Gemini (109 page)

As, however long they might live, Rankin and Robin would never now stand face to face, although they each had fine looks, and the love between them was as great.

It was still early, two hours before noon. They didn’t have to leave for Whitekirk until the following morning. There was time to talk to Nicholas, and to her uncle. Or so it seemed, then.

T
HAT AFTERNOON, THE
wind dropped and it snowed, calming the seas and presenting, enduring for once, a tranquil landscape of white hill and plain and clustered cabins, among which was set the sturdy sprawl of the Priory. It would have been possible, then, for a boat to set off on the grey, surging sea that they could glimpse but not hear. Adorne and Nicholas decided against it, for it would have meant losing Mick Crackbene, and exposing vulnerable women and children to risks greater than those they ran in this solid building, with their ten soldiers, and the six more that Adorne had brought.

They did not then know of the changing situation in Edinburgh, or of the meetings in Avandale’s home, or Kilmirren House, or the Canongate; but they had considered most of the probabilities and were fully aware of their danger. It was the vital meeting at Whitekirk, tomorrow, that occupied all of their minds, when they allowed it.

That afternoon, Anselm Adorne did not allow it, but—strategy defined and orders given—laid himself out to please and comfort the religious whose hospitality he was receiving; to speak at length to the Prioress Euphemia; to walk round the grounds and allow himself to be snowballed by Kathi’s children, and watch them make snowmen. Passing through the cloisters, he smiled, observing outside in the garth a well-tried sledge, and a once-painted barrow, and a child’s spade stuck in the snow. He talked for a long time to Jordan and saw, and was pleased by, his friendship with Margaret, his great-niece. Between, he walked with the nuns to their church and prayed there, while Bishop Prospero administered the sacrament in Genoese Latin and heard his confession in Genoese. A worldly man, come late to the priesthood, Camulio was not a
bad choice for a man of Adorne’s stature. Nicholas attended the services, but did not confess.

Throughout the strange afternoon, Jordan was close to him. They had been apart once, when Kathi had asked to say something in private. It was about Applegarth, which was all right. Then it was about Andrew Liddell, and it wasn’t all right at all. Mick’s patience had clearly run out, and the bastard was taking a hand. To hell with Mick, and the Prioress.

Nicholas said, ‘I heard about Applegarth, too. It isn’t unlikely that he had that unsigned message sent to Simon at Lochmaben. He works with Davie Purves, another firebrand. I don’t think you need look for anyone else.’

She said, ‘Nicholas. Don’t be stupid. Who is Elizabeth’s son?’

‘How should I know?’ he said.

D
ARKNESS FELL BETWEEN
three and four, over a black sea and a moon-coloured land blinking with light. By five, the younger children had supped in the kitchen and Bishop Prospero visited them there for a while, teaching Rankin some words of Italian, while he kept Margaret beside him, and made her laugh. He had a son himself, were it known, in the service of King Ferrante of Naples. Women liked Bishop Prospero. The kitchenmaids and the nuns sat round him, their faces rosy in the light of the fire. He had really come, he said, to see what was for supper; and let them take him to the great larders, and the bakehouse, and the brew-house, and the row of barred storerooms, each with its low vaulted ceiling, which held their less edible stores. He was sorry to go, he said, when someone from above came to fetch him.

Adorne was in the Priory parlour, with Katelinje Sersanders and de Fleury. He looked calm. ‘Prospero. We are receiving word of a cavalry skirmish not far off. They have found trampled snow and some blood, and tracks that seem to point to Dunbar. Now our lookout tells us that two armed horsemen are coming this way. Crackbene has taken men to intercept them. We should know soon who they are.’

‘Sooner than soon,’ said the young woman. ‘Jordan is up on the roof, and I suspect Rankin is trying to join him.’

‘Sooner than soon indeed,’ de Fleury said.

The door burst open upon his son, streaked with peat-soot. His son exclaimed, ‘Father! It’s Master Julius, covered in blood; and Monseigneur de St Pol of Kilmirren is riding beside him!’

‘Ah,’ said de Fleury. The girl looked at him, but he was gazing at Adorne. De Fleury said, ‘It sounds as if they’re in trouble. How fortunate that we are still here to help them.’

•  •  •

F
AMILIAR WITH THE
detritus of battle, the nuns were not shocked, but dealt efficiently with the wounds of the handsome man with the slanting eyes and pleased smile, by name Master Julius. He was in better shape in some ways than the lord of Kilmirren who, though unhurt, was not of the age or the build for strenuous skirmishes. He had been on his way to the Priory with a troop led by Lord Home’s own grandson, he said, when they had been attacked by a superior force from Dunbar. Master Julius (a lawyer) had been travelling with the Homes for security, and managed to get himself and the old man away. The rest had been captured.

‘Really?’ said M. de Fleury, who had lain in contented repose in the window-seat ever since the two gentlemen were brought in. ‘Couldn’t you save them, too, Julius? You mean Alex Home is now back in Dunbar, a prisoner of his own former master, and facing all those men he threw over when he crossed to the King? That was unkind.’

‘I felt unkind,’ said the lawyer. He was testing his arm-sling and smiling. ‘I think, like you, that he had a hand in what happened at Lauder. Anyway, it’s over. Reverend Mother, Sisters, how can I thank you?’

The ladies withdrew, with reluctance, leaving the gentlemen to their affairs. Some expected the demoiselle to depart also, but she remained by her uncle, who had seated himself beside the fat lord. The old man, almost recovered, was staring at M. de Fleury, who gazed tranquilly back. M. de Fleury said, ‘I hope you thanked Julius. You threw him out last time you met.’

‘It was a mistake,’ the lord of Kilmirren said.

The door closed. Inside, no one spoke for a moment. Then Anselm Adorne said, ‘We are glad to see you both safe, but perhaps we ought to be quick. My lord, why were the Homes coming here? Do you know?’

Kilmirren stirred. In his mid-seventies, he no longer wore armour. His only protection today had been a jerkin of leather beneath his jacket and cloak, and a helm on his head, which he had taken off, leaving a strapped cap beneath, set into the descending cataract of his jowls. His dress was stained, and his chest rose and fell still with hard breathing. Julius, encountered by chance, was dressed more for hunting than battle, and his sword-cuts were all on his arm.

Kilmirren said, ‘Fortunately, I can tell you all that Home could. Albany is renewing his service to England. Avandale suggests you go to Whitekirk tomorrow, but the chances of an agreement are slighter than they once were.’

He expounded, with concision. It came to Kathi that she had often heard his voice raised in mockery, or provocation, or with some lancing taunt, but never in the mode he must have used all his days as a skilled commander; as a minister whose advice King Louis, of all men, respected.
It struck her to wonder whether half the mischief in his life had not sprung from boredom. Then she recalled the days when he controlled his own merchant fleet; when he secretly ran the great company called the Vatachino, which he created to crush and shame Nicholas. He had been just as cruel, then.

She listened, pondering on what he was saying. Liddell, the moderate man, was now absent in London. It confirmed Crackbene’s impression that Liddell had no direct hand in the campaign against Nicholas: he was not managing the affairs here of some unknown and vindictive cousin. Liddell’s absence also helped to explain Sandy’s aggression. The foray against Alex Home, just before Whitekirk, had not been wise. Liddell would have advised Sandy against it.

Absent, too, was Bell-the-Cat Angus; but he had lost political courage after his gesture at Lauder, and his personal backing for Albany might not have been fierce, had he stayed. The same couldn’t be said of his unruly, leaderless Douglases, now filling his fort of Tantallon. And Tantallon was close. The red, cliff-top bulk of Tantallon was here, on the doorstep; three miles from where they were sitting, and closer to Whitekirk than that.

Applegarth
. Someone was mentioning the name. Nicholas, in course of pursuing some point with Kilmirren. His voice throughout was neutral. The last time they met, he had just come from Kelso, and the fat man had spurned him. ‘Monseigneur, why were you here with the Homes?’

And the fat man answered. ‘Shall I tell you? Yes. I am here to do what the Crown is afraid to do: to uncover the man who plotted against my son and my grandson, and kill him. I know his name.’ He turned to Adorne. ‘You fear I shall upset the delicate balance tomorrow. I shall not. I shall seek this man out myself, when you have gone. Dunbar is full of informers.’

He hadn’t mentioned a name. Nicholas did. Nicholas said, ‘Applegarth is in Tantallon.’

There was a little silence. The fat man said, ‘How do you know?’

And Nicholas said, ‘North Berwick is also full of informers.’

There was another silence. ‘But you will not touch him,’ the fat man said, speaking distinctly. ‘You will not help him escape me, you will not take him prisoner, you will not kill him. He is mine.’

A third person spoke. ‘
I
would kill him,’ he said. ‘He lied to Henry. He called my father a traitor.’

Jordan. Jordan, Kathi saw with a pang, standing defiantly before the obese, elderly man as a much younger child had once stood, in scratched silver armour, defending his family. In the window, Nicholas had stiffened. Now he must be thinking as she did. How much had Jordan overheard, guessed, been carelessly told?

The yellowed eyes stared at the grey. Kilmirren said, ‘And how many men have you killed?’

Jordan’s gaze did not move. He said, ‘As many as Monseigneur, perhaps, at the same age.’

‘And,’ said St Pol of Kilmirren, ‘you imagine you could kill a man more successfully than I?’

‘I have your son’s sword,’ Jordan said.

There was another space. She could not look at Nicholas. At length: ‘I remember. Perhaps that was another mistake,’ Kilmirren remarked. ‘Perhaps one day you will challenge me with it. Shall I take it back?’

‘If my lord wishes,’ Jordan said. He had brought it with him, Kathi knew. He slept with it over his bed

‘No. You will have blunted it,’ Kilmirren said. ‘So let us return to men’s affairs. Cortachy, what is your plan for tomorrow?’ She wondered what her uncle would do; but he simply looked at the other man quietly, and spoke.

What he said was not welcome. Kilmirren had been in no doubt that Adorne, abetted by Nicholas, proposed to trap and kill the Duke of Albany by some superb act of Burgundian villainy. He found it beyond all belief that there should be no plan at all, and that Adorne meant to do just as he promised. It was perhaps the presence of Camulio that made the lack of deceit so unlikely.

She registered all of that, but her heart and soul were with Nicholas, who had stretched out his arm and taken his son to sit beside him.

T
HE
U
LTIMATE
S
UPPER
(as her uncle wryly named it) was simple but stately, the two inadvertent guests being outshone by the splendour of the Bishop, not to mention the King’s other envoys, attired in the Court dress and chains they would be wearing tomorrow at Whitekirk. The Prioresses, returning the courtesy, were dressed in long, simple robes of double Caspian silk, with some important ecclesiastical jewellery. Kathi just wore her best.

Sitting next to her, Nicholas duly admired it. He added, ‘Are you fasting from fright, or from religious conviction?’

She hadn’t spoken to him since Jordan’s outburst. As soon as the conference finished, the old man had gone off to rest, and Crackbene and Nicholas had been locked in discussion with Julius. Adorne had gone to walk in the cloisters with the Genoese bishop. She knew that his faith gave him relief, and was glad. For herself, she had just spent a vociferous two hours in fierce games with Rankin, ending in an attempt to steer him towards bed. Margaret, as ever, was more successful with her winsome sibling than anyone. Vying with her two handsome children, one a Berecrofts,
one an Adorne, Kathi refused to admit to cowardice. But certainly she had come to receive comfort from them, rather than give it.

Nicholas guessed as much, of course; hence his present bland question. She
was
fasting from fright. She suspected that the vast calm of Nicholas also covered something other than lethargy. She said bluntly, ‘I don’t like tonight, and I can’t stand the thought of what is going to happen tomorrow. And now you have St Pol to think about as well.’

‘He could be an asset,’ Nicholas said. ‘If there was an attack after we’d gone, for example. He’ll be here, and the soldiers, and Crackbene. And Jordan isn’t bad, or at least his master-at-arms cost enough. Do you remember the provision cellars, the ones Prospero investigated today?’ Perversely, he was answering as if she were afraid for herself.

She stared at him. ‘Do you
know
how long we’ve been here? Is there a blade of grass that has escaped me?’

‘Don’t pretend: you’ve enjoyed it. If anything awkward does happen, you should take the children to one of those vaults. They’re locked and barred, and no one could easily see you. And there’s plenty of food. Casks of wine and bags of raisins for weeks.’

‘So Dame Euphemia said. It was one of the first things she suggested,’ Kathi said. She watched his face. ‘That worries you?’