Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [320]
‘Really?’ said Simon. He sounded entertained. ‘You must be terrified. If you are spying for Scotland, they’ll kill you. Or will they? We saw you chatting. We saw you pretending to work. I don’t think anyone from the castle is coming. Four men have been killed: who will notice, downriver like this, in this weather? Who will trouble when two more disappear? I think we can take all the time in the world.’
Nicholas said, ‘No. They are coming.’ His eyes were holding Henry’s.
Simon said, in the same mirthful voice, ‘Then there isn’t time to come and tie you up, is there? You must, alas, be dealt with forthwith. Don’t you wish, Claes, Claikine, young bastard, that you had stayed in your dyeyard? You would be safe now, if you had.’
Nicholas, motionless, answered; speaking to Henry with his eyes and his voice. He said, ‘I am where I have chosen to be. I only wish we had longer.’
After a moment, he said, ‘You are right. There isn’t time; kill me. But let Andro go; your father would want it. And save yourselves.’
‘We have your permission?’ said Simon. ‘How kind.’ The bow in his hands was ready strung. He lifted and pointed it, fussily. ‘And really, I don’t think we wish to preserve witnesses. You have both died. We need not tell everyone how.’
Nicholas heard him, but let the words pass. He made himself look at Simon: at the comely, petulant face, no longer young, bearing even now, in his instant of triumph, the blight of dissatisfaction, the shallow vehemence founded on bitterness. He wished he could convey, in these closing moments, something of what he himself felt. My father, my father …
If you had taken me in, I would have come: I would have stayed bound to the furrow, and you might have found something in me that you were not ashamed of. We could have lived side by side … neither for favour or reward, hate or love, but for the truth. We could have found happiness.
But if that had transpired, what of Henry? If there had been no apprentice, Henry would not have been born.
He was thinking of his two sons, and did not watch as Simon’s hand drew back, and steadied. So dissimilar, Henry and Jordan, and yet, in a shadowy way, there was something innate that they shared. He had imagined once or twice recently that a tolerance, even a friendship, was forming between them. If that happened, it might make this worth while.
Then he thought of Jodi, and the others he loved.
He had closed his eyes. He didn’t hear, above the roar of the river, the Heaton bowmen streaming down from the bridge. He didn’t see them slacken, drawing their bows, as they saw what was happening. He didn’t see the arrows spurt, or the one that struck home. He only heard Henry’s cry, and, opening his eyes, perceived the white face of his son, printed with amazement, at first looking at nothing. Then the blue gaze turned, passing over Nicholas de Fleury and coming to rest, bewildered and sick, upon Simon, as a child’s eyes would dwell on its father. For a moment, nothing moved. Then Henry, shuddering, descended first to his knees and then, quicker and quicker, tumbled down the ravine and into the river.
Nicholas saw it, and leaped. The arm that held him back was inhuman: hard across his stomach; so unyielding that its force made him retch. And a voice—Wodman’s—said, ‘No. Simon must do it.’
Even Wodman’s arm couldn’t hold him for ever. Nicholas tore free, and jumped. But during that second’s delay Simon de St Pol, with furious courage, had plunged to follow his boy down the slope at his feet, leaping and sliding until he, too, was seized by the torrent and spewed into the landslide of water that was the murderous flood of the Till.
Neither of them had the skills Nicholas had. No one had taught Henry to dart and swerve between rocks like a salmon; to duck and dive below floating obstacles; to ride the spume of a weir. No one had taught Simon either.
It would never enter Simon’s head that what he was doing was useless. His son had made a blunder. He, Simon, would correct it.