Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [426]
Until the time came.
Someone touched him. ‘Come and join us,’ said Kathi. She took his hand to lead him to Gelis. Now that he looked, it was all as he imagined, except that Isabella had snatched the flute and was running, laughing, from Jordan. A flower dropped on his hair. He looked up.
Blue eyes, golden hair, framed in the leaves of a tree. Kathi’s son, bright as a fawn, his face dirty. He sang out, and Kathi looked up with resignation and said, ‘We notice. You will, of course, fall. But wait until we have left.’
Walking with Nicholas again, she unexpectedly spoke. ‘You don’t mind?’ She glanced back at the tree. ‘You don’t mind what he is called?’
She had not asked him before. She was offering to speak of it now, as an expression of faith in his strength, his self-discipline, his ability to recover, even, from something she had seen in his face. Nicholas opened an arm and, walking still, Kathi took his hand over her shoulder. He said, ‘You disguised it well enough, didn’t you? No, I didn’t mind.’
‘It began as Franskin,’ Kathi said. ‘Just a pet name, but hard for a little person to say. When he was born, Margaret couldn’t pronounce it.’
He said, ‘There wasn’t much she couldn’t do.’
‘No,’ said Kathi in thoughtful agreement.
He had given Margaret a pearl. Kathi had asked him to keep it. Nicholas had no daughter, but might have a granddaughter one day, who might have a daughter in turn. Its story would live.
They walked. Then Kathi resumed in the same tone. ‘The name for our son? Robin wanted this one as much as I did, and asked Gelis. She said she gave it to us as a gift from you both. She had made a journey to Dijon. She had found it engraved in the crypt.’
‘I thought so,’ he said.
Gelis had never told him. His hand clung to Kathi’s, and hers to his. She spoke gently. ‘The child in the tomb. He was your twin, who died before you were born?’
Rankin; Franskin; Francis.
‘Yes,’ he said; and by his voice, closed the subject for ever.
Was; and is; and will be.
He looked back. The lad had swung himself from branch to branch to the ground, lissom as once his father had been. A handsome boy, with springing blond hair, and features fine as if fashioned in porcelain.
This was a soul that he knew, gifted and eager and generous; beloved of many; destined surely for fame; and determined, as Robin was, to follow a man he thought worthy. A noble child of his race, Francis Crawford of Berecrofts. Francis Crawford of Templehall, it would be, one day.
But this was not the piercing spirit, clear as a snowfield in sunlight, for whom Nicholas de Fleury was waiting. A being fiercer than this, he had been told: far more passionate, far more vulnerable, with far more to give to a world which would not know, at first, how to receive it. A spirit that would always lead; that could never be a disciple.
The other half of his being, come again.
KATHI’S SON LEFT the tree and came running, and Nicholas turned the flower into a dart and flung it, with comradely venom. The lad, laughing, ducked.
Ahead, the pretty, fair girl ran on, but Jordan had glanced round, and was looking. Nicholas waved to him, with his free hand.
HERE ENDED THE picture.
Heir endis the buke of the ches.
Reader’s Guide
1. For Discussion: Gemini
“They were more than halfway towards becoming friends,” says Nicholas of his two sons. What had made them enemies? As Jordan and Henry stepped tentatively and poignantly towards friendship, which do you think made the greater effort? Which made the greater achievement?
2. What are the links between the story of the Duke of Gloucester, soon to become the infamous English King Richard III, and that of Alexander, Scottish Duke of Albany? Are theirs at some level the same story? How do they diverge?
3. At the climax of this novel, and this series, Nicholas de Fleury finally