To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [103]
Willie said, ‘Henry Arnot’s being sent off to Rome. Why don’t you do something properly, just for once?’
‘I do,’ said Nicholas. ‘I’m trying to run a Bank properly.’
‘You’re back on water,’ said Willie Roger. ‘You always have a bloody short temper when you’re on water. Well, you’re wrong. I’ve spoken to your Julius. I’ve spoken to your Gregorio. I’ve spoken to your Govaerts. I don’t think you’ve ever done anything with everything you’ve got, except perhaps music. And that’s just improvising. That’s not striving for perfection.’
The clerks, their necks red, were writing assiduously. Nicholas sighed. ‘You think I’ve forgotten about the Chapel Royal money.’
‘I know you have. Haven’t you?’ Roger said.
‘Drums, you promised me,’ Nicholas said.
‘If you managed to extract the money for your Passion and my – You haven’t?’ said Roger.
‘Why do you think Henry Arnot is going to Rome?’ Nicholas said. Someone was hovering. Alonse.
‘Why?’ said Will Roger. His face, too, had turned pink.
‘The King,’ Nicholas said, ‘has reached the conclusion that the Priory of Coldingham ought to be suppressed, and its revenues directed instead to the Chapel Royal of St Mary the Virgin at St Andrews. I know Henry Arnot is going to Rome. Why the hell do you think he is going to Rome?’
Will Roger kissed him. It was highly unpleasant but not unexpected, and the clerks, turning round, had raggedly embarked on a round of applause. His grip must be slipping. Alonse, his face neutral said, ‘Messire?’
Nicholas pulled himself away and gave Roger a blow between the shoulderblades that was a quarter bonhomie and three-quarters meant to rattle his teeth. Then he turned to Alonse.
‘Messire,’ said Alonse. ‘The lady of Cortachy has called. She asks if she can speak to you privately. I have taken her to sit in your chamber.’
Of course. Anselm Adorne’s pregnant wife, come to beg; come to quarrel. Everyone did.
At home, she made small jokes about her size, since the swelling this time was everywhere, and she was hard put to disguise it: wearing her robes extra long to hide the grotesque feet and legs, and enfolding half her neck and her chest in the drapes of her white linen headgear. Even her face felt inflated. Whereas Claes vander Poele – Nicholas, now de Fleury – looked at first sight the same as the troubled, determined lad of nineteen who had asked her help and Anselm’s to marry the widow Charetty his employer in the Jerusalemkirk.
He was not the same, of course. He was thirty, and made to seem taller by some change in the shape of his muscles, and the way he now stood. His eyes held the attention now the way Anselm’s did, by their authority, and not just because they were wide-set and grey. She thought he had probably modelled himself on Anselm, and set her lips, remembering the wound he had given her husband, and the tiff she and Anselm had had over it. Anselm had always been soft with the boy. But now, of course, the boy himself had had his first son, and she had not been one to harbour a grudge.
She said, because she was thinking of it, ‘I’ve been to see your young Jordan. A babe to be proud of, and a lovely young mother. You are lucky.’
‘I know,’ he said. He had remained in the doorway while she spoke, but now he came quickly in and sat down beside her. He said, ‘I would have come to you. What can I bring you? What do the doctors say?’ That was the other difference. The dimples had gone.
She smiled. ‘Alonse was kind. He is bringing some milk. Dr Andreas says I have to rest, that is all. Jan was no trouble, nor will this one be.’
He said, ‘Jan is safely on his way to Rome, so far as I know. He will come to no harm from me. Is that what you wanted to know?’
He was direct. She supposed she looked tired, and he wanted to shorten the encounter. She said, ‘He was a silly boy. Yes, I did want to know that, and about Sersanders and Kathi. Although Kathi has taken your part more, I must say, than I think she should.’
Unexpectedly, the dimples appeared. He said, ‘Kathi takes everyone’s part, that of Gelis included. I think