The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [276]
Presently, the others left too, repeating the laughter. Nicholas did not register its meaning or cause. Since he now spoke neither Arabic nor French, they had not carried out their threat, and his fingerbones – all his bones – were unbroken. With the part of his mind that was Arab he appreciated the humour. He could have moved, crawled, gripped with a few broken bones. He lay in the stifling darkness, uttering sounds until death or sleep overcame him.
He sneezed and, being still alive, opened his eyes. The trap-door was open, and the torch that hung below it was lit. The draught was not what had disturbed him: a fan, glinting with jewels, stroked his lip. ‘My dear man, how you stink!’ said David de Salmeton, disposed with the grace of a vine on the staircase.
Once, it had seemed a sin to doubt beauty; to think that anything less than goodness could dwell in a face and form such as this, or within Simon’s golden perfection. The childish belief clung all the longer in that it was allied to a morbid awareness, a misdoubting of envy. One should love beauty for its own sake, he believed. In time, he had learned to understand the impulse, and control it. It was one of the many worthless lessons he had learned.
He looked up, beyond the mouth of the trap-door, but Gelis did not seem to be there.
His rival said, ‘It is unseemly to gloat, but I wished you to meet your successor. We had planned to integrate the Vatachino with your Bank in twelve months, but you have run it down a little too quickly: we did not wish to take over a destitute house. Your flair – you had some flair – deserted you in your Scottish transactions.’ The charming voice made a pause. David de Salmeton had come, as a vain and clever man would, to make his victim aware of his fate; to hear him protest or plead.
Your Scottish transactions. For a threadbare, ludicrous moment, Nicholas reviewed his Scottish transactions; summoned to mind the fierce and complex activity which had filled his every waking moment in Scotland and then, bridging the chasm of Godscalc’s death, in the Tyrol and Venice, in Florence, Naples, Alexandria, until the cable had snapped and all he had set in motion was stilled. Stilled now, in all its destruction, for ever.
He returned to de Salmeton’s words, and felt a pang of amusement. He did not show it. He had deliberately left no private instructions: for Scotland, for anything of the long, complicated design upon which he had been launched. When he died, the victory of his enemies would be half, perhaps three-quarters assured. His Bank would probably fall, to the triumph of the Vatachino and Anselm Adorne, and Simon de St Pol of Kilmirren and his fat father Jordan. And, of course, Gelis. I wished you to meet your successor.
He had said nothing aloud. From malice, then, the man broached the same subject. ‘By the way, the lady your wife sends her regards, and wished me to assure you that she is in health, and all her friends and kinsfolk relieved of their premature mourning. She has gone to Mount Sinai. Something about a parrot, I gather?’ He smiled, his eyes attentive.
It was, of course, the first independent confirmation that Gelis lived. Nicholas believed it. The oblique reference to Margot was sufficient proof. He had convinced himself of it already although, he must now admit, his judgement was faulty. De Salmeton spoke again, bland as barbed fur. ‘What, Nicholas? So poor a spirit? The stable-boy sulks, but surely the knight dies with a quip on his tongue?’
Allah and the Hallows requite thee.
‘Forgive me,’ Nicholas said. ‘They didn’t warn me your presence was lethal. The lady my wife, then, was too busy to call? I should have had her admitted.’
De Salmeton stirred, as if the tone of the remark had surprised him. Then he said, ‘Time passes when one is occupied, and pleasure makes one forgetful. We parted late, and she asked me to be her ambassador, as