Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [347]
Bot for his frende the wys man neuer stud
Agane his aith or zit the commoun gud.
Chapter 45
Now of the merchand suld we saye sum thing.
This popular suld stand befor the king,
That gold and gud be redye at his will,
For his knychtis for to dispone thaim till.
WHEN NICHOLAS LEFT home that day, and those that followed, Gelis had no need to ask where she would find him. Now that the orderly fuses were lit and the actors were charged with their tasks, nothing was left to the architects of the nation’s affairs but to assemble with their servants, their clerks and their couriers in the Tolbooth, that strong irregular building, parliament hall, court and prison, next to the church of St Giles in the High Street, which had become the unofficial council chamber of Scotland. Now the hired rooms were empty of hucksters: the cells had become offices serving those larger spaces which acted as meeting halls, or refectories, or even emergency dormitories. The merchants who entered these rooms were the chosen representatives of their burgh and community, members of the grim and anxious consortium of able men now awaiting news of the events they had caused to unfold.
Outside, on the crown of the hill, the Castle remained sealed; its drawbridge up; its walls manned by the men of John Stewart of Darnley and Atholl. No one threatened to enter, but the empty, uneven slope attracted the curious, who came and stood in small groups, debating anxiously, or occasionally shouting daring obscenities. There was no sign that they had been heard; but after the first day, Avandale set a light guard on the hill, to discourage unseemly conduct.
On the Thursday after Nicholas came back from Coldingham, a rich cavalcade left the town and rode east, picking up an armed force from Haddington as it went. It returned the next day, preceded by a fast-riding courier who burst through the gates of the Netherbow and spurred up the steep, winding hill to the Tolbooth. The resulting conference at the Tolbooth stayed in session until dusk, when men began to emerge, and their torchbearers leaped up to claim them, from the drift of dark, chattering figures waiting in the warm August air. Nicholas, calling good night to Tom Yare, made a decision and walked not to his home but to the High Street house of Anselm Adorne, now host in his absence to some of his colleagues and friends from the Canongate. Julius was there. Young Jordan had recently stayed there too, with Kathi and Robin, but now lived at home with his parents.
Gelis had been right, of course, in her instinct. To celebrate the love of one son on the heels of the death of another had seemed wrenchingly disloyal until he got over it, and collected his own thoughts and feelings into some sort of order. After that, opening his door for the first time to Jordan, Nicholas had not, as he had bitterly feared, found it intolerable to see a boy of thirteen, not twenty-one; with plain brown hair instead of gold, and grey eyes for blue. He saw only that the grey eyes were ringed, and the young face pale, and that there was a dam of questions which had to be brought to breaking point and then past it; and that this was his job. The deepest distress, it emerged, had to do with Whistle Willie and Tam. Jordan had known them best of all, although he had admired Henry, in spite of the nonsense at Eccles. Nicholas told him how Henry had outfaced the English and fallen, and how his father had jumped in to save him.
‘But he couldn’t,’ Jordan had said. ‘One person can’t swim faster than another in that sort of river. You couldn’t have saved me in the Findhorn. You have to run along the bank first.’
‘You can’t do that either, if it’s a ravine,’ Nicholas said. ‘Anyway, the first instinct is to jump. Anyone would.’
He stopped, thinking about it, and found Jordan’s eyes fixed on him. Jordan said, ‘You did? You jumped in after Henry as well?’
He had told no one that. Neither had Wodman or Adorne. Nicholas said, ‘It is an instinct. I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t save either of them.’
Jordan said,