Gemini (119 page)

‘No,’ Nicholas said. ‘They were going to kill us both anyway. Because you sent the army, I escaped.’
Because of Bonne
.

‘But not wee Margaret, and not Julius,’ she said. ‘Andro told ye that Jordan is dying?’ The she added quickly, ‘My Jordan, not yours.’

Now that the child-name Jodi was shed, he found it odd that both his son and his grandfather should answer to Jordan. It was Gelis who had so named their son, during the war Nicholas and she had then waged. He had thought she meant only to hurt, but he had been wrong about her again. When no one else did, she had believed that Nicholas was a St Pol.

Nicholas said, ‘Is he too ill for a visitor? Should I trouble him?’

‘Nicol,’ she said. ‘He’ll injure you sooner than you’ll injure him.’ Which was true. He went in.

A beauty like Simon’s, he had been told. You could only look for it in the symmetry of the features within the gross folds of fat; in the breadth of shoulder pressed into the pillows, and the length of the body beneath the handsome coverlet. Now that St Pol wore plain head-linen, you could see the line of white hair on his brow, of the purity that comes from golden fairness. Nicholas’s own beard, when he grew it, was yellow. His eyes were grey. St Pol’s were blue, as Simon’s and Henry’s had been.

Bel had followed him in. She said, ‘Here’s Nicholas come to tell ye how his son does. He’s not to stay long. Ye havena finished your drink.’

‘And I’m not going to,’ said the old man. ‘Go away.’ She had nursed his wife for years. She had nursed his wife, and helped to look after Lucia. Nicholas supposed she knew now how Julius had driven Lucia into the river at Berecrofts, thinking that she was her brother. He remembered begging Adorne not to let Simon leave on his own, certain that Julius would kill him outside. He remembered having to use his sword on Adorne, in his anguish.

The skin on St Pol’s face was mottled, and his lips were a cold-looking blue. He said, ‘Young men don’t pay calls, these days, to thank their benefactors? Next time he can suffer the arrow.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Nicholas said. ‘We have been in Linlithgow. I am here to thank you on his behalf. Is the wound very painful?’

‘No. Or I should not be lying back as I am. I have no desire for a visit by you. Send the boy.’

‘Why?’ said Nicholas.

It was Bel who answered, from her chair in the corner. ‘Because St Pol has an offer to make.’

‘Dear me!’ the fat man said. ‘Did I ask for an audience? No. I asked you to go away.’

‘Then this is me refusing,’ said Bel. ‘Go on, Nicholas. Ask him what it is.’

‘I don’t know if I want to,’ Nicholas said. ‘In any case, if he had one, he’d have to make it to me. Jordan is in his minority.’

The gross face appeared bored. ‘I had noticed. In that case, I shall ask him, and you will stand by and listen.’

‘There isna time for that,’ Bel said with continuing calmness. ‘Nicol, Monseigneur wants to make Jordan his heir. Not you. Him. And on condition he changes his name to St Pol.’

‘No. To Semple,’ said the fat man. ‘There is no style these days in things French. The Madeira land is being sold. If the family is to stay in Kilmirren, then it reverts to the Renfrewshire name. Jordan Semple, Master of Kilmirren, for the present. Semple of Kilmirren in time to come. And he will move in with me now.’

‘I’m afraid not,’ Nicholas said.

The old man laughed. ‘Why? In case I turn him into a Simon or Henry? There is not quite enough time for that. He comes to me now. The papers have been properly drawn up and notarised. You will have what you always wanted, dear Claes. A son following the St Pols in Kilmirren. And legitimately, without having to prove your own birth. For if you proved to be a St Pol, the boy would be a bastard, would he not? You and your wife would be shown to be related, and your marriage therefore null from the start. Such a trial.’ Although smiling, he was breathing more harshly.

Nicholas continued to stand at the foot of the bed. He said, ‘You misunderstand me. There is no question of Jordan coming to you, for there is no question of his being your heir. If he is not both the natural and the legitimate heir, and he is not, then I have no wish for him to be granted your estate as a gift. He has no need of it, and he is worthy of something far better.’

‘You would buy him a title?’ said St Pol. His face was full of contempt.

‘I could. I have just recovered my African gold. But I prefer to think that de Fleury is a name he is proud of, and that he will grow up to inherit my property, and add some of his own.’

‘De Fleury? The name of a small French vicomté now defunct? What weight will that carry in Scotland?’ St Pol said.

‘What weight does St Pol carry?’ Nicholas said. ‘Alan, Simon, Lucia, Elizabeth. Julius, on his mother’s side—you heard about him? Diniz is the only other man of worth, and he has rejected you. Once you have gone, the tarnished shield can drop from the wall.’

‘Nicol,’ the woman’s voice said behind him. From the bed, the breathing was hurried.

The eyes, however, had not changed. St Pol said, ‘You don’t mention Henry. Does he escape your litany of inadequate failures? Or did you beguile him into your bed as well as your house? I never did quite find out.’

Nicholas said, ‘I think you know the answer to that.’

‘I wonder,’ said the fat man. ‘Well, if not for that reason, why omit him? He was as puerile as Simon, and as vicious, and as vain. A St Pol to the core, you would say. I think I can guess, after all, why you don’t choose to have Jordan follow him. The upright Jordan must not be compared to such trash.’

Bel was letting him speak. Certainly, the fat man’s voice was suddenly stronger, and his breathing reflected no worse than an angry contempt. It was Nicholas who stood still, his breath choking, as he detected the terrible game, the subtle, terrible game he was being invited to play.

He had always wondered. Now he need wonder no more.

He said, ‘You knew who Henry was.’

‘You said something?’ said the fat man.

Nicholas said, ‘How long have you known? Since I sought him out? Since before that, when he was young? Or since—’ He stopped.

‘Dear Katelina,’ the fat man said softly. ‘She was so very shocked. When she thought I was you, she flirted quite prettily. But when I took off my mask—ah, no, no. But unflattering though her disgust was, I suppose it made her all the more compliant when true love came along, if somewhat frayed from Jaak de Fleury’s attentions. It was true love, my dear Claes, wasn’t it? Or was it, more sadly, more realistically, just another well-born young lady curious to experiment in the byre? Oh, yes’—and he smiled—‘I knew Henry was your son, poor vicious Henry. I virtually begat him upon you.’

‘Thank you,’ said Nicholas. Behind him, Bel made a sound. Nicholas said, ‘So then you allowed him—encouraged him—to dislike and despise me, and later to kill me if he could. There is, by the way, the question of how Jordan emerges so upright and Henry the opposite? Their mothers were sisters. What, does anyone remember, was the result of that experiment with the twin dogs?
La nourriture passe nature
, more
or less? So the evil was yours; the fault is yours that you lie here without sons, and die childless.’ He laughed, without joy. ‘Even your son and your grandson were killed by a St Pol. Through Julius, son of Elizabeth, the sister you and your brother ignored.’

St Pol was staring beyond him. He said, in an angry voice, ‘Help her.’

Her?

Nicholas whirled round.

The small woman had slipped from her chair, her face blanched, her brow contorted with pain. She said, ‘Henry, Nicol? Ah, not Henry!’

She knew so much. She hadn’t known Henry was his. She lay, half on the floor, gazing up at him, and he dropped to his knees. He had gathered her like this in Africa. He had carried her, sick and ill and valiant, and sung to her, and helped make her well. Love and music. Bel? Bel? Don’t go. Listen?

He held her. She was not fully conscious. He held her, and followed a thread of song in his mind, as if he could induce her to hear it. Her hair was thick and grey under the gauze, and her face was round still, and still bonny. She had a daughter in France, and a grandchild. They were not going to lose her. Nor was he. He spoke to her, in a murmur. He spoke about Henry.

‘Come along, Bel. Come, Bel. It’s over. It was Simon he loved, and his grandfather, and now he’s at peace. We remember him, and so does his brother. They were halfway to becoming friends, Henry and Jordan. It wasn’t all loss.’

Her eyes were open on his. Presently she shook her head, and attempted to smile, and he drew her up into the chair. She was cold, so he laid his jacket around her, and turned to the bed-chest for a blanket.

The coverlet was upset. The fustian wool hangings were as neat as before, and the carpet laid on the steps, and the table set to one side with its tin flagon of physic and cups. But the coverlet was crumpled, and one of the pillows tumbled askew; and half sunk in its depths was the frozen face of Jordan St Pol, caught as it was when he dropped, wild with frustration, at the height of his effort to rise. His mouth was a little open and his eyes reflected the light as Henry’s had done; but no one had held him as he died.

S
ENT FOR
, T
OBIE
brought Gelis with him. By then, the staff of the household had come and ordered the room, while Nicholas took Bel away. She wouldn’t go to her room, but sat with him in the parlour, where Nicholas had first met his son Henry, the golden child, and the golden man he thought was his father. Then Tobie came, and went to the bedchamber, while Gelis walked in and kissed Bel and sat beside her, her hand at her back. Bel was weeping, her face immobile; the tears running
ceaselessly into her kerchief. Nicholas, without very much colour, moved quietly about, responding to questions, giving low orders to the same servants who, six months before, must have witnessed his struggle with Julius. Now they simply obeyed.

Presently, Tobie came to sit with Bel and Gelis, and Nicholas joined them, and answered his questions as well. He might have kept something back, but Bel had a mind of her own. Discovering that the others knew about Henry, she questioned them steadily. Then, against Nicholas’s silent resistance, she brought in the name of his living son, Jordan.

It was over, what had been said in that bedroom. No one had to know, least of all Gelis, that St Pol had wanted to make Jordan his heir. Nicholas sat, looking at no one, while Bel told all that had happened.

At the end, he glanced up, and found her watching him grimly. ‘I told him ye wouldna. I told him ye’d be too thrawn to take it, even if it was for the bairn.’

‘It was too late to make amends,’ Nicholas said. Gelis said nothing.

Tobie frowned. ‘But he saved Jordan. Didn’t that count? The gift was for Jordan.’

‘It was for the succession,’ Nicholas said. ‘It was why he saved Jordan. Without Jordan, Kilmirren was lost.’

Bel blew her nose. She said, ‘I think his reasons were more praiseworthy nor that. You know what I hope? I hope he heard the last words you said, Nicholas. About Henry’s love for his grandfather and Simon. About Jordan and Henry becoming friends. Ye thought that worth doing. Might he not have thought the same? And even if he didna, would your hopes for Henry not be carried out if Jordan went on in Henry’s place? I would want that. I would want that to remember my Jordan by. Otherwise my hale life has been wasted on someone worthless. And to me, he never was that.’

There was a silence. Then Gelis said, ‘So you wanted Jordan to have Kilmirren, Bel?’

‘Aye,’ she said. ‘I got St Pol to write the gift out and sign it, just in case he lost the knack, or fell out of his senses. I have the paper there yet.’

Nicholas was looking at Gelis. She said, ‘It is your decision.’

He said, ‘No.’ His gaze had moved. When he spoke again, it was slowly. ‘Bel? What would Father Godscalc have said? He knew who Henry was. Tobie and Gelis and I have kept the secret all these years. When Godscalc was dying, he spoke of him, but he also spoke of us all, and how he wished us together. He asked us to make him our bridge. Is this what he meant?’

‘You would do it?’ she said.

‘Not for St Pol,’ he said. ‘But I would do it for you, and Gelis, and Jordan—our Jordan—and in memory of the friends we have lost, whom it might have made happy. What would Adorne have said?’

‘Property. Take it
. And Tam Cochrane,’ said Gelis. ‘He would be there with his slate and his ruler before anyone said a word about garderobes.’

‘And Whistle Willie,’ said Tobie. ‘You’d have an organ in no time at all.’

They were talking heartily, out of shock, but they meant what they said.

Nicholas said, ‘Then, Bel, we will take your paper, and Jordan shall have his inheritance. And he will be Semple and we shall be de Fleury, which will keep him explaining until the end of his days.’

L
ATER, HE WENT
upstairs alone, and stood by the bed, his gaze resting on the grey, silent bulk of his grandfather, whose beauty had altered his life. They had left the great ring, now immovably part of his finger. St Pol could not hurt him with it, or pass it on to him now.

Bel had hoped that his last words had been heard. Now, he thought that he could wish the same thing. Today, he had rejected a gift, and Fate, it seemed, had determined to thrust it upon him. As he had recently said, one could not depend upon plans.

He had never thought, long ago in his own flat country of Flanders, in his own well-loved burgh of Bruges, that one day he would abandon it all for a small, mountainous land, at the behest of a man whose ill-will had dogged him for most of his life.

But no. That was not accurate either. He had already decided to stay.

Bruges was part of his life. So was Marian. So was her family. That would remain. As for Bonne, he felt no obligation; no wish to know more about her, any more than she did about him. She would marry, and that would be the end.

For him, this choice seemed right. It simply meant that now there might be descendants of his who would choose to work in this country that had welcomed him, and perhaps gather about them a circle as various, as eccentric, as fond as the one of which he and Gelis were part.