To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [47]
She had thought, sitting alone, considering – hour by hour, week by week – what she knew of his mind, that the summons would come on the day that marked the third anniversary of their marriage. But he, no doubt guessing as much, had amused himself by avoiding it. The command, when it came, arrived at an hour of no special portent, and she left immediately, so that he should be in no doubt that she was willing.
It would have been a relief to be tracked by human beings, by spies such as ordinary businesses used. Instead, she was being monitored by a shadow, and felt reduced to a shadow herself. A shadow, an echo. Whereas no one could monitor Nicholas, who moved to his prey like a cat, traced from field to field, grove to grove by the streamers of terrified birdsong.
She had one servant with her, and an escort to protect her whole baggage, which she had been expected to bring. Despite her leisurely progress, she might, by hastening, have arrived at his camp before dusk, but instead chose to pass the night at an inn in St Omer. She spent money freely. It was her marriage endowment from Nicholas. There was plenty of it.
Movement by night from a town was forbidden, or possible only for officials or burgesses. Nicholas was neither, but gold or threats must have served, otherwise she would never have been roused by a terrified maid in the night, with a message that she was to dress and depart. Outside, her own escort had gone and strangers waited. The sergeant carried a note in the script that, in Arabic, in Italian, in Flemish, she had seen on tablets in Africa, in Venice, in Spangnaerts Street: the quick, clear, tutored handwriting of her husband. She was to go with his soldiers to Hesdin, leaving her maid and her boxes behind. He did not mention the child.
Because of the child, she must go. She understood perfectly what was happening. As she had drawn him from Scotland and Bruges, dispatched him painfully on fool’s errands, chasing the will-o’-the-wisp of the child, so he now held the same lever. Only he, the ultimate engineer, manipulator, Master of Secrets, would use it in his own way, and this time to punish her.
Wherever she was going, the child would not be there. Whatever, whoever awaited her at the end of this night, she did not think it would be Nicholas. It was strange then that, wrested from her bed, thrown on horseback, she found herself possessed by a vast and painful excitement, a surge of exhilaration that fell upon the chance, at last, to ride fast and hard to where, of all the world, she longed most to go.
The journey occupied four hours, and was made with fresh horses, changing twice to maintain the highest level of speed. No one spoke. Gelis van Borselen was a good horsewoman, and had set out well rested from Bruges at a pace whose agonising slowness she had cause now to be thankful for. She regretted only that, riding, it was not practical to arrive at her destination as finely gowned as she would have preferred. The boy of the Sinai desert, the travel-stained woman of Venice were due to be forgotten. Then she bit her lip, thinking how seldom appearance had ever had anything to do with him, or with her. The night fled by, and in the torchlight no one saw that sometimes she wept unawares as she rode.
They arrived with the first of the dawn. Already her shadow was moving before her when she saw a powder of lights far ahead and, suddenly, the high ruddy twinkle of glass. She had known, since they entered the parkland, that this was not the road to the Burgundian camp. She was being brought somewhere else to stand trial for what she had done. All the same, even when coursing the green wooded vale of the Canche, she still dismissed the ducal château as a likely destination. Hesdin was too unsubtle a choice for the subtle Nicholas of this brittle war.
And again, Nicholas had used her expectations to trick her. The great building blurred