To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [94]
He stopped, largely because the King was standing in front of him, slapping him on the shoulder. ‘You villain! Try to throw your King to his death! But here is the hero who stopped you. Robin of Berecrofts, I’m told?’
The boy’s eyes were open. He began to struggle up from where he was resting, but the King pushed him back masterfully, on the wrong shoulder. ‘No, no. My own doctors will visit you. And then we shall receive you, and see what can be done. You are old enough to hold a position. Yes, Nicol?’
‘He was courageous, my lord,’ Nicholas said. He remembered what he had said to get the boy’s head to clear. It had worked.
‘Then he should join some household that would train him. Do you not agree?’
The dogs were still licking Nicholas, and he pushed them aside. The boy’s gaze was fixed on his. Willie Roger said, ‘I think we all know, my lord, which household would be best. Nicol should take him himself. He has an army. A Scottish squire would embellish it.’
Nicholas had begun, a while ago, to realise that some such thing was going to be inevitable, if he were to continue staying close to the Berecrofts. Mistress Clémence ought to be pleased. ‘I should leave it to my lord King and to his family,’ Nicholas said. ‘But of course, I should have no objection.’ The boy’s pale face had crimsoned.
The King said, ‘Then that is settled. And now for the business I brought you for, and you cannot say, my friend, that it is not necessary. What you need – what we all need – is warm water.’
Very occasionally, when he was drunk, Nicholas came home talking, Gelis had learned. On this day, so exquisitely devised in all its features, it was his voice she heard first, as she waited fully dressed in the silence of the Canongate house where, at last, her son was at home, and asleep.
She had known since yesterday that something subversive was happening: the message had come from the Castle direct. The King, it appeared, requested the presence of young Master de Fleury this evening. He might be brought by his nurse, but not by the lady his mother. The note did not bear the King’s seal, but was brought by a man in royal livery from whom she learned that her husband had had a hand in composing it. The command was still, she was assured, that of the King.
She had been considering what to do when Archie of Berecrofts vaulted over as usual, and was casually helpful, as usual. ‘There’s a theory that barren bellies warm to other dames’ nurslings. Queens and Kings are like other folk: they want bairns.’ She had listened in silence, digesting that.
Then for reasons quite unconnected, Katelijne Sersanders had come: disingenuous, thoughtful, steering her way through all the shoals surrounding their past relationship in a way one couldn’t help but find disarming. She had left apparently undisturbed by the absence of Nicholas, who failed to make his expected appearance, and whose bed remained empty all night.
He had been kept by the King, so they said. He did not appear in the morning, and had not returned by this evening, when Mistress Clémence went off to the Castle with Jordan, reluctant and sleepy in velvet. She was glad when Archie’s boy offered to carry him, and she sent two men to escort them, with lanterns. The porter, gossiping, mentioned that the wee lady Margaret had gone up the hill with some ladies from Haddington. The Flemish lass had been with them. The one that brought Master Jordan’s new parrot.
The hours dragged. Bit by bit, the house quietened; the lights began to go out. No one came. It was later than Jordan had ever been allowed out before. Gelis walked from window to window, floor to floor. After a while she found a crooked shadow at her elbow: Pasque, snorting and grumbling. She was company. Gelis didn’t send