Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [277]
He said it in Flemish. He said it deliberately, while he stood and she sat; while they were speaking, and he had not even touched her, so that she would know he had come intending to say it.
Everything in the house now was quiet. ‘Why?’ she said.
‘Because there has been time to reflect. Do you remember?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
He looked at the book. La Danse aux Aveugles was the title. It was only a title. He said, ‘We made each other a gift. You said that you would take me, if you took any lover. You said – and I said – that there could be no prospect of marriage. I have a question to ask you. According to you, I asked it before.’
‘What?’ she said. There were shadows under her eyes.
He said, ‘The night we spent together. I know why you came to my room. Did you feel the same when you left it?’
Her gaze was so open, he could see the candle flame in it. When he moved, the light from his jewels travelled over her. She said, ‘I thought you could tell.’
He moved his lips, as if he were smiling. ‘You think I was conscious of anything that night but what was happening? But I thought about it while I was away. I didn’t believe we’d come back. And when we did, and I woke, you had gone. I wondered why you had left.’
‘To make you follow me,’ Gelis said. ‘Umar wanted me to go, rather than hurt you. He thought then that you ought to stay; that coming home would only plunge you into perpetual misery. He wanted peace for you.’
‘I have peace. I have followed you,’ Nicholas said. ‘I am here, if you want me.’
She said, ‘Even though I haven’t answered your question?’
‘You have,’ he said. ‘What revenge would there be in having me follow you, unless it was to refuse me once I came? And you haven’t.’
‘Not yet,’ she said.
He said, ‘Listen.’
She had flushed. ‘What?’ she said.
‘Your breathing,’ said Nicholas. ‘And mine. Gelis, I want to touch you, and I don’t like this library. Must I go home?’
She sat without speaking. The jewels flared at her throat. He remembered the pool in the palace, and the tendril that was her young body, and the child-like buds of her breasts. He thought it would be hard to go home, but he didn’t move.
She said, ‘What would it be, but animal pleasure? You should want more than that. So, I suppose, some day shall I.’
‘If you know who you are,’ Nicholas said. ‘But with me, you will. You said it yourself. I am like Godscalc and Diniz, the other half of your life. The other half of your mould. I don’t even ask that you try to complete mine.’
She rose. It was late. There were lamps here and there on the staircase: the doorkeeper was awake, and no doubt there were servants and pages. But he was a guest of the house, and had only been holding converse in a library. It would be easy enough to make an exit.
Gelis said, ‘There is a way into the new wing they are building. My room is near there. I am afraid it has books in it.’ Now she stood, he could see her skirts trembling.
Nicholas said, ‘If someone sees?’
‘I am a van Borselen,’ Gelis said. ‘In the wrong bed, I am invisible.’ Her voice came from the door.
He opened his eyes, and walked after her, quickly and quietly, through many corridors. ‘I wish,’ he said, ‘that I had been born a van Borselen. Which door? Go in. I’ll wait to see if it’s all right, and follow.’
He did wait, but no one had seen them. He saw, while he waited, the moon hanging yellow as cheese over the roof-tops, and heard a distant bell, and a dog bark, and a solitary horse ambling by somewhere. From the church of Our Lady came a rumour of plainsong. His body had begun to take charge. He felt sick.
When he opened the door, Gelis’s room was in darkness. Taken with his present cataclysmic absence of peace, it was enough to make his throat close. He had told her himself how to hurt him.
Then he moved, and touched a European woman’s long hair, which led his palms down to a smooth neck, and two naked breasts, and a supple waist with a gown half unfastened below it.
He said, ‘That’s no way to undress,’ in an uneven way. And then didn’t say very much more, for his own finery