The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [164]
“His mother must miss him sorely,” Gregorio said.
He only wished to elicit, if possible, how long they were staying. To his surprise, the woman didn’t answer at once. Then she said, “As to that, great ladies are busy, monseigneur. There are nurses enough for the little one. She sees him when she can.”
“Indeed.” He said gently, “Was it a difficult birth?”
She nodded slowly, stretching the cloth on her lap. “A big child, and my lady was twenty. They blame the child sometimes. Or it frightens them, being so new to handle. And again, there are those whose greatest fear is that the little one won’t grow to love them. You’d wonder children ever got reared, till you remember Nature always has her way in the end, and a child finds its way to most hearts.”
“Of course it does,” Gregorio said. He felt queasy. Nicholas, poor disowned bastard. You haven’t missed much, not being claimed by this Scottish house. He said, “And how is my lady taking to Scotland?”
“My lady is taking to Scotland very well,” said a light, polished voice from an inner doorway. Smiling a little, the speaker was walking towards him. “You come from Meester Adorne? Perhaps you don’t know that I have spent one sixth of my life in that country. I was maid of honour to the Scottish queen, Duke Philip’s niece. What is your name?” She spoke Flemish.
“Gregorio,” he said. So this was Katelina van Borselen.
She was not beautiful, except for her body, which had a fullness of breast perhaps owed to the child, although she could not be feeding it. A confection of floating white cambric concealed most of her hair, which showed brown at the temples. Her brows, heavily marked, were a characteristic of the Borselen family: the fact that she had not plucked them showed a certain independence, borne out by the set of her mouth. Her neck was slender, and she held herself well. A comely young woman. Once roused, he suspected that she might come near to something quite striking.
She said, “Well, Gregorio, I am sorry to say that my lord is detained, but I expect him quite soon. Will you wait, or is there a message you may trust me with?”
“I should prefer to wait,” said Gregorio. “Perhaps there is an office? It is a matter of business.” The presence of Simon’s wife was not part of the plan.
“Then he will take you to our chamber,” she said. “And meantime you will sit and tell me all the gossip of Bruges.”
“He was asking about my little lord Henry,” said the woman.
He watched the girl’s eyes. They looked flat and dense, as if painted, but they might have looked so before. She said, “Everyone has been so kind.”
The woman said, “He was asking whom he favoured.”
Had he asked that? He didn’t remember. The girl said, “Oh, doesn’t every first child look like his father?” She smiled. She had said it so often that the remark and the smile had lost meaning. She said, “But why should we deafen you with women’s talk? What is happening in Bruges? And Genoa? What is the latest news from Genoa and the East?”
A door opened. The lady Katelina turned her head. “Simon? Here is a messenger from Anselm Adorne. He has private news for you. I am jealous.”
Gregorio turned. In the doorway stood the man he had seen twelve months before, admiring the fire that had consumed the house, the dyesheds, the yard, of Marian de Charetty in Bruges. The lord Simon who had secured a ship of his father’s and, placing Pagano Doria in charge, had sent him to Trebizond with Marian de Charetty’s twelve-year-old daughter. The lord Simon whose antipathy towards Nicholas, born of his first wife, was known throughout Flanders.
Married when he was fifteen, Simon de St Pol must be in his mid-thirties at least. But such was the grain of the skin, the set of the blue eyes, the shining spring of the corn-yellow hair that he might have been the same age as his new