To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [83]
Truth to tell, it was tiredness he was fighting, rather than anything else. It had been a long thirty-six hours. The worst of it had been at the end, when he had had to explain that his wife was not coming.
Little Bell and Guthrie and Hommyll and even Liddell had been half amused; the King had not. ‘We commanded your son, and the lady Gelis your wife.’ The royal complexion, less freckled than Sandy’s, still ebbed and flowed with his temper. He was nineteen, and had as yet no issue to prove his virility. He said, ‘You know why.’
Nicholas said, ‘Perhaps my lord has forgotten. My son will be here, but Gelis suffers still from her accident. The break was a bad one.’
‘I see,’ said the King. ‘We thought that she might be sick of a child. Of another child.’
‘Alas, no,’ Nicholas said. ‘Perhaps your own good fortune, when it comes, will restore ours.’ He could hear John of Mar murmur, then giggle. He wished, fleetingly, that he had not intervened, years ago, to prevent the young bastard’s eye being skewered.
‘In three years?’ James remarked. ‘You have managed one birth in three years? Your case is worse than our own. We told you. Your wife should have come. And now we have this potion from your own doctor, it seems, or his family. It surprises us that you have not tried it, or recommended it to us before.’
‘My own doctor?’ Nicholas had repeated. He had none at the moment. Andreas looked after the Princesses at Haddington, and Scheves treated the King. Pierre de Nostradamus served King René alone, and King René had been driven to Provence.
The King said, ‘Your army’s doctor. Tobias. The nephew of the greatest physician of Pavia, who treats our uncle of France for his ills. You told me about him, and I have sent for this fertility potion. It has come, straight from France.’
‘Dr Tobias has brought it?’ Nicholas said. Tobie had left after Venice, vowing never to come near him again.
‘No. I did,’ said Andro Wodman, coming in. He bowed to the King and his brothers and turned. ‘Dr Tobias wasn’t involved. We asked for the recipe from his uncle. His grace asked me to make you a copy.’
He held something out, and Nicholas took it. Across the paper smiled the face he had last seen at Angers, at Ham: the broken nose; the thick, heavy hair; the short neck. Andro Wodman, former bodyguard to Louis of France; former Archer with Jordan de Ribérac. One of them must have sent him. Louis at least would be impressed by today’s news when he heard it. His secret envoy de Fleury had persuaded King James to lead an army in person to France. When the apricots come.
All the same, it was as well that Crackbene had gone, and the moneyers. Nicholas laughed aloud. He said, ‘Thank you. I must think who to give it to. And how is the vicomte de Ribérac? I assume that you brought him.’
‘I wish I had. No, I came with Monypenny, the other grand lord serving two masters. Like yourself.’
‘No, I have three,’ Nicholas said. ‘Four, if you want to count Burgundy. You have come to join in the swordplay?’
‘He has business elsewhere,’ said the King. ‘And we have to join her grace the Queen for some music’ His face was still clouded, and his vexation flared again in the Queen’s room, even as he watched Nicholas with his son. He said, ‘The lady van Borselen should have been here. We are displeased. Tell her.’ Then he touched the boy and said, ‘A fine son. He likes water?’
‘I am afraid he cannot swim,’ Nicholas said.
‘No, no. Warm water. Come. We shall dance. Take a partner. My lady, here is Nicol.’
The boy clung. Kathi Sersanders said, ‘He can dance with us both. He could even hold one of us up. Bouton, did you look at the cage?’
‘You have met him? Since Venice?’ Nicholas said. ‘I haven’t thanked you for what you did there. You will probably live