Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [279]
He looked at Nicholas. Nicholas returned a blank face, behind which was sheer mutiny. Moriz said, his grating voice oddly subdued, ‘So perhaps she married twice. We should not probe. But, my friend Nicholas, for your own peace of mind, I think you must agree to go to Stirling to see her, at least.’
‘And since you are going,’ said Abbot Henry, ‘you might place us all in your debt by taking a few crates to a warehouse? The goods may be removed from here by night. It is an old smugglers’ route. The cellar tunnel leads to the Nor’ Loch. We discovered it when we acquired the house for the monastery.’
A smugglers’ route, Nicholas would wager, that had seen a few barrels of illicit French wine bundled in by repentant sinners. No wonder there was a gleam in the Abbot’s bright eye. And he had induced Nicholas to go to Stirling with the handguns. And see Bel. And, undoubtedly, get involved with the Queen, whether he wished to or not, although that would not, to be accurate, be Arnot’s doing. Umar cast a long shadow.
He found he was no longer resentful, but mysteriously lighter of heart. What was being asked of him was difficult. It was bloody unfair to plunge him into yet another quagmire of intrigue when he was barely disentangled from Albany. But it was the kind of adventure, the kind of risks that he loved. And he was good at working with people. And it might make a difference, at that.
It was time to go. Moriz and the Abbot were chattering amicably on their way to the ladder. The light travelled with them. Adorne extinguished the cellar candles and stood, without immediately following. All Nicholas could see was the fairness of his face and his hair and his hands. Then Adorne moved thoughtfully over and surveyed him. ‘We place a great burden upon you, Nicholas. It is as well that you have these broad shoulders.’ He rapped them lightly, half smiling; then, spreading his fingers, ushered him after the others.
It was when they had all four climbed from the cellars that Nicholas heard someone sneeze, and uttered an unthinking, ‘Bless you!’
They all looked at him. The Abbot said, ‘Well, thank you, Nicol, but why?’
It seemed that no one else had heard anything. The ghost of Tobie, perhaps. Or of some master smuggler long dead, athletic enough to have swum over the loch. Or nothing at all; in which case he, Nicholas, had left an unused blessing about. From him, blessings wouldn’t carry much weight: his forte was giving advice, and you couldn’t leave that behind you. And even if you could, there were some people who never took it.
BEL OF CUTHILGURDY’S town house in Stirling was built of timber, and lay with others at the foot of the castle rock, which was so like that of Edinburgh. It was a district favoured by well-doing burghers: their neatly thatched premises with stables, bakehouse and well-head were set in swept yards and pleasant patches of grazing and orchard and herb-garden. The enclave was central enough, without being subject to the dusty traffic on the ridge leading up to the castle, or deafened by the clamour of the riverside wharves. Dame Bel’s house was not held in her name, and Nicholas, having duly delivered his crates, would hardly have found his way there without Adorne’s written direction.
Adorne, of course, had seen quite a lot of Bel since she took to visiting his little daughter at Haddington. So had Kathi and Tobie, for the same reason. Even Jordan had called at the Priory once or twice, accompanying Sersanders, or Robin. From wherever he encountered Bel, Jordan always returned with a minding and some new, funny tale of her doings. He no longer called her his aunt, but there was an attachment, clear to see, between the boy and the elderly woman. Only Nicholas, absent in France during Bel’s stay in Edinburgh, and carefully absent ever since, had seen less of her than anyone, and had listened without comment to the reports that he heard. It was Julius who wished to excavate the St Pols and their attachments. He preferred to forget.
The servant who opened Bel