To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [80]
‘Business isn’t everything,’ Kathi said.
‘Tell Nicholas that,’ said Archie; and then flushed with embarrassment. ‘But of course –’
‘But of course, at heart Nicholas is a family man,’ Gelis said.
Kathi took her leave presently. M. de Fleury had not succeeded in arriving, if he had ever intended it, and she was not invited to meet the child she had once helped to steal. She thought, looking back as she left, that perhaps Robin’s intuition was right, and this softer Gelis, the Gelis of Bruges and their courting days, might truly mean that she and M. de Fleury had mended their marriage.
If not, it meant something else, that she would rather not think about.
Next time, leaving Haddington, Katelijne Sersanders needed no special advice, since the King’s youngest sister, the fount of all royal information, was travelling with her. It had not been difficult to arrange an excuse to visit the Castle. Will Roger was adept at deception, and Margaret’s only stipulation had been that if she were going to dance, she should not have to talk to her miserable namesake, the Queen. It was going to be Kathi’s job to do that, in sign language.
It was a little unfair on the monarch. After two years of marriage, her grace the Queen’s grasp of English was reasonably good: she had some phrases off pat. This is a disgrace was one of them. This would never happen in Denmark was another. Her frame of mind was not due to lack of material comforts, esteem or loving attention; rather to an excess of some of these things. The King needed heirs, and she was childless.
It was not Jamie’s fault, as his courtiers would gravely explain, before bursting into suppressed laughter. Jamie had been known to rise from his table, wife in hand, in the middle of dinner; or skip off during a dance; or disappear in the course of a hunt, dragging Margaret. Margaret, wearing her steady smile, always went with him. She never conceived.
His sister, aged eleven, had several theories which she aired again on the journey to Edinburgh. ‘She doesn’t like what he does. Sandy knows what he does. They used to share the same girls.’
‘Then he’s probably very good at it,’ Kathi said. Their servants, riding about them, could hear perfectly what they were saying.
‘But I wager that they would never do it that way in Denmark. Anyway, he broke the church rule.’
‘My lady …’ began Katelijne warningly.
‘It doesn’t matter. Everyone does, everyone knows. You can’t be married and keep off for ever. He started a year ago. He told Sandy.’
‘She must have been frightened,’ said Kathi.
‘I don’t know about frightened. She was angry: she gave him great scratches. But of course, she couldn’t complain once the time came. Six months. She hasn’t conceived in six months. She’s fourteen, and childless.’
This wasn’t about James and his disappointments. Kathi knew what it was about. She said, ‘My lady, your turn will come.’
‘When?’ Margaret said. ‘The King of France has a son, the Duke of Burgundy has a daughter, the King of England has babies, and all of them have to wait until James gets a baby on Margaret, because his baby’s marriage has to come before mine. It isn’t fair,’ Margaret said. ‘I want to be married.’
‘You will be,’ said Kathi. She had already told Phemie what Robin, in his young, calm way had told her. Thank God, this Margaret was too young as yet to conceive. Bleezie Meg, the farm laddies called her. She was a Stewart.
Slightly feverish with laughter, like the courtiers, Kathi visualised her forthcoming unscheduled encounter with Nicholas de Fleury placed side by side with a crisis of dire royal carnality, and wondered if he could handle it. She was happy to think that, on past form, he could. Then she remembered the child.
Although she had accompanied her mistress many times to the Castle since August, Katelijne had always avoided M. de Fleury as she had until now avoided his wife. As with his wife, she had not been above snatching a look at him. Unlike the lady Gelis today, he had always been formally dressed, in