To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [107]
‘Certainly,’ Gelis said, ‘you do not.’
‘No,’ he said. He pushed himself thoughtfully off the door. ‘But one must keep up the average. The Marquis of Ferrara had sixty-six bastards, they say:
‘De ce côté-ci du Pô
Tous sont fils de Niccolò.
‘I aim,’ Nicholas said, ‘for both sides of the Alps.’
‘Why not?’ Gelis said. ‘You may have made a better start than you know. I have no complaints, and no questions. Go and see the Countess and make her even happier.’
He went to see the Countess, since that was why he was here, but first he visited Jodi, who had been smartly switched into a fresh tunic, he deduced, to receive his unheralded parent. Both Jodi and Mistress Clémence, for different reasons, looked rather pink.
Mistress Clémence was a choice of Gelis’s with which Nicholas had no fault to find – but then, he had always had a respect for his wife’s managerial powers. Whether employed by Gelis, by himself, or now within their joint ménage, Clémence of Coulanges had successfully steered her correct way through the changing relationships, while keeping her main task firmly before her: the wellbeing and training of Jordan.
He took her advice, within limits. When it was brought home to him now that Jodi was one of three children, and that he must give some attention to the others, he accepted that it was necessary for Jodi as well as for the Countess’s brood, and acted accordingly. He had grown up among child apprentices, serving-maids’ children, the children of his own employer who became later his wife. He had carried Tilde about on his back, who now had her own child, named Marian. As he sat, obtaining strange sounds from the whistle, he thought, not for the first time, of Margot’s coming child, so long deferred because of the taint in her family. He had been prepared to find the same thing in Jordan. He supposed Margot felt as he had. Sometimes, in the stream of such thoughts, he wondered why he was doing what he was doing; but not for very long. Soon, he got up and went to see the King’s sister.
The first-born of a young king and queen, Mary was the weakest of the five surviving orphans, having neither the ambitious intensity of the King, nor the wilful vigour of Sandy, nor the stupid belligerence of John of Mar, which showed itself more forgivably in the vivid, spoiled wildness of Margaret. Mary, with her wired headdress, her stiffened gown, her pallid skin, had been born frightened. Thomas Boyd, Earl of Arran, had offered her refuge after the death of her strong Flemish mother, and after the spectres of all those deadly contracts which would have married her to men who spoke another language, in parts of the world she had never known. It had happened to all her aunts. It would happen to her.
And instead, Fate had married her to Tom, whom she knew; who was Scots and well born and virile. She knew that, because her maids of honour told her everything. She would have an experienced lover. A glorious lover. Girls – women – married women – were dying of envy.
And so it had turned out. And now they had taken him from her.
She did not quite say all this to M. de Fleury, but when he kissed her hand she held it tightly, and made him sit close by her chair, to show kindness to him as he had shown it to her all those years ago, receiving her secretly in his house, though with respect, and agreeing to help her escape with her Tom. Before the dear children were born, whom it seemed he had befriended. Her dear fatherless children whom M. de Fleury was now going to help. Because now he was here, surely he would reunite her with her Tom?
She had sent her maids from the room. Nicholas, his hand trapped by hers, let her talk. The years of marriage, of intimacy, of childbirth had dispelled the shyness of their early encounters. Gradually, as she spoke, he realised that – as Gelis had said – she knew from her siblings all that had happened at the Castle, and his share in it. And she knew of course why it had been done. She did not even feel contempt for the Queen: