Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [29]
Before leaving for Scotland, Nicholas de Fleury had told Robin’s wife all he could remember of the shots which had caused Robin to fall. Tobie, also present, had been alarmed by his frankness, Kathi thought. Nevertheless, after a moment, he had quietly taken Nicholas through his account once again and then, after clearing his throat, had explained the kind of damage such wounds might inflict. He was a military doctor, and could quote lucky and unlucky cases.
She had wept in the end, but in a way it was over: she had nothing left to imagine. And it meant something to her that Nicholas had thought her strong enough to bear the whole truth, and that Tobie, who had not been so courageous, yet recognised that Nicholas was right, and had treated her with enlightenment in his turn. And if she knew the nature of the unhappiest outcome, she also knew what to expect of the best. She had a son and a daughter, the elder just two. Robin had wanted a house full of sons.
Kathi had another friend, too, in Gelis van Borselen at the Hof Charetty-Niccolò, home of the Bank and dyeworks which Nicholas de Fleury had formerly owned, and where his wife and son, Jodi, still lived. Kathi went there, on the day she heard that Dijon had fallen to France. Dijon, encompassing Fleury, from which Nicholas took his name, if nothing else. Being in Scotland, he would not even know it had gone.
Gelis, who had been working with ledgers, put the last one away and came to sit down. Viewing herself from the outside, as ever, Kathi was entertained once again by the contrast they made: herself small, brown and sinewy, and indefatigably active, and Gelis fair and supple and shining, and never visibly active at all, while all the time quartering Flanders on behalf of the business. The owner now was Diniz Vasquez, to whom it had fallen three years ago, when Nicholas had divested himself of his holdings. Nicholas had then taken himself to other lands, from which act of understandable but wilful stupidity he had come back, altered, to resume his marriage to Gelis.
To begin his marriage. Even now, weeks after he had left, you could see the incandescence in Gelis: the fires that had been lit in the short time she and Nicholas had had together. They had burned for Nicholas, too; and for that, Kathi was deeply thankful. She did not wish to imagine the force of will it must have taken to sever himself from that haven; to walk away knowing that, once in Scotland, he might not live to return.
And yet—she underrated him, to think of him like that. However fierce his longing for home, he would, characteristically, find some zest in what he was doing, create something worth while, because he could not help it. He was there because he owed Scotland something. Driven by personal hurt to extremes, he had used the most sophisticated of his gifts against a community, simply in order to injure a single family—the St Pols of Kilmirren—which had caused hurt to himself and his mother. Once, when he was a boy, Nicholas had hoped, Kathi knew, to have himself proved a St Pol. Later, it did not matter to him whether he had a claim to legitimacy or not. He had wanted, like a child, to become their friend. And the three generations, Jordan, Simon and Henry, had responded with cruelty, and now threatened his life and his family.
He had gone to Scotland to deal with that, and to make amends for what else he had done. It was something that Gelis understood, as she understood the sacrifice that she was being forced to make also. She must wait, while the way was cleared for her to join him. For he did not only face the St Pols. There was the other enemy, David.
One did not, then, begin to talk to Gelis of Scotland, but of what was happening here. And, listening, Gelis said at the end, ‘I’m sorry that Dijon has gone, but I think Nicholas had got quite used to the idea of not being the next vicomte de Fleury. It makes life simpler without titles. Just think, Jordan has lost Ribérac too, so he is merely St Pol,