The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [231]
Then Bel of Cuthilgurdy arrived, and Tobie felt immediately better. She had a new grandchild, and fell into comfortable chat with Tilde and with Margot without asking questions, and carried off the Sinclair women to cheer up Anselm Adorne who, in a resigned way, was making his will.
That was when it appeared that Andreas had to stay to look after the Princess, and there might be a place in the excursion for a footloose physician.
By then, the number of reasons for leaving had increased by at least one. The ceremony of the birth would be followed with terrible inevitability by the ceremony of baptism. Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, was going to be godmother. Eleanor, Duchess of the Tyrol, was to travel north to see her royal niece’s first child. The Hof Charetty–Niccolò was already awash with bales of satin and silk as Tilde and Catherine prepared to dress themselves and the company and Diniz.
Tobie made it known, with regret, that he proposed to leave Bruges with Anselm Adorne and his niece Katelijne as their physician. He found, with annoyance, that the company was to include John of Kinloch, a priest he had cause to dislike. He later learned, with mixed feelings, that Gelis van Borselen was going as well. But it was too late, then, to change his mind.
The situation had made Tobie deeply uneasy. All he had originally known of the grown woman Gelis had been learned from Godscalc, and he had formed a mental picture of a beautiful, independent, valiant girl who had been with Nicholas in Africa for half at least of the three years he had spent there, the watershed of his life. Nicholas had gone to find gold, but he had been prepared to pay the price that was necessary, and had suffered with Godscalc, and nearly died. His reward had been the great friendship with the black scholar Umar, who had once been a slave and had become his teacher. His reward and his punishment, for Umar, after sending him home, had been lost in the tribal rebellion that followed. And with him, it seemed, had been lost the healing power of all Nicholas had learned from books, and learned from the desert.
Returned, Gelis and Nicholas had married, but had not stayed together. Until now, Tobie had conformed to the general conclusion: the idiot had got her with child far too soon. On this journey, he had revised his opinion. Then, thrown into the company of Katelijne, he had found as she convalesced that she had formed one or two opinions herself. And because she was wholly uninvolved, wholly without envy, wholly tolerant, and extraordinarily perceptive, he responded by telling her what he knew.
Not all of it. The secret of Henry he kept, even when she described, with pity, the blow that had nearly ended his real father’s life. He did speak of Umar, and Africa.
For a long time after that, she had been silent. Then she had said, ‘How many people are given the chance of that kind of love? A black slave; a judge. He withdrew M. de Fleury from a pointless life; gave him silence, gave him teachers, gave him wisdom, and then died. People mourn in queer ways; then they stop.’
‘If they are allowed to,’ said Tobie.
The hazel eyes had looked up from the pillow. Katelijne said, ‘The lady of Fleury is jealous of Umar?’
‘Maybe,’ Tobie said. ‘Umar had a loving young family … babies … It was partly what drew Nicholas home, Godscalc thought. For the first time, Nicholas wanted that for himself.’
The girl had seemed to think. She said, ‘The lady Gelis never speaks of your Umar, even when