The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [303]
‘I think,’ she said, ‘that I shall tell you at another time, in another place. At the end of my choosing.’
‘And the child?’
She smiled. Always, the child. She said, ‘You doubt the existence of Jordan de Fleury, eighteen months old and walking? I brought you a lock of his hair. Give me the ring, and you may have it.’ She took the little pack from her sleeve and held it, unopened.
The sky was opal; the gable crosses of the little church outlined against it. She could see Nicholas some small distance away, standing with rock-like stillness as if in prayer, or awaiting a mystical experience, except that his hands were not joined, but placed hard over his arms.
‘Univiva, unicuba et virginia,’ he said. ‘My unsullied bride: no.’
The sky brightened. He did not move. He had guessed.
‘Then let the wind take it,’ she remarked; and slipping her fingers into the little pack, eased it open and held it aloft. The gesture was not unlike his own. The slip emptied, in a whiff of gold fluff.
His darkened eyes followed the sparkle, while his hand idly fingered the ring. He said, ‘And that is all the proof you have to offer, here on the mountain of law?’ The roof of the chapel behind him was rosy. Behind and below, like the seething, chopped tides of the sea, combers of violet and red were emerging.
She said, from a sudden fear which manifested itself as crude anger, ‘Should I have brought you his head?’
‘Whose head would you have brought, I wonder?’ Nicholas said; and bounced the ring in his palm. He closed his fist over it. ‘False to false. It would have been the right coinage.’
She said nothing. He was looking at her. He said, ‘If you know I can divine, you know that I couldn’t fail to recognise a deception.’
‘It was the boy’s hair,’ she said. ‘You have never seen him.’
‘It was not from any child born of you,’ Nicholas said. His voice, suspended in the great spaces about them, was quite calm. ‘So it means the child doesn’t exist. We have uncovered one truth, at least.’
The wind blew, and stirred her cut hair. She had to decide, now, quickly, whether she believed in his powers; and then how to play this hand he had dealt her. She said, ‘He does exist. I didn’t want you to trace him. I hoped you couldn’t divine.’
‘And yet you burned what I sent him?’ he said. He added, ‘It argues, certainly, that he existed last year. Or a substitute you didn’t want found.’ He paused. ‘Or again, if there was no child, there was no need for a toy.’
The song, faltering in the flames. How had he known? But of course, he had Simon followed. She said again, ‘He does exist.’
‘Yes,’ said Nicholas. He turned aside a little. She couldn’t tell whether it was in agreement, or caused by some other thought. He said, ‘You need him to appear to exist, to control me. Otherwise I should hardly be here, for example. But as you see, I am beginning to demand more proof than that. And if you really do have a son, you will require to produce him at some time in any case, to bear my name and inherit my fortune. So why not now?’
‘To save him from you. You tried to kill Simon,’ she said.
The sun swam above the horizon. He stood, outlined in burning red, and looked down on her.
‘But he is not Simon’s son,’ Nicholas said.
She looked at him.
He sighed: perhaps in impatience; perhaps from something else. His voice when he spoke was still colourless. ‘I have some experience of women,’ he said. ‘I know about Simon: how he managed fatherhood in his youth but never again, despite all those years of assiduous profligacy. The birth of Henry restored all his confidence, but no successors have come. It is unbearable to him. He lies.’
‘He has admitted it to you?’ she said.
‘No.’ He turned, ‘It is not difficult to prove, if one takes trouble. He is sterile.’
‘He was my lover,’ she said. With an effort, she, too, kept her voice tranquil.
‘I know that,’ he said. ‘But the child you bore is my son, not Simon’s. You hoped at first that I’d harm it. When it was born, perhaps you found some pity for it.