To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [105]
She looked at him in horror. ‘You think –’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But you may have done the right thing, even though the lady Mary might not think so at the moment.’
He helped her rise, and as she took her leave, she gave him a kiss. She felt him recoil. It upset her, thinking how she had intruded on him her thick heated body and wet face. She went home.
Chapter 14
A WELL-RUN CHILDREN’S establishment, to the mind of Mistress Clémence, had much in common with a well-run military barracks. It was the extreme competence of the Burgundian camp under Captain Astorre which increased the hopes she had already formed of M. de Fleury’s capability as a parent. The talents of his wife, the lady Gelis van Borselen, had now also been demonstrated, to Mistress’s Clémence’s satisfaction, in the transformation of the house in the High Street
The lady Gelis was, of course, already conversant with the requirements of a royal household. The King’s sister and her attendants were suitably quartered, with neatly erected extensions for their housing and service in the gardens and the Priory’s mansion next door. The cooks were reconciled, and some of the lesser servants turned off in favour of better-qualified ones from the Canongate house.
The nurse of the two royal children went back to Bruges after a week; but the wet-nurse, a humble creature called Scone, appeared glad to remain. The royal children were aged eighteen months and three months and on the point of being irremediably spoiled: it was fortunate that they arrived when they did. Jordan, introduced to them carefully, had shown no sign of jealousy.
His father, with remarkable good sense, had left the household alone for two weeks, but had arranged to communicate with the child at regular intervals. Most parents sent presents. M. de Fleury sent questions: What have you eaten today? What is the parrot saying? Have you new gloves for winter? Mistress Clémence doubted whether the answers, returned through some servant, ever reached M. de Fleury himself; but composing them gave his son great satisfaction.
Indeed, the child had to be protected from over-much attention: members of the royal bodyguard sometimes found their way indoors, the foremost being the man Andro Wodman, who spoke her own kind of French and whom she tended to keep, perhaps, longer than she should. And then the boy Robin came often, and the girl Katelijne stopped by very occasionally when on her way with her mistress to see the Countess. But both these young people were level-headed, while the lady Gelis, managing it all, was clearly better suited than she had been, alone in her rooms in the Canongate. But for the silly, poor-spirited girl they were housing, Mary Stewart, Countess of Arran, the new life might have been close to ideal.
She hinted as much, once, to the young girl Sersanders on one of her visits. The girl, who had taken up knitting, had come in with a large woollen object which proved to be a hat destined for Jordan. As always, it was to be given to the lady Gelis and not direct to the child.
The girl had sat down, knees akimbo and balanced the hat on her head. ‘She isn’t interested in anything. Even the children. Would you miss Tom Boyd as much as that?’
The nurse had smiled. ‘I don’t know him.’
‘I did,’ said Kathi. ‘I think he was just the first man she saw outside the nest. Like the chickens in Cairo. The King thinks if she can be made to make friends with the Queen, the Queen will feel the same about him. He wants them both to go with the children and stay in Kilmarnock. He gave the Queen the Boyd lands in the west.’
‘I do not think,’ said Mistress Clémence, ‘that