The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [107]
The lamp in the next room had been rekindled. The door between presently opened and Gelis van Borselen stood there, her face in shadow. She said, ‘Ah. You are up. He seems to be here. Do you mind keeping your room? I shall send if I need you.’
It was an order: Unless I say so, don’t speak to him. It was also something more, and worse. All that was said in one room could be heard in the next.
Margot hesitated. Then she said, ‘I should like to send word to Gregorio.’
‘Write a note,’ Gelis said. ‘I shall give it to him before he goes.’ And she turned to walk back to her room.
She wore, half fastened as yet, the undergarment of one of last summer’s gowns. Margot thought, as the door shut, that she looked cold in it already.
The journey, being at night, had taken longer than four hours to accomplish. Nicholas had chosen to set out twelve hours too early, knowing that Gelis would count this as one of his options, and would be prepared. The ease with which he was admitted confirmed it. It meant, of course, that she had been forced to keep vigil too.
On the way, he had occupied himself with a long, complicated piece of strategy to do with current rates of exchange for gold bullion. Between formidable ladders of numbers, the tracks of his mind kept presenting him with blocks of fragmented poetry. When it first happened, he followed the verses to the end, as his consciousness yielded them. When others took shape in their place, a painful jumble, he forced a return to his numbers.
Now and then, he fell asleep in the saddle: something that could happen in battle-lulls, but rarely elsewhere. This was hardly a battle. All he was doing, in practical terms, was settling a claim over property. He had to pursue a missing object, identify it, and take appropriate action.
He arrived at the convent. The guest-master, gazing slightly past his ear, offered him hot spiced wine, with speeches of welcome.
Refusing, Nicholas asked with equal courtesy after the health of his wife and the child.
‘Ah!’ the guest-master said, glancing past the other ear. ‘But that she must tell you herself. A wife’s prerogative. Shall I send to see if she is ready?’
‘If you would,’ Nicholas said, sipping water. He hated water. One day, when all this was over … For a long time he had been saying: One day, when all this was over. For, of course, it had to be over, one day.
Then he was upstairs, and his escort tapped on a door, and left him as someone remarked, ‘Please come in.’
Please. (‘Bear it? Kill it? Rear it?’) Please was an improvement.
He went in and closed the door behind him. He locked it slowly and, turning, tossed her the key. ‘Unless you want to be interrupted,’ he said.
Regardless of anything, it was her face he looked at first. He had no idea what to expect. Dislike, of course. Probably something very much stronger: hatred, contempt. Possibly fear, although she would disguise that. Or worst of all, juvenile triumph.
But not that, no. She was not juvenile. She had planned it, she had carried it out, she would carry this out. She could do it in several possible ways. He saw, looking at last, that his recollection of her face was quite exact, and that she had chosen to appear firm and calm, but for a hint of impatience.
He looked down then. She wore the gown she had worn, newly landed from Scotland last June, on the day of their sudden betrothal. He remembered the close-cut ellipse of the neck, sedately matched to the beauty – the new-ripened beauty – it covered. He recognised, forcing his thoughts through their channel, the expensive fabric; the excellent seamwork. It fitted now, from bodice to hem, as it had done before.
He said, ‘You must be cold,’ with a calmness equal to hers.
The shutters were closed, and she had brought in extra