Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [91]
‘We’ll soon alter that,’ Nicholas observed with casual fondness. Ceaselessly, from the first moment, he had dispensed boundless, ineffable comfort. Only Kathi had seen, at that moment, that Nicholas’s hand had clamped shut like an animal.
The same tightrope that she walked, hour by hour. Is this right? Is it wrong? Have I destroyed him?
After a while, she went and got her hostess, and wine came, and the others—Tobie, Crackbene, Archie again, and Tom Yare himself. She stayed until the noise was at its height, and only lingered on her way out when she heard Robin ask about the tournament. The answer, in Nicholas’s inspired re-enactment, wrung comedy out of elements she could only imagine with horror: the presence of both Simpson and Jordan de St Pol, of the boy Henry and John of Mar. It rose to a climax.
‘Pigs!’ This time Archie was weeping with laughter.
‘Oh, we’ve got pig-wives in Berwick,’ said Tom Yare. ‘And muggers. They bring round the mugs frae the piggeries. Terrible rough types they are. Jump on ye for your purse.’
‘They’ve got them in Bonnington, too,’ Nicholas said. ‘Andro and I nearly lost more than our purses. But our muggers were oyster-muggers, it turned out. Mongers. Mussel-men with a nasal impediment. Which reminds me. Did you know that oysters like to be sung to? Repeatedly?’
‘The more you eat? Responsorial chants?’ Robin said, wheezing.
‘With hockets,’ said Nicholas. ‘And they appreciate double-sexed love songs. Come on, Tom. Ah! I die; ah! I die; ah! I die … I’ll sing it. You follow me.’
‘You’re drunk,’ said Tom Yare cheerfully.
‘I am only drunk to my oysters,’ observed Nicholas superbly, against Tobie’s wail of resistance. ‘Sing. This is your scalp-mail. Until you’ve paid it, no beds.’
She left, shutting the door on the laughter, and had a small weep herself, in seclusion, because she too was relieved, and proud, and full of joy.
HE CAME TO speak to her late in the evening, when the house was quiet and the men were dispersed, thinking of bed. They were to sail in the morning.
She had said good night to Robin, and to Tobie who shared his room in this house: they had found a bed for Archie nearby. Crackbene was on shipboard already. Here, Kathi slept with Tobie’s wife Clémence, but she had gone first to the children’s room and found Nicholas already there, his doublet over one shoulder, gazing down at her children. Cristen, her nurse, stood smiling beside him. He looked up.
Boundless, ineffable comfort, dispensed hour after hour, with intervals for fast-talking planning and others for vulgar hilarity. Until now, there had been no sign of effort. He smiled and said in a low voice, ‘I hadn’t seen them since January. One a Berecrofts, one an Adorne. That seems fair.’
The children slept, plump and healthy and beautiful. ‘They are too young to understand about Robin. It’s a blessing,’ she said. ‘Clémence is not using her room, if you wanted to talk.’
The nurse smiled at Nicholas as they left. Another of the friends he made so easily, when he wanted to. It was not the case with his own servants, with whom his relationships were even, but distant. But then, moving about, he had been surrounded these last years by strangers. And loneliness was another name for self-sufficiency.
Walking from one chamber to the other, she wondered what he needed to say, and what she dared say. He had spoken to Clémence, and would have all the news about Gelis and Jodi. For the rest, Tobie and Crackbene between them had told him everything else: about Bruges; about Robin; about her uncle. She knew as much from Tobie, who had drawn her aside and said, ‘In case you find yourself in private with Nicholas … I’ve given him your uncle’s letter for Phemie. He was very