Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [340]
In private, with Percy and Dorset, Stanley and Woodville, the Duke did not disguise his true feelings. ‘These giddy, lamentable Scots! A cowardly army, and a King so weak that he cannot control it! So what now? He is under arrest in his own Castle. We can neither fight him nor treat with him.’
Dorset said, ‘We could enter Edinburgh and starve them out of the Castle. We have twenty thousand.’
‘We have three weeks,’ said Neville. ‘Then the money runs out. And the supplies.’
Dickon grunted. Percy said, ‘Is it possible …’
‘What?’
‘Is it possible,’ said Harry Percy, ‘that this is deliberate? That they know how short a time we can stay, and have removed the King for that reason?’
‘How could they know?’ Gloucester said. ‘The only one who knew all our intentions was the Burgundian, and I am assured that he drowned in the Till.’
CANNILY PROTECTING THIS particular asset, Master Secretary Whitelaw permitted Nicholas to sleep until the night was half over, and then sent for Gelis, his wife, who had not been allowed to see him since his return from York. By that time she knew, as Nicholas did not, what had happened at Lauder, having given beds to three of its warriors. Coming to Whitelaw’s, she left John and Moriz but brought Dr Tobie, who chose to remain tactfully out of Nicholas’s room until called, sitting on an uncomfortable chair and falling asleep from time to time, neck askew.
Had he been there, he would have seen nothing of intimacy, none of the fever that had marked other reunions. When Gelis entered, Nicholas had exchanged his bed for a chair, and was standing beside it, wrapped in a robe. When she crossed to him, he touched her elbows, drawing her close for his kiss, and then set her as gently apart. His face was open and grave and quite steady. ‘Cry mercy,’ he said. Be kind. Be guided.
She said, ‘Andro described it all. There is nothing you need to say, unless you want to. Or only one thing. Adorne says someone betrayed you?’
‘It was going to happen,’ he said, ‘whether someone betrayed me or not. It isn’t important. Gelis, I know you are concerned, but I should be a poor pupil if I ran crying from this. I can carry it.’
‘I think you can,’ she said. She touched his face, and he took her fingers and kissed them, but did not keep them. She said, ‘We all can.’
She tried to speak with conviction. She, too, had learned patience. She had learned how to keep her afflictions to herself, as he did. She had also learned to give up her privacy sometimes, because it bore too hard on others. But he had to think of that for himself.
She said, ‘There is only one thing I want to say. Don’t blame Simon. Don’t blame yourself. I have never seen anyone work as hard as you did to redeem Henry, but I don’t think you could or maybe even should have succeeded. And don’t imagine that you have failed Katelina. She made the wrong choice. She didn’t give you a chance to recognise or rear your own son. She committed you both, out of foolishness, to a deception. If you can forgive her, then you must forgive everyone, including yourself.’
‘Everyone?’ he said. ‘No. I know what you mean. Let’s leave it at that. Thank you. I knew you would say something wise.’ His eyes rested on hers, and she returned his gaze. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. She was taking such care