The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [256]
His name was Claes, Nikki, Nicol. His name was not Nicholas. What was his name?
Who sculptured Love and set him by the pool, Thinking with liquid such a flame to cool.
Someone was shaking him. He said, in explanation, ‘My mother is dead.’
And the other man, in anguish almost as great as his own, seemed to say, ‘I know. Is that not the root of it all? I know, Nicholas. I know.’
Wine after long abstinence has a curious effect. Waking and sleeping through the long night, Nicholas de Fleury was aware that Tobie was somewhere in the same room, but could not always think why. Towards morning he remembered very well. Soon after that Tobie himself fell asleep, his chin masked with fair bristle, circles under his reddened lids. Nicholas rose and, presenting himself early at the baths, was clean, shaved and dressed by the time Tobie awoke. He had also spoken to Achille, and had a tray brought with food enough for both. He did not try to eat himself, but laid the tray beside Tobie’s pallet. He said, ‘I have to thank you.’
Tobie pulled himself up. After a while he said, ‘What do you remember?’
‘All of it, I think,’ Nicholas said. ‘Gelis died on the galley from Venice. Some things will have to be done. I don’t know how the child is being cared for. The news will have to be sent to her family.’
‘I can do that,’ Tobie said. ‘I shall tell Adorne, as well. And the child, presumably, is already in the best hands. Gelis expected to be gone a long time.’
‘But not quite so long,’ Nicholas said. ‘Would you do one more thing for me? Would you prevent Adorne or his niece coming to speak to me?’
‘They will understand,’ Tobie said.
Nicholas experienced a fleeting amusement. He said, ‘I doubt it.’
Tobie left later, having satisfied himself, Nicholas assumed, that despair was not about to drive him into doing something irrational. He had not asked what Nicholas intended to do, understanding perhaps that as yet he had little idea. His own main concern, from the outset, had been to appear as normal as possible and to get rid of Tobie.
It seemed that Tobie had somehow diverted Achille as well, for no one came near him except a page who scuttled out with the tray, and some time later appeared with another one. Nicholas let him leave it. The interruption made him realise that the pain came from his hands, cramped round the arms of his chair. Then it was dark, and the daily hubbub lessened below, and gradually the intrusions – everything – stopped.
And everything had stopped. Wheels within wheels within wheels. John had said that. So withdraw the innermost wheel, and silence falls. Nothing happens, because nothing makes it happen. The panorama is frozen. The mechanical figures cease to climb. The outlying animations – in Scotland … in Flanders … in the Tyrol, Venice, Cyprus, Egypt, Persia – all slacken as well, and sink below, weighted with sand from the ballast. Joining the wheel already broken, which he had never fully acknowledged till now.
There is no cradle under my roof …
I want the teachers of your line to help instruct the poor fools sprung of mine … All now truly gone, from today.
From yesterday. Time was passing. So what was he going to do? His mind reached that point, always, and jibbed, and went back. Back, and back. And then forward again. Was it quick for him? How was it for her? Slow this time, and seeping: seawater, fresh water; the pendulum swinging. If the mould was broken, how could you ever put anything together again?
Some time during the night he lit a candle and, sitting, dazzled, took out his maps and his jewel. His hands beat slowly and heavily, as his heart did, and he thought that was bad. Although he knew it was pointless, he cast over Jaffa and all the coast that lay between there and Alexandria, but of course there was nothing. He waited, and then thought to ask the jewel what he should do.
Divining tools cannot make choices. Remembering, he set himself, with an exhausted kind of persistence, to ask specific questions. Should I go here? Or here? Or here? It amused him,