicholas said, ‘You’re supposed to think it over, and then give a furious laugh, and then kick me out. That is, you can’t kick me out from a wheelchair. So devise your own bloody response.’
‘You bastard,’ said Robin.
‘I know,’ Nicholas said. ‘But it’s a fast way of reminding us both how much we hate one another. I’m going to get beer. Line up your questions.’
Afterwards they argued, but not bitterly, although Robin did a lot of objecting. Towards the end, Nicholas said, ‘Anyway, you heard. Simon is coming.’
‘And that really frightens you,’ Robin said. ‘If Henry had known you were leaving, he would never have called Simon back in the first place.’
‘Yes, he would,’ Nicholas said. ‘It’s as much about his grandfather, now, as about me. In fact, they can sort it out better without me.’ This was true. As he thought Gelis guessed, it was the strongest inducement, among several, for leaving.
‘And I thought Julius was coming?’ pursued Robin doggedly.
‘Then Julius can fight Simon for me. Once Simon’s dead, I’ll come back.’
‘You are a clod,’ Robin said automatically. He added, ‘You know what they feel, Willie Roger and Cochrane and the Leithers? It’s like the last time. You turn your back and leave whenever you feel like it.’
Nicholas said, ‘Do you think it’s like the last time?’
And Robin had the grace to flush, and say, ‘No.’
There seemed little reason after that why Nicholas de Fleury should, once home, shut the door of his office and, with solitary application, drink until he could no longer think clearly. The Donatello pinned above him had surely no relevance. He had been just twenty, hardly older than Henry, when it was done. And anyway, John le Grant had already defined the situation with punctilio. ‘That was then, when they needed us. Now, they’re fine.’
Sod sorting out people. Sod John le Grant.
THE SNOW CEASED; the rain stopped; the gales abated and, glittering like a new set of teeth, the landscape was found to have changed.
At that precise moment, spurred by hearty cries of incitement from France, Archibald, fifth Earl of Angus, led an army raised by Albany’s friends across the Border deep into England, and for three days set them to