Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [94]
She stood, feet astride, glaring at him. Her slippers were scuffed under her gown. She said, ‘Sandy said you had good ideas. Then when we needed you, you had gone. I don’t want to be married.’
‘Highness,’ Nicholas acknowledged. ‘The English envoy brought an offer?’ He emerged from his second reverence. From where he stood by the window, Liddell cast him a glance, almost of sympathy. Albany, sprawled in a chair, scowled at his sister.
Albany said, ‘If we find the situation intolerable, we shall deal with it in our own time. We are not short of ideas. We merely wished to test public opinion. The offers, such as they are, come from our side. His grace my brother has proposed that the lady Margaret and I marry the English King’s brother and sister. That is, that I should be contracted to Margaret, the widowed Duchess of Burgundy; and that the lady Margaret should console the Duke of Clarence, who lost his wife in December.’
Nicholas said, ‘I am not sure, my lord, that I follow. This is surely a gesture, no more. Neither marriage, however splendid, would suit English policy.’
‘Of course you are right, but James doesn’t think so,’ Albany said. ‘He is determined to abase himself before England. If this doesn’t succeed, he’ll marry Meg to some high-born English bab in the cradle, and she will be tied to London for life. Why were you in Berwick?’
‘Because Berwick is full of spies,’ Nicholas said. ‘And I had an excuse. I went to meet Katelijne of Sersanders and her husband on their way home from Bruges.’
‘Kathi!’ said Margaret. She stopped tramping about and looked pleased. ‘Did her husband die? Perhaps she would return to our service.’
‘She has two children. No. Her husband was badly wounded at Nancy, but hopes to continue in business. They are in the Canongate, opposite the old Berecrofts building.’
‘I shall send for her,’ Margaret said. ‘She will want another interest if he is sickly, or dying. And she also has good ideas. You helped my other sister with her marriage. Sandy is sure you can help us.’
But Sandy’s mind was on affairs other than marriage. Sandy was Warden of the East Marches and Earl of March, which meant he possessed control of the south-east of Scotland, down to the walls of the fortress of Berwick-upon-Tweed. The fortress and the town were the King’s. The King’s money paid for their fortification and repair, and the King recouped from the customs paid by foreign merchants. The King’s wine and the King’s luxuries were conveyed by his merchants from the quayside at Berwick. Just recently, since the treaties with England, the King had made gifts of land within Berwick for his own state officials who now merited a presence there. The Lord Clerk Register and the customs controllers had joined William Scheves, and Wattie Bertram, that eminent citizen of Edinburgh, and those others who were already there: the Keeper of the Castle, the bailie and chamberlain, the representatives of the monasteries of Melrose and Newbattle, and Sir William Knollys of the Order of St John. Everyone upon whom the King’s favour shone obtained a place of honour in Berwick. To visit Berwick was to proclaim yourself a King’s man.
Albany said, ‘Spies? The biggest spy in Berwick is Tom Yare. I see his riders coming in through the ports and down to the Cowgate to have a quiet word with my lord of Avandale, or up the High Street to Argyll’s tavern, or disappearing through the pend to catch Master Secretary Whitelaw.’
‘It depends how you look at it,’ Nicholas said. ‘At least they’re spying for Scotland. It’s the English sympathisers I should be interested in myself. But it disturbs you, my visit to Berwick. And Sir James can probably tell you more than I can.’
The easy flush came to Albany’s skin. He said, ‘I am not disturbed. I expected you to be here, and you were not. That is all.’
‘I shall try not to disappoint you again,’ Nicholas said. He was tired of standing, and perhaps they noticed it, for