Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [409]
Bel spoke. ‘And I hear that Kilmirren survived. I was right, then. He went?’
Tobie said, ‘Yes, and he’ll live. Wodman is bringing him home. The cantankerous bastard wouldn’t stay with the nuns any longer.’
Bel sat up. ‘He’ll live?’
‘You didn’t know he was injured? An arrow. You heard that Julius tried to shoot young Jordan, the boy, from above? The old man stood in the way of the arrow. I’ve seen him. He’ll do; as well as a man of that bulk will ever do.’
Bel said, ‘What did Nicholas say? Did he realise how Kilmirren came to be wounded?’ Her voice was composed, but her hands had shut together.
Tobie sneezed. Below his round eyes were circles like blisters, and he had pulled his hat from his sun-spotted cranium. Once Clémence would have sighed. Now she gazed at him through watering eyes. Tobie said, ‘I told Nicholas what the old man had done. He didn’t say anything. The place was in an uproar. Anyway, he’d just … ended the business with Julius. He wasn’t in the mood to visit the sick.’
‘He refused,’ said Father Moriz with Germanic bluntness.
‘But St Pol saved Jordan’s life?’ Gelis said. Then she remembered, and stopped.
No one had saved Margaret’s life. Margaret was dead, and she ached for both Kathi and Robin. But the greater grief that she felt was for the other death: the one that would bear hardest on Nicholas, on the day that Julius, also, had died.
The death of Anselm Adorne, the wise, courteous mentor of his boyhood.
The death of his boyhood.
ENTERING EDINBURGH, JORDAN de Fleury was allowed to call with his father on the Abbot of Holyrood, but had to wait in the antechamber of the grand houses they visited next. Master Crackbene kept Jordan company, and Master Yare, whom he knew from Leith and Berwick as well as Edinburgh. On the journey, they had talked quite a lot about Berwick. When he was young, sailing there with Master Yare and his father and Henry, Jordan had thought it a splendid place, and envied Master Yare his great house in The Ness, and longed to fish, and to live in the castle.
Now it had gone to the English, but no one appeared too depressed. It seemed that the English were complaining already about the extra taxes to pay for the garrison, and all the casks and baskets of coal expected by loyal merchants in their new homes. And here was Scotland, to hear Master Yare, with its trade and its harbours adjusted, a war averted, and nobody very much worse. Certainly not Master Yare, who was Treasurer of the burgh of Edinburgh. Or Gibbie Fish, or Wattie Bertram, or Will Scheves, or Humphrey Colquhoun, or Lauder of the Bass, the whilk, said Master Yare, ye didna notice renting out their candlesticks, did ye?
‘Poor Sandy,’ had said Master Yare, jogging along. (He said Pooh.) ‘He might have been a nice enough lad, but no gumption, ganging or coming; and awfu’ blate [bhate] about asking advice. He should have lent heed to your sleekit da, Jordan.’
‘You sound as if you’re sorry for Sandy,’ said Jordan. He had never called the Duke Sandy before.
‘After what happened at the Priory, you mean? Sure enough, it happened because of him, whether he had a hand in it or not. But in the end, he’ll be worse off nor us. Mind my words,’ had said Master Yare. ‘If your own brain pan is wanting—and I’m sure it’s not—mak’ siccar you buy someone else’s.’
They talked to Jordan a lot, both on the journey and after, and told him things about his father he hadn’t known. Jordan wasn’t likely to forget Margaret, or the rest that had happened, but he felt more normal by the time the morning was over, and Master Crackbene and Master Yare had gone home, and he was alone with his father. He felt hungry.
THE HOUSE WAS quiet, by the time Nicholas