To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [291]
‘I didn’t think you believed me,’ he said. ‘At least, if St Pol is away, as you said, we may be free of some risks. I can’t prove it, but I don’t think that cart was an accident. Would the child not be safer in Edinburgh? Or does the termagant nurse have the last say?’
Katelijne clapped her hands. ‘You have met Mistress Clémence! You are going to disagree over child-rearing, and you will end up like everyone else, by doing just what she wants. If she thinks it best to stay here, she’ll stay here.’
‘That was Mistress Clémence?’ said the doctor.
‘She comes from Coulanges,’ said Kathi. ‘Coulanges on the Cisse. So does Pasque. You have to meet Pasque.’
‘Certainly, I shall have to become better acquainted with both of them,’ said Dr Tobie. ‘Especially since – would you believe the coincidence? – the attack on Nicholas took place near Coulanges, and he was nursed in the house of her relatives.’
‘Of course I believe it,’ said Kathi. ‘He would have gone there to investigate Clémence, and the vicomte’s men would simply have followed him. He does that. He was probably having you watched all the time you were in Gobbio. We heard the Countess died after having her son. I was so sorry. Tell me about it.’
She listened, for as she thought, he had been asked to go back. Dr Tobie had been a good servant to Urbino. She wondered if he had the detachment and constancy to make his destiny with Nicholas, and not suffer by it. She thought that – like Diniz, like Gregorio – what he needed most was a wife. They talked for a long time, as close as they had ever been, and parted happy.
For Nicholas, the day was merely a continuation of a sleepless night during which his abused body, unused to the saddle, had stiffened, and his mood further jaundiced by the sight of Katelijne and Tobie, united once more, talking in the yard overlooked by his casement. His grandmothers. He wished that Tobie would go, and that the girl would find a husband and be done with it. He dressed and, while he still believed he could handle it, went to see Gelis.
She was always beautiful. That was the paltry aspect of this war they were waging which, by Godscalc’s decree, was already two years longer than he had ever desired. The tragedy was that real time was passing: years in which others would have been content to ask for less, to take with gratitude what was there, and be reconciled for the rest to the third-rate, or to consolation elsewhere. But even if he had been willing, and he was not, she would never agree. Pride would forbid it, until she was forced to cede in her chosen arena. Until she was given pride of a different sort.
So it was terrible, as it always was, to see how lovely she was. And being Gelis, she had scorned to dress modestly, in the peccant wife’s role, but wore loose silks which trailed from her chair, and had left her hair straying, unbound. It was half grown again, as Kathi’s was. They had both played boys in their time, but only one of them was playing the woman.
She said, ‘I have had two separate visitors this morning. I didn’t know Tobie was here.’
‘And the other?’ he said. He did not want to sit down, and now need not. He made his way to the window and leaned there.
‘Katelijne. You were badly injured at Chouzy, but you were not left for dead. Tobie says Simon must have known that.’
‘Did you think it was all my plot?’ Nicholas said. ‘I wish it had been. Simon merely waited until he heard I had come back, and then timed it all accordingly. With your help.’
‘I am always glad to help,’ Gelis said. ‘And how successful we have been, both of us. Simon is banished from Court, and the King will be your abashed friend for ever. So it was all inspired opportunism, the disease story? How disappointed Simon must have been about everything.’
‘I expect it was a shock,’ Nicholas agreed. ‘I was intended, I suppose, to stride in and skewer you both through the kidneys, while Simon skipped off and got out the wassail cakes.’
‘I think he anticipated something less final but thoroughly actionable,’ Gelis said. ‘Treasonable