To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [130]
In the weeks that led up to Christmas, Gelis was present at most of the gatherings held in her house. During those meetings she sat, largely silent, watching Nicholas manipulating people: so inoffensively sure; so good-natured; so deeply autocratic. Away from the conference table she watched him handling the staff of her house; and the boy Robin and Archie his father, who dropped in most days; and Jodi’s nurses; and Jodi. The weeks went by and Jodi, whistle in pouch and wearing the large knitted hat from which he would not be parted, wandered talking in English and French from house to garden to workshop, breathing heavily as he drew crosses and windows on two inches of paper with Tom Cochrane’s graphite; standing thumb in mouth watching John le Grant fashion two little wheels in order to make a number of others revolve. He stopped holding his arms to be lifted, and spent less time with his parrot, except for four days when Nicholas was away.
They said Nicholas was divining, and indeed reports confirmed that he had been in the west to fulfil some commission connected with minerals. He took Alonse, but not Robin. Everyone, returning, was very secretive, and she caught the end of a peppery clash between Nicholas and the priest, Father Moriz, who was generally stationed at Holyrood. In divining, obviously, Nicholas was open to rebuke by the Church. It did not seem to disturb him: he looked cheerful, as if glad to have the interruption behind him, and turned the unflagging energy once again upon his labouring colleagues. He spent a little time, as was usual, with Jodi, but made no excuses and gave no appearance of making amends for his absence; after a short, sulking interval, the relationship was as it had been before. Nicholas was an expert with people of any age, and planned for the long term.
It was then, moving up to the date of performance, that he engineered a moment alone in a room with his wife. She came to it bearing a list. In conference, they had been discussing a mountain of details: chains and straw for the streets of approach; turf to mask the trap-tops; ale for the erectors of awnings; and a request on behalf of the pulleys for a supply of pork fat from the butcher. Someone reported the theft of their piss-flasks and tournesol, which deprived them of blood. Blood was discontinued.
‘Grass,’ Gelis continued, proceeding down her column of dubia, ‘for the donkey called Abraham. When am I going to see all these performers?’ No one had been allowed near the rehearsals.
‘Not until the day, and by paying full price. Guild rules,’ Nicholas said, shutting the door. They were alone.
‘No special family rates?’ Gelis said. Her heart beat like a drum at a hanging. She had always admitted the force of his physical presence, but had found methods, in public at least, to resist it. She had been less prepared for the strain of being coupled, however briefly, however selectively, with his mind. On shipboard, his companionability had been a veneer; here, it was genuine. For the space of this project, she, too, had become part of his team, and had been treated to the same magical mixture of mischief and concentration. For nearly two months, she had fought against the enchantment. It was temporary, temporary, temporary. When the Play was done, it would stop. She would stop it.
But now, she thoughtlessly followed his mood. She said, ‘Family rates and good seats. Or I’ll ask Willie Roger to smuggle me into the Trinity. I could begin singing the tunes so that people don’t want to hear them