Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [381]
Nicholas left, with Adorne, the next day. Four hours later, a Sinclair man raced into Edinburgh with news. It was said—by a fisherman you could usually trust—that a party had left Albany’s castle to sail to the south. He said it included Angus and Liddell and Lord Grey, and its purpose was to assure the English King of Albany’s loyalty, and to ask him for three thousand archers.
It sounded feeble enough. As an appeal, it would almost certainly fail. That, however, wasn’t the issue. The fact was that the Whitekirk meeting tomorrow was pointless: Albany had only agreed in order to squander some time.
‘So we send to tell Adorne to come back,’ said Will Scheves, at the rushed meeting called to consider the news.
‘Do you think so?’ said Avandale. ‘He should be told, of course; gallant friend, it is disappointing to say the least. But why don’t we suggest he go to the meeting as planned? Albany may not trouble to come. Or he may come, out of curiosity, but defer a decision. If his delegation has just left, it may be three weeks before it returns from Westminster. Sandy won’t want to close every bolt-hole before then, nor would he be wise to harm Adorne. The meeting should be safer than we expected.’
‘You have the truth of it,’ said Colin Argyll. ‘Leave the plan as it is, but have someone ride to North Berwick now and tell this to Adorne. He can decide on his tactics tonight, and set out for Whitekirk, if he thinks it expedient, tomorrow. Whom shall we send? Shall I go?’
‘Colin, you forget you are indispensable,’ said Drew. ‘Why don’t we ask Alex Home to go to North Berwick? With Chirnside under his belt, he ought to be willing.’
‘And having deceived Albany, he ought to be vigilant. Casting his left eye askance like a tunny. Aeschylus,’ offered Master Archibald Whitelaw, holding his spectacles up to the light.
THAT SAME AFTERNOON, a number of visitors called upon Jordan de St Pol at Kilmirren House, benefiting from the brief absence of Bel, his formidable hostess, in Linlithgow. The Preceptor of Torphichen stayed merely to exchange the news of the day, but other calls were more personal. The Mallochs, father and son, came to express friendly concern for Monseigneur, since the tragic deaths of his son and his grandson. His handsome grandson, so missed by Muriella.
The Borderer chatted pleasantly with the old man, while his son renewed his acquaintance with the young demoiselle Bonne von Hanseyck, so happily discovered to be residing in the same house. Naturally, there was a hired chaperone, but the demoiselle, rescued from atrophy, made him positively laugh at her accounts of the Charteris household, and Sister Monika’s Cistercian tattle.
Bel, returned rather wistfully from Efemie’s tight clasp at Linlithgow, found the visitors gone, and the old man mysteriously missing as well, having ridden out with his servants, Bonne said. It was then mid-afternoon, and the short winter day close to its ending. Bonne could tell her no more of her host, but was willing to regale her with an account of all the events she had missed. She was glad, she observed rather thankfully, to have Mistress Bel’s company again.
‘Aye,’ said Bel. ‘Well, I’m just away again, lassie. I need to call on a friend with a message. But I’ll be back for my supper, so get the board out, and the pieces, and I’ll play ye for who gets the box of marchpane I was given by Saunders.’
It wasn’t pleasant, when already chilled from a ride, to step out into the gloom of the High Street and slide and squelch through the filthy snow down through the Netherbow to the Canongate. But the steps of the Floory Land were all swept and dry, the lantern powerful, and the big windows