To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [25]
He had moved out of the warehouse to another house which clearly adjoined it. He stood in a chamber whose furnishings – trestles, brazier, instruments – were familiar to him from other rooms, including that of his own company doctor and another, in Cyprus. Except that Tobie had never employed a table covered in black, with a copper bowl of liquid set in its centre, the rim engraved with strange letters.
The only seats in the room stood before it. Nicholas looked at the man who had brought him and spoke, slurring a little. ‘I have nothing to say to you.’
‘You are not surprised,’ said the Jew baptised M. Pierre. ‘The Queen, I suppose, asked if you predicted the future. And you said you did not.’
‘It is the truth,’ Nicholas said.
‘Perhaps. Sometimes we perceive one truth, and a bystander sees another. But if I ask you directly, now we are alone, whether using a rod or a pendulum, you can trace a human being, you would not deny it?’
‘No,’ said Nicholas at length. All the laughter had gone, but not all of the wine. A wave of anxiety turned him cold.
‘No. This is not some idle test. I do not ask you to prove it. I wanted to meet you. Our mutual friend Dr Andreas of Vesalia sometimes visits the Loire. I wished to offer you a present.’
‘Fa me indovino, et iou te davo dinare?’ Nicholas said.
‘I ask for no money. The gift is your own, and I propose only to free it. I know what rumours have said of your son and your lady. I know that if you have left them, you must be very sure where they are. Is your pendulum with you?’
‘No,’ said Nicholas.
There was a silence which he made no effort to break. Then the other man said, ‘So be it. I could not harm him, you must know that. As his father, your power is unbreakable. If I had something of his, I could answer your question.’
Nicholas walked to the stool and subsided. ‘Which is?’
‘It need not be spoken,’ said M. Pierre. He sat opposite. His gaze remained level. ‘A pendulum is only a weight on a cord. You ask it questions and it replies yes, or no. This is a little different. Your answer is more complete. It is spelled.’
Nicholas sat, his unseeing eyes on the bowl. In his purse was a thread, and bound to one end was a carob seed: the pendulum whose presence he had denied. His son was in Dijon. The pendulum told him that every day, as any expert could guess: his finger was inflamed with the rub of the thread. The man said, ‘Please accept. I should balance one thing with another.’
Nicholas looked at him then. The eyes, darker grey than his own, remained level, and the lips within the brown beard, although authoritarian in set, were not without sensibility. Against his better judgement, Nicholas drew the fragile thing from his purse and handed it over.
It dangled over the bowl. The warmth of the sinking sun roused the oil in the fabric that covered the window, and hazed the copper with light. The little play-token hung, motionless, its cord in the Jew’s strong, clean hand. Then it stirred.
It was very quiet. If the revels continued in the next building, they didn’t penetrate here. The only sound was the chime of the seed as it shivered, and swung, and, spacing each swing and each movement, touched the rim of the vessel five times.
The doctor holding the cord had not been told what its owner was asking. Nicholas, bedevilled by the mists of the future, hardly knew himself what most he needed to know, so ominous and diffuse he felt the shades around him to be. He simply opened the doors of his mind, so that there was nothing between him and the man who held his son’s treasure. And the carob set to its work, and spelled out a name.
The seed stilled. The Jew looked at him. He must have worn a puzzled expression because M. Pierre drew back and said, ‘You are disappointed. Would you like me to do it again?’ His gaze remained calm, although this time Nicholas was conscious of some sounds