To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [363]
He had closed his eyes. Jodi roused him, demanding tearfully from the doorway that his father should see him to bed, while Mistress Clémence, firm as ever, pointed out that other people also grew tired, and that instead, his father would tell him a story.
Nicholas told him his story, making room for them both in the chair, and stopping to answer the small, whispered questions. Has the boy gone? Is he coming back? Where is the fat man? But after a while, the old familiar tale exerted its power, and when the child spoke at all, it was to repeat an old joke, or an old verse in the usual places. Soon after that, his eyes lifted and fell.
Nicholas stopped, and smiled at the nurse, and said to Jodi, ‘Bed. When I come back, what would you like me to bring you?’
‘Where are you going?’ Jodi said.
‘That depends on what you want,’ Nicholas said.
A little later, Mistress Clémence returned without the child, and took a seat at what could be called a deferential distance. He said, ‘I wanted to thank you.’
‘Dr Tobie helped. Will the vicomte return?’
‘He is going to Madeira,’ Nicholas said. ‘But I am leaving as well. My wife and I are to part, and the boy will live with his mother, not me. I hope you will find you can stay with her. We owe you a great deal.’
‘But you will visit?’ she said.
‘I don’t think I can,’ Nicholas said. He had begun to realise it.
She said, ‘I will bring him, my lord.’
‘I should like that,’ he said, ‘and my wife would be grateful. She wishes, as I do, that the boy should grow knowing us both.’ He paused. ‘You used to call him a bachique. That is Blésois, surely.’
‘You would hear it at Chouzy,’ she said.
He said, ‘I heard it in Edinburgh.’ Tiens! Tiens! Comme c’est gars bachique, the old woman had said.
She said nothing. He said, ‘If you know her – if you ever meet her – tell her that I am sorry.’
‘For what, my lord?’ the woman asked. She had neither mentioned a name nor asked for one.
‘She will know,’ Nicholas said.
There was an interval, from which he emerged to find the nurse speaking. ‘It is dark, and there is a disagreeable press in the courtyard. Would you like me to find you an escort?’
He had come with John le Grant. He would not be returning with John le Grant. Nicholas said, ‘Have you someone in mind?’
She returned his slight smile with another. ‘Anyone of the required competence,’ she said. ‘An astrologer might serve best of all.’
The small joke surprised him. He admired her for it, for of course she, too, must despise him.
Later that evening, when they all knew the truth, Tobie left Adorne and the rest, and went to tackle the seigneur de Fleury in Gelis’s parlour. He thought of him by his title since he was in the process, for the last time, of excising this particular man from his life. He was also rather drunk (as was John), because the excision was painful.
The parlour was empty. When he went to look for Gelis, as eventually he did, that brave girl Katelijne Sersanders was with her. He took them both back to the room. It was still in fair disarray, but Jordan de Ribérac’s chair was upright still. The cushion was an uneven patchwork of scarlet, and the back and one arm glistened with blood. Caught in one side was the tie of a small person’s bedrobe. Gelis looked at it, and then without speaking walked out of the room. Tobie stood and looked after her.
Kathi said, ‘Jodi was brought in to see him. Mistress Clémence would notice something was wrong.’
She was pale. She had been pale ever since he had told them about Nicholas. ‘I didn’t know,’ Tobie said.
‘He wouldn’t expect you to. Are you going to leave him? Again?’
‘I should never have come,’ Tobie said. ‘And you should forget him. He has destroyed your whole future. How could he? How could he do that, after Iceland?’
‘He saved my brother. He cares for some things. The Play mattered,’ Kathi said. Gelis had come back.
‘It wasted money, that was all.’
‘No,’ said Kathi. ‘And he returned when Zacco called him. And he didn’t sell Iceland.’
‘What?’ said Gelis. She stood