Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [370]
He made a sound of despair that was almost a laugh, and sat down. Her face, round as ever, had acquired no structural elegance with the passing of years, but the thick, fair skin was unblemished and the brown gaze as amiably critical. Being at Court, she had exchanged her usual coif for a full head of sail with pearls in it, and her shapeless portly-sleeved gown was still shapeless, but cut out of velvet trimmed with black fur, and set off with a necklace of hawsers and hatch-lids. The hawsers were gold, and the hatch-lids were set with cabochon rubies. He had observed them at the start of the evening, and knew what he was being told.
She said, ‘Struck dumb?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But you have not been so afflicted, I suspect.’
‘Aye. I spoke to Julius,’ she said. ‘About myself and St Pol. It was time. He had half the story: some from Wodman; some from Stewart of Darnley.’
‘And you told him the rest,’ Nicholas said.
‘It was going to come out. I told you. All the Archer families knew of the famous Jordan de St Pol, who once commanded the French King’s Archer Guard. They knew he had a wife. If they went to Chouzy, as you did, they’d find my daughter there, and learn from her name who her father was. So tell me what you know. Ask me questions.’
‘I don’t need to,’ he said. ‘Years after St Pol left the Guard, you were living in France in the Scottish Princesses’ household, and mixing with the Scottish Archers of the day. You were a widow, with a young son at school in Cambuskenneth. You met and married Perrelet d’Échaut, whose father had been granted a seigneurie at Chouzy. When d’Échaut died in his thirties, he left you also to care for the daughter you bore him, and for his own sister Aleis.’
She was looking at him with compassion, as if he had lived through it, not she. She said, ‘You know most of it, then. Peter and Alice Shaw, just, they were called: my second man and his sister. It was no great drama, Nicol. He was a grand man, my Peter, and brave with it. So was his sister. She was five years older than Peter, married Jordan de St Pol at fourteen, and bore him two children, Simon and Lucia. Then she was stricken with the trembling illness, and lost most of her sight, and her senses. Jordan was a trusted man at the French Court by then: he couldna nurse her. He found it hard: he was bitter at times; but he was loyal; loyal; and stood by her till she died many years later. That is why I don’t leave him, Nicol, nor him me. Don’t mistake me. I can see the worst of him better than anybody. Whiles we canna thole one another. But our lives are bound together. And mine is a voice that sometimes he’ll listen to. Mine and Andro Wodman’s.’
Of course. Wodman had become an Archer of the Guard before Bel left France. And he, too, had protected this clever, cruel man. Nicholas said, ‘He tried to rape Gelis’s sister.’ He couldn’t let that go unsaid in the presence of anyone trying to excuse Jordan.
Bel’s colourless eyes studied him. The compassion was still there. She said, ‘But he didn’t, did he? Don’t you think that says something? A big, powerful man can usually get his own way. He did get his own way. He lays plans, Nicol, like you do. I tried to tell you that, once. He follows a plan, and won’t drop it. Now he has disowned you, you are disowned, and for ever. I have no family claims: he will keep me by him for comfort, but that is all. There is no one else. There is nothing more, in my view, for anyone to fear.’
They looked at one another. ‘And you have told the others?’ Nicholas said. ‘Since, as you say, it was half known already?’
‘I have told them all,’ Bel replied. She drew a long breath. ‘Mind, the old man won’t like it. He was never fond of me being known as his wife’s brother’s widow. He thought I’d tattle, maybe, about Alice. He persuaded himself that I was with him and Lucia because I needed the shelter. I’m tired of that, now.’
‘Hence the vulgar display of rude wealth. Julius will want to marry you,’ Nicholas said.
She smiled. He said, ‘Why else are you