Gemini (38 page)

‘There aren’t any,’ the youth said. ‘Or just Harry, which is all right if you’re blind. It’s a van Borselen name.’ He stared Nicholas in the eye.

‘Well, I think I prefer it to Wolfaert,’ said Nicholas mildly. ‘I suppose you’re right. All the good Henry names are Italian. But remember the problem, when you come to baptise your first son.’ He added, with vague hopefulness, ‘There was some talk of trailing a bladder, and shooting at it, for money?’

‘You think you can beat me?’ said Henry.

‘Jodi can beat you,’ said Nicholas scornfully. Henry was beginning to recognise jokes.

In fact, Jodi was remarkably good: so much so that Henry remarked tolerantly, ‘You’ve been practising.’

‘No. It’s your bow,’ Jodi said. ‘I brought it with me. That’s what I’m shooting with.’ He paused. ‘You don’t want it back? Aunty Bel said you didn’t.’

‘Aunty Bel?’ Henry repeated. It was sharp.

‘Mistress Bel. Not his real aunt,’ Nicholas said. ‘Bel of Cuthilgurdy.’

‘I don’t imagine she’s anybody’s real aunt,’ Henry said. ‘And if she was ever a Cuthilgurdy, it was forty years ago, my grandfather says. The land’s long since gone to somebody else. So how do you know her? Because she used to hang about my father’s sister?’

‘She went to Timbuktu with us. You were too young, perhaps, to remember. You would have enjoyed it.’

‘I’ve been to Africa,’ Henry said.

‘Jodi hasn’t. Where?’ Nicholas asked.

Later, they fished.

Later, Henry settled down to dice with the crew, and lost badly, and accused them of cheating. Later, he either ignored Jodi or sneered at him. Then the wind rose to gale force, and they lost a spar and had to cut a sail free and Alec broke open a keg of strong ale and they were all uproarious again.

Up and down; up and down. No, they were not going to fall in love and marry between Leith and Berwick; but at least they arrived in Berwick, all of them, rather soiled, rather damp, but undamaged in flesh and in spirit. Yare sent Jodi up to his house, from which he and his father would ride home with a good guard next morning. Nicholas stood with his other son on the riverside quay, watching the partial unloading begin. He said, ‘You don’t fancy sailing on to Middleburg? It would let you mend fences with Veere. Wolfaert can be an ass, but he’s quite a powerful man in these parts. Or you could sell your fells directly to Antwerp.’

‘You want to know what the competition is?’ Henry said. He turned from the river, his blue eyes held wide, as if by some new resolution. He said, ‘I heard you tried to drown my father’s sister at Berecrofts. I heard you thought it was my father, and held her under the water.’

‘I was there when she drowned,’ Nicholas said. ‘She tried to cross a frozen river in snow. Why do you think I would kill her, or your father?’

Henry said, ‘Because you wanted to be one of us.’

Nicholas said, ‘I wouldn’t have minded being one of you, although not for the inheritance. I had enough money. But in fact, I couldn’t be a St Pol without harming my own family, and I wouldn’t do that. If I
were
one of you, my marriage would be void, because my wife and your mother were sisters.’

‘So that wasn’t why you wanted to kill my father,’ said Henry. ‘It was because he knew what a slut your mother was. He was a boy when he was made to marry her, and she cheated. Everyone knew.’

Men shouted; horns blew; winches creaked. If you listened, you could hear the surf far away on the sandbanks. Nicholas said, ‘Everyone believed it, certainly. Your father and grandfather made sure of that. I think they had their reasons.’

‘I’m sure they had,’ Henry said. He laughed.

Nicholas said, ‘I meant that your father was fifteen when he married, and my mother was nearly twice as old, with a child on the way. He probably felt trapped and resentful. Does it matter? I have my own wife and son. I have no designs on your family. I was hoping that you would talk about it, like this, so that I could tell you so.’

Up, and down. Henry said, ‘You think I want to hear your pathetic excuses? Pardon me. You’ve dragged me on this squalid trip, and that’s enough. You won’t, I hope, expect me to come back in your company.’

‘No. Do you want me to lend you some money?’ Nicholas said. ‘I did better than you did out of the cockroach championship.’

Henry’s blue eyes gleamed. Then he said, ‘Go to hell,’ and walked off.

Up, and down. But his welcome back home, after the busy, talkative journey with Jodi, was worth it all. Ah, his welcome.

H
IS FEAST DAY
came and went, signalling that he was about to become a year older. On the Eve of St Nicholas, there was a Mass at the Abbey Church of Holyrood, and Sandy Albany gave a feast for him in the royal apartments. Ten days later, on the day he stubbornly maintained as the anniversary of his birth, Kathi provided a repast, pleasantly set out for him and for Gelis in the big upper room of her Canongate house, and shared with an amazing number of the persons whom he knew and liked best, including those who set to noisy music, on demand, the scurrilous words written by Robin on the underside of their platters. And among the adults were the children whose lives were now also part of his own: Margaret of Berecrofts, a rosy, formidable character of nearly three, in the patient charge of her adored Jodi, with Rankin pattering behind. And in an upstairs room, brought for the occasion, a wicker cradle containing within its muslin freshness a sleeping infant called Efemie Adorne, with her father’s hand pensively guiding its sway.

Leaving the room, Nicholas had found Kathi just outside, waiting to take him downstairs. He said, ‘He is glad to have her. I was afraid he would resent it.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Mind you, it’s some time since any uncle of mine had a close acquaintance with babies. If she wakes, he will rush out and be replaced by three nurses. Have you heard about Honoria?’

‘It’s going to be something crude,’ he said hopefully. ‘One of the dirtier bits from Davie Simpson’s selections from Ovid?’

‘You
are
having a good birthday,’ Kathi said. She negotiated the stair and halted on a small landing, whose window gave a view of Tobie’s wing and a courtyard. ‘Don’t you remember Loathsome Ben Bailzie, the assiduous suitor?’

‘No. I knew it was going to be a dirty story,’ said Nicholas. ‘Look. I can see Tobie crossing the courtyard. He’s carrying a duck.’

‘He’s carrying a goose. It’s your present. You must remember Ben Bailzie. He was on my marriage list. He was practically in my marriage-bed. You used to encourage him.’

‘Oh, him!’ Nicholas said. It was a goose. He said, ‘And there’s Clémence. She’s got a goose too.’

‘Well, remember,’ said Kathi with irritation. ‘The Bailzies all want to be rich, and no one ever wants to marry them, so they have a family
policy of foisting parenthood on very young virgins of both sexes and then offering nobly to marry them.’

‘It’s a nice thought,’ said Nicholas. ‘But
two
geese? Anyway, if Ben Bailzie is the fellow I’m thinking of, I’d be amazed if he could seduce a virgin of one sex, never mind two. You aren’t thinking of oysters? They’d go well before geese, if there’s time to cook them before he arrives. Or maybe he’s come?’

‘No,’ said Kathi carefully. She put her hands on the window-sill and sat on it. ‘
Honoria
has come. Ben Bailzie’s daughter. He got a rich young virgin in the family way and then was reluctantly compelled to marry her. Result, Honoria.’

‘And I encouraged him?’ Nicholas said, dragging his eyes from the geese. ‘You mean, if I’d succeeded, you might be Mistress Katelinje, spouse of Bailzie and precipitate mother of Honoria? Margaret and Rankin wouldn’t like it at all.’

There was a silence, during which Katelinje Sersanders coloured from her brow to her throat, and Nicholas took a breath and then let it out slowly, for he had made the connection; had belatedly realised why she was talking this nonsense. And he was not in a good timber house in the Canongate of Edinburgh at all. He was standing in flickering darkness by the bank of a river, while behind him flames rose from the place of a would-be seduction, attempted by a fierce, lonely man recently dead. Pursued by the same lurid light, Robin, lissom, mobile, an anguished young husband, was seeking help. And before Nicholas, lying where she had been carried, was Robin’s wife, Kathi, looking up at Nicholas with the same look in her eyes: the look that even her husband had not yet read.

It was not dark but light, and a matter for joy.

Nicholas said softly, ‘My dear?’

And she said, ‘Yes. You are the second to know. And I want to tell Tobie.’

Then he gave her his hands, and brought her to stand, small and still slight, against him, within his embrace. ‘He must be so proud of you. You must be so happy.’ And when she made a choked sound, he added, practically, ‘And if it is a girl, you must call it Honoria.’

Then she snorted, and wiped her eyes, and stretched up to receive his salute, to be swept aside by the small, solid person of Margaret, dragging Jodi to see her second cousin Euphemia. Nicholas held Kathi steady, while gazing with her at the retreating children. He said, ‘There goes a very happy big-sister-to-be. I like your progeny, Kathi.’

‘So do I. Isn’t it lucky?’ she said.

Down below, rejoining the riotous crowd of their friends, the first thing Nicholas noticed was Robin’s gaze, bright and defiant and proud, fixed on him from afar. He must, then, have sent Kathi to break their
news to him quietly, tonight. The best gift, the greatest pledge of friendship he could have devised.

A better time to acknowledge it would be found. But now Nicholas went across swiftly, and knelt, and, unobserved in the uproar, said to Robin what could not wait to be said, so that Robin flushed, and lay back, and laughed with brilliant eyes. Then Nicholas rose, and set out to make his birthday one that everyone there would remember, including himself.

D
R
T
OBIAS
B
EVENTINI
, who now knew and approved of the reason, watched him do it. The guard-geese, which had been bought with considerable trouble, furnished the central motif of the celebration, if not of the table; and Tobie, given over to contentment, enjoyed creating ever more extravagant explanations of their duties and skills. Eventually, watching the birthday guests depart amid a bobbing crowd of servants and torchbearers, with the geese screeching and hissing amongst them, Tobie linked arms with his wife and turned back to where Robin was lying, half-asleep, with Kathi moving softly about him.

The children had gone, with their nurses. Clémence, once Jodi’s nurse, was now Tobie’s.

Clémence and he had no children. They did not discuss it. It was something much desired by them both, but if it did not happen, then Tobie’s life, for him, was still complete; and he thought it the same for Clémence. He wondered sometimes whether Nicholas would now extend the family begun abruptly so long ago, but began to think, as the months passed, that either deliberately or by chance, that door had been closed. He thought he understood. There was the threat posed by Simpson, of course. There was also the age of the children now living. Jodi would soon be nine years old. Henry was already grown, and on his way as a man. And in Germany there was someone else: a young maiden called Bonne, who was supposed to be the step-daughter of Julius, and who was being reared, by her own choice, in a convent. She might never emerge. Tobie hoped that she wouldn’t. He hoped that Nicholas might be allowed, now, to proceed with his life without Bonne, without Julius, without Simon de St Pol. Without more children, if that was what he wanted. Nicholas was his own gift to the world. He needed no replication, as Robin did. Or, as someone had said, the family he had was sufficient.

The day, with all that it signified, came to a close. The day closed; the year turned; and the geese screamed, but no one heeded them, yet.

I
N THRALL TO
their purpose—that the kingdom of Scotland should be made and kindly wrought, as if it were a pair of gloves—the statesmen took note, or failed to take note, of the news that now came, filtered by distance, from the outside world.

First of the great rulers to leave, that tall old man Uzum Hasan, Prince of Diarbekr, Lord of High Mesopotamia, chief of the White Sheep Tribe of the Turcomans, took to his bed and died on the Eve of Epiphany, upon which three of his sons immediately strangled their Christian-born half-brother. His motherless sisters escaped. Josaphat Barbaro, the dead ruler’s companion, fled in disguise and began to make his way home to Venice. Sultan Mehmet of Turkey gave praise.

Kathi said, ‘You went there. At least you went there, Nicholas. It prolonged his life and saved others, that promise of help from the West.’

‘Ludovico da Bologna went there,’ Nicholas said. ‘According to rumour, he was asked to go back by the Pope after Russia. If he did, he’ll be dead.’

‘So what will happen?’

‘Ask your uncle,’ Nicholas said. ‘Venice will make peace
, tellement quellement,
with Turkey. It will mean competition for Genoa. Gelis?
’

‘But opportunities for alum,’ Gelis said
.

T
HE
B
ANK OF
the Medici was the next of the great institutions to stagger. On Easter Day, in the Cathedral of Florence, the twenty-nine-year-old head of the Bank and his brother were attacked at Mass by assassins with some help from within, the pre-arranged signal being the elevation of the Host. Lorenzo de’ Medici escaped, but his brother died, as did Francesco Nori, who once represented the Bank in Geneva and Lyons. The killers were from the rival banking firm of the Pazzi, encouraged, it
was said, by Pope Sixtus, who meant to confiscate the Medici wealth in the Papal States, and end their alum monopoly. Later, under pressure from France, the Medici decided to close their debt-burdened office in Bruges, which Tommaso Portinari had already abandoned in order to live in Milan. Offered the Bruges business on affordable terms, Tommaso declined. About the same time, by chance, another of the long-ago band of young foreign exiles in Bruges was doomed. Lorenzo Strozzi, smitten by a lingering illness, was destined to die in Naples, leaving two little sons by Tommaso’s wife’s sister, and an older, richer, successful brother in Florence with an illustrious future.