To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [137]
Will Roger was there, and Tom Cochrane, and John and Moriz and half the polyglot crew who had helped him to do what he had done. And Gelis. And Katelijne Sersanders.
Will Roger said, ‘Come, my bastard Flemish apprentice. Come, you amazing man. Come and get drunk.’
If he couldn’t scream like a child – and he couldn’t – it was what he wanted most at this moment on earth. Except that he had seen the face of Adorne’s little niece. Nicholas said to her, ‘What?’
She shook her head. Her eyes spoke, and the tears on her cheeks. He said to her, ‘Come to my room,’ and threw a word over his shoulder to Roger. Belatedly, on his way through the house, he saw that Gelis had followed. She was right; he had no wish to stop her. In the privacy of his own chamber, Gelis drew the girl down to a seat while he closed the door and dropped kneeling before her. ‘Kathi?’
She said, ‘I’ve just been told. My aunt was brought to bed of a son during the Play.’ She stopped, looking at Nicholas.
He wondered if she thought the significance had escaped him. He said, ‘Tell me.’
She said, ‘They saved my aunt. The boy was born strangled. He died.’
Nicholas rose to his feet. ‘No,’ he said. ‘There was a knife.’
Gelis dropped her arm. Kathi looked up, her lashes stark as boar-bristles. ‘They cut the cord with a knife. The cord strangled him.’
His head swam. He said ridiculously, ‘How do you choose?’
Kathi frowned. She said, ‘My uncle chose to let the child die, to the risk of his soul. Men make decisions.’
‘Pawns cannot make choices,’ said Nicholas. ‘Doctors can. The cyrurgyens ought also to be debonayr, amyable and to have pytye of their pacyents. Was Dr Andreas there?’ He did not know what made him think of William Caxton. For no reason he pictured Anselm Adorne’s condemned son as an angel of beauty; a golden child like the one in the play. He began to feel even more strange.
‘Dr Andreas was there,’ Katelijne said. She added quickly, ‘It wasn’t your fault. Nothing was. I must go. I wanted to tell you.’ She was looking at Gelis.
Gelis said, ‘I am so very sorry. Can we do anything?’
‘No,’ the girl said. ‘I must go.’
She was halfway to the door before he realised he had said nothing more. He said, ‘Kathi. Shall I come with you?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Rest. It was glorious. It was the crown of your life.’
The door closed. He sat, rather suddenly, conscious through the cloudiness in his mind that he had been wholly inadequate. His skin was clammy. Shreds of old emotions, old tragedies wrapped themselves round his thoughts, mixed with the sadness of Adorne’s loss and other deaths, other burdens he could not understand, which seemed to lie on his shoulders. He felt ill, and adrift, and afraid.
Gelis said, ‘Are you going to be sick? Even Jodi wasn’t as overexcited as that.’
He had forgotten Gelis was there. He had even forgotten the Play. Of course, that explained how he felt. He said, with a certain effort, ‘Not unless you pay me for the performance. Did you enjoy it?’
‘Enjoy what?’ she said. Now that he looked at her, she was sitting upright in her splendid court gown and veils, her hands clasped in her lap. They were glistening white. She looked as if she meant to be there a long time.
He said, ‘I had better go back to the others.’
‘I have something to tell you,’ she said. ‘Something you wanted to know.’
He got up. ‘Later,’ he said. ‘Later, please, Gelis.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘We have been interrupted so often, that I think it must be now or not at all. It won’t take long. Sit down. Mourn the Adorne child a little before you plunge into all your well-earned festivities. After all, its death was your fault.’
He remained standing. He said, ‘You needn’t go on. Kathi knows all that you do.’
‘And thought you required reassuring. Why? Because she knows, as you and I do, that for the