To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [46]
That night, he said aloud to John what he felt. ‘There is nothing now to be done but to wait.’
To the rest of the camp, the three days that followed were little different in character from the busy, brawling good humour of the month that had passed. Certainly, Astorre took time, now and then, to drop into the temporary nursery of Master Jordan de Fleury and show him how to wield his new wooden sword. Mistress Clémence, who could unbend now and then, would send him away with one of her exceptional pies, and Astorre came to the view that she was rearing the boy well enough, although she didn’t cackle like Pasque at his jokes. Astorre suspected that little Pasque, as a matter of history, was not unaccustomed to the attentions of rough soldiery.
Father Moriz, too, was reassured. He spent time with the child and both nurses, and sometimes found Nicholas there, looking entirely at home in a way that both touched and surprised him. For Nicholas, those sparing but regular calls were the only departure from a schedule crammed with meetings and paperwork. There were no more boisterous excursions into the exercise field. Only, as the bruises started to fade, the weal on his finger grew angrier.
John, as well as Father Moriz, knew what it meant. He was sufficiently aggravated, by the second day, to remark on it. ‘So where is she, Nicholas? Where is Gelis?’
And Nicholas, looking at him with indifference, had pulled open a drawer and, spreading a map, had said, ‘There. No, since last night possibly there. If you have five minutes, I can show you exactly, if that is what you really want to know.’ The pendulum lay on the desk. It looked like an ordinary pebble.
‘I want to know why you are doing it,’ John had said. ‘You know she is coming. She’s got to come.’
‘Of course. So she should have a welcome,’ Nicholas said.
The foreboding which others experienced had already touched Mistress Clémence, an expert in the aberrant conduct of fathers. Studying M. de Fleury, she had watched, unsurprised, the dulling of the glow brought about by those long leisurely days at sea, and distrusted the extreme urbanity which seemed to have replaced it. Either M. de Fleury was unmoved by the approach of his wife, or was able to cover his feelings by a feat of acting which defied the imagination.
She held this view until the third day when, coming to visit the child, he took Mistress Clémence aside and informed her that his wife was expected tomorrow, and that he wished her to travel with him to meet her.
‘But naturally. I shall prepare Master Jordan,’ she had said.
‘No,’ he said. ‘The boy is not to come. You will be there instead, to assure my wife of his wellbeing. I have arranged to meet her at the palace of Hesdin.’
‘The lady is staying there?’ she had asked. The palace was empty. Everyone knew the palace was empty.
‘She will be taken there. I have the Duke’s kind permission. I have in mind,’ continued M. de Fleury, ‘to show madame some of Hesdin’s particular splendours. You will be pleased, I hope, to accompany us.’
She was disturbed. She would have thought him a little drunk, were it not that she had placed him as a temperate gentleman, except when it suited him. Even as she agreed, Mistress Clémence conveyed mute dissatisfaction. She disapproved of what happened at Hesdin. She agreed because her Christian conscience (and human curiosity) would not have allowed her to refuse. A good nurse is the link between child and parent: the person who interprets one to the other and is respected by both, if not loved. Although she had been loved, in her time.
The following morning she set off to Hesdin with a liveried escort from the company. With her rode Nicholas de Fleury, husband and father, ready now to end a long parting.
Chapter 6
MOVING INESCAPABLY in her turn towards him, Gelis van Borselen was conscious that, whatever she did, her foe her husband was watching her. She