Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [360]
‘He has managed well enough,’ said Anselm Adorne. ‘Enough at least to have time and money to set aside for someone carrying his mother’s name. But it would spare him, of course, if you knew who your real father might be. You are less sure that it might be the Graf? Is there nothing you can remember?’
He listened. It had never been easy to piece together Bonne’s past. Once, her self-proclaimed mother Adelina had professed that Bonne was the daughter of Marian, Nicholas’s first wife, born in secret and adopted and brought up by Adelina. Adorne was willing to believe that Adelina was not the mother of Bonne, but not the rest of it. All the proof, all the probability was that Marian had borne a dead child, and concealed it from Nicholas to spare him unnecessary grief. Whoever Bonne was, she had been gallantly claimed by the Graf before he married Adelina. And nothing Bonne could remember had ever explained where Adelina had found her.
Nothing she said now added to what Adorne had already heard. Adelina had introduced Bonne as a love-child of the Graf’s when she and Julius first met. It had been in Germany, in Cologne, and Gelis, who had been there at the time, had the same impression exactly. So had Father Moriz, who had made later enquiries. After so long, no one was going to remember events in quite the same way, but in one particular they agreed: Bonne’s parents were unknown, and likely to remain so. But Nicholas, none the less, was taking the responsibility for her.
It made Anselm Adorne think of his Efemie, who was five, and old enough now to live with her nurse in one of his houses in Linlithgow, with her cousin Saunders to entertain her. Adorne, also, came almost every day to visit his daughter, as he had omitted to do with the children who were now grown up in Bruges, and who sent him admonishing letters from convents. It was not their fault. He had been negligent. But there was the humbling example of Nicholas—Nicol—who had grown up fatherless and virtually motherless, and yet could open his heart to care for Phemie, and for everyone’s children, not just his own. When in Edinburgh, Lord Cortachy made a point of talking to young Jordan, when calling on Gelis; and spending some time in the Canongate with six-year-old Rankin, Robin’s newest trainee and heart’s joy. Rankin was never relinquished to accompany his mother’s uncle, but occasionally Adorne would borrow Margaret, the boy’s older sister, and take her to stay with Euphemia.
His heart went out to them both: his little deaf daughter and his great-niece, just two years her senior, with her long lashes and quick smile and tapering fingers, so like his own. When, one day, he would no longer be there, he trusted his nephew Sersanders to look after them; setting aside any other entanglements he might have. But he liked to think of the two girls growing to womanhood with the infinite blessing of Nicholas’s care, and that of Katelinje. It was too late for Jan and Antoon and Arnaud and the rest, but with these children, he could make a fresh start.
He spent some time with Bonne, and then left, having achieved, he thought, very little. But his expectations had been low. He became immersed in certain preoccupations of his own and was not necessarily delighted to hear that Prosper de Camulio of Genoa was coming to Scotland to take up his bishopric in this, the non-fighting season of winter. Adorne’s connection with Genoa was past. He had begun to think that Bruges might be behind him as well. Lodged in an alien country, itself on the edge of rebellion, he had found a place where his experience could make a difference; a kingdom he could help make effective. He had concluded, quite recently, that this was the way he wished to finish his life.
He had also realised that he owed much of this decision to his regard for Nicol de Fleury. It was important to him that de Fleury should equally