The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [168]
‘To test it to destruction?’ said Nicholas. He seemed to be whispering. Then he must have turned, for he said roughly, ‘Ah, no. You know now what happened: it is done; it can’t be helped; it is wearying you. Godscalc, let me call Tobie.’ He was kneeling on the bed-step, and Godscalc felt both his hands around his.
He withdrew one and touched the boy’s hair, and thought to draw him close, as when once before they waited together on the threshold of death; and thought that Nicholas wanted it, too. He said, ‘It can be helped, my dear son. You must know there is only one question that matters. I don’t ask what your wife feels for you. Perhaps you don’t know. But despite everything, behind everything, below everything, do you love Gelis still?’
A distant door slammed. He felt the sound under his arm like a blow. Nicholas lifted his head and let Godscalc see his face, as if he no longer wanted to protect himself. Then he said, ‘Someone is coming.’
Godscalc did not speak; not then, nor when the weight left his bed as Nicholas slowly knelt back, and stood, and then stepped down from the bed. Footsteps approached: the sickroom door opened quietly. Tobie stood there, his cherubic face scowling. Tobie said, ‘Father, I had to.’
‘I asked him to bring me,’ said Gelis van Borselen.
Tending the dying, Tobias Beventini had faced many times the hard necessity of discriminating between one friend or another, of using what wisdom he had to detect when his patient was in need of peace or even when, suffering, needed his loved ones more than relief.
He did not quite know what he was doing, bringing Gelis to the room where Nicholas de Fleury and his priest were alone. Nevertheless he believed, from what he had heard, that Godscalc had a right to speak for the last time to the formidable companion of his journey from Africa; and that she had a right to his blessing.
Entering the room, he knew at once that Godscalc was spent. He also felt, more than saw, that something private was taking place, or had taken place; and that Godscalc felt it unfinished. He did not, therefore, as he might have done, either turn them all from the room, or ask Nicholas to take his last leave. He saw, in fact, that after the first shock, the eyes of Nicholas and the priest had returned to each other, and held still.
Tobie said, ‘You are an obstinate old man, and you should have sent for me. Nicholas, sit down over there. Gelis, there. And be quiet, both of you, until I have finished.’
‘A bully,’ Godscalc remarked. He had found a special smile in the hollow face, among the thinned grey and white whiskers, for Gelis. Then he turned the smile, grown calm, grown calming, upon the man Nicholas.
Busying himself with the cup, the flask, the drops, the sponges, Tobie saw them both, Gelis and her husband, as if through the back of his head. Or if he did not, he saw them reflected in the priest’s worn, smiling face.
They had been told to be quiet, and they were. Gelis was still cloaked and hooded as she had come through the countryside, once they found her. Diniz had sent men searching far and wide. The cloak was wet, and her face, when she drew back the hood, was sharpened with the speed of the journey, but ravishing still, with its light eyes and fair hair. Nicholas half rose to help her, but she shook her head and cast the cloak back herself. The hem of her gown was stiff with mud.
They both sat in shadow; he couldn’t hear either breathing. The eyes of Gelis moved between the bed and the person of her husband, black on black. Nicholas, after his first gesture, had not looked at her. Tobie, moving his clean hands in and out of the light, knew that Godscalc’s eyes were on his face, to test what he thought. What he thought was that he had never seen Nicholas de Fleury under such strain, and that Gelis herself had observed it.
He took his time oyer his business; giving Godscalc some of the space that he needed, and robbing him of the space ahead, which Godscalc did not want, and he had no right to preserve for him. Then he turned and dried his hands, and said, ‘Gelis?