• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2703 0

of Sinclair, Henry’s captured horse at his girth. He handed both mounts to the groom, and ran up the foresteps with his mind on something other than a business meeting with Sersanders and Archie. It had already occurred to him that, without Henry, he was free to discuss rather more than he would have risked otherwise. But that didn’t excuse what had happened. He couldn’t believe that he had lost his temper with Henry: something so predictable; so easy to avoid. But now that it had, it was for him to turn it to some sort of advantage. He cleared his mind, walking with Archie’s chamberlain to the bureau, talking about the Easter processions. They were almost there when a man came running to stop them. Master Archibald was in his private chamber with Master Saunders, and begged Ser Nicholas to come there on his own.

He was on his own. ‘What has happened?’ Nicholas said. The staff didn’t know. But he knew, as soon as he entered the room and saw the letter between Archie’s hands. ‘Robin?’ he said; and sat down, as young Sersanders brought it to him to read.

He absorbed the contents in seconds, but did not at once speak. It was all very comprehensive, in Tobie’s crabbed doctor’s handwriting. He was used to Tobie in connection with other people’s written effusions: the list of accessible girlfriends in Milan; a recipe for camel-cough, or for a vile death on St Hilarion, or Famagusta. A document about the birth of a child. Henry, and Robin.

Archie said, ‘It’s all right. Read it again. Robin isn’t dead,’ and Nicholas looked up, disquieted to find that he had somehow attracted Archie’s compassion. Archie said, ‘I know you two are close. I’ve been thinking. There’s a house over the way. They could have that. We’d widen the doors for lifting him out And the same over here. Once up the steps, he could lie in Saunders’s office; run the core of the business; keep it all going. It’s not his head that’s astray. Ye don’t need your feet for a business.’ He paused. ‘And doctors don’t know it all. If the power comes back, he’s got ae leg. Like yon peg-leg Florentine. He could walk.’

He had assumed Robin was coming home, with Kathi and the children. The letter said nothing of that, or what was happening in Bruges. Sersanders said, ‘It came from Leith. The ship’s clerk had a few to deliver. Were you going back to the High Street?’

Coded message, which Archie, thank God, didn’t pick up. Nicholas said, ‘Eventually. I don’t suppose we need go on with this meeting just now. What do you say?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Archie of Berecrofts. ‘I don’t know. There’s more than ever to discuss, don’t you think? Now we can expand even more. Make a good like for these two little childer.’ His voice broke on the word.

Nicholas said, ‘Yes, of course. Let’s begin planning.’

It was dark when he left to walk up to his house in the High Street. Sersanders walked with him, for reasons other than courtesy. As Nicholas had divined, there was another letter from Tobie: it would be awaiting him there. And this one might have truths that Robin’s father had better not know.

He had expected to find Wodman at home, and was not sorry to learn that he was out. He remembered Henry only when he ushered Sersanders into his parlour and found the boy half lying there, disposed over a settle, freshly changed into velvet; the pure, pale skin showing its one violet bruise. The letter from Tobie lay open and thumbed on the table.

Henry said, ‘Uncle! Saunders, what can I say? To find the living dead in your own family! To see your pretty sister bound to a mindless half-man for life, performing for him every service but one, I should suppose. What have the Adornes, the Sersanderses done to deserve this?’

Sersanders took one stride before Nicholas stopped him, his voice harsh. ‘It is my fault. I acted childishly, and Henry is returning the compliment. Come to another room.’ He picked up the letter. It was much longer than Archie’s, and not in code. Nicholas said to Henry, ‘Have you shown this to others?’

‘To everyone I could think of. Did you think you could keep it secret?’ Henry