Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [238]
To begin with, girls of the better class in Madeira had shunned him altogether, because of the lie that had exiled him: that he carried an infection that made all his partners barren, and had supposedly threatened the marriage of the idiot King. He now carried a copy of a certificate, from the King of Portugal’s own doctor, to the effect that his infertility was not due to disease. He objected to the way it was phrased, for he was not infertile. He had sired Henry, for God’s sake. And he had certainly got a child on that wretched woman he had had to marry, Sophie de Fleury, although it had been born dead, thank God. All he would concede was that he was not very prolific as a young man, and had had no children at all in more recent years, even by Henry’s own mother.
But the certificate, long since transmitted to Scotland, meant that he could expect to return home, when and if he got the chance. And now the chance had come: a letter from Henry which surely indicated that the old man was losing his wits, and that Simon could oust him at last.
He was halfway home before he learned that a state of war existed between England and Scotland, and that a French blockade would stop him from changing ships at Sluys. He landed instead at Dieppe and was forced to wait, with other travellers, until he could find a Scots ship willing to take himself, his luggage and the suite of six men without whom, naturally, he never travelled. Then the master refused to sail by the English west coast because of the fighting round Bristol, and they had to thrash their way up the east coast towards the Water of Forth, with nothing to relieve the tedium but the crass conversation of the other passengers, most of whom soon succumbed to the weather.
For some days, the only exception was the German girl with the nun and the serving-man. The girl was a hooded, silent young thing, but Simon amused himself by gaining the confidence of her chaperone, Sister Monika, which was always the first step. He could feel the wench watching him; and when, in rough weather, she came up alone he was there, ready with some light banter in his disarmingly poor German. It was even better when he discovered that she also spoke very good French. Attracting girls had always been easy, because of his looks. He might be in his mid-fifties, but under the Madeira sun, as he was aware, his gilded hair had become rippled with silver; his slender nose and lean cheeks and noble brow were golden brown, and his eyes were still the same amazing blue.
Even Henry could not compete with his father. The boy, when last seen, had looked like measuring up to his grandfather’s height, which some found excessive. Henry’s beard, when it became worth shaving, had been brown and not gold, and his single womanish dimple was also, for sure, from his mother’s side: Francis van Borselen had been dimpled, they said. Simon de St Pol had no intention, ever, of being outshone by his son, but he was proud of the dynasty he had founded, and meant to arrange for it to continue.
This girl was a German count’s daughter, the old nun had said, but had refrained from revealing the family name. It made for interesting speculation, especially as the girl, got alone, proved to have a dry, tough turn of speech which suggested the opposite of the shy little thing he had taken her for. When, at the right moment, he took her hand in both his own, she did not resist, but merely gazed at him with her unremarkable blue eyes, and said, ‘I beg your pardon?’ upon which he unhurriedly freed her, with an appreciative quirk of the lips. It seemed very likely that the girl was a virgin, as his nemesis Sophie had been.