Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [267]
Nicholas said, ‘I don’t know, but I don’t think it matters. Tasse knew nothing at all of my parents, and if she was attacked, it couldn’t have been over that. People get robbed, and then killed. The muddle over Montello was probably just a mistake of the monastery porter’s, and Julius is working up fantasies. I think we should all leave him alone. When he finds out it’s hopeless, he’ll stop. So may I have some pudding and get to be frivolous?’
Adorne said, ‘You may not only have pudding, you may drink my health. This is the other reason you are here. Her grace the Queen has just made official my position at Linlithgow. I am to be her servant there, for as long as I wish to stay.’
Kathi was beaming, and Nicholas gazed at them both with unalloyed pleasure. For a long time now, Adorne had been shouldering what were virtually the duties of a Keeper of the Queen’s Palace, with all that entailed. He had received some sort of payment for that, and for the Conservatorship he still shared with Wodman. But the official emoluments for the maintenance, repair and defence of a royal palace were substantial, involving rents from land and crofts all round Linlithgow, and the returns from the King’s coalheugh as well. All that, with his charge at Blackness, made him one of the guardians of that very vulnerable part of the coast.
There were other implications.
Nicholas said, ‘I don’t know when I’ve ever heard anything about this royal family that pleased me more. At last, they have done something right. And, of course, I have to ask: does this mean that you are staying in Scotland?’
‘It means I can afford to,’ said Adorne. ‘I can provide for Euphemia. I can, and shall, gladly give my services until, God willing, this unnecessary war has come to an end. What happens after that will depend on what happens in Bruges. But yes. For the first time I am truly contemplating spending my life in this country. Does that appal you, after all Katelinje has been saying?’
‘If it did, I shouldn’t be here,’ Nicholas said. ‘Your health. Your health, and all it says on that flagon.’
The flagon was Syrian. It said, Lasting joy, increasing prosperity and fortuitous destiny.
‘I wish him a fortuitous destiny every day,’ Kathi said. ‘And you know what I’m going to say next.’
‘Am I staying. I don’t know,’ Nicholas said. ‘And yes, I’ve been offered inducements. And yes, you’ve been talking to Betha Sinclair.’
‘No. It is I who have been talking to Gilbert Fish and Landells and Livingstone and MacCalzeane, and Will Goldsmith the Halfpenny Man, and even one of the Mullikens,’ said Anselm Adorne. ‘Am I not a compendium of information on the bullion trade? You were offered virtually anything you wanted, if you would mount another expedition to Africa and bring back gold. You were offered lands and a barony, if you would stay in Scotland and use your powers for mineral divining. You refused. Why?’
The sweetmeats had been set out by the window. When Nicholas did not immediately answer, Adorne rose abruptly and walked there, turning, glass in hand, to look at the other man. Nicholas took his glass and joined him, more slowly.
Nicholas said, ‘I don’t want to go to Africa, because I don’t want to spend my time that way, and the bullion wouldn’t arrive for two years, and the coinage problem is urgent. Parliament won’t vote James the money he wants; he’s trying to hoard what he has, and raise more by other means, and you and Drew and Colin and Archie have to guide him, as we have to do about war.’
He had used Christian names, forgetting. Adorne said, ‘That is what councillors are for.’ He sat down, in a collected way, and Kathi came and sat with him.
Nicholas looked down on them both. He said, ‘I’m not demeaning the throne. I meant no more than that the King should be advised. There are deposits of silver and lead and perhaps gold about the western moors: we all know that—the Hamiltons and the Crawfords and the monks of Newbattle better than anybody. But it takes time and money and good engineering