Gemini (41 page)

‘Why, no. He would have tried to make it into a friend. This perpetual desire to be loved. You are wrong. He is greedy, and that is the form of his greed.
The soul is a widow who has lost her husband
, they say. He yearns for heaven on earth.’

‘Then he is not alone,’ Gelis said. ‘Tell me something. Why did David Simpson come to see you?’

‘You feel I have attacked you?’ he said. ‘I hoped, I suppose, that you would be stirred to joust on your husband’s behalf, but I see that you wish to disengage. Very well. Master Simpson wished to make mischief, through me. I have been forced to point out, for the last time, that my plans are not his, that he has no means to persuade me to make them so, and that if he attempts to associate with me again, I shall be forced to have him removed.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. Beside her, Lord Avandale continued politely to present her with his back.

‘My dear girl,’ said Fat Father Jordan. ‘My dear girl, you mistake me. If I remove him, it is only because he is obstructing my view. Why look! Pigs’ teats in milk. May I offer you one?’

S
HE SET OFF
next morning, and was back in her house in two days.

All was well. Jodi was safe, and Kathi and Robin and their family. Only Nicholas was absent, having departed on a tour of the Borders with a large group of armed men, led by Albany.

W
ARDEN’S EXCURSIONS WITH
Sandy Albany had much in common with the peregrinations of the Court of Savoy. Setting out with a hundred armed men, accompanied by minstrels, secretary, chaplain, chamberlain and quartermaster, Nicholas felt as if he should be attired in boiled leather and adorned with ribbon knots in the Hungarian style. They had with them twelve barrels of wine, two baskets of cheeses and a small herd of sheep, to provide gifts for their hosts and alms for the poor, the religious and (according to Sandy) prostitutes in distress.
Viva Savoia
. By comparison, the departure of the Lord High Chancellor with Gelis had possessed the prosaic air of a rather rich sheriff on circuit. The sheriff’s food, Nicholas suspected, would be better than Sandy’s.

He missed Gelis, and then didn’t, because there was so much to do.

He didn’t mind the management of the young. It would take a long time to accustom red-haired Meg, Albany’s sister, to the idea of another English royal marriage, but, given a chance, he thought he could do it. He had also begun to re-open, with care, that tenuous relationship with Mary, the elder Princess, begun during her first marriage and exile to Bruges. His part in all that had not harmed her, and had even benefited the kingdom. Despite the lapse of years, and her second marriage, she still appeared to regard Nicholas as a mentor in whom she could confide. She now had two sets of children: the son and daughter born in Bruges to Thomas Boyd, and another daughter and son born to James, Lord Hamilton, more than twice her age, and now frail.

She did not dislike her second husband, although she was younger than some of his children. Boyd had been the love of her life: she did not seek to replace him, and was content that she had been allowed
to remarry a Scotsman; she had not been contracted abroad. Hamilton was courtly and competent and one or two of his bastards were merry company. Her situation only disturbed her, now and then, when she wondered how she was to provide, once a widow, for the dispossessed children of her first family, whose father’s land had been forfeited to the King. Anselm Adorne had been allotted a part of it, after he had housed and sustained her in Bruges. When James went to his reward, she was going to require some of it back. Sandy said it was hers. He said that Adorne had certainly made himself useful, but always when he had something to gain.

‘Don’t we all,’ Nicholas had said. ‘But the Unicorn Society was a good idea. Jodi enjoys it.’ He had seen Jamie Boyd there as well. He was eight, a year younger than Jodi was now. The Hamilton son was only three, a little older than Kathi’s Rankin. Both the lady Mary’s sons were called James. The lady Mary said, ‘I’ve been thinking. Sandy agrees. Why don’t you give me your Jodi to train? He can bring his own man, and he and Jamie can both learn under Jamie’s instructors.’ She had paused, and then said, ‘My brother Mar does not visit Cadzow or Draffane. He and my lord disagree. But Jodi would be welcome.’

Some such offer had always been likely. He had discussed it with Gelis some time ago. ‘Sandy will try to persuade both his sisters away from the King and Adorne. This is one way I can counter it. But only if you think it would be good for Jodi. He will be in a royal household, as a page.’

And Gelis had said, ‘Thank you for asking me. But you wouldn’t even have suggested it if you hadn’t been sure. If it’s good for Jodi, then yes.’

And now he was trotting beside Sandy—beside Alexander Stewart, Duke of Albany, Earl of March, lord of Annandale, lord of Man, Lord High Admiral of Scotland and Warden of the Scottish March—with all these cheeses and wine barrels bouncing behind, and a hundred men-at-arms, happy to be away from the wife, and ready for anything.

The plan was quite simple: to begin at Dunbar, the chief stronghold of the earldom of March (Sandy’s pride), and proceed south by the coast, calling on the controversial Homes at Fast Castle and the other obdurate Homes of Coldingham Priory, and spending some days with the criminally adept population of Berwick-upon-Tweed. Then, following the course of the Tweed and the Border to the east, a ten-mile sweep would be made via a number of good fishing pools to the church and lands of Upsettlington at the Carham ford, the place between the East and Middle Marches where Border disputes were usually settled. Then they would turn for the north, and return to Edinburgh, calling on the Abbot of Melrose (to whom Alec Brown was related), and by the village of
Lauder to the hospice of Soutra, which had a good vegetable garden and a sound set of latrines, and a house beside Bonkle’s in the Cowgate of Edinburgh.

When Border truces failed and war broke out between England and Scotland, the area about Lauder was a popular mustering-place: it was where, four years ago, an excited Albany, aged twenty, had gathered an army to repulse a threatened English attack led by the possibly superior, possibly cynical, possibly simply ambitious Richard, Duke of Gloucester, not yet twenty-two. The attack didn’t come.

There was a theory (held by Bishop Spens and Gelis, for example) that Sandy Albany, one of five royal siblings, sometimes modelled himself on Richard, one of seven. They had first met at Greenwich Palace, the home of Richard’s mother in England, when Richard was twelve, and Sandy was ten and a captive. Then Sandy and Bishop Spens had been allowed to come home, and Richard had been sent to the Earl of Warwick’s. Richard had gone to Bruges as Sandy had, but not from choice; he had been exiled when he was eighteen with his brother the King. They had stayed in the house of Louis de Gruuthuse, whose wife was a van Borselen. Then they had come triumphantly home, in a ship of the Admiral Henry van Borselen, Sandy’s great-uncle by marriage. The Lancastrian King was defeated, and Richard acquired honours and a great household and was appointed Admiral and, two years ago, became the right high and mighty Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester, Warden of the West Marches for the defence of Cumbria, based in Carlisle. But of course he didn’t need to stay at Carlisle, having Lord Dacre to deputise for him; and the Middle and East Marches were looked after by Harry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, with whom Sandy was supposed to discuss all the tiresome frontier matters of purloined horses and cattle, and infringed fishing-rights and wanton injury and destruction, and failure to pay damages or return hostages.

It was stuff for lawyers, and half the time Sandy sent a deputy. He was here just now out of pique, because Percy had called a meeting and then cancelled it, just when Sandy had proposed to attend it. So Sandy decided to go on tour anyway, and visit those sheriffs and baronial officials who dispensed local justice in peace-time, and were supposed to supply him with troops in time of war. And check, as he should, that the decrees of the last March truce meeting had all been obeyed. And observe (his private intention) just how much illegal activity was taking place on both sides of the Border where English and Scots, comfortably distant from central authority and mostly related by blood, were pursuing their own sports and their own interests with blithe disregard of anyone’s rules.

Nicholas let it all happen. Once on the road, you couldn’t argue with
Sandy. But his friend and steward, at least, saw the dangers. It was Jamie Liddell who warned Nicholas that the excursion was mooted, and who kept to himself, in due course, the fact that Nicholas had dispatched a discreet warning to everyone on their route. Sandy could be tactless, especially in the company of Homes.

It seemed at first to promise well. At Fast Castle, no one killed anyone else, although words were exchanged. At Coldingham, Nicholas diverted questions about the future of the monastery, which the King wanted to change, in order to finance his royal chapel music. After the arguments died, Nicholas tracked down those monks who were genuinely interested in music and obtained their approval for one or two new choral pieces, which happened to be signed by Whistle Willie. In between, he visited the scriptorium and had a long talk with the monk in charge of the archives. Sandy came out with a whole skin, and Nicholas came out looking thoughtful.

In Berwick-upon-Tweed, having called on Lauder of Bass at the castle, they repaired to the Browns’ roomy mansion in St Margaret’s, and got Sandy’s bard to perform while they ate. It had surprised Nicholas, in the past, to find that Henry de St Pol had ever heard of a blind poet called Harry, since that particular bard was unwelcome at Court. It had not surprised him, subsequently, to discover that the minstrel, an acerbic veteran best met in the open air, had been adopted by Sandy for parading in taverns and among certain types of patriotic society. He had even, in Nicholas’s presence, got the old man to recite the bloodier bits of
The Wallace
for Meg, his unmarried sister, who had burst into tears. Nicholas had felt like bursting into tears himself, but for different reasons. He had no objection to the fifteen contradictory versions of the life of Sir William Wallace, great Scottish hero and martyr, whose left arm had ended up nailed to a gateway in Berwick, any more than he objected to the fifteen lives of Alexander the Great or Robin Hood or King Arthur. He did, however, become disenchanted with Jamie Liddell’s deep compulsion to verify facts, which doubled the length of the sessions.

‘Where did you hear that? I’ve never heard that.’

And the old man would bridle. Encased in lid-leather, his eyes looked like pigs’ knuckles. ‘What would you know? That was a Latin book, that was from.’

‘Then the Latin book was by some idiot romancer who didn’t know his Ayr from his Alva. Shall I tell you what really happened?’

‘Don’t,’ Nicholas would beg. ‘Just don’t.’

But he always did.

That night, it was the Lord Clerk Register, Alex Inglis, who entered the room just as Harry was vicariously slaying an Englishman:

The bard broke off. Alex Inglis remarked, ‘Good evening, my lord. I see we are preparing to contribute to the peace in our usual fashion.’

Sandy looked furious. It was customary for a representative of central government to accompany the Warden on his visits, which was partly why so many had lodgings in Berwick: the Clerk Register lived in Hide-hill in style, as befitted a man who expected a bishopric. The said Clerk Register, at the moment, was suppressing much the same annoyance as Sandy, since he was supposed to be working in Edinburgh, and indeed had been, before Nicholas rousted him out and advised him to speed down to Berwick.

Nicholas caught Liddell’s eye, and they began hastily to mend the situation, with partial success. When they all left for Upsettlington and Melrose, Alex Inglis was still with them; but so was Blind Harry.

B
ACK IN
E
DINBURGH
, Nicholas called first on Anselm Adorne, even before he went home to Gelis. It was safe: Sandy had gone to the Castle and Liddell and Inglis to the Cowgate; Nicholas slipped into Adorne’s house in the dark. Adorne was the friend of the King and the Queen and the Knights of St John. Nicholas was a fellow Burgundian, but not a recognised courtier. He was Sandy’s friend.

Adorne was there, springing up from a card game with Andro Wodman, who rose also to greet him with what might even have been satisfaction on his broken-nosed face. Nicholas himself didn’t want to eat or drink: he didn’t even want to be given a chair, but sat on the step of a prie-dieu in his rubbed boots and travel-stained doublet, listening as Adorne told him that Gelis was back, and the gist of her news and his own.

Since the storms of the previous year, news from Flanders had not been cut off, and Adorne was the recipient, as was Nicholas, of many quiet dispatches from unusual sources. They knew that the Medici outpost in Bruges had now closed, and that London was closing. Tommaso Portinari was still in Milan, from which city Adorne had been surprised to receive a small bale of Genoese alum bearing Tommaso’s seal and a Biblical text, which those who knew him found faintly alarming.

The van Borselens wrote. Some news percolated from Jan Adorne in Rome, but not overmuch. The many adult young of the family Adorne
had had little to say since the arrival of their father’s small daughter. Even the cherished Arnaud had merely sent a stiff note to announce the birth of his first son Aerendtken. Nicholas, in his new understanding of Anselm Adorne, judged what it had cost him to confess such a thing to his children, and thought them ungenerous.