The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [50]
By the time he got to the door, it had closed again. He rapped, and nothing happened. Then he heard the nurse’s footsteps again. The door opened and she appeared, her face shapeless and red in the light of his candle. She held the girl’s door shut behind her. “You heard it?” she said. “Such a fuss. But you’ve no need to worry, my lord. Come back in the morning and the little lady will be ready to see you, and as proud as a queen.”
“What?” he said.
“What do you think?” said the nurse. “The Holy Mother knows I’ve worked hard enough for it. I never guess; it’s unlucky; but I thought this might be the moment. They get frightened. You’ll hear her crying, but never worry. Turn over and get you a good night’s sleep, my lord Pagano. Make the most of your sleep. Because if I know that little lady she will keep you busy in more ways than one. The bigger the pain, the bigger the hunger. That’s the truth about virgins, Messer Pagano.”
He let her go back to the room, and returning, stood by his window, enjoying the night. Then he went back to bed and slept soundly till sunrise.
Catherine received him next morning. Sitting erect with her russet hair combed and a silken shawl wrapped round her shoulders, she was a different girl from the creature of yesterday, although her cheeks were white still and her eyes circled and brighter than normal. They held, as she watched him, a timid and rather charming appeal. But mixed with the traces of strain and alarm was pride, as the nurse had expected, and the edge of a tremulous happiness.
He dispelled all her doubts by flinging himself at the side of her bed and covering her with the lightest of kisses. Then he gave her the ring he had kept for this moment. Tears came into her eyes. But when he pressed her lips hard with his own, her arms came round his neck as if she would absorb him.
They were married one evening in Florence, just before they achieved the secret retreat from their lodgings. She had fought tooth and nail for an open ceremony, a public Mass, a flaunting of her new state before Nicholas, and he had to explain his reasons for secrecy. Once Nicholas knew where the round ship was sailing, his jealousy would be boundless. He would envy Pagano his beautiful bride. He would envy them both their golden future in Trebizond. He might even, Pagano told her, take ship and set out to stop them.
“He wouldn’t follow us?” she had asked. She was white still, and moved about cautiously, content enough to be married in name. When she was ready, he had to lead her to the next barrier. He had promised her a wedding mass at Messina. And after that, he had let her understand lovingly, he would make her really his wife.
She hardly heard him, he thought; there was so much else happening. And now that she was a woman, all thought of returning to Flanders had gone. He had offered to write a long letter to her mother explaining it all, and she saw it go off, with his seal on it. Otherwise her mother would never believe it. She was going to Trebizond to learn how princesses lived, and dress in silk gowns and bracelets and rubies.
He thought she might even get them, if they were lucky.
Nicholas sailed two weeks later. It was a pity, and perhaps even a danger, that Doria had stolen a march on him, but a round ship could go where a galley could not, and it would have been folly to risk his ship earlier. Also, he had an instinct about Doria that he trusted more than the weather.
The last letter from Marian his wife came just before the Ciaretti left port. It said a little more than he was accustomed to hearing, because it was written at Christmastime; the first that had passed since they became man and wife; and they could not share it. As boy and mistress, they had never spent Christmas apart since he came to her dyeshop at ten, although the relationship had been shaped, for most of that time, by the berating edge of