Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [278]
Chapter 40
SCHOOLED BY THE DESERT, Nicholas had learned the lesson if not the habit of moderation. It was not likely – indeed, it was impossible – that he could be temperate in any room with Gelis van Borselen, but at least he could so manage this time that he stayed with her only an hour, and did not allow a night-long sequence of the kind they had shared once before.
That night had come about for many reasons, the best of which still existed. It was a precipitate and sensual union; she had seen that clearly enough. It was perhaps unusual in those terms: close in age but unequal in experience, they possessed a physical match he had rarely, if ever, found before. It was a matter perhaps of simple energy, or of empathy, or even of a kind of imagination he had not suspected. He experienced in her an extreme of joy, and knew, accomplished as he was in this at least, that he had brought her the same.
The best of reasons was not that, it was what they had spoken of: an act of more than bodily fusion. Apart, they were indelibly marked by the year-long travail they had lived through together, and what they had also borne on their own. He carried, for life, the imprint of his journey with Godscalc, and of the two years that followed. She, in turn, had in his absence faced and conquered an alien city, and had single-handed fought her way back to the Gambia with Godscalc, sick and suffering, and brought him successfully home.
Even now, it was not perhaps enough to make the union they should have had, but for Katelina. Tonight he had said nothing of the future; had not wanted to speak; nor had she. She had not wanted to disengage either, holding him with a kind of ferocity before suddenly letting him go.
He had said, ‘Gelis? It’s your cousin’s house. We don’t know what we want ourselves yet.’
And she had risen as she was, and lit the lamp and, taking a brush, drawn it slowly down the length of her hair. She was different from Katelina. And everywhere, she was fair.
He said, ‘Come to Spangnaerts Street tomorrow, and see Godscalc. We can talk.’ He was half dressed.
The brush moved slowly down. She said, ‘I have to go to Scotland next month.’ The long strands lay between her breasts, and outside them. She held the ends of her hair in one hand.
Nicholas said, ‘Don’t make it difficult.’
‘Why not?’ said Gelis. She was still brushing, when he opened the door, and held it, and went out.
It was not so late, and he should, perhaps, have expected that Godscalc’s lamp would be lit when he returned, and that Gregorio would still be sitting by the priest’s bed, relating all that had happened. They had heard him at the gate, and greeted him, smiling, when he joined them. Godscalc said, ‘You have had a great reception, I hear. You deserve what you have had.’
There was a benignity in his smile, and in Gregorio’s. Nicholas wondered, not for the first time, what sixth sense men possessed that enabled them to detect this particular activity even when, as now, its level was markedly wanting. He supposed they guessed who his partner had been.
Godscalc had so far talked little of Gelis, beyond praising her devotion on the voyage. There had been no pastoral admonitions. Gelis and Nicholas were being trusted to reach their own decisions uninfluenced. That there were decisions to be made must have been obvious.
Nicholas said, ‘The Gruuthuse family did me great honour. I think perhaps I have found a niche for Astorre and the army, from what I hear of Duke Charles. And I saw Gelis. She is returning to Scotland.’
‘Before the Duke’s wedding. The postponement has thrown everything out,’ Godscalc said. ‘Gelis seems to enjoy the young Scottish princess’s household. Wolfaert’s niece. The girl is only sixteen, and already married a year.’
‘And we are to have a wedding here?’ Gregorio said. ‘Diniz has returned to his chaste bed at his uncle’s, but not before he and Tilde told us all. I am glad you agreed.’
‘It was a difficult decision,’ Nicholas said. He let himself