Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [408]
Gelis had known that Nicholas would not be among the first to arrive: that he would be obliged to report to Avandale and Whitelaw and Argyll; and to the Abbot at Holyrood, under whose jurisdiction Whitekirk lay. She also guessed, as it turned out correctly, that he would keep Jordan with him. Nicholas, in time of misery, was the best companion any young person could have. And it would spare Robin, for a while, the worse misery of pretending to welcome someone else’s live, healthy child. It was, blessedly, Robin’s father who came back first, with John and Tobie and Father Moriz, and from them they heard the whole story of the attack. Later, Father Moriz told them how and why Julius had died.
Bel gazed at him throughout. When he ended, she spoke into the silence. ‘And Nicol killed him. In a sad, sad day, there is a tragedy, I can tell you, to match the worst of it.’
‘A tragedy!’ Tobie cried. His worn face was flushed. ‘You talk of Anselm Adorne in the same breath as Julius? A man who lied to us all; who took all we gave him and used it to deceive and betray us; who killed, or got others to kill for him, again and again? Who pretended to be Nicholas’s friend while he was planning to get rid of him and his family, and all but succeeded in having him labelled a killer and traitor himself? Who tricked him into fighting—into losing his own …’
‘Tobie,’ said Gelis. He stopped.
Father Moriz stirred. He said, ‘You are right. So is Mistress Bel. Julius was all of that. Mistress Bel began to guess it before most of us. But what you have to remember is that Nicholas knew it. He always knew. And he chose to keep quiet, as he chose to give Adelina a chance. They were his family. He thought them redeemable. So the killing yesterday was terrible, as Mistress Bel says. It was an admission, for him, that he had been wrong. And that, in turn, meant that he had let us all down.’
‘He had,’ said John le Grant. ‘He let the country down. Julius was a traitor.’ Gelis said, ‘Do you think, any of you, that Nicholas didn’t think of all that? He took a decision. He protected us, his family, by keeping us separate from Julius, whatever it forced him to do; wherever it forced him to go. And in everything else, including this country, Nicholas gave himself as a shield against Julius, as he did at North Berwick. If Julius was an example of petty selfishness, don’t you have something there to set against it? Something that might not have been there but for Julius?’
She was shivering, the cool golden Gelis. Clémence, seated beside her, took her hand.
Moriz said, ‘I think you have it. This is not Good against Evil: a piece from the Holy Book done in verse on a wagon. It is as you said: the tale of a small spirit that has enabled a greater to grow. But now, what shall that spirit do? He has failed us. He has failed himself. He has reached the top of the mountain, and someone must help him to choose.’
No one spoke. Then John le Grant said, ‘Then we show him he hasn’t failed us. I was wrong. You were right. Julius has gone. We don’t speak of him; we don’t care what he did. What we care about is what Nicholas is going to do, and if he will want us to join him.’
‘Do you want to join him?’ Gelis said. Her eyes were wet.
‘Will he want to have us?’ said Tobie. Then his face changed. He said, ‘Why are we talking of Julius, or even Nicholas, when we have lost what we have lost? Archie; Robin; I’m sorry.’
They talked, after that, of what mattered: eight friends, coming to terms with what Bel had rightly named as a tragedy.
Adorne, in that calm, handwritten will, had asked to be buried in Linlithgow, where the Queen had made him captain and Governor of her Palace, and where his small, deaf daughter was. Kathi and Sersanders and Andreas had stayed with him and with Margaret, and the Bishop would presently help to bring them to St Michael’s, the church of Linlithgow.
Gelis had asked how Kathi was.
‘Dazed,’ said Father Moriz. ‘There is a blessed numbness, at times, when terrible events first come to pass. And