To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [134]
He did not think of his son, his mother, the women he loved and had loved. But soothing the boy who played Mary, his fingertips on his shoulder, he was conscious that shadows were present; that far off in Venice a woman in travail with her first child was also here in his thoughts. And somehow the intensity of his conviction seemed to transfer itself to the boy, and the blood returned to his face.
Battle pitch can be sustained for only so long. In every campaign, success depends on the skill of its timing.
The day before the performance, Nicholas worked without respite from long before first light, as did all his henchmen. Even Sandy, pale, with glittering eyes, was no longer the King’s brother, but a willing part in something close now to mystical. That night, Nicholas sent everyone home but the guards, and walked up the hill to his house in the High Street.
Gelis was awake, and opened her door. The house was silent. He stopped.
She said, ‘Take my bed. I shall wake you.’
‘Will you?’ he said; and came in, as if he were a friend; as if all distrust had been neutralised. He stumbled once, reaching her bed, and meant perhaps to rest there and untie his doublet and shirt, but in the event he simply sank back and slept as he was.
The brazier whispered. Its dull red and blue light touched the cushioned settle to which she retreated, her eyes on the low curtained bed. A single candle stood by his pillow, illumining the dense, springing hair, the ends of his lashes, the bridge of his nose. His hand, smudged with dried paint, lay open as if appealing for something. His face was closed in the absolute peace of dreamless sleep; she could not hear him breathe. All the vigour, all the intelligence, all the cruelty were in abeyance, till he should wake.
She had watched him like this once before, during the long agony of their duel in Venice. His sleep had been unnatural then, and full of torment. And she, watching him, had been tormented as well; consumed with anguish and bitterness, for fear he would wrest back his child.
He had taken Jordan. Then he had sent for her.
I made the same choices that you did, over and over. She knew that he had. She knew why he had.
In time, the candle guttered, and she rose stiffly and went to extinguish it. She paused at his side.
His face was invisible, but he was still deeply asleep. He had turned once, half constrained by the close-fastened doublet. It would be the task of a moment to free him, leaning circumspectly, unloosing the buttons. When she last eased the clothes that he slept in, it had been long ago, and she had been unmarried in Bruges. Then he had lain warm and resistless like this, closer than this, and smitten by sleep for a sweeter reason than this, or the pains of divining. She could do it again. He would not waken, but he would know, when he rose, what she had been thinking of.
She snuffed the candle, and left without touching him.
He slept for four hours, rousing of his own accord an hour before dawn and presenting himself, freshly dressed and new-shaven, to apologise and thank her as any normal man might. Leaving, he turned to ask her if she meant to come to the play and bring Jordan, and smiled when she said yes. She would not see him again until the performance was over.
She felt tired but content, even triumphant. His day had come, and hers with it. She had been put to the test. And there was nothing, today, she could not do.
In Edinburgh that day, the house of Anselm Adorne was one of the very few still to be occupied. From end to end of the town, the crooked streets were all empty; their inhabitants tumbled down to the foot of the Canongate and flushed up the mountain behind, as if the ridge were indeed the chute that Nicholas once had called it. The buildings lining the ridge were hung with banners, to honour the guests of the King.
It had come to James some weeks before that, instead of grudging the cost, he should be exploiting what promised