To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [230]
‘I am honoured,’ Nicholas said.
‘But equally,’ said the King, ‘there are new financial commitments which I had hardly contemplated when we spoke of this last. Briefly, I have no money with which to pay you.’
Nicholas manufactured an expression of pain. It was not very hard. He added some meekness, and a good deal of perplexity. He said, ‘Then, my lord, I do not know what to propose.’ He didn’t suggest waiving the price. The King knew what he owed him already, and so did he.
There was a silence. Then Semple said, ‘My lord King. If I might make a suggestion?’
There was no such thing as walking alone down the High Street to his house. Apart from the escort which had already attached itself to him, he had accumulated a scurrying crowd by the time he came to his front door, and had to waste time answering questions and throwing remarks to them all. Then he managed to enter. The porter knew him these days. He did not try to see Gelis, but went at once to the rooms where Jordan was.
The boy was there and awake; the nurse had got his message. The boy rose very slowly from his play and stood looking, unsmiling. It was the first time Nicholas had seen his eyes full of anger. He thought that they had probably succeeded, if the child felt sufficiently safe to show what he felt. He felt the gaze of the nurse on his face.
The child’s skin was sprinkled with blotches. Nicholas said nothing of them, but kept his own face open and pleasant, dropping comfortably on his hunkers. He said, ‘Maman kept telling and telling me to come back. I should do what I am told.’
‘I do what I’m told,’ Jordan said. After a while he said, ‘What were you doing?’
‘I was buying fish for the King,’ Nicholas said. ‘I saw a white bear and some falcons. If I didn’t have to come home, I could have caught one for you.’
‘I could catch a falcon,’ said Jordan.
‘Could you? Then perhaps you should come with me next time. All I could get you was this. I had a horse. This was my whip. See, the handle is carved from the bone of a beast called a whale. Hold it.’
Jordan held it. The horsehair, dangling, lay on the floor. He moved it up and down, hissing. Mistress Clémence said, ‘Master Jordan rode with the family at Dean Castle. He had to borrow a whip.’
The wooden horse he had painted was quite near. Nicholas perched on its back and said, ‘Come. Show me how the whip works.’
Soon after that, the child settled quite naturally on his knee, and began to ask the first questions, and then to chatter. Mistress Clémence moved back and forth, fetching milk for them both, and poking the brazier, and finally sending Pasque for the tub and undressing the boy for his bath while the conversation went on. Then at last, sitting wrapped in a towel on his father’s knee, Jordan said, ‘Poem.’
Nicholas said, ‘I like hearing poems.’
‘Poem,’ said Jordan. And struggling down, he stood, breathing heavily, and recited.
It was a long poem, and although he hesitated once, he remembered it all.
Nicholas stared at him with vast and clown-like astonishment. ‘Now that,’ he said, ‘is the longest, finest, best-spoken poem I have ever heard. Are you really Jordan de Fleury?’
‘Yes!’ said the child. He jumped up and down, making noises.
‘Yes, you must be. And here is Mistress Clémence so proud, and I am proud, and so will maman be, when I tell her. And now I suppose I will have to take you sailing with me on my new ship? Do I have to?’
‘Yes!’ shouted the boy.
‘With me and maman and Mistress Clémence and Pasque?’
‘Yes! Yes!’ screamed the boy.
‘And what do you think the ship should be named? What is my name? What is your name? Should the ship be called the Fleury?’
‘He will never sleep,’ the nurse said, over the squeals.
‘Yes, he will,’ Nicholas said. ‘For we are not going sailing just yet, and I am going to bed too, and in the morning I shall still be here, and I shall come