The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [118]
‘I dare say I shall. If we had a book ready, I could take him a present. But I shan’t be here to offend him for long. Has Margot written?’
‘Margot? No!’ Gregorio said.
‘Then you shall write to her. It is time, I think, for my son to be born. What would be a good date? Any preference? One might say three days from now. On the fourth day, I go to the convent. On the fifth, she receives family visitors, and a week from now she comes back to Bruges, greets her friends, and we all go to Scotland.’
Gregorio said, ‘It sounds an excellent plan. I think you should write to her yourself. If she’s still where you left her.’
‘A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse. She is,’ Nicholas said.
‘But there’s no sign of the child, I should guess. That’s why you want this?’ Gregorio said. ‘She’ll have to produce it, or move it, or send word to its carers.’
‘You’re not going to write?’ Nicholas said.
‘No,’ said Gregorio. ‘Not as your agent, to Margot.’
‘Then was there anything else?’ Nicholas said.
Gregorio gazed at him. ‘Only what I’ve said before. Let it go. Find some grounds for divorce. Send her off with the child. Pick up the life you used to have.’
‘Yes, you said it before,’ Nicholas said.
‘Then listen to me,’ Gregorio said. ‘Or to Tobie. Or to Godscalc. Once you had charity.’
‘Charity?’ Nicholas said. ‘I have decided to maintain my marriage!’
‘That is not charity,’ Gregorio said.
Chapter 17
THE LIMP COULD not be disguised, although Anselm Adorne set his stick aside for the hour Nicholas spent in his presence and, if he felt pain, did not show it. Nevertheless, his eyes were deep, his thin-boned face pale. And Margriet his wife was swollen with anger.
She would not leave them to talk. She made that plain even before the meeting took place in her very own house, in the Hôtel de Jerusalem.
‘I will not go away! A youth who bedevilled all your years of office, until you had to beat him for it! An apprentice who stole the affections of poor Marian de Charetty, until out of love we had to agree to their wedding, even arrange it! A fellow who, now he is rich, will pick a fight with all who oppose him, and have them murdered too, if it suits him! Have him arrested!’
‘Let us hear him first,’ said Adorne.
‘What is there to hear? He laid a trap for Kilmirren the Younger and tried to kill him! He frightened our niece half to death! He set about you when you tried to restrain him, and then when he had gone, Kilmirren’s sister was found in the river! He is a murderer! If I leave him alone, he will kill you!’
‘Then,’ said Anselm Adorne, ‘you can hand him over to the authorities, for there will be no doubt at all who is the culprit. Really, my dear. A man like Nicholas seldom kills in cold blood. He prefers to bleed his victim of power or money. He does not like the Genoese.’
‘You didn’t know,’ Margriet said, ‘that the Fortado crew were all rascals. You only took shares in the venture.’
‘Nor was I in Famagusta when the Portuguese held out against him. But we are of Genoese blood, and his rivals. That I concede. There we are certainly opposed. But in a personal way? I think not.’
Nevertheless, Margriet van der Banck stayed with her husband, high officer though he might be, cultured though he might be, champion jouster and hard drinker though he might also be (when away from the house with his cronies), because he was her dear man, and kind father to so many fine children and had made her, in her time, hostess and companion to royalty. Her chain and necklace, carried high on her bosom, proclaimed it.
The youth, when he came, was empty-handed. Youth? Jan, her eldest, was twenty-four and this one was four years his elder and given over to Mammon, whereas Jan was learning law at Pavia and would end up serving God in the Curia, if the Bishop of St Andrews was as good as his word.
This one wore black, like the Duke