Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [403]
She came across Jordan, Nicholas’s son, sitting on the ground in the garth, weeping openly. She glanced about, saw no one else, and dropped beside him. ‘Jordan?’ It couldn’t be about Adorne, although Jordan had admired him, she knew. He couldn’t know what his father was doing. She couldn’t leave him like this, when word of any kind might emerge from that room. She imagined she could hear the swords biting and clashing from here. She said, ‘Jordan, what is it?’
He jerked his head up. She caught the glare of two distended grey eyes; then he cried out in a voice of appalling, of unrecognisable stridency. ‘Your son killed her! Your stupid son ran away, and she went too, and it killed her!’
Tobie’s voice said, ‘Jordan, go and stay with Mick Crackbene. Kathi, come with me.’
She resisted. She said, ‘Who was he talking about?’
But she knew. And everything else left her mind.
BEHIND HER, NICHOLAS had locked the door of Dame Euphemia’s room and drawn his sword. Julius, still behind the desk, had laid his sword on its surface and was looking at him. Unlike Nicholas, who had thrown off his borrowed garment, Julius still looked dapper, even though his well-cut doublet was stained and slashed, and his hose were unembroidered and smelling of horse. He said, ‘This is silly.’ He was smiling.
‘No,’ said Nicholas. ‘Pick up your sword.’
Julius said, ‘You didn’t even know how to fight when we first met. Or to ride. It didn’t stop us from enjoying life.’
‘No,’ said Nicholas. ‘Pick up your sword.’
Julius said, ‘So what put this idea into your head about Andrew Liddell? You didn’t have it in Bruges.’
‘I had it in Fleury, aged seven,’ Nicholas said. ‘My mother knew. I knew when you dropped into Geneva, after you finished in Paris. Then you went to Bologna—did it never strike you that people like Bessarion and Fra Ludovico sometimes read records? Next, you came back to Geneva, and followed me eventually to Bruges. I asked Tobie to lock up his poisons in case you used them on Jaak and blamed me—but instead, you simply waited for me to ruin Jaak for you. Proof that you were a Liddell as well as a St Pol? Crackbene saw your early papers in Coldingham, or Ada did. And there was proof, wasn’t there, in the Liddell grazing ground at Dunbar, which mysteriously belonged to the St Pols?’
‘Ada!’ Julius said with derision.
‘She’s quite a good witness. But there are others; either already in place, or soon found. Lucia’s death? Jock Ross can tell about the hound you borrowed, and that you didn’t come back to Blackness when you said you did. Adorne nearly killed Simon, he told me, by being given the wrong lance. There was an arrow at Venice which wasn’t from some outraged Muslim source: Umar traced that, and told me. And even today—Alex Home told Kilmirren that Applegarth had betrayed my visit to York, and you know Applegarth well. He wasn’t surprised when you entered this room. You killed him so that he wouldn’t compromise you, in case you had to come back.’
It was odd, watching the expressions crossing Julius’s face: impatience; defensiveness; hurt disbelief; peevish annoyance. At the end, annoyance mostly prevailed, although he persisted—out of habit, you would say. ‘That’s in your imagination, but even if it wasn’t, didn’t we have good times together? And why are we fighting if we’re kin? Am I not Simon’s full cousin? Come on. This is nonsense.’
Nicholas said, ‘I could only be related if I were Simon’s son.’
‘Well, of course you are,’ Julius said. ‘Only there’s no proof. I’ve searched, but there isn’t. Not, of course, that you mind. What hurt and mystified you was the rejection. Why should anyone hate you so much that they hounded everyone near to you? Don’t you know?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Nicholas. He didn’t want to hear. Especially, whatever he guessed, he didn’t want to hear it from Julius.
Julius looked him up and down. ‘Well, surely.