To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [109]
‘You are very kind,’ Mary said. ‘I am afraid I am not very clever. Tom is clever.’
‘He knows he can rely on you,’ Nicholas said. ‘You are his bulwark.’
He had said nothing of Anselm Adorne.
He left almost at once, sweeping up his cloak down below, and brushing aside Katelijne Sersanders unseeing, so that she stood looking after him. He was already striding downhill when his way was barred.
His eyes blind, his mind wheeling, he was in no mood for that. He had his sword half from its sheath when he was set upon. He fought and then abruptly relaxed. The man before him was Roger, and the rest were the men of his choir: nine of them.
‘Christ!’ said the musician. ‘Have they fired you from Martha and cracked you? You nearly broke my damned tooth.’
‘No one would have noticed,’ Nicholas said. ‘You play as if they’re all broken. Gumflute music. Gumpipe music. Gumkrumm …’
There was another scuffle, slightly less vicious this time, during which he took a lot of blows and recovered his self-possession. At the end, panting, they all turned him about and marched him downhill, away from his own house and the nuns’ and Adorne’s. Willie Roger said, ‘You’re coming to the Trinity with us.’
‘Why?’ said Nicholas.
‘A mature falsetto,’ said Roger approvingly. ‘I have this bathing-tub –’
He broke off in order to let the renewed struggle run its course which it duly did, ending near the top of Halkerston’s Wynd with four men shackling Nicholas by the arms and another hitched in immobilising fashion on his back. Halkerston’s Wynd led to the church of the Trinity. Will Roger said, – or we could roll you down. Yes or no?’
‘No,’ said Nicholas, and staggered to a resigned standstill. When Roger disapproved of something or somebody, he was apt to do this. He hadn’t liked the sport at the Castle: Nicholas knew that well enough. He added, ‘But I haven’t much time.’
‘I have plenty,’ said Roger.
It sounded grim. Since, however, the many spectators were grinning, so Nicholas smiled in return equally broadly. He said, out of the side of the smile, ‘Clacquedent, they’ll call you. I’ll have your embouchure for orderly garters. Tuscan drawn-work. Punto tirato. Molar merletti. And I’ll wear your tongue in my hat. In the Name of the One, why the Trinity?’
They had let him go, and they were all walking normally. Roger said, ‘Because it has an organ.’
It was too late by then to make another protest. The mellow sun shone on the loch; the moorfowl croaked; the Castle brooded against the bright sky. He walked on, and tried not to show how angry he was.
It was a sumptuous church, the one founded eleven years ago here at the lochside by the King’s mother Mary of Guelders for her own weal, and the weal of her people. It was even complete enough to be used; at least to the extent of an apse and three bays of its choir, owing to the zeal of its Provost, Edward Bonkle his neighbour. Bonkle was not there when they reached it; but the doors were flung wide by the Sacristan and the Master himself, twinkling; welcoming. They walked under the hood of the porch and entered the spaces within.
Silent; cool as a forest the pillars receded, seemingly empty, leading the eye to the east, where a single lamp hung above a group of gowned men round a lectern. As he distinguished them, they were briskly joined by two boys, and then by the priests who had admitted him. Roger’s friends followed after. Murmuring, smiling, they composed themselves surrounding the stand: a loose half-circle of underlit faces, reflective and brilliant as carollers in the snow.
Someone stretched to the lectern and furled back a skin of what lay there. It hung, speckled and supple, holding the light for a moment like honey. The speckles on it were music. And seated to the side of the sacristy door, almost concealed by the pipes of the organ was his metallurgical priest, Father Moriz.
Nicholas turned.
‘Oh no,’ said Roger.
They looked at one another. Nicholas said, ‘This has nothing to do with you.’ No one listening would have understood what he meant. He knew what he meant, and he thought