The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [167]
‘With your mind only, I think. It is the first step, at least. But that is not all.’
‘It is enough,’ Nicholas said. He stood slowly, his hand gripping the frame of the chair. ‘Father, I don’t want to leave. Talk to me, but not about that.’
‘Not about why you are not only angry with God, but angry with the whole human race?’
‘No,’ said Nicholas.
‘No? Angry, then, with your wife. Mortally angry with Jordan and Simon de St Pol, despite your own asseveration; and cruel to those caught in your quarrel. And, uniquely and finally, uncaring of all those around you, your familia: the people who have enabled you to rise, and who love you, and who depend on you, because you have been consumed with a longing for vengeance. Why? Shall I guess?’
Nicholas said, ‘I changed, that is all. I became tired of living my life as a victim.’
‘And that is your answer? Is it possible,’ Godscalc said, ‘that you think I intend to tell anyone else what you and I are saying just now? Or that I can carry it anywhere in the morsel of time that remains? This is why I waited for you.’
The lamp hissed. A wisp of smoke rose from the brazier, brought to warm him although it was summer. Nicholas looked, too, as if all mortal warmth had been denied him. He took a step from the chair and then, turning, folded both arms along the high ridge of its back, and propped his bent brow on his thumbs. He said, ‘Your guess is probably right.’
Godscalc said, ‘Then let me make it. What is the greatest pain I could conceive, that would drive you to idiocy? Only that the child is not yours. But perhaps Simon’s.’
‘You have it,’ said Nicholas. He didn’t move.
Now Godscalc’s eyes were damp. He continued steadily. ‘He took the girl, then, by force?’
‘You know it couldn’t be that,’ Nicholas said, and disengaged from the chair with sudden impatience. Godscalc watched him. Of course it couldn’t. The consequences of rape would have been transparently simple. Victim, husband and child would be bonded together for life; and Simon de St Pol would be dead.
Godscalc lay. You would say that in this brilliant, extraordinary man Gelis van Borselen had all anyone could want on this earth; that the unruly attraction between them was about to deepen into the companionship of which they both stood in need. She had shown her mettle in Africa. Godscalc himself had experienced the constancy of her care. Yet he had been disturbed even then, sensing turmoil, anguish even, under the sardonic calm.
He had been unable to reach her, although she had wept, once, at his knee. He had stopped asking questions, fearing to drive her away: she had no parents, no siblings, no confidants. Only when she spoke to him of marriage had he begged her to search her own heart. He had been concerned for her, as well as for Nicholas.
She had listened. She had even placed her doubts, as he had hoped, before Nicholas. Then in Scotland she had planned this cruel thing, from what desperation he could not imagine. And Simon de St Pol, from his shallow resources of pique and of vanity, had lent himself to her plan. Godscalc said, ‘Did Simon know what he was doing?’
Nicholas said, ‘He knew she was going to marry me. I think, for him, that was amusement enough. I don’t believe he envisaged a child.’
‘So he doesn’t know about Henry. This is not his retaliation for Henry. It is hers.’
‘I take it so,’ Nicholas said.
‘But to reject you now? After Africa?’
‘I was always afraid,’ he said. ‘So was she.’
That, of course, Godscalc had known; only he had never been sure of the reason. Now he said, ‘Afraid of what?’
‘I don’t know. Of ourselves. She had other fears. She never talked of them.’
‘But you didn’t expect this?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I thought I was safe.’
I thought I was safe. The shadows moved. Sometimes the brazier seemed to steal all the air from the room. Sometimes Godscalc’s lids were so heavy that he had to rest them, and wait, as now, to lift them open again. When next he spoke, he chose his words with great care. ‘Sometimes a child will stoop to the unthinkable to test the depth of one’s love.