To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [36]
Kathi said, ‘I should trust M. de Fleury to hold his own against M. de St Pol and the vicomte. They won’t harm your baby, Tilde, she’s a girl. And really, Gelis has been terribly punished, and is going to have a hard time. She will need all her strength if the reconciliation is going to work.’
‘I don’t want it to work,’ said Tilde abruptly.
‘I know. But maybe he does,’ Kathi said. ‘Give her a room. I shan’t come. Let her stay.’
Later, talking to Diniz, Tilde was not sorry she had agreed, although Catherine was harder to convince. Then Gelis came, a white formal stranger who became from that moment a white formal recluse, making brief, silent forays to houses which received her with neutrality: that of Tommaso Portinari of the Medici Bank; of the Baltic merchants; and, very briefly, that of her cousin in town.
Occasionally, seeking common ground, Diniz would take her into the counting-house and let her listen and watch. She recognised the messages coming in from Cologne but made no offer to handle them. Although not physically ailing, she seemed as tired as if she had travelled a long way for many years. Anger with their unwanted guest turned to a pity that was not expressed either, for it was not invited. The brutal silence lasted a month; and then the messenger came with the summons which caused Tilde to fall silent, and look at her husband. But Gelis, hearing, simply rose and said, ‘It is time, then,’ and went steadily to complete her arrangements. When she came to leave, there seemed nothing to say that had meaning. They were Nicholas’s family, and she was not. She was whiter than when she had come, with circles under her eyes, but was quite composed, thanking them.
Just before leaving, she had asked Diniz and Tilde to her room and had brought out and handed over two parcels. One contained a child’s golden pendant of Italian workmanship. The larger enfolded a silver-gilt object: a warming-apple.
‘The pendant is for Marian your daughter,’ Gelis said. ‘The apple was always meant for your family. If your daughter one day has to leave you, give her the pendant, and keep the apple for Nicholas. He will find her for you.’
‘He gave you the apple,’ Tilde said. She remembered the precious object brought by Claes with such care from Milan, and never presented to anyone. He must have been very young. Claes, not yet Nicholas. She remembered Gelis, loud and baleful and triumphant, showing it off. Her sister Katelina had been angry.
‘It was always meant for your family,’ Gelis repeated, with her sister’s anger.
In Dijon, M. le bouton de Fleury began to make his desires known in Burgundian French, instead of the Blésois, the Blois tongue of his nurses. His voice, swooping from high to low, could be heard in every part of the fortified farmhouse his father had taken for him, so well defended that even the bullies of the vicomte de Ribérac had been unable to bribe or beat their way through.
Since he had arrived there in May, his father had visited him twice – possibly a mark of affection, and certainly one of efficiency, since it meant twice setting aside his affairs to make the long, hard ride to and from the north. Whatever his motives, Clémence de Coulanges welcomed the reinforcement to her rule, and the benefit to the child. His mother lost, the boy needed the reassurance of his father’s interest, and the father, unlike most, did not bribe or cosset or ignore, but treated the toddling boy of two and a half years as friend, companion and page. Mistress Clémence, who did not believe in spoiled children, was by turn impressed and suspicious.
The rest of the time she spent sparring with Pasque who perceived in M. de Fleury’s absence the perfect opportunity for a quick foray abroad to display their darling Jodi in Coulanges. Mistress Clémence did not lack the gift of command,