Gemini (5 page)

De Fleury said, ‘Perhaps I should ask your advice about that. As you said, it is sensitive news, and incautious handling could cause damage.’

Yare said, ‘What have you heard?’

Wodman glanced at his fellow passenger, but said nothing. De Fleury said, ‘Only what reached Bruges before the end of the year. The King’s brothers and sisters are young, and occasionally wilful. Sometimes merchants and even envoys find it better to speak first to the older men of the Council, who can then choose the right time to debate the issue with King James or his brothers. But I may have heard wrongly.’

‘No,’ said Yare. He was aware that he had been spared an explanation he would not have wanted to give. He was bailie of Berwick, but he was also one of the small circle—Scheves, the Prestons, the Sinclairs—who supplied personal service to the royal household; whose ships brought in baby night coats and wine-barrels and salmon, while some of their houses in Edinburgh were grand enough to lodge envoys. He heard a lot of personal gossip and, of course, used it. But he was careful to whom he imparted it.

Now he said, ‘What you heard is true. It is a young Court, as you say. The Duke of Burgundy’s death raises complex issues which the King’s advisers will want to consider.’

‘So that perhaps I should see them initially,’ de Fleury said. ‘But if the King summons me first, there is not much I can do.’

‘No,’ said Yare. ‘Once he knows that you’ve landed, that is. But you could be sorely held up. It’s a bad beat sometimes, north, in this wind.’

‘And Mick Crackbene, as we all know, can’t set a course. Yes, that’s true,’ de Fleury said, lifting a brow at his shipmaster.

‘If you say so,’ the big fair man said blandly. And to Yare: ‘I didn’t tell you. We’ve brought your tombstones. Lovely, they are. One for you, one for your lady. Come and see when we get them ashore.’

He promised. As the talk turned to more everyday channels, it occurred to Tom Yare that there was a piece of gossip he should give to Nicol de Fleury. Something heard by Yare’s brother the friar, who lived near the Priory that taught the King’s youngest sister in Haddington. He would tell de Fleury, in private.

B
ACK ON BOARD:
‘He didn’t notice the chip in the marble,’ Nicholas said.

The ship heaved. Wodman said, ‘He wasn’t really thinking of tombstones. He was trying to work out how fast he could get a message to Edinburgh. Whom will he send the news to? The guilds?’

The ship pitched. Nicholas said, ‘Christ, Mick: you
have
rigged the sails badly. No. The guilds will come second. First, he’ll send to the Lords Three.’ They both knew whom he meant. Avandale, Whitelaw and Argyll led the inner council that supported the King. That supported young James and his little wife and the four royal brothers and sisters about whom Tom Yare knew so much that was disquieting.

Mick Crackbene said, ‘You mean he’ll send to the Council, who will then tell the King that the Duke of Burgundy’s dead, and suggest what to do about it? Is that what Yare told you?’

And Nicholas answered, ‘As good as. You heard him.’ He wished sometimes that Mick were less observant. For many years, the shipmaster had worked, off and on, for Nicholas de Fleury, and sometimes against him, as Wodman had done. But what Yare had said, in that brief aside noticed by Crackbene, had been for no one but Nicholas himself.

Yare had given him news—no, a piece of scandal, which Nicholas was compelled to believe, however unwillingly. He would have to deal with it personally: there was nobody else. But first, he had a weightier errand: to report to the policy-makers of Scotland the facts of the Duke of Burgundy’s death. He did not know how long all that would take, or when he could set in train what he had come for, which was not to pick up
a cargo. He was not, in fact, perfectly fit; but that would mend. His injuries had been nothing to Robin’s.

Landing in Berwick that wild, February day, Nicholas de Fleury had known that he was mad to come back to Scotland, but that it had to be done. And since he had made a computation, as he always did, of all the possible risks, he concluded that the two parties who intended to kill him would not try it at once, but would hope to have some sport with him first.

In which he was wrong.

W
ITH THE CO-OPERATION
of the weather, it was not hard to arrive tardily at the harbour for Edinburgh and Nicholas was unsurprised, knowing Tom Yare, to find nobody there but a few unfamiliar harbour- and customs men, who dealt solely with Crackbene, and showed no interest in identifying his patron or passengers. Although it was mid-afternoon, the sky was dim with rain-clouds, and a blustering wind scoured the puddles and seethed over the sandbanks, and collided in spume with the jetties. Officially, they were to stay aboard, with their cargo, until morning. Unofficially, it was conveyed that two persons might land if they wished. Which let Nicholas take Wodman to Edinburgh.

It was only two miles from Leith. Someone hired him a couple of hacks, in a port where once he had had his own stables and lodging. Crackbene’s wife stayed in Leith with their children: he didn’t know where. Four years ago, he could have named every man in these streets. Now he and Wodman rode out muffled in scarves, leaving the ship to toss in the gloom of the river-mouth. He had sympathy for the crew, but relied on Crackbene to preserve the fiction that no one had landed. Presumably the harbourmen knew to keep silent. He wondered whether the Council or the Abbot had arranged it, and who would come to escort them to their rendezvous; for obviously someone must come. To arrive unprimed at the portals of Edinburgh would defeat the object of all this performance. Once recognised, he could hardly withhold his news, whatever damage it did.

Out of Leith, the road was a mess. All the land to the north of the river was under the jurisdiction of Archibald Crawford, Abbot of the most important monastery in Edinburgh. The Abbey of Holyroodhouse lay at the foot of the hill on which the King’s castle was perched. The town clung to the steep spine between them. He knew every house, every lane in it.

He hadn’t been here for four years. He had been growing and changing somewhere else, with different people, speaking a different language. He had never meant to come back, but had done so. Chilled and sore and battered by violent sailing, Nicholas was suddenly positive that he was
right to be here; seized by a kind of hope not incompatible with the lunatic joy that he had forced himself to leave. Now he knew what he wanted, and had resolved to bring it about. He meant to succeed.

T
HEY HAD CHOSEN
the western, riverside route to the town, because it kept to the Holyrood bailery, and touched the busy hamlet of Bonnington, which led to the Canongate, and was tenanted by yet other Crawfords. Also, being longer, the way was less apt to be plagued like the Easter Road, with wealthy pack-trains, or ox-wagons stuck in the mud, or by common contingents on foot, rolling their kegs or dragging their sledges of merchandise.

Their chosen path was mostly used by pedestrians, who kept clear of mud-throwing hooves and did not look up as they trudged. To the right was the river, with an occasional mill and its lade, and its service buildings close by, on the rising ground where the thatched cottages huddled. On the left, the ground was rough and uneven, and rose in humps and hillocks towards the high town ahead, with a steep hill between. There were crofts there as well, each with a beaten yard and some hens and a kailpatch among dug-up anonymous workings, or parcels of rough grass and whin and low trees. Nicholas knew what it all was or had been. It had once been his business, and it might be so again, depending on what happened now. He said, ‘What d’you think? I expected someone to collect us by now.’ The rain had begun, but the sky was no lighter.

‘We’re going too fast,’ Wodman said. ‘We could get to Bonnington and stop at a tavern. You could do with a rest.’

‘You stop at a tavern,’ said Nicholas. ‘If you think you can drink through your scarf. We are meant to be still on board the Christmassy
Karel
, and not spreading good tidings just yet. If you’re desperate, I have a flask.’

‘I’m desperate,’ Wodman said. ‘You wouldn’t have any food?’ In France, he had been a royal Archer, and they were all hearty drinkers and trenchermen. Turned merchant, he made a good, conscientious Conservator, who just happened to know some dangerous people. Nicholas handed over the flask, and dropped his horse’s gait to a saunter. The rain rustled down. There was no one on the road at the moment, and nothing to attract anyone either. Between themselves and the river, there were three wattle cabins with smoke drooping down from the heather and childish voices disputing inside. The noise drowned, at first, another sound from behind them, which gradually emerged: he automatically identified it.
Allah-u akbar, la ilaha illa’llah;
the afternoon summons to prayer.

No, of course not: wrong country. Women, singing. Fisherfolk, calling their wares. Sellers, calling buyers to Paradise.
Allah-u akbar
.

Wodman took his mouth from the flask. ‘I heard it,’ Nicholas said. ‘Do you really want food?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Andro Wodman. The warbling voices were clearer and closer, and there was a rumbling basso beneath. ‘Unless they’re selling bowls of seethed meat with onions. What are they selling?’ They had both turned and stopped to look back. Toiling up the rise was a group of sturdy young people, their faces bright in the rain, hauling sledges behind them. Walled sledges, crowded with hampers.

The wind was from the east. Even without that, you could tell what was in them.

‘What about oysters?’ Nicholas said. Wodman handed over the flask and jumped down before he did.

There were three sledges, each with two fellows hauling and another couple striding behind. The girls rode with the creels, singing and holding them steady. The men wore skin caps and tunics, with rough over-mantles of felt for the rain. The women were hooded and bundled in hessian and stopped singing as they came up. One of the men delved in a creel and came forward, his hollow hands weighted and dripping. The oysters in them were the finest Nicholas had ever seen: the sensitive shells, thin as a porcelain roseleaf, slowly closed as he watched. ‘They like to be serenaded,’ the man observed. ‘If you will sing to them, they would surely re-open, my lord.’

Nicholas laughed a little, for the voice was educated, and the discreet device to attract them was plain. A clerk, a servant of Church or of state, had at last arrived to collect them. The girls, who remained crouched with the creels, were no doubt genuine.

Wodman had realised it also. Dismounting, amused, he was accepting the gift with bravura. Nicholas gathered his reins to do likewise. The same well-spoken man smiled, and stepped round to help him, still speaking. ‘But you will need something to open them with.’

The something was naked steel, flashing from under the felt and driving expertly upwards.

It was so fast that only instinct could help. As Nicholas swerved, he shouted to Wodman. They hadn’t indulged in an escort, but they weren’t crazy enough to have come on this ride unprotected. The swordpoint bit into his cloak and grated across the cuirass underneath, bringing the swordsman close for a moment, his face blank with surprise. Nicholas kicked him under the chin, so that he blundered back and hit someone else while Nicholas dragged out his own sword. The horse wasn’t his, but it was a powerful beast and alarmed enough to be ready to rear. Nicholas wrapped the reins round one wrist and hauled, using the bit to drag the horse threshing on to its haunches, and then allowing it to plunge forward kicking again. It couldn’t last very long, but at least he didn’t fall off, and enjoyed the whistling sound his blade made as he slashed it down
on one side, then the other as the oystermen mobbed him. He could hear Wodman making loud breathless noises, but couldn’t see him, which meant he hadn’t managed to remount. He tried to steer towards him, but it was like jousting in a cone of molasses. Too many men. And he was not at his best.

It was now very noisy, with a lot of shouting and cursing and the flat sound of steel against steel from his blade and Andro’s. All their assailants seemed to have weapons. There were three less than there had been: two fell back, bloodied, and someone was screaming continuously. Far from summoning help, the uproar had probably frightened off every traveller for miles. Jolting about in the saddle, fending off the blows to his legs and his horse and the inventive characters who wished to mount up behind him, Nicholas kept track of the sound of Wodman’s swordplay, and heard his yell of triumph as someone was spitted. He had never fought beside Wodman before, and was glad to have the benefit of an expert. He wondered if Wodman were wishing he hadn’t come.

He fell off, finally, because they stabbed the horse under him and he wasn’t expecting it, this being an action profoundly alien to professional robbers. His horse wasn’t wearing a cuirass. Nicholas hurled himself off as it staggered, with his sword in one hand and the wine-flask in the other, unstoppered. One man got the force of his shoulder, and two others the remaining wine full in the face while he located where Wodman was and crashed into him, back to back. Wodman said, ‘About time.’ He was covered with blood, but his sparse teeth gleamed: he was happy. They had been about fifteen to two. Fewer, if you left out the girls, screaming, crouched in the sledges. A lot fewer now, when you reckoned the men on all fours in the road, and even one who looked dead. Say eight to two.

It was worrying, for the fact was that they themselves both ought to be dead. The first man had certainly meant to disable him, but no one had tried to do more—and with those odds, and his shortcomings, it should have been easy. So it wasn’t a personal matter. Not handsome David de Salmeton, and his private grudges. Not a minion of the St Pol family, which had thrown de Salmeton out of its business, but shared his hatred of Nicholas de Fleury. Just someone who wanted a ransom, and assumed he was rich, and worth a lot more than a horse. Or perhaps he wasn’t the target at all. He said, panting, ‘Have you bedded anyone you shouldn’t have lately?’