Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [263]
It was as well she mentioned it, for Jordan had forgotten about the St Pols, and Henry was the first person he saw on the wharf when they came ashore. His father threw him a smile, but Henry turned his back, and his father and mother walked on towards the house. He could hear his father mentioning oysters, and his mother starting to laugh. Jordan smiled. Henry came over.
Henry said, ‘He isn’t much of a fighter, is he, your father? Ran away from the Forth. Stayed away from the muster. What was he doing? Visiting all his other wives?’
He had been told what was safe and unsafe to mention. Jordan said, ‘We were chasing a wine-ship.’
‘How exciting,’ said Henry. ‘Did you catch it?’
‘No. But our ship brought it back. My father had business to see to. Anyway, there wasn’t any fighting on the Forth,’ Jordan said. ‘And I thought the army disbanded.’
‘It might not have. And someone certainly burned Blackness without you helping to stop it,’ Henry said. ‘But I suppose you just have to follow your father. You ought to try some real fighting some day.’
‘What was it like with the Earl of Argyll and Angus Og?’ Jordan asked. He sat on some rope and Henry perched on a bollard and told him. It was quite interesting, and terrifically gruesome: the place where they fought, even, was called Bloody Bay. It was also very serious, unlike John le Grant’s tales of Jordan’s father fighting the Turks, which were all full of the jokey things that they did, like pretending they were there to cure camels. In the end, the Bloody Bay story ran to a halt, and although Jordan asked some things he wanted to know, and said, quite honestly, that he wished he could do something like that, Henry jumped to his feet and said he really couldn’t waste any more time, and just went. He glanced at their house as he passed.
Nicholas saw him, from where he and Gelis stood, half embraced in the depths of the parlour, but didn’t say anything. Gelis’s eyes were on Jodi, coming slowly along from the wharf. She said, ‘What have you done? You have brought back a man.’
‘The start of one. It was a longish time for a boy, and he was very good. But now he needs to get back to his friends, and become thoroughly silly and childish. Don’t scold him too much,’ Nicholas said. His fingers moved to her ear.
As so often before, the mystery of it overwhelmed her. She burst out. ‘How do you know what to do? How do you know exactly what to do?’ And when he looked down at her, startled, she said, answering herself, ‘It is Umar, isn’t it? The teacher, the professor, the judge, who passed on all he knew. That, and instinct.’
‘He taught you as well,’ Nicholas said. ‘But you manage reasonably well on instinct alone. Or you used to.’
She felt herself melt as he said it, for she recognised both the mock complaint and the frustration behind it: Jodi was coming; they could not be alone. She also understood, without resentment, that she had reached a small boundary, and had been stopped. There were not many now, and she did not test them for her own sake but for his; reminding him, as best she could, that she was there, if he wanted to cross. If he never did, she still had more than she deserved. She had him safe. He was back, safe, again.
THE NEXT ATTACK came in July.
It had always been possible, in spite of the Church’s injunction which had persuaded her Scottish son in Christ James to disband his army, and her English son in Christ Edward to cease having to pretend that he meant to come north with any promptitude. Obedience to the Holy Father certainly entered into both decisions, but did not last long on King Edward’s side.
Personally, he was not immediately coming north, or releasing an army. Nevertheless, he lent