Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [32]
Who is Katelina? A woman in Anjou. So, once, Nicholas had diverted a question and he had not, in fact, lied. Katelina van Borselen was, although his own age, fully a woman: she had become, if recently, both a wife and a mother. She didn’t belong to Anjou, but could be found there. She came from a royally-connected dynasty in Flanders, and had divided her time since her marriage between Scotland and Portugal.
She was married to Simon de St Pol, whose loathing of Nicholas was only exceeded by her own. And she was in Anjou, much against her inclinations, with the obese and powerful father of Simon, who frequently commanded her company on his travels. Jordan de Ribérac was the King of France’s adviser in financial affairs, and when he talked of business matters, she listened to him. She did not enjoy travelling with him. The alternative, however, was staying with Simon. And she was learning. If Simon’s business was to prosper, she had better learn.
Katelina van Borselen had been twice now to the vast castle of Angers, fountain of all pleasures. Angers was a seat of René, King of Sicily, Count of Provence and Duke of Anjou whose son John of Calabria was in Italy, leading the new season’s fighting for Naples. The court of Anjou had a magnificence about it that Burgundy, for all its wealth, could never quite match. Katelina took away impressions of paintings and tapestries, ostrich plumes and grey and white taffetas and everywhere, manuscripts. King René, a man in his fifties with a young and beautiful wife, was himself the source and arbiter of half the beauty around him, and not merely the patron.
Now, he had relinquished the struggle for Naples to John, his son by his first wife. He viewed from a distance the fortunes of his daughter Margaret, bred to battle like John, and fighting to preserve the English throne for her husband Henry against a fierce Yorkist claimant. To those who helped his children, King René opened generous doors. The Flemish Queen Mother of Scotland gave aid and shelter to Margaret. His nephew Louis of France (a race René neither liked nor admired) yet had the power to help not only Margaret but Duke John in Naples. René of Anjou was therefore willing to welcome Jordan de Ribérac and Katelina his son’s comely daughter, whose provenance from that viewpoint was quite excellent. René loved handsome objects, young and old, but the love was simply that of an epicure. His Queen, half his age, was his passion.
She was with him now, in the spacious chamber he used as a workroom, and so were half the court, as well as Jordan de Ribérac and his son’s wife Katelina. On the table before King René was an elaborate painting; an illustration for an allegorical romance he had just invented. His eye on his brush, the King hummed to himself occasionally, and occasionally spoke, showing that he was quite aware of his deferential audience, and not averse to teasing them. When he required observations, or broke into discourse, it was frequently Jordan’s opinion he asked. He smiled kindly, now and then, at Katelina.
No one, thought Katelina, could regard the father of her husband as an object of beauty. Once, the big frame, rolled in fat, might have belonged to an athlete. Now it was simply the bolster upon which hung his silks and velvets and furs, and within which his cruel wit resided. Before kings, he sheathed it a little. It was never quite absent.
The King addressed him. ‘My good lord Jordan: we see too little of your lovely kinswoman. Why not leave her with us while you attend to your business in the south? Your fleet at Marseilles must be crying out for you.’
‘It is my common fate, your grace,’ said the fat man Jordan de Ribérac. ‘Also, as it happens, they are crying out for crew members. The Queen of Cyprus has sent her ship on to Nice, and her shipmaster is clubbing children and rivetting them into the benches.’
‘So you said. It is being looked into,’ said the King. He withdrew his brush and sat back, his eyes on the painting. He turned. ‘But of course, when they sail, your ships will sail without you? I am