To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [286]
Simon smiled at her too. She was no stranger, surely, to courts. A King, at twenty at the peak of his vigour, was going to satisfy himself somewhere. And if his Queen, a prude from her marriage at twelve, was now looking to her condition as an excuse to refuse him, he was going to befriend any man who could relieve his predicament. Especially if he were offered a fair adventurous foreigner, already known as a bawd who had gone from another man’s arms to her husband.
He had had no trouble convincing the King. The long separations, the friction between the sieur de Fleury and his wayward lady were common knowledge, as was Simon’s own affair with the woman. He had described that. He had described every detail of their conjunction; both as it was, and as he would like it to have been. The King, when his eye rested on the fine lady Gelis tonight, would see through her grand damask robe to her skin, and would not suffer the itch that possessed him much longer.
Simon proposed to make him wait for an hour or two yet. After that, he could have what he wanted. No woman could refuse herself to a king and expect any future position worth having. The King was seven years younger than Gelis and eager, and personable. She would surrender. A single night’s work, properly handled, could be turned to mortify her as she had mortified him and proclaim de Fleury a pimp or a cuckold. And for love of the King, and his Bank, the new Lord Beltrees might even tolerate – condone – perhaps even encourage the union. Were he here.
Simon had already seen the King’s valets, and the vats of warm water were prepared. After her chatter and gaming, the Queen would be tired and retire. Then they would all retire.
It did not occur to him that his victim’s mind, honed in a four-year contest of which he knew nothing, would set to work, after the first shock of perception, to assess his scheme in the light of her purpose. She saw that he wished to purvey the idea that the liaison had not been of his making, but an embarrassing affair of unquenchable lust and reluctant gallantry. He owed the van Borselen nothing now, and could risk it.
Next, he wished to prove that Nicholas, far from objecting, would share his wife with the King for whatever he might personally get out of it. The generously bewived Nicholas had done it before, after all, with Zacco of Cyprus. Zacco had accepted the courtesan Primaflora, whose arts survived death and could be studied still – sweeter than sweet, more bitter than bitter – in the arms of her husband and student.
It did not occur to Simon, the last and sorriest miscalculation of all, that Gelis might decide that what Simon had devised would perfectly suit Gelis van Borselen too. Let Nicholas wriggle out of this, if he could.
She knew of the baths. She remembered Nicholas, returning drunkly damp to her bed on the night of the Florentine football. Should all fail, change thy country; for some cities can cure barren women. He had protected Jodi, at least. Tonight Jodi was safely with Mistress Clémence and Willie Roger at Haddington; she had only herself to look out for. When the Queen retired, and the girl Katelijne, frowning, had followed her twelve-year-old mistress to bed, Gelis had watched, outwardly grave, while the King cajoled his older sister into coming with him to the baths, there to relax with her ladies and his gentlemen. There would be a glass of wine, a little music, some food. They would, of course, be suitably robed. It would be decorous.
They chattered, walking down the steep stairs, and she felt the King’s young hand at her side. It reminded her of a masculine finger, circling a wine-glass. Simon had thought once that she would come back to him, and his son, nauseatingly, had copied his style. Henry had received his punishment now, and what Simon was planning was part of the family reprisals. Jordan’s retaliation would be altogether sharper and more lethal