To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [310]
His grandfather had just died, but James had not mourned: it was a chance to renew all his claims to the duchy of Guelders. He had just made truce with England, but planned to break it if Louis would give him the money he wanted. He was secretly planning again to relieve Louis of the county of Saintonge. He had a son of less than three weeks whose marriage he was already considering.
Unlike Burgundy, James wanted more children and quickly, for all the alliances he must make. For many, many reasons he did not want Nicholas to leave. Towards Gelis, seated not quite so near, the King’s manner was that of an understanding physician.
One gave a performance, under such circumstances, and Nicholas was a good actor. At the end, he was asked to step down and receive, on the King’s behalf, a parting gift. It was a standing cup, made of gold set with stones, and fashioned in Paris. The King had not used the services of Wilhelm, although Wilhelm was now a royal servant, by a contract just agreed. Nicholas thanked his host on one knee, and wondered why all the noise in the chamber had stopped. Then the King said, ‘We have another gift we have prepared for you.’
He should have noticed that Willie had gone, and the singers. He should have been aware of the sounds from outside, the gleams of light through the windows, the murmurs drowned by the animation indoors. He should have been prepared for what he saw, when the Queen led him out through the doors and into the courtyard; and then for what he heard.
They had not tried to assemble the clouds, or the moving lights or the Secrets. Joseph and Mary wore their own gowns, as did the Magi, and the children were barefoot in their shirts. Below the platform, Willie stood stripped to his pourpoint, with great anxious patches of sweat under the armpits. Then the music began, and nothing about it was makeshift.
The same sky received it, the same clouds, the same hills. Below, the resonating chamber was deeper, primed by time and remembrance. Remembrance of the birth of Anselm Adorne’s child, loving gift of his wife; conceived to bring him at last the bright warrior son his heart craved. An infant cried once: the newborn prince in the Queen’s arms. It was a small audience this time: only the people of the Court, and the Abbey, and those who were thought to be his intimate friends. No one moved.
Nicholas watched, re-created before him, the one selfless thing he had ever done. The great, solemn sweep of the work had been concentrated, salt upon salt, to a morsel of its full length. They had remembered their studies. The clear voices spoke, and the close-textured difficult harmonies lingered and surged once again, rising and falling, lovingly captured.
Such intensity of emotion, so compressed, could overpower a choir. The singers’ eyes were fastened to Roger, who offered no comfort, no coaxing, but lashed the music out of their throats so that they sang without weakening, as if angry. Only at the end, when the music burgeoned, beginning its climb, and from north, south, east and west the silver trumpets suddenly spoke, and the four organs added their thunder, did his own face fill with what he felt for them. Then there came the silence, as happened before, and then the storm broke.
This time nothing stood between Nicholas and the warmth: not Kathi; not Gelis. Willie Roger appeared, punched him angrily in the stomach and then locked him in an incoherent embrace. The Queen, the child asleep in her arms, reached up her wet face and kissed them both. He went through the proper form of thanks to the King, and to Sandy and to all those he knew must have devised this; and then excused himself in order to climb the steps and speak to the singers, the actors, the musicians. Caught in rising euphoria, they wanted