Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [38]
‘I expect you’ll risk it,’ Nicholas said. ‘Shall we go somewhere and talk? I thought I saw you up there, but couldn’t believe it. I admire you. An appointment to this Guard is given only to the best.’
‘It must indeed have seemed unbelievable,’ Henry said. ‘Will you trust yourself, then, to my house? It is just down the hill.’
Nicholas knew where it was. It was where he had first been shown the child Henry by a triumphant Simon de St Pol. Where other things had happened, with other people. He said, beginning to walk, ‘Thank you. Your father is still in Madeira?’
‘Where your false information sent him? Yes, Uncle. But my grand-sire is here.’ His voice taunted. ‘Do you still want to come?’
It was not what Nicholas had heard; nor, he suspected, the truth. Two days ago, the fat man had been in the west, at Kilmirren, and was most likely still there. Nicholas remarked, ‘Should I have a bodyguard? And who else will be there: Mistress Bel?’
‘You remember our old friend Mistress Bel,’ said the youth, gratified. His hair curled, ducat-gold, from under the tilt of his bonnet, and the guard at the drawbridge saluted him. He said, ‘Sadly, no. She stays in Stirling these days, since you threw her out of her house.’
Nicholas had bought her house. He had not thrown her out. He said, ‘I can’t quite recall doing that. Could it have been David Simpson?’ It was what de Salmeton called himself now.
The boy stopped and slapped the side of his own head. ‘That was it! After he bought your castle of Beltrees, he took over her land and expelled her. Life in Scotland has become very rough; I wonder you dared to come back. I heard Johndie Mar slapped your jaw. I see he punched your eye also. Did you stand still and let him?’
‘I’ll blind him next time,’ Nicholas said. ‘The black eye and the rest came from another fight. As you say, Scotland has become very rough.’
‘Another fight? When? You only came yesterday.’ The boy came to a halt. Two washerwomen and a cowherd stopped at the top of the West Bow, admiring him. A servant of Wodman’s, seeing them both, raised his brows and unfurled a hand in some sort of greeting.
‘So people started hitting me yesterday,’ Nicholas said crisply. ‘You might even have been without an uncle if Andro Wodman hadn’t ridden out with me. We were waylaid by some rascals. They broke his arm and his nose.’
‘I wish I’d been there,’ Henry said. ‘Your army would have helped: you should have brought them. I remember Captain Astorre: you set me to train under him. How is he? And the gunner, John, wasn’t it? He taught me all I know about guns.’
This was true. In return for which, Henry had tried to blow him up, and Nicholas too. As he had tried to kill—
‘And Jodi,’ Henry said fondly. ‘How is your little son Jodi? If you aspire to place him with the Guard, I should be happy to teach him. He is a brave fighter, I’m sure, and could look after himself even in a rough country like Scotland. Ah! Here we are.’
And not before time. A different kind of assault was under way. But he was committed to his own, private injunction: to subdue his personal feelings; to recognise what forced the other to act as he did; to put himself, as ever, in another man’s place. And if he could see into the heart of a stranger, he could surely fathom this, the damaged son of Katelina van Borselen.
The servant who opened the door was not one of Bel’s. The man stood aside as if he were used to the way Henry brushed past unspeaking, making for the door that led to the parlour. It was a handsome, two-storeyed house with a thatched roof and a curved outside stair. It was built facing the causeway, on the slope of Castle Hill, with behind it a long, shelving garden. At the bottom of that was the Nor’ Loch where Gelis might have died, one icy winter, through the self-willed machinations of Simon de St Pol, man of impulse, like Henry. Impulsive as Simon’s far cleverer father, fat Jordan, was not.
It was very quiet. The servant, after hurrying, had left him. The door had closed behind Henry. Then it opened and Henry stood there, as he had stood