To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [263]
‘But he has received a great honour as a result,’ Nicholas had protested. ‘Anselm Adorne is now the Scottish Conservator in Bruges, and trusted by the King, as I am.’
‘And now the King has gold!’ the Duke had said, switching complaints. ‘What will he use it for? To send an army to help France?’
‘As my lord has already heard, I am sure, the Scottish Parliament has forbidden the King to lead such an army, and it will not leave without him. What this has achieved,’ Nicholas said, ‘is to provide the Scottish King with the money he craves to improve his own estate, so that he has no need of a French pension.’
‘Such as you have,’ the Duke said. ‘Depleting the French treasury, the argument ran. You want to go and see him this summer, you said.’
‘There is a difference,’ Nicholas said. ‘If I am killed, my successor will not fight for France. Kings die young in Scotland and a pension, once arranged, is easily continued.’
The Duke had grunted, and soon he was dismissed. The Chancellor Hugonet had been present throughout: a friend of Adorne’s, but in other ways a man worth cultivating. Some time after that, Nicholas went and sat on the grass beside his legal partner, stretching his legs. ‘Julius, did you know Cardinal Bessarion should be in France by next month?’
‘I knew he’d been made Papal Legate. I thought he was too ill to travel. Where’s he going?’
‘Not here,’ Nicholas said. ‘He wrote to the Duke, but Charles isn’t taking advice, as we’ve noticed, even from Sixtus. He’s travelling through Lyons to the Loire. I’d like to see him.’
‘So should I,’ Julius said. ‘Why not? It’s easy. We just abandon the siege and tell the Duke we’re going to go off for a few weeks to France. He won’t worry.’
‘No, he won’t,’ said Nicholas mildly. ‘I’ve got leave already. If I’m going to keep up the fiction, I have to report to Louis some time. Then I bring back all the French secrets to Burgundy. But not until we’ve taken Beauvais.’
‘You devious … Can I come?’ Julius said.
‘Ask me later,’ said Nicholas. He waited. He knew Julius wouldn’t like that.
Julius said, ‘You won’t be sorry to abandon the brat. You know everyone thinks he’s your son?’
‘I hope so,’ said Nicholas. ‘And don’t deny it. It may keep him alive a week or two longer. I’ve even told Hugonet that he’s called Jordan.’
‘Why?’ said Julius.
‘I don’t know. Word gets about,’ Nicholas said.
In private, Nicholas gave some consideration from time to time to the matter of Henry, just as, among his other business concerns, he allotted time to his wife and son Jordan. The couriers who passed regularly between the camp and his office in Bruges connected with others from Antwerp. He knew what Gelis was doing, and Jordan heard from him every few days. They were compiling a poem together.
He was not compiling a poem with Henry, unless it were the groundwork for an epitaph. The irony of the situation was bearable only if ignored; the fact that Henry de St Pol of Kilmirren, jokingly rumoured to be his son, was his son. Julius, of course, had no idea of it; nor had Astorre. Diniz had guessed. Wherever he was, Tobie knew; and carried the paper that proved it. And Gelis had guessed, for her dead sister Katelina was Henry’s mother who, marrying Simon, had persuaded him that Henry was his child. Which Simon, thank God, still believed. For if Simon ever learned the truth, he would kill Henry.
The problem, at the moment, was to prevent Henry from killing the man who had shamed him at Veere; whom Henry knew only as Nicholas de Fleury, a base-born apprentice with a grudge against Simon his father. Initially, Nicholas had placed the boy entirely under the rule of Astorre, and from Péronne to Nesle, had remained out of his orbit. It would be hard enough for a self-willed spoiled child without the thought that his captor was gloating.
The first reports indicated a sullen silence, as he expected. In a few days, that had changed. The boy, said Thomas (Thomas!), was amazingly quick on his feet, and he would thank everyone to give him first call on him. It emerged, as time passed, that Henry was