To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [280]
And that was all right. Responsibility belongs to the person who chooses. God is without blame.
Chapter 38
PLANNING IT, Gelis van Borselen gave Nicholas three days to get to the coast and find a vessel in which to pursue her. If he were deeply embroiled elsewhere, he might take a day or two longer. Or, if he were more disciplined than she expected, he might stay where he was, until Diniz sent word of her destination. She had made sure that Bruges knew where she was going. He would be a week behind her at most, and very angry.
The voyage to Scotland was unremarkable. At Leith, she remained on board ship until Govaerts responded to her call for an armed escort into town. She made no effort to visit the High Street, but installed herself and the child and his nurses in the domestic wing of the Casa Niccolò in the Canongate. To Govaerts, she said that the private quarrel with the St Pol family had now become grave, and that her husband had ordered that until he arrived, the house should be discreetly protected, with a permanent guard for herself and the child.
Govaerts was able to tell her that Simon de St Pol had been for some weeks at Kilmirren, although his father the vicomte was still abroad. She expected Simon to move east almost immediately, and during the two days that followed, made all the outside calls that she must, before retiring to the confines of the house along with Jodi, who was pleased with his welcome, but resentful of the absence of his father and Robin.
She had no need to repeat her warnings to Mistress Clémence and Pasque, who already knew what had happened between Nicholas and Simon’s son Henry. They also knew – everyone did – of her misconduct with Simon four years ago, and his rage at being used in her war with her husband. Until now, his father had kept him away.
The harassment began on the fourth day, a sign of unusual efficiency. At first it affected only the house in the High Street, which was kept in her absence by two sisters who slept in the kitchen, but came daily to serve the big house in the Canongate. It began with minor annoyances: a baxter persistently claiming a non-existent debt; the accidental breaking of shutters; the destructive robbing of the finest trees in the orchard. When Govaerts sent two men to stay in the house, they found the water barrels were tainted. It culminated in a fight in the street, after a drunk man had insisted on entering, claiming to think the place was a brothel.
In the Casa Niccolò, all the food and water was tested, and there was a guard night and day. No official complaint had been made: nothing was traceable to Simon, who had settled into his house near the top of the High Street and was peaceably dividing his time between the affairs of his estates and occasional serious consultations at the royal kennels and stables where the King, unused to incipient fatherhood, had come to value his advice on matters of venery. Simon was to all intents pure. One could not complain without regenerating the scandal.
While all the rest of the town pretended ignorance, the Berecrofts family was predictably sensible. Calling to invite her to visit, Archie had conveyed, mildly flushed, his father’s considered opinion. ‘I’m to say that one lassie’s mistake should be noways prejudicial to a fine lady like Gelis van Borselen, and that if either Robin or your husband took a fist to that useless brat Henry, it was because he deserved it.’ After a while he had added, ‘In any case, what can the loon Simon do? Anything serious, and the law would clap him in prison.’
She had been touched and sickened at once – sickened as she always was at any mention of Simon. She reminded herself, yet again, why she was doing this. She also remembered that Archie of Berecrofts and his father had been threatened by Simon, once, for sheltering Nicholas.