Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [59]
It was Diniz Vasquez. He brushed past her and knelt. ‘Arnaud?’
‘It’s nothing,’ said Adorne’s son. He sat up, the doctor supporting his back. Then he said, ‘Kathi!’
Gelis turned. It was Kathi, Arnaud’s cousin. Kathi, her eyes large and darker than hazel in a colourless face, within a long hooded cloak that shrouded her small frame like a quilt. Kathi, who had been safely locked with her children in the Hôtel Jerusalem, on the farther side of the town.
Diniz said, ‘I had to bring her. We’ve had some news as well. From the other direction, from Damme. They knew Gruuthuse had set off from Ghent. They also knew of someone else on the road: another party well on its way, and likely to get here before them. Gruuthuse’s is a troop of armed cavalry. The other is an ordinary convoy of wagons for Bruges, with a small escort, but no arms to speak of. They set off before Gruuthuse. They don’t know anything’s wrong.’
‘If it’s dark, the Gate will mistake them and fire,’ Gelis said. ‘Or they’ll be caught in the crossfire against Louis. Can anyone warn them?’
Then she saw the look on his face, and on Kathi’s.
‘I hope so,’ said Diniz. ‘The carts are from Nancy. Robin is with them.’
Chapter 6
Come of hir husband that was went fra hame
A fals tythand: hir husband suld be deid,
Scho wepit so and swownit in that steid
As sho ourcome and went furth at the zet,
All sudanly hir husband that scho met.
ONCE, A BOY of eighteen, Diniz Vasquez had travelled and argued and fought with Gelis and Nicholas and a woman called Bel on a journey to win gold in Africa, and there had discovered a hard-won maturity. Before that had come the long apprenticeship on the island of Cyprus, when Diniz had lost his father and watched Gelis’s own sister die, and had formed the undying bond of love and respect that he felt for Nicholas. It was Diniz who had fought and saved Nicholas at the battle of Nancy.
Now, standing in the ravaged Hospital of St John, he said, ‘That is why I am here. Lord Cortachy sent me. To make sure you were safe. And to get outside the town somehow with a warning. It must be done. And you will both wait here for me.’
Then Gelis said, ‘I will come with you.’ And when Kathi said ‘No!’ she rounded on her with roughness. ‘There must be two: one to go for horses and the other to keep to the road. And it must seem innocent, as it might with a woman and a man. And you are not to go because if you and Robin both die, then what of your children?’
The large eyes were chilled. Kathi said, ‘And I know the other reason. You think it is cold enough for the Minnewater to be bearing again.’
It was what she had thought. She had not said so. It was how Diniz had lost his mother, long ago: drowned in the broken floes of a little river by Berecrofts. It was how Gelis, too, had nearly died, below the ice of the Nor’Loch of Edinburgh.
It did not matter to her. It did not matter, either, to Diniz. He looked at her, struck. ‘Of course. You know the Minnewater, all the canals from your childhood. You will know where it freezes up first.’ And, of course, she did.
They went quickly, then. Kathi came to the postern and caught Gelis and kissed her, just before she stepped through. ‘That is for you,’ Kathi said. ‘And for Robin, if you see him.’
IT WAS DIFFERENT, now, from the dark empty road outside Spangnaerts Street. As the day grew towards dusk and the cold hardened, the chilled crowds had left the stinking, unprofitable barrier of the Burg for the warmer business of smashing into the places where pikes and hatchets were stored, and helping to drag the small culverin that someone had found, and cheering on a barrow loaded with gunpowder bales and some hackbuts. The roads to each of the southernmost gates were filled with determined people, and the way to the Ghent Gate was packed.
Gelis was dressed as she had been, and Diniz had cast off his half-armour and helm and wore a servant’s gear from the Hospital: a cap with flaps and a rough felted cloth over a worn leather tunic, hose