Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [239]
Then the old biddy came on deck, and that was as far as they got, for they were off the Scottish coast, and every King’s ship in the area came out to have a look at them and check that they didn’t have an English admiral and a full range of cannon on board. Once into the Water of Forth, they were actually escorted to their destination at Blackness, which was the vessel’s home port, and where Simon proposed to disembark for Linlithgow, four miles away, and take horse for Kilmirren. He wanted to find out what was happening. And he wanted, nursing his wrongs, to set out from this place, close to the salt-pans where, eleven years ago, he had so nearly died, and the frozen river where, the same night, his sister Lucia had drowned. Had been deliberately drowned, as he was going to prove, by the brute who also fought and tried to kill him at Carriden: by the apprentice Claes, who called himself Nicholas de Fleury, and whom Simon had come home to deal with, now that his old fat father had failed.
The other passengers disembarked and went off with their porters. As the port for the Queen’s Palace and burgh of Linlithgow, Blackness was an anchorage more than a harbour, but was well organised for its size. Dominating the eastern horn of the bay, with its jetties and warehouses, its fisher-cabins and seamen’s huts and single rough tavern, was the castle, royal fortress and prison, squat on its spit of black basalt rock, running out into the water. Behind the castle, and on the low rise that held the small chapel, were bigger houses, neatly thatched and mostly belonging to merchants whose homes were elsewhere. The largest, and the only one with a slate roof, was the King’s.
Simon waited on the coarse strand; and so, he noted, did the small German party. He wondered whom they expected. He had sent a note ashore, himself, and was gratified presently to see approaching a small group of horsemen wearing the livery of the Keeper of Blackness and sheriff of Linlithgow, and led by that same man, his old jousting partner, Sir John Ross. A good Renfrewshire man, Jock Ross of Hawkhead, with the kind of clear head, despite his versifying, which might well recall detail, for example, from as long as eleven years before. Anyway, he produced a warm welcome and an offer of horses and dinner at his Linlithgow house, which was what Simon wanted. Indeed, the sheriff went further and, noting the nun and the girl, sent to ask if he could help.
The girl, eyes downcast, approached and answered in French. They wished to travel to Edinburgh, and had sent for a wagon from Linlithgow.
‘Today?’ Sir John was kind but impatient. ‘My dear demoiselle, the sun will set in an hour. You must be content to stay in Linlithgow. Your wagon can take you tomorrow. There are several good inns: never fear, my men will see you safely settled.’ He waited, smiling at Simon, as the girl translated for her companion. The nun’s voice, croaking fearfully, burst into reply.
‘She is not pleased,’ Simon murmured. The sea splashed on the pebbles, and kittiwakes wrangled, kit-kit, on a rock. A line of distant trees glowed, lime and orange in the sinking sun. From beyond the elevated ground to the south, there swayed a column of smoke.
‘Cortachy’s mill,’ the sheriff said. ‘You know Anselm Adorne? It’s a sore point with the local landowners, but he’s right to destroy it. The first thing any English fleet would do is raid the countryside for food, and that thing was stacked with grain. Quite a gesture: the man only built it the other day.’
‘Adorne?’ Simon said. ‘I thought your Burgundians would be in prison by now. Isn’t there a pact between England and Burgundy? I thought Adorne’s friend the Dowager Duchess had spent half the year at Greenwich arranging it.’
‘Oh, it’s open season for pacts,’ Ross said. ‘And I dare say Adorne, like a few others, had to decide which side he was backing. But he elected to stay, and the King and