Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [277]
He didn’t need to elaborate. Alec Brown had been killed because the King had discovered he was still working for and in England. So were half the other merchants in Berwick. But to the King, Berwick had become a symbol, a token, an obsession.
The English war had declined because of the winter, but also because England was being challenged on too many fronts. Now one threat was receding.
Drew Avandale spoke to Adorne. ‘Seaulme. I can see France trying to buy peace with England. Can you see them attempting the same with the Duchess of Burgundy? Would Maximilian agree to a truce?’
‘If it were unknown to England,’ Adorne said. ‘So my correspondents think.’
‘So do the traders,’ said Nicholas. ‘It would free England to invade us next spring. But whatever the King may wish, men are going to hesitate to die over Berwick.’
‘What would they die for?’ said Henry Arnot.
He was answered by the other Abbot, Archie Crawford. ‘Until now, the King, or what the King represents. If that is to continue, the King must hear advice. If that does not continue, in my opinion the country would still unite for one reason only: to drive out an overlord.’
‘And will the King hear advice?’ said Argyll. ‘Or are we here to look for a successor?’
‘Hardly, when I am sitting here,’ said Drew Avandale. ‘Colin, we don’t have time to waste. We have a grown king, with young sons to follow him. There may be some who would like to replace him, but if we act as we should, there will never be a faction with popular backing to oust him. We have to find ways to guide him, that is all. Will? Seaulme? Archie?’
It was Adorne who replied; Adorne who, as a charming and experienced foreigner, had been allowed as close to this young King as anyone. Adorne said, ‘It is time to ask the Queen.’
‘So I happen to think,’ Avandale said. ‘So, I think, do we all. Abbot Henry? You know her grace better than anyone. Stirling is the home of her children, and where she spends much of her time. She has been trained well; her brother rules Denmark; she is no stranger to statecraft. Would it place too much burden upon her to bring her actively into our plans?’
‘She is half there already,’ said Henry Arnot. ‘She has her own court, her own advisers, her own views. She is loyal to her royal husband, but knows of his difficulties. She would respond. But whoever visits the Queen is bound to lose the King’s trust. You must choose carefully.’
There was an hour more. At the end, Avandale and the others went off, and the Abbot, neatly entrapping the Burgundians, invited them to his room for a dish of cheese and imported olives and pasta, which he thought a Genoese might enjoy, while continuing to talk about bullion.
Much of the recent discussion had been about money: tax-raising, coining and, finally, storage. Mints and treasure chests required stout stone houses. In Edinburgh, coins had been pressed in the stone house Adorne had once leased from the Swifts. The tiled house in his care at Blackness had been used as a royal storehouse and mint. The Precentor of the Order of St John hoarded treasure at Torphichen, as his counterpart in England stored the war funds of the English King. The Abbot of Holyrood had confided half the church plate of the monastery to another Swift, chaplain Walter, who had a stone house in Edinburgh. In his reprobate days, Nicholas himself had used part of his premises in the Canongate to mint illicit coins. In places like Berwick and Edinburgh, the merchants’ valuables, the coining-irons, the garrison’s wages were kept in time of war, in the castle, not the town. But gold was hidden everywhere; and so were jewels; and expensive garments; and documents worth more than the gold. And faced with an invasion, you had to know where.
Expatiating, the Abbot of Cambuskenneth had noticed his liturgical hour-glass. With an exclamation, he bounded from the table and lit a candle, still declaiming at speed. Nicholas assumed,