Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [51]
‘What!’ said Archie. He sat down. ‘He’ll kill you.’
‘That’s what Wodman said. He’ll watch out. I wondered if Saunders would also like to give me a hand.’
‘With Henry de St Pol!’ said Kathi’s brother.
‘He’s going to despise common management and deal-making, but he reveres the chivalric arts. If I set up a few exercises, would you give him some show-fights?’ said Nicholas. ‘Or am I asking something too dangerous?’
‘Against that little braggart?’ said Saunders. ‘Dangerous for him, I can tell you. I couldn’t hold back if he provoked me.’
‘But you could teach him?’ Nicholas said. ‘The Guard won’t. They’re uncomfortable with him: he’s too young, and he shows off. He needs someone to practise with who’s hard, but fair. Someone he can admire. He’ll end up adoring you. And then there’s David Simpson.’
‘I don’t think Simpson will end up adoring anyone,’ said Archie of Berecrofts. ‘Kathi says he will lay plans to kill you, but not yet. Not, ideally, until your family are here and can witness it.’
‘So I have to get rid of him before that,’ Nicholas said. ‘Will you tell me all you know about what he is doing? He seems very rich.’
‘He is, if he has your African gold,’ Saunders said. ‘Kathi says that you think that he has. But he lives genteelly in Edinburgh, at Blackfriars, most of the time, as agent for the Apostolic Collector, Camulio. You know him?’
‘Prosper de Camulio? Yes. He came to Bruges as a Milanese envoy. We did a deal once, in Genoese alum. So they both stay in the guestrooms at the Blackfriars?’
‘Camulio does,’ Archie said. ‘Simpson occasionally lords it at Beltrees. Or he’ll spend some nights at Newbattle Abbey. The Abbot likes him. All those Norman families, and David’s French Archer connections. I’m told he gives his services free.’
‘For what?’ Nicholas said, without emphasis. He was thinking.
‘Don’t the Sinclairs have a lot to do with Newbattle, Nicholas?’ Archie said. ‘One of the founding families, and next door to Roslin. They still lease bits of land to the chosen ones—the Cochranes, the Prestons, a doctor or two. God, you want to keep in with the Sinclairs and their tribe of physicians, Nicholas lad, if you’re going to go on the way that you’ve started.’
‘You’ve changed my mind. I think I’ll stick to trade,’ Nicholas said. He went on, in fact, to talk about trade until they had lost their uneasiness. He wanted help, but not until he was ready. Simpson hadn’t publicly threatened him, or done anything against him in Scotland as yet: the reverse, in fact. To kill him now would be murder. And that would be unfair.
WHEN HE EVENTUALLY found his way to his chamber in Holyrood, everyone had gone to bed except Andro Wodman, who was visible, fully dressed, throwing illicit dice in a storeroom with a senior carpenter. Nicholas flung his saddlebags down and went to join him.
Round the bandaging, Wodman’s face was purple and yellow. Archie had been right. They did need the services of a medical team. Nicholas said, ‘I’m sorry. I had to stay last night at Roslin. What’s happening?’
‘I know. One of Tam Cochrane’s cronies came back.’
The carpenter, by which term was understood a highly trained, blue-blooded expert called Lisouris, said, ‘And you’re going into business with Nowie?’
‘Sir Oliver Sinclair to you,’ said Nicholas sourly, in the knowledge that Lisouris certainly did call Nowie ‘Nowie’.
‘And still got your arms and your legs? Watch it,’ said Lisouris, who looked like a dancing-master.
‘So what about Henry?’ said Nicholas. If he sat down, he wouldn’t want to get up. He recalled, with amazement, believing at some point that he wanted a woman.
‘He’s asleep. In the next room to yours. Sweetly sorrowful because, having invited him, you weren’t there.’
‘So what did he do?’
‘Went to Mass, made sexual advances to one of the monks, and was dragged in front of the Abbot. He’s leaving tomorrow.