Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [240]
‘I’m glad,’ said Simon easily. He wondered if Jock, who had put on some weight, hadn’t kept a clear head after all. Henry had killed a few mounts in his time, but that was the extent of his interest in horses. The nun had stopped gabbling, and the girl had come forward again. He smiled at her.
She said, ‘We accept your advice with gratitude, and regret our ignorance. None of us has been here before.’
‘But you have somewhere to stay in Edinburgh?’ Jock Ross asked. ‘You are not without friends or relatives? Some convent expects you?’
The girl glanced up, and then lowered her eyes meekly once again. ‘I am an orphan, sir, whose affairs are in the care of two gentlemen whom war is detaining in Edinburgh. I have come because I feared to be alone. They do not expect me.’
The sheriff frowned, his eyes on the nun. ‘Two gentlemen? Where do they stay? What are their names?’
The girl bit her lip. ‘There is an address, written here, for the gentleman who is married. But in case of difficulty, Sister Monika has the name of a Priory which will accept us.’
‘And the gentleman who is married?’ asked Jock. Horses were coming, the sun red on their harness. Simon judged that his mind was turning towards supper.
The girl said, ‘It is a French name. The sire de Fleury. Nicholas de Fleury, of Bruges.’
Simon’s mouth opened. Sir John Ross, his thoughts called from supper, said, ‘Nicol de Fleury? I didn’t know that he … How did you say you were called, demoiselle?’
She didn’t answer at once, but spoke to the nun, who frowned, and then rattled out her reply. Simon stared at the girl without listening: the teenage girl from Germany, who spoke fluent French from an area certainly far south of Paris; who was brown-haired and blue-eyed and impertinent, and who had come to join two gentlemen who looked after her affairs. He caught the word Köln. Cologne. That was where the Charetty lawyer’s business was. Julius. Julius, who had been married to—
The girl said, ‘Sister Monika says I may tell you. My name is Bonne, lady of Hanseyck, and the sire de Fleury is a patron of the convent at Cologne from which Sister Monika and I both come.’
The sheriff continued to frown. Simon presented her, on the contrary, with an expansive, a wonderful smile. ‘But what a coincidence! Nicol de Fleury is well known to me! Indeed, I will not hear of your travelling tomorrow to Edinburgh on your own. You must allow me to take you. And then I shall introduce you, if the Sister permits, to my son Henry. He must be just about your age.’
IT WAS THE continuous, excruciating shriek of the de Fleury guard-birds, effortlessly piercing the clamour of the High Street, that lifted Jordan de St Pol ponderously from his desk to his window, to witness the mêlée on the lower side of the street before the closed door and empty premises of Nicholas de Fleury. There, the lord of Kilmirren perceived horses, a wagon, and a party of seven men and two women, one of whom was in holy orders. Six of the men wore the livery (a stag and two ratchets) of his own house of St Pol. Stationed before them, in a battering blizzard of feathers, was his only son Simon, stolidly twisting the neck of a goose.
The lord of Kilmirren sighed, and sent for his chamberlain. When, after a short delay, his heir and the two women stood before him, his only expression was one of ineffable patience, and you could not have told—certainly Simon could not have told—whether the girl’s identity, cautiously revealed, conveyed anything. In Simon’s version, she was simply Bonne von Hanseyck, a German count’s daughter, whom he had escorted from Blackness. Simon hoped that was enough. This was Simon