To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [99]
She looked round the room, before she realised what he referred to. She said, ‘In the house in the High Street. Oh, yes.’ Something white on the bed caught her eye.
‘The note I told you about,’ Nicholas said. ‘From the King. With his especial good wishes. Good night. You have made the right decision, I’m sure.’
He left with Govaerts. She thought he was smiling. She prepared to take herself to her room. She felt a fool, in her heavy skirts and long sleeves and rolled hair while all sane people were sleeping. She crossed to the bed to take up the paper.
The pillow was wet. All along the depression where he had lain, the linen was grey with cold moisture from which arose a faint, costly scent. The paper, when she lifted it, was dimpled with moisture as well. She carried it to the fire in order to read it.
She had expected a letter. It seemed, instead, to represent an exhortation, perhaps to a son going abroad:
Avoid dampness. Thy room should possess a north window, and a juniper fire. Choose to consume fowl of all kinds, and quench thy thirst with almond water, or a little sweet wine, poker-heated. Avoid milk, and refrain from partaking of cheese, or of paté, or vegetables. Sleep for seven or eight hours; less in winter. Be merry: eschew contention and anger, and pay special heed to the gut, which requires rest for seven hours after food. When the hour of consummation is come, teach thyself to linger in preparation, and to recognise when preparation is ended. In parting, assume infinite care; so that two hours shall pass in the most expedient and lofty position. When all is done, keep thy bed for three days.
There were two paragraphs more.
Reject the mixtures of charlatans. Instead, take some hare meat and sugar and tooth dust, and serve with one testicle, chopped, from a wolf. That on his right side will make thee a son, whilst thou must eat of his left for a daughter.
And:
Should all fail, change thy country; for some cities can cure barren women.
It was an exhortation, of a kind. It was advice. Advice on how to conceive her next child.
She threw the paper into the fire. Then she went and sank by the wet, scented sheets and clenched her hands, because they were shaking.
Chapter 13
WEEPING MOTHER WITH two screaming children, the King’s elder sister arrived that same night on a Burgundian ship, and the waves of news rollicked about like the gouts from a bath-stall. The next morning, betimes (so they said), the Princess and her household were fetched to the Castle and put into her old rooms in David’s Tower, although the walls reeked of smoke and there were white footprints all over the stairway.
A Council meeting was called, and after that, the King sent for the man who had sailed in with the bairns and his sister: Anselm Adorne, the Duke of Burgundy’s counsellor. He also called for the other Burgundian, Nicol de Fleury, him that was to blame for the King’s sore head this morning, and a deal else, the callant. But Nicol had gone out of town, so it seemed, no one knew where. That was a lad.
Anselm Adorne, for his part, stoically endured the disaster. He had no alternative. But for Nicholas and the Boyd family, the Baron Cortachy might have made this return glorious, with his first-hand reports of the lands he had visited and his gracious letters from princes. And but for the death of the Pope, his handsome son Jan would have been with him, to present on one knee the book of their travels so painfully written, now encased in velvet and jewels and dedicated to King James himself.
Instead, Jan was travelling to Rome, with no more promising companion than the bankrupt and belligerent Bishop of St Andrews, and no sure prospect yet of a post. Instead, his dear Margriet, with