To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [228]
‘When is your first meeting?’
It was then an hour after noon. ‘Now,’ Nicholas said.
‘Who with?’
‘With the King.’
‘Sandy will tell him. When he sees Sandy, he’ll know not to expect you. Do you know he’s written to the Pope about suppressing Coldingham Priory? I’ll get my choir. You’ll get my choir. Never mind. Do you want to go home, or to your bureau? Do you want Govaerts to report to you first?’
‘He has,’ Nicholas said. ‘He brought me clothes, too. Willie, would you just say nothing and get me up to the Castle? I want to change in your rooms, and drink all your beer, if you have any.’
‘Beer?’ said Willie.
‘I got used to beer,’ Nicholas said shortly. ‘The sophistications of travel.’
His protector’s silence lasted all of ten minutes.
‘Do you want to stop?’
‘No,’ said Nicholas.
Seven minutes.
‘Talking of beer. Was it true you became friends with Paúel Benecke?’
‘Yes,’ said Nicholas. ‘Apart from the fact that we each had a good try at killing the other.’
‘Oh,’ said Will Roger. ‘Maybe you won’t get your Danzig ship, then.’
‘Maybe I will,’ Nicholas said. ‘If he knows what’s good for him.’
‘Oh,’ said Will Roger.
Five minutes.
‘Was that true what you did to the Hull ship? What did you call them? The Chinchins?’
‘I didn’t fight the Hull ship. John and Moriz.’
‘Whoever. They took away their cocks and their fokkes and handed the crews to an Icelandic harridan who’d already captured and kept English prisoners?’
‘As John said. Willie, I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘You wouldn’t let me play my drums either. What’s wrong with telling the story? You’ve had a great victory. You’ll have to talk about it up at the Castle.’
‘You didn’t see it,’ Nicholas said.
‘John described it. You all did. You saw off the Hanse; you saw off the English; you nearly saw off the Vatachino. And you come back with a treasure in stockfish. Why not bang your own drum and mine?’
‘Because God’s drums were better,’ Nicholas said.
There was a silence. Surprisingly, Roger had understood. He said, ‘You mean when the mountains exploded? But they all got away. They had warning. It wouldn’t harm anyone. A few fish.’
‘They fled where they could,’ Nicholas said. ‘Our ships carried them, too. But the old and the sick and the young wouldn’t all get away. No one knows where the lava is going to burst out, or which way the rivers will flow, or how the scalding water will fall from the glacier, and where it will pour out to sea. When the ash comes, it sets light to everything. The sheep burst into flames. Women run about with buckets over their heads, trying to herd in the beasts. But even the families that we saved couldn’t take their livestock with them. And when the water enters the sea, the fish will die too.’
‘Nicholas?’ Roger said.
Once he couldn’t start. Now he couldn’t stop. ‘They say, after the last time, that the rivers and sea were full of boiled bodies, fish and human, jostled together. So there will be no fishing this season, and no moss and no hay and no grazing, therefore no sheep and no cattle for milk and for meat, and no horses to load up or ride on. And they can’t expect any help from King Christian of Denmark, who has had to pawn away Orkney and Shetland already, and who can’t even protect them from Jo Babbe.’
Roger said, ‘Would he sell Iceland to Scotland? Is that what you are going to suggest to King James?’
His voice had become very quiet, for which Nicholas was thankful. He let time pass, and not only because he was feeling unwell. Eventually he said, ‘Scotland couldn’t afford it.’
Then Willie Roger looked round and said, ‘Well, you’d better get down, if that’s what beer does to you, and get rid of it.’ He waited and said, ‘What’s wrong? It wasn’t your fault. There is nothing you can do for them.’
‘No,’ said Nicholas angrily. The anger was not against Willie Roger but himself, because when he made a plan, he liked to stick to it.
In honour of a few of his other plans, he sent a message, before he presented himself at Court, to Mistress Clémence at the house in the High Street.