To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [302]
Darkness was falling. The flaming brands swirled like the hairy-tailed besoms of comets, and the smoke from the torches badgered the cloudy white breath of the revellers. Nicholas wore a stained sheepskin jacket and scarf-cap and was skating slowly, looking about him, but maintaining his distance from Jodi. Tobie, watching with interest, saw a demoiselle in a large knitted hat disengage herself from a group of young men and skim like an arrow towards the indolent skater. Nicholas stepped aside with unhurried skill and let her flash past; she emitted a howl and cannoned through a circle and into the fire-eater, who inhaled when he ought to have blown. A vociferous crowd closed about the bellowing man. The voices of Nicholas and Kathi, soothing, could be heard in its midst. Tobie started to laugh, began to move, and was stopped.
‘I think that gold has already anointed the hurt,’ said Mistress Clémence with dryness.
Nicholas emerged from the crowd, which was now laughing, with Kathi at his side. Both appeared to be arguing, and she was carrying her hat, which was smoking, and had apparently been used as an extinguisher. Her coat, like his, was unkempt and curious, with the grey and oat-coloured burnish of sealskin falling under her wind-whipped brown hair. They moved past, still disputing, to where Tobie saw Gelis standing cloaked, where Nicholas must have left her.
Iceland, Tobie thought. The source of the garments, the raillery, the easy, intimate camaraderie. For a moment he saw again the Nicholas of the dyeworks at Bruges, employing all his voices and faces, expatiating, complaining. The girl, with the face of an affronted kitten, was replying in kind. Then, breaking off, Kathi swept up to Gelis and clutched her by the arm, expostulating, her free arm waving, while on the other side Nicholas did the same. Gelis, listening, smiled and replied, and the next moment the three had moved off, linked together in mild animation.
‘As I said,’ remarked Mistress Clémence. ‘A sensible girl.’
Viewed from the height of the ridge, the rink – seventeen hundred feet long, four hundred broad – appeared a long gut of fire, from which arose smoke and smells, music and laughter.
Simon of Kilmirren turned from his window and said, ‘Well? It was your offer, I believe. To perform whatever final acts I might require.’
The red-haired man beside him was already sitting. He said, ‘But that, my lord, was before the family received the recent special attention of the King, and before you yourself had to leave Court. Also, I have to say that the incident of the cart was singularly ineptly carried out.’
‘It was your idea, as I remember,’ Simon said. ‘As for the rest, no one knows I am in Edinburgh.’
‘All the more reason, my lord, for exercising restraint. This opportunity is quite unexpected and there has been no time to plan. Much as the Vatachino would wish to see the end of de Fleury, I am not prepared to face criminal charges for work ill prepared.’
Simon said, ‘You will let him betray you, wreck you, cheat you and do nothing?’
Martin pursed his lips. ‘There are other theatres. It is our thinking at present that the final confrontation should take place outside Scotland. You need not be involved.’
‘I want to be involved,’ Simon said. ‘Here.’
‘Then you must do it by yourself,’ Martin said.
The hour of Jodi’s freedom began to draw to its close. It was possible, even from a distance, to glimpse him, a bundle of brown and red swinging and sliding between two bigger children; a jubilant parcel on the shoulders of Archie or Robin; a pair of ecstatic eyes viewing a sweetmeat being handed down from a stall. Tobie and the nurse, being less identifiable, held to that part of the ice nearer the centre; the other three kept to the east. A tall man and two comely girls were not easily hidden. Indeed, they were meant to be seen, as proof that the child was not there.
Sometimes, Gelis forgot why she had come, so strange and fearful was