Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [283]
She was ingenious in arranging where to meet. The van Borselen house only twice. The next time, at Veere, where he required to go, as was right, to talk to those Scottish merchants who had objected so strongly to the increased market tolls that they had broken off trading in Bruges. He took with him some letters from Bonkle.
She had a boat at Veere, and proved to him, as she had promised, that she could sail. There was room for two of them, and a small sail which took them to a beach which remained deserted all afternoon. Later, he came to his senses and apologised, aware that he had allowed her no respite. Yet she had shown nothing but a powerful compliance. She said, ‘If I don’t want you, I’ll tell you. Gregorio says he saw Katelina’s son and disliked him. Does that pain you?’
‘Yes,’ he said. He felt her naked weight shift on his arm, and looked reflectively upwards. The sky was pale, and the sand lay where it was, without rising. All around them was water.
‘You might win him back,’ she said. ‘Now he has brothers.’
Nicholas looked at her.
Gelis said, ‘Didn’t you know? A fertile kitchen-maid and now, they say, a well-born maiden whom Simon may have to marry. They say that possessing one child often leads to the siring of others. Simon will have a family.’
‘I don’t grudge him it,’ Nicholas said.
‘You envy Umar,’ she said in a soft voice.
‘I am happy for him,’ he said. ‘I am also patient.’
She moved a little. Then, rising, she came to stand over him, bare feet apart, damp hair streaking her breasts in the sunlight. ‘How patient?’ she said, and let herself slowly down. ‘This much? Or this? Or will you let me do this, and do nothing?’
‘No,’ he said; and closed her laughing mouth, and took up his licence to union once again.
At Easter, they parted, she to take her woman’s retreat, as she had warned him, and he to take his share in the ceremonies. She had mocked him over his first reaction to her news. ‘You were disappointed! You were hoping to discover me pregnant and helpless?’
He said, ‘I should like you, yes, to be able to make your decision. I shouldn’t want to oppress you with an unwanted marriage or children. It’s as well.’ In less than four weeks, if she kept to her plan, she would be gone. He wouldn’t allow himself to say more than he had. He wouldn’t allow himself to say, ‘Am I to be only your lover for life? Don’t we fit, mind to mind as we do body to body? Or do you still hate and want me at once, because of Katelina?’
The rest of the time, of course, they were in fierce opposition. Even while they were sleeping apart, she would find her way into the Charetty counting-house and browse with Diniz and Tilde through the ledgers, and then burst in on him or on Gregorio later with some violent stricture. ‘Do you know what you are lending the town, for their costumes? Why are you not fighting to keep importing the alum you want? What are these terrible fountains? They don’t work!’
None of Nicholas’s friends knew what to make of it. Gregorio, talking quietly to Godscalc, would say, ‘They are exhausting one another. He came back with a strength she hasn’t been able, yet, to disturb. But she will destroy herself, if she doesn’t make up her mind soon.’
‘Margot’s assessment?’ Godscalc had said. ‘I think you are both right, but I also think there is nothing you can do. Gelis is torn between loyalty to her sister and something else. It may be mere fleshly pleasure. In which case, it will fade.’
‘Leaving Nicholas where?’ Gregorio said.
And Godscalc had said, ‘I shall speak to her, Goro. But not yet.’
As if to justify his decision to wait, the weeks after Easter seemed to show Nicholas less beset, and something less inflammatory about his resumed connection with Gelis. However discreet they might be, the occasions were always created: the hunting excursion, the expedition to sail or to shoot which always left them alone, out of Bruges. She had returned to the house of