Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [93]
He said, ‘Who asked? Robin or Tobie?’
She smiled. ‘Both. I said I couldn’t say. I gather they didn’t ask you.’
‘Everyone else does,’ he said. ‘The answer is, I don’t know. I can’t be sure I can keep out of trouble. I need time, like Robin, to be sure I can manage myself. If this attempt is successful then yes, I should want to stay; but the decision must come from all of you, not from me. From my victims.’ His face, an untrustworthy witness, was rueful.
‘Would you let me tell him that?’ Kathi said. ‘Would you let me say that you have allotted yourself a certain length of time within which you mean to teach yourself … to—’
He made to stand up, and then didn’t. His face, a trustworthy witness, showed shock. ‘No, Kathi, no! It isn’t a parallel. Christ, he’s a boy fighting back from disaster, none of it his fault. What is wrong with me is my own fault entirely. If I fail—’
‘Yes?’ said Kathi.
He clearly hadn’t thought of it before. He said, ‘If I fail, I can simply go back to the dyevats, where I can’t damage anybody. He doesn’t have an alternative.’
‘So, knowing that, you will feel bound to help him through his trial,’ Kathi said. ‘And if you talk to him as you have talked to me, he may well think he can help you. At least, knowing Robin, he will try. And isn’t that what we want, to engage him with something? Business by itself won’t be enough.’
There was another blank silence. Then Nicholas said, ‘But if I failed, I should bring him down with me. He would lose his guide-rope as well.’
‘I’m glad you see that,’ said Kathi. ‘For if you stray, a lot of people are going to be hurt badly again. Robin won’t be alone.’
His face had stilled. He said, ‘I see.’ He didn’t inflect it. If he had, she thought she would have heard despair. He said, ‘I think you must be the hardest person I know.’
She said, ‘That’s what Robin says, too. Anyway, you were hard enough on the multi-talented Master Yare. Tormenting him with the Latin version. Making him sing the song with the Rs.’
She could see him manacle his thoughts in order to follow her lead. His face slowly became untrustworthy again. ‘Dame Music and her less well-endowed scholars Tom didn’t mind. He has such a wonderful burr[burh]. A ! mohrioh; A ! mohrioh; A ! mohrioh … Robin enjoyed it, at least. And about oysters.’
For a moment, she had forgotten the connection between singing and oysters. Then she said warily, ‘What?’
‘Just this,’ Nicholas said. There was a little suede bag in his hand, which he brought across and, kneeling, emptied into her palm. ‘The fair stone Margarita which dwells there. For Margaret. The Icelanders reduced it to Groa, but I think Margaret of Berecrofts sounds better. I don’t know what to get Rankin. I’ll think.’
The pearl lay in her palm, lustrous and creamy on its fine chain. After a while, she looked up.
‘I sang for it,’ Nicholas said. ‘Perhaps one day Margaret will sing for it, too. I must go, or Clémence will chastise me.’
She followed him to the door, and he touched her fingers, and left.
She sang the pearl a short, suitable song, and went to bed. And, surprisingly, slept.
IN EDINBURGH, THE English envoy departed, with many fine gifts, on the heels of his moderately successful farewell tournament, and David’s Tower shook with dissension. Messengers seeking Nicol de Fleury waylaid him outside his house and took him up to the Castle, where he was pitchforked, with no visible pleasure, into the private lodging of Sandy Albany. Standing inside the door, Nicholas said, ‘My lord. Forgive my dishevelment. I have just ridden from Leith, and have not so much as entered my house.’
‘I know. What were you doing in Berwick? I wanted you here.’
‘I am here now,’ Nicholas said. Liddell was also in the chamber: steward turned watchdog who had not been so credulous as Sandy, renewing this relationship, but who was, Nicholas thought, at ease with him now. And then he saw there was someone else—a young woman. A short, rounded girl of sixteen or so whose hair rippled red on her shoulders, and whose fierce young voice he