Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [76]
Henry laughed with something suddenly close to real pleasure. ‘You think he’d give you Kilmirren!’
‘To save your life?’ Nicholas said. ‘As soon as I denounce you, you will be condemned. Wodman is a royal officer. I’m a Knight of the Unicorn, come to that. You don’t try to kill unicorns every day.’ He paused. ‘I don’t think you’re doing too badly. What are you grumbling about? I promise I’ll hit you only every third week.’
‘I’ll knock you off your horse next time,’ Henry said sharply.
‘All right. Wager you one of the bloody bashed jugs you don’t. Are you on duty tomorrow?’
‘No. Yes,’ said Henry. He looked slightly dazed, as he had on the road.
‘Oh. Well, don’t get too drunk on that,’ Nicholas said, producing and dumping a flask by the bed. ‘Salve for the wounds. Good night.’
Henry said nothing, only stared as he left. But he didn’t fling the wine after him.
Nicholas returned to his room and, ignoring the bed, walked to where the other flasks were, and pulled down the first, by his chair. Then he set it aside with one clumsy hand, as the first wave of reaction overwhelmed him.
He was too far from childhood, at thirty-six, to expect comfort. Eventually, he resorted, instead, to the wine-flask.
Like father, like son.
PROSPER SCHIAFFINO DE Camulio de’ Medici of Genoa, once Milanese diplomat, now a nuncio of the Pope and the Apostolic See, and Collector of the Apostolic Camera in the realms of England, Scotland and Ireland, had first bustled into the orbit of Nicholas some seventeen years previously, entertained him in Milan, and in Bruges. Their common interest had been an illicit one, in the chemical alum. You would suppose that, now in holy orders, Camulio would have abjured every form of chicanery but you would, of course, have been wrong. Debts and misguided patriotism, between them, would always talk louder than God.
At just over fifty, he had begun to weather, in the way that run-about envoys usually did, whether representing a Duke or a Pope. Nevertheless, his black eyes beamed upon Nicholas, entering his comfortable guest-room in the monastery of the Dominicans, Edinburgh. Nicholas, who had never minded Prosper de Camulio, beamed back. He said, ‘I like the robes.’
Camulio plucked at them. He said, ‘It is a living,’ and laughed, and waved Nicholas to a seat. A serving Brother, in humble black and white, poured some very good Chios wine. ‘I thought it appropriate,’ the Nuncio said. ‘I hear you have just returned from the lands of my forefathers. I wish to hear about Caffa, and the Adornes. And, of course, about your own circumstances, these disturbed times. Ah! Perhaps you even miss the days when you were a simple apprentice called Claes!’
‘I am constantly being reminded of them, at least,’ Nicholas said; but he smiled. They had a lot in common. And it passed the time until he could ask about the Nuncio’s splendid new procurator.
‘David? But you are his close friend, of course. How sad he will be to have missed you. No doubt you were dazzled, as was I, by the gifts he was anxious to send you. What great service did you perform for him in Cyprus?’ Camulio asked.
‘Not the one you’re thinking of,’ Nicholas said, and waited while the Nuncio cackled. It was easy to confirm, talking further, that Camulio knew something of Simpson’s past history, but nothing of his long campaign against Nicholas. There was no reason, indeed, why he should. Simpson, as a Scot working abroad, had the sort of disconnected career that was hard, even for the Curia, to examine completely. And he had no public blemish on his character. David Simpson had left the Scottish Archers in France at the same time as Wodman, and had followed him into the service of Jordan de St Pol. Even his dismissal from the Vatachino company had not been publicised; Wodman professed not to know why. Nicholas thought it was obvious. The traitorous Simpson would be tolerated by Henry’s grandfather in Scotland, just so long as Simpson