To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [97]
It was enough. He moved, closing the door between themselves and the way to the little boy’s room, and crossing to the platform of his bed, stepped up and disposed himself comfortably on the quilt, his bare head inclined on the pillow bere. Within the dark of the bedposts, she could not even distinguish his features. He said, ‘Shake me if I drop off to sleep. Jab me if you like; there is my knife. What drunken truths are you hoping for?’
The fire crackled. He had built a chimney-piece, such as they had now in some rooms at Bruges, and the light rippled and leaped over the hearth and the handsome tiled floor. She chose a stool halfway between the fire and the bed and sat down. She said, ‘On the ship, you told Father Moriz that I was free to take Jordan and go.’
‘Of course,’ he said. There was no hesitation.
‘Provided I never come back, and provided you never see Jordan again.’
‘So when are you going?’ he said. He had tucked his right hand behind his head; otherwise he lay still, completely at ease.
‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Now you can let the Prioress stay.’
‘Ah,’ he said. There was a space. She even thought, dazed with anger, that he had fallen asleep. Then he added, ‘One of my sins, I perceive. Are there more?’
She said, ‘Not even that; although I should like to have had warning, and to know whether you have a chamber there, too. No. I heard about your interesting evening: the King and his family brought to risk their lives on the towers of the Castle; Robin’s injury; the Adorne girl’s exhaustion; the men of your company whom only luck saved. I heard all about that, and the drunken idiocy of the balefire. But all that is your responsibility, not mine. You and I, as I understand it, are playing a different game, and I have decided to end it.’
‘Good,’ he said.
‘Good? After all those elaborate plans?’
‘Io son mercatante e non filosofo. I might say the same thing of you. If you can’t stand one day of reverses, then you have saved me from wasting my time. A game is only worth while between equals.’
She said, ‘You took Jordan into danger without me. That removes our common ground. And am I not wasting my time on a game so little regarded by you that all its course can be spoiled by some pointless demonstration of drunken bravado?’
He took the hand from behind his head and let it flop straight from the shoulder, fingers open. ‘My God,’ he said.
She could see his eyes were closed. When he spoke again, it was with insulting patience. ‘When,’ he said, ‘did you ever know me embark on a pointless demonstration of anything? Is Jordan injured in any way? No.
‘Did I suffer any form of impairment that will prevent me from pursuing this game, as you call it, and winning it whenever I choose? No.
‘So leave because you are losing. Leave because you are cowardly. Leave because you are jealous. But don’t pretend you are leaving because I have abandoned the game. I promise you I have not.’
‘Jealous!’ she said. ‘Of your bedmates!’ Then she felt herself slowly flush.
He did not reply.
She said, ‘He is my son. I have nothing to be jealous of. I won’t have him used.’
‘He wouldn’t have been,’ Nicholas said. ‘He was to have stayed in the High Street with you and his nurses, and with young Berecrofts as playfellow. Robin is to come as my equerry and page.’
She said, ‘You are moving as well?’
‘It is time to separate house and office,’ he said. ‘And it suits me to be near Adorne’s lodging. His ship has put into Leith.’
She sat up. ‘It has! Whom has he brought?’
‘His pregnant wife,’ Nicholas said. ‘But no son. They have left their doleful author behind, forced to try his luck with the new Pope in Rome.’
‘And the Boyds?’ said Gelis quickly. ‘The Earl and Countess of Arran and their children? Did they leave them behind?’
‘No,’ said Nicholas.
‘They’re here! But Tom Boyd and his father will hang!’
‘Didn’t you work it out?’ Nicholas said. ‘They couldn’t afford to leave them in Bruges, the Duke