Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [312]
Andro had expressed disbelief. ‘Jamie? The Princess’s son? He’s barely twelve!’
‘Still,’ Nicholas said. ‘And someone called him Lord Boyd. The old man is dead. It must be Jamie.’ Andro looked shocked, but not horrified. Nicholas had been horrified, and still was.
In all this, he had made sure of one thing. If Andro got back without him, he was to repeat what he knew to no one except the innermost circle. It was too explosive. It could set off a wave of violence in either direction: a torrent of Anglophile traders with a good personal connection in Leighton Buzzard, or a host of Wallaces led by Blind Harry, baying for his former champion’s blood.
Baying. There was none at the moment. Nicholas drowsed, and woke dizzily, and drowsed once again, vaguely aware of what was happening and annoyed by it. Finally he let go and sank into some sort of oblivion.
When he woke, it was quiet; and he felt both better and worse. His eyes had cleared, which was good, and so had most of the nausea; his headache was clangorous but not mind-deadening. He could think. At the same time, pushing his way from the peats, he found himself shivering. Whatever happened, he couldn’t stay here for the night. Indeed, there was no point for, by now, Wodman would be dead or far away. He fervently hoped far away, on a fresh horse, and settling down to carry his information on the long, long ride by the route they had already decided, through northern England and up the Till valley to the Tweed, and Scotland, and safety.
There was no reason why Nicholas shouldn’t follow him, once he had acquired a horse. No doubt later on he would also be the better for food, but he preferred not to think of that now. Anyway, for God’s sake, he was resourceful. If he weren’t, he would hardly have survived until now. The sooner he got out, the sooner he’d be back in the game.
The game. Once, it was the term he found reassuring to apply to almost everything that he chose to do: to trade, to war; to the moves and counter-moves, even, for the avoidance of war. But not after Nancy. Not now.
He forgot to be pleased that he had got into and out of York and had escaped both beheading and hanging. He began to fret over what might go wrong in Scotland without him.
IN EDINBURGH, JUST before the end of the third week in July, unauthorised news was brought to the King that the English army was fully operational in its camp at Tweedmouth and about to begin a bombardment of Berwick. The same messenger, awed to find himself with the King (he had been let in by mistake, at a shift change), confirmed that the English were led by their King’s brother, Richard of Gloucester. He added, carefully, that he was sorry to report that early rumours seemed to be true, and that his grace the Duke of Albany had come from France to join the English attack, and was in the van of the army with Gloucester.
The shouting from the King’s chamber brought in his ushers. His ministers of state were haled in thereafter. Within the hour, the proclamation had issued. The incomplete troop now assembling on the Burgh Muir was to march south to fight the Auld Enemy. And James of Scotland would command it himself.
The waiting was over; the period of grace had come to an end. Now they had to know Albany’s intentions. Now, Nicholas de Fleury had to be found. A rider was sent, sparing nothing, to Upsettlington, to find and notify Anselm Adorne.
HUME, BESIEGED BY messengers,