To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [356]
Chapter 48
GELIS HAD NOT intended, she had never intended this meeting to end in extinction. On the contrary. Its purpose had been to shape her future: her future with Nicholas.
Born Egidia van Borselen in Bruges, unattractive young sister of a beauty, Gelis had been twenty-two when she had planned her life around the merry, mischievous man whom her sister, she well knew, had seduced. Katelina had always been able to take what she wanted. Even her marriage was false. She had tricked Simon de St Pol into her bed to give a name to her child, that was all. She had made a fool of St Pol. One could always do that, if one planned well enough. Gelis had been able to prove it. And if it so happened that one wanted that other, that merry, mischievous man, but wished to keep him, admiring, compliant for life, that was possible, too.
She had begun by attacking Nicholas, since she could no longer punish her sister. Aggression had become a defence, as she discovered the order of the attraction between them. Only fools, fools like Katelina, became enslaved. He would recognise her as his partner outside his bed before she became his pleasure within it. So she would keep him, as Katelina would never have done.
In all these five years, the only time she had truly imagined defeat was when he had kidnapped Jodi and vanished. Otherwise, outside death, she had been certain of winning. She had made him dance to her tune over Jodi, and in business she had wholly deceived him. The achievements of his greatest rivals were partly hers, as today she had come to declare. This day had brought, in the beginning, what seemed to be a different Nicholas, so that she had almost regretted the presence of Martin. But she meant to win, and had made her case therefore, and Nicholas, in this temperate guise, had accepted it.
But for Jordan de Ribérac, she would never have known he was mocking her. But for Jordan de Ribérac she would have taken the final step in good faith. And some day in the future, Nicholas would have turned to her and said, ‘This time you were the fool, and I deceived you.’
Now that, at least, was not going to happen. She looked at him, and met his eyes, resting on hers. He said, ‘I would have told you all this. I am sorry.’ She did not believe him.
Nicholas stood, with the armed men behind. But now the rest of them had regrouped, as if attending an assize. The doctor sat, his mouth pursed, in a chair. Mistress Clémence had taken a sewing-stool, with Jodi beside her. Behind them, a man played with a knife, while the youth Henry stared without cease at the cousin who was also his brother. The fat man was speaking.
He had come, of course, to exact retribution for what his son and his grandson had suffered from Nicholas and also herself. She knew, she thought, the scale of his anger. This cynical championing of Nicholas had already slighted them both, and was only the beginning. She had not known, until now, that the old man had a new and greater reason to hate them. Because of Nicholas, he had been thrown out of France.
It had happened before. Then, he had been saved by a change of monarch. Now, she learned, that same sympathetic King Louis had turned against the vicomte de Ribérac, former Captain of Archers, former merchant prince, former fiscal adviser, and deprived him of his estate and his title, his property and his investments on the recommendation of Nicholas, the former apprentice.
Contracted to Burgundy, Nicholas had been working in secret for France. He had been assured of money, positions of honour. He had asked for, and had been promised Jordan de Ribérac’s post, provided that he could prove that the vicomte was guilty of fraud.
‘It was easy,’ Nicholas said. His face was relaxed. His eyes, holding those of the fat man, were not.
‘It was easy for a master of deception,’ de Ribérac said. ‘Thread by thread, rope by rope, the trap was spun, not over weeks, but over years. Cargoes selected and stolen, gold smuggled out. A well-found ship in the harbour at Ayr proves to be insured