Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [367]
‘And after Yule?’ Adorne said.
‘I don’t know,’ Nicholas said. ‘Perhaps my mind will have caught up with my emotions, or the other way round. The graves are too fresh, just now.’
Adorne’s eyes were full of pity. He said, ‘I have just told you. I think this had nothing to do with the St Pols.’
The bagpiper played, silently, placidly. The wild men leered. There was a beautifully scrolled Latin legend above the stairs to the sacristy which, translated roughly, stated that wine was strong, the king was stronger, women were stronger still, but truth conquered all. The present conversation, elegantly scrolled, would make just as much sense.
It wasn’t Adorne’s fault. Nevertheless, Nicholas replied with uncharacteristic savagery. ‘Of course it had to do with the St Pols. It killed them.’
IT SEEMED, AT that point, as if a steady nerve would carry everyone through the precarious journey that lay ahead. The threatened conflagration had been quelled and a kind of template produced which might steer them clear of another. Nicholas returned to the Abbey, but Anselm Adorne, saying nothing, went straight to the comfortable, well-appointed house in the High Street where Nicholas was once to be found and spoke to Gelis alone.
Something about him must have startled her, for she closed the door and seated herself and him at once. ‘Something is wrong?’ She knew they had both been to Roslin.
‘With Nicholas, no. With myself, perhaps. That is why I am here. Gelis …’
He hesitated, and she sat quite still, watching him with that pale, Arctic gaze below the heavy van Borselen brows. Once, he had thought her cold, but now knew that it was self-control he was witnessing. He said, ‘I do not have his full confidence. I hope that you have.’
There was a silence. Then she said, ‘I know all that matters. I wouldn’t expect to be told everything.’
‘This matters,’ said Anselm Adorne, ‘but he is concealing something about it. He is a good actor, but I have known him from boyhood. I need to know what he is not telling us. There is no stain on his own life; I am sure of it. He is lying to preserve someone else. There was nearly a tragedy—there was a tragedy—over Adelina. It must not happen again. He cannot protect all the world.’
‘He thinks he can,’ Gelis said. ‘So why is it important?’
Again, he hesitated. Then he said, ‘I have been trying to find out who told Simon that Nicholas was secretly going to York. I have a clue: the message came from the Borders. Nicholas will not listen, and has asked me to halt the enquiry. He either knows the answer, or means to pursue it himself.’
‘He will know,’ Gelis said. She spoke with unemphatic certainty. He had been acquainted with Nicholas from boyhood, but Gelis had fought to understand him, on and off, for eighteen years. She added, ‘You are saying that you—and perhaps others?—have had to promise to leave it alone, but the rest of us haven’t?’
‘That,’ he said. ‘Or I hoped the name of the spy might suggest itself.’
She said, ‘No. I don’t know, and if Nicholas has asked you to stop, it’s for a reason. Whatever it is, leave it to him.’
‘Do you think he is infallible?’ Adorne said. ‘Simon and Henry died. Nicholas himself would have died, had I not been there. He is one of the most remarkable persons I know: a doer of startling works; a man who finds wisdom through his mistakes. But there is one area where he is still blind; you may say heroically blind. He has still to learn that life is not a noble fable for children; that honour is not sacrosanct; and that, for the desirable good, one may be forced to walk naked of the garment of loyalty.’
She said, ‘I don’t want you to teach him.’
They looked at one another. Then he said, ‘No. But I would rather he learned this lesson from a friend; and I would be that friend.’
He wanted her to know how grave it was. He was using her to warn Nicholas that he was reneging. He had