Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [424]
Bel blew her nose. She said, ‘I think his reasons were more praiseworthy nor that. You know what I hope? I hope he heard the last words you said, Nicholas. About Henry’s love for his grandfather and Simon. About Jordan and Henry becoming friends. Ye thought that worth doing. Might he not have thought the same? And even if he didna, would your hopes for Henry not be carried out if Jordan went on in Henry’s place? I would want that. I would want that to remember my Jordan by. Otherwise my hale life has been wasted on someone worthless. And to me, he never was that.’
There was a silence. Then Gelis said, ‘So you wanted Jordan to have Kilmirren, Bel?’
‘Aye,’ she said. ‘I got St Pol to write the gift out and sign it, just in case he lost the knack, or fell out of his senses. I have the paper there yet.’
Nicholas was looking at Gelis. She said, ‘It is your decision.’
He said, ‘No.’ His gaze had moved. When he spoke again, it was slowly. ‘Bel? What would Father Godscalc have said? He knew who Henry was. Tobie and Gelis and I have kept the secret all these years. When Godscalc was dying, he spoke of him, but he also spoke of us all, and how he wished us together. He asked us to make him our bridge. Is this what he meant?’
‘You would do it?’ she said.
‘Not for St Pol,’ he said. ‘But I would do it for you, and Gelis, and Jordan—our Jordan—and in memory of the friends we have lost, whom it might have made happy. What would Adorne have said?’
‘Property. Take it. And Tam Cochrane,’ said Gelis. ‘He would be there with his slate and his ruler before anyone said a word about garderobes.’
‘And Whistle Willie,’ said Tobie. ‘You’d have an organ in no time at all.’
They were talking heartily, out of shock, but they meant what they said.
Nicholas said, ‘Then, Bel, we will take your paper, and Jordan shall have his inheritance. And he will be Semple and we shall be de Fleury, which will keep him explaining until the end of his days.’
LATER, HE WENT upstairs alone, and stood by the bed, his gaze resting on the grey, silent bulk of his grandfather, whose beauty had altered his life. They had left the great ring, now immovably part of his finger. St Pol could not hurt him with it, or pass it on to him now.
Bel had hoped that his last words had been heard. Now, he thought that he could wish the same thing. Today, he had rejected a gift, and Fate, it seemed, had determined to thrust it upon him. As he had recently said, one could not depend upon plans.
He had never thought, long ago in his own flat country of Flanders, in his own well-loved burgh of Bruges, that one day he would abandon it all for a small, mountainous land, at the behest of a man whose ill-will had dogged him for most of his life.
But no. That was not accurate either. He had already decided to stay.
Bruges was part of his life. So was Marian. So was her family. That would remain. As for Bonne, he felt no obligation; no wish to know more about her, any more than she did about him. She would marry, and that would be the end.
For him, this choice seemed right. It simply meant that now there might be descendants of his who would choose to work in this country that had welcomed him, and perhaps gather about them a circle as various, as eccentric, as fond as the one of which he and Gelis were part.
He had found Gelis, and happiness. The other element in his life he had also, for it took nothing from others. He had a great deal of love to give, and was fortunate in attracting it, he had discovered.
He remembered the gold, and wondered, with slight irritation, how he was going to spend it. He had a feeling that someone would tell him.
He walked downstairs, not to begin a new life, but to continue the one that was already his, with his friends.
Epílogue
And I beseik him, lord of all, Iesu,
The ground of grace, the well of all werteu
To send ws grace, that sic werteu we haf
To serf him so that our saulis he saif,
And bring ws to his kinrik and his blys,
Quhar lyf but end and ioye eternall is.
Amen, amen.