The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [149]
Tobie sat down. From the pallor of extreme anger, he had become flushed. He folded his arms. He said, “He’ll pay? Ten Paternosters?”
Nicholas lay, watching Godscalc. He had appointed Godscalc himself, because he thought him an astute man as well as a prudent one. Whether that had been foolish or not he had yet to find out. Tobie, of course, had been made company physician by the demoiselle. When Simon stabbed him at Sluys, Julius had saved him from drowning. But it was Tobie the demoiselle had rewarded, for he had brought him to convalescence. Julius…
Godscalc said, “Shall I tend his body and you his soul?”
“How?” said Tobie doggedly.
“Look at him!” Godscalc said. “That, for a start. And what else will make him suffer sufficiently? We could force him to do what he dislikes most. We could force him to tell us the rest of the truth.”
It had been a mistake. Damn him. Damn him. Nicholas, who thought he had been unable to move, dug his fist in the sheet. Godscalc looked at him. The black eyebrows rose to the black untidy hair. “Such as,” he said, “telling Tobie who is behind Pagano Doria?”
Too astute by far, but not, after all, wholly destructive. It was a trouble, now, to make his voice serve him. Nicholas said, at the second attempt, “I would have told you. Gregorio wrote me in Florence. Simon owns the Doria. Simon sent Pagano Doria to Trebizond to compete with us.”
The priest, saving him, took up the story. “And, one supposes, to destroy us. And further, perhaps, to abduct the child Catherine and even to see that Nicholas never comes back. I was not sure,” said Father Godscalc, “but I made some enquiries in Porto Pisano, and the answers pointed that way. It does not begin to excuse, of course, what Nicholas had already done.”
“Simon was behind Doria?” said Tobie. He looked shocked. It would not, however, mitigate what he felt. He had always been in two minds about him, Nicholas knew. Now he had put aside doubt. Perhaps with reluctance. And still obliged in conscience, of course, to perform his physician’s duty. He spoke to Godscalc. “We know now that Nicholas lies, and will always lie. But you? You didn’t warn us?”
Godscalc said, “I was waiting for Nicholas to do that. Since we knew Doria already as an enemy, his silence put us in no extra danger. But it was another instance of his penchant for secrecy. I was not aware, then, that he had already abused it.”
So they had told Godscalc everything. Or everything that they knew. He lay and thought about that. In Bruges, they had accused him of destroying by guile every person who crossed him, including his kinsmen. It had stood in his favour, of course, that despite all Simon had done he, Nicholas, had never injured or hurt him. Or so they had thought, until now. And now, of course, they knew that he had given Simon in secret a bastard: a spurious, an incestuous son.
Tobie and the priest continued to talk, but without referring to him. His sins of omission as well as those of commission were no doubt being thoroughly aired. He had, of course, promised to keep nothing from them, and had not kept the promise. He would be required to pay for that as well. They moved to the window, their voices rising and falling, and he found his eyes had closed. The walls and ceiling swayed vertiginously under his lids, and he struggled with an inclination to gasp. Then Tobie’s voice, close at hand, said, “No. He’s awake,” and fingers closed on his wrist. He pulled his hand away.
It was still Tobie and Godscalc, looking down at him, but they seemed different. Then he saw that the light had changed. Perhaps he had slept without knowing it. Godscalc said, “Your master of medicine agrees with me that there has been enough talking. But you will want to know this. We concede that the parentage of Katelina van Borselen’s child should remain a secret, so long as she wishes. Tobie and I will tell no one else. If she dies, however, we reserve the right to protect