Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [89]
Henry skipped aside. Everyone skipped aside, for the pig-asses were thundering back on a victory circuit. And by the time they had reached the end of the field, Henry had gone, the swords had gone, and even Nicholas de Fleury was absent.
‘Pigs!’ said Davie Simpson admiringly, as the spectators rose, stretched and prepared to go home. ‘Pottery pigs. Pig-asses to carry the shards. Pig-wives to drive them.’
‘Drunk pig-wives,’ Nicholas said. ‘They’ll never remember who put them up to it. Is my lord going home? Henry is waiting.’
‘So I see. And Mar?’ Jordan de St Pol enquired. He rose to his full height and gazed at Nicholas. Simpson, smiling, had gone.
‘He knew one of the pig-wives,’ said Nicholas. ‘One who is less particular than Lang Bessie.’
‘So I suppose I should ask, where is Bessie?’ The pursed eyes never left Nicholas’s face.
‘I think,’ Nicholas said, ‘you would have to ask Willie Roger. Or even Dob Cochrane, if he’s well enough. I’m sure Dob Cochrane could tell you.’
‘Thank you. I am sufficiently answered,’ Kilmirren said. He paused. ‘I am sorry about the horse. It was misused. The boy should be thrashed.’
Nicholas, too, had seen the pretty, Persian-trained horse, lying where it had dropped, and where it would never display its young rider’s beauty again. He said, ‘You have to break eggs to cook them.’ He saw a flash of contempt, and the other man went.
He had expected, then, to run down and join the exuberant, arguing crowd round Whistle Willie. Instead someone was coming quickly towards him. Sersanders, followed by Archie of Berecrofts. Sersanders cried, ‘Nicol! Archie’s just heard. He’s come! Robin’s come! He’s at Berwick!’
Behind him, Archie’s healthy, good-natured face was a mixture of crimson and white. He said, ‘So I’m away. Are ye coming?’
Nicholas grasped his shoulder and shook it, relief and pleasure tingling through his own blood. He said, ‘Of course I am. Try and stop me.’
A little later, when they were shouldering their way through the Horse Market, Nicholas asked a question of the Master of Berecrofts. ‘The message … did it say who else Robin had with him?
Archie stopped. ‘Man … I’m sorry. I should’ve told ye at once. Your lady’s not there. She stayed in Bruges as you told her. But Kathi and the children are with him. And Dr Tobie and Clémence.’
‘Then he’s being well looked after,’ Nicholas said. He gave a large smile, and began moving again. ‘And it’s all that we hoped for. He’s home.’
Chapter 9
Thar was a Roman takin in the weir,
And fred a gane.
WAITING IN BERWICK, Robin was frightened.
Kathi guessed, and perhaps Dr Tobie suspected, but no one could have known for sure. The pride that kept the sick boy alive saw to that. And there was nothing that even Kathi could do to alleviate it. Robin was afraid to meet his father, for his father’s sake. He was afraid to meet Nicholas for his own.
Kathi also felt pain. In the five days of their stay so far, she tried not to project upon this abused and struggling harbour, the wide, shoaling river, the green hills, the foreboding that came whenever, as now, she had time to think. She, more than perhaps his other friends, had been responsible for releasing Nicholas into this arena. Three months had passed since then. On what happened now depended not just Robin’s future, but the future for all of them.
After they all first arrived, they saw little of Crackbene or Yare. Tobie had stayed, and taken time to persuade her to leave Robin sometimes and walk out with Clémence and small Margaret and occasionally that active lady, Tom Yare’s wife, to see the trading-vessels unload at the wharf, and the sea-fishing boats coming in, noisy with gulls, to meet the flashing knives of the gutters. Then they would stroll by the swift stream that turned the town’s mills, and through the portals in the massive walls to the fields beyond, with early flowers in the new grass, and patches of arable heaped with dank, salty seaweed. Past the walls and the great ditch were those other walls, which encircled the castle where the Almoner Leigh would stay