The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [204]
She wanted – She knew what she wanted, but it was not this. A long passage of arms lay before her, and she could not have Nicholas driven to end it by Simon. She pulled herself free, the wine spilling. He exclaimed. The door flew open. A child’s voice said, ‘It isn’t here!’ A child entered.
‘Henry!’ said Simon and, releasing her, straightened. His eyes were black. He said, ‘I told you to wait.’
‘I wanted to see him,’ said Henry. ‘I wanted to tell him not to grow up and bother me, because he’s only a bastard. Are you the mother?’ He was speaking to Gelis.
Her sister’s son. Now nearly nine years of age, the blue-eyed, golden-haired baby of her dead sister Katelina van Borselen, wife of Simon and mistress of Nicholas as, in reverse, she had been. Only the straight brows and the set of the mouth brought his mother to mind. It was Simon who brought him up now. But she had sworn an oath to Godscalc. So had Nicholas. She searched the boy’s face, and saw nothing of Nicholas there but one dimple and a certain stubbornness, perhaps, in the jaw.
Are you the mother? It was his father’s child he had been searching for and would have killed had he found it, very likely. He had tried to kill Nicholas. She looked at the white, angry face and wondered what madman had made him believe that a half-brother had power to supplant him. Then she thought of the fat vicomte whose name she had used as a weapon. She sat where she was, the wine staining her breast, and said, ‘I am Gelis van Borselen, dame de Fleury. I am your aunt.’
Simon swore. Transfixed as she was, she almost smiled.
The boy said, ‘That’s what I thought. He got you under him and you grew him a baby. Are you growing another?’ He was looking her up and down. He added conversationally, ‘I do that too. With the cup. They like the wine in little drops.’
The words, in a child’s mouth, made her spin round upon Simon. He said, ‘He eavesdrops. He was brought up by sluts. A St Pol does as he is told. You were told to stay at the inn.’ He had the boy by the arm. The boy looked at him with hatred.
Gelis said, ‘Henry? There is no half-brother here you need be jealous of. There never will be another. I will promise. Simon, will you promise too?’
‘What are you talking about?’ Simon said.
Gelis said, ‘That Henry will be your heir, and no one will ever supersede him. That is all he wants to know.’
‘Well, he ought to know that already,’ said Simon. He had become rather flushed. He addressed the child, glaring: ‘Do you want to go to Scotland? Just tell me.’ The child was silent. ‘Because if you don’t, you’re behaving in just the right way. You’ve insulted your aunt. Apologise.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Henry remarked.
‘You heard what she said. You’ll leave her baby alone.’
‘If you say so, my lord father,’ said Henry.
‘Get out,’ said Simon.
The child looked at Gelis, and left.
Gelis found she was shaking. She stopped herself. She said, ‘Dear me. Perhaps your father was right, after all.’
‘About what?’ Simon said. He was breathing fast, his eyes still on the door.
‘In offering to recognise Nicholas as his grandson. Your son.’
‘What?’ Simon said. He said it quite slowly.
She raised her brows. ‘You didn’t know? Your father offered to purchase my child. In return, he would recognise Nicholas as your son. Nicholas would inherit Kilmirren and Ribérac, and young Jordan would follow, not Henry. Unhappily, Nicholas wouldn’t agree.’
‘That’s impossible,’ Simon said, and half laughed. She waited. He said, ‘My father proposed …’
‘Ask him,’ she said.
‘And Nicholas turned down the offer?’
‘He tends to take the long view,’ Gelis said. ‘I suspect that, once your father had got what he wanted, Nicholas would not have lived very long. And, of course, he hasn’t seen the child, as I said. He has persuaded himself he has a use for an heir. Certainly he has money to leave. Are you not pleased about that?’
He was untangling his thoughts, pacing fretfully. ‘I should be, if you were parting. But you’re not. You may have other children.’
‘Was that what Henry interrupted?