Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [251]
The pale eyes had sharpened. ‘If it comes to it, you would take part?’
And Nicholas answered, ‘I am not declining to come, MacChalein Mor, because I dislike the sea.’
HE WENT TO Berwick after that, in one day, calling at each of the east coast strongholds on the way. Julius and John le Grant rode with him, and some of the dozen men-at-arms he now paid. They came from Leith, and were also capable of making themselves useful on shipboard. Crackbene had picked them, with John’s approval.
From the beginning, the expedition went well: a good cracking ride down the eastern seaboard through the earldom of March, Albany’s country. Nicholas let Julius make all the early running. Because of his friendship with Liddell, Julius was familiar with the landowners round North Berwick, the Bass and Dunbar, and could count on some sort of welcome from the Earl of Angus and his vigilant colony in the rock-fortress of Tantallon.
Angus, perpetrator of the raid which had broken the peace, had fittingly been rewarded with the duties of Warden of the East March of Scotland on the unspoken premise: you got us into the war, so now fight it. In fact, being determined to guard his own land, he accepted the post as his due; but remained resentful of intrusive authority, and suspicious of any friend of Adorne’s. Julius treated him with easy deference, and gave the impression that he was here to admire, not to examine, the March’s defences. These days, Julius was in the most buoyant of moods, all the disgruntlement of Cologne cast aside.
Nicholas let him have his head, and John, too. Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus, was just over thirty and used to getting his own way. Ill-advisedly, he had married a Boyd, whose father had been adopted in exile by England. The marriage had not helped his career, and had cast temporary doubts on his loyalty. His loyalty to the King was still questionable, but not his friendship with the King’s brother and sister, or his readiness to invade English soil, to the point of provoking a war. Which would make him popular with the French King as well.
He had a nephew there at the castle: Jamie Boyd, Princess Mary’s young son. Nicholas saw the boy watching him, and sent John over to speak to him. He knew the boy didn’t want John, and that common foresight required that he himself should cultivate both the Boyd children. At the moment, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He had meddled enough with that family.
Riding away, he quizzed Julius. ‘What do you think? I’d rather see Angus down on the March, but if he’s done all he says he has done, then it isn’t bad.’
‘You heard him,’ said Julius. ‘There’s no movement at the moment in Northumberland. We’ll check the rest as we go. But I think it’s all right. Liddell says he’ll do anything to protect the Douglas estates, and he doesn’t want to share them with Boyd or the other Douglas in exile. He’ll fight for the King.’
‘I suspect he misses Albany,’ Nicholas said. The spring air brushed his face; the horses’ hooves behind him drummed comfortably. Below him on the left, the sea sparkled, empty but for a small fishing-boat. John had pulled off his steel bonnet and his hair, grey and red, flopped about his raw face. He looked contented as well.
John observed, ‘Jamie was saying they heard from his good uncle Sandy only last week. His new wife is pregnant.’
‘That’s the Bourbons for you,’ Nicholas said. He spoke absently. He added, ‘Anything else? How is King Louis?’
‘Oh, recovering,’ Julius broke in. ‘Applegarth was telling everybody that. Recovering, but inclined to dwell on his heavenly future, which might be good news for Rhodes.’ He looked cheerful. ‘Another shift in everyone’s policies.’
John grunted. John had been with Nicholas and their army, working for the Knights Hospitaller in Rhodes. He had helped to build the St Nicholas bastion, which last year had accepted a battering of three hundred stone balls from the Turks. It had resisted. It might not hold out this summer.