Gemini (74 page)

‘Because I didn’t want it,’ said Nicholas.

‘You see?’ said Sir Oliver fretfully. ‘That is what I meant. You will have to make up your mind, my dear Nicol. Adorne will not make it up for you.’

D
URING
THAT TRIP
to the north, Jordan de Fleury stepped from childhood and became the son of his father.

It was Gelis, daughter of maritime Veere, who had him taught to swim as a child, but his father and the cool lord of Roslin who took him to fish in the wild spate of the Findhorn and taught him how to use it for sport, following these two mighty men, bare to the sun, plunging through the ravine; swirling in the swift, rock-strewn waters like the lean, agile salmon which a man got to love, and to prefer to the fat lazy fish of the estuaries.

It was his father who allowed him to come to the meetings he had with the Priors, the landowners, the royal servants who leased the fishings, at which they talked not only of salmon, but of general trade and all that might affect it, which seemed to include everything in the world. Beforehand, his father now would outline for him, simply and briefly, what was going to happen, and what he wanted, and what to watch for, and Jordan would sit through the subsequent meeting, giving nothing away, but convulsed with private glee at each point scored and object achieved. He learned to watch people’s hands, and their feet, and their eyes. He learned never to despise a man because he wanted something different, and never to underrate him either.

They met Tam Cochrane, after Sir Oliver Sinclair had left them at Speyside, and scrambled all over Auchindoun while he explained its defensive points and its weaknesses; and then rode south to Kildrummy. Master Cochrane was Constable of Kildrummy Castle, which meant that he had to make and keep it defensible. The masons were working there, and the yard was the kind of place Jordan had liked to play in when he was small, with buckets of mortar, and heaps of squared stones and timber, and scaffolding, and barrows, and scratched drawings everywhere.
The money for it came from the earldom of Mar, which belonged to the King since the last Earl had died. As a servant in a royal household, Jordan had become quite familiar with earldoms and baronies, and had already attended a baron court, and seen taxes being collected and local men trained to fight, and even to raise their beasts and plant properly. You had to do that, if you had land. Or even if you didn’t, his father said, you should know about it.

They climbed over the Buck of the Cabroch while they were travelling, and he was taken into forests, where he saw trees being sawn and made ready for floating. Master Lisouris showed him how to tell good wood from bad, and he helped manage the oxen. Last thing of all, he helped fell a tree. Then he travelled to Aberdeen with his father, and got a place on a boat going to Leith.

His mother was at the Leith house, and came out by skiff to where they were waiting over the bar for the tide. They went back with her. She didn’t kiss him or anything, although she held him at arm’s length, smiling, and then gave him a quick squeeze on both shoulders. She kissed his father. She said, ‘It was a long two-day battle for some people. Even the St Pols got back from Tobermory before you did.’

It was as well she mentioned it, for Jordan had forgotten about the St Pols, and Henry was the first person he saw on the wharf when they came ashore. His father threw him a smile, but Henry turned his back, and his father and mother walked on towards the house. He could hear his father mentioning oysters, and his mother starting to laugh. Jordan smiled. Henry came over.

Henry said, ‘He isn’t much of a fighter, is he, your father? Ran away from the Forth. Stayed away from the muster. What was he doing? Visiting all his other wives?’

He had been told what was safe and unsafe to mention. Jordan said, ‘We were chasing a wine-ship.’

‘How exciting,’ said Henry. ‘Did you catch it?’

‘No. But our ship brought it back. My father had business to see to. Anyway, there wasn’t any fighting on the Forth,’ Jordan said. ‘And I thought the army disbanded.’

‘It might not have. And someone certainly burned Blackness without you helping to stop it,’ Henry said. ‘But I suppose you just have to follow your father. You ought to try some real fighting some day.’

‘What was it like with the Earl of Argyll and Angus Og?’ Jordan asked. He sat on some rope and Henry perched on a bollard and told him. It was quite interesting, and terrifically gruesome: the place where they fought, even, was called Bloody Bay. It was also very serious, unlike John le Grant’s tales of Jordan’s father fighting the Turks, which were all full of the jokey things that they did, like pretending they were there to cure camels. In the end, the Bloody Bay story ran to a halt, and although Jordan
asked some things he wanted to know, and said, quite honestly, that he wished he could do something like that, Henry jumped to his feet and said he really couldn’t waste any more time, and just went. He glanced at their house as he passed.

Nicholas saw him, from where he and Gelis stood, half embraced in the depths of the parlour, but didn’t say anything. Gelis’s eyes were on Jodi, coming slowly along from the wharf. She said, ‘What have you done? You have brought back a man.’

‘The start of one. It was a longish time for a boy, and he was very good. But now he needs to get back to his friends, and become thoroughly silly and childish. Don’t scold him too much,’ Nicholas said. His fingers moved to her ear.

As so often before, the mystery of it overwhelmed her. She burst out. ‘How do you know what to do? How do you know exactly what to do?’ And when he looked down at her, startled, she said, answering herself, ‘It is Umar, isn’t it? The teacher, the professor, the judge, who passed on all he knew. That, and instinct.’

‘He taught you as well,’ Nicholas said. ‘But you manage reasonably well on instinct alone. Or you used to.’

She felt herself melt as he said it, for she recognised both the mock complaint and the frustration behind it: Jodi was coming; they could not be alone. She also understood, without resentment, that she had reached a small boundary, and had been stopped. There were not many now, and she did not test them for her own sake but for his; reminding him, as best she could, that she was there, if he wanted to cross. If he never did, she still had more than she deserved. She had him safe. He was back, safe, again.

T
HE NEXT ATTACK
came in July.

It had always been possible, in spite of the Church’s injunction which had persuaded her Scottish son in Christ James to disband his army, and her English son in Christ Edward to cease having to pretend that he meant to come north with any promptitude. Obedience to the Holy Father certainly entered into both decisions, but did not last long on King Edward’s side.

Personally, he was not immediately coming north, or releasing an army. Nevertheless, he lent an encouraging ear when Jack Howard, queasily back after his upsetting and unexplained illness, proposed (in a calm, measured way his men found admirable) a return with his fleet, better armed, better provisioned, and with the capability of establishing a base in the Forth which could act as a supply centre for the land invasion, when it came.

The beacons flared, and King James, cheated, betrayed, torn from
his assurance of pious security, fell into a rage that even de Fleury could not pacify. The King was left with his priests and a doctor, and his fleet took to the water.

This time, it was a different fleet, with different tactics. ‘Your bloody fault, Nicol,’ had said John le Grant, when they planned it. ‘If you hadn’t had your small fishy joke, there would be no need to cater for Howard: there’d be no sense in his coming back. As it is, he’ll probably come for revenge.’

‘It would be an extravagant form of revenge,’ Argyll had said. ‘If he comes, it will be because it suits Edward’s strategy. A second attack like the last would be worthless. Howard would either come along with a land force, or to prepare for it.’ Colin, Earl of Argyll, had come back from the fighting, having quelled the rebellion and arranged to abstract and imprison his own grandson Donald, aged three. One of his daughters was wife to Angus Og, son of the rebel Lord of the Isles.

Much though he esteemed MacChalein Mor, Nicholas understood that it would not matter to Argyll whether his daughter wept for her small son or not: if necessary for the greater good, the boy would spend all his life in captivity, until he was grey. It was not the same as stealing your son from your wife. It was the same, in some ways.

Nicholas had said, ‘So this time we confront Howard, if he comes.’

‘
Dìreach air a shùil
, just so,’ Argyll had said. ‘Andrew Wood will draw up the plans. You and Crackbene and the men of Leith will help him. And it is sorry I am, but trade stops from this moment. We accept incoming ships, but none may leave during the season. We may need them all.’

He had been right. Of all the threats they had discussed, Jack Howard’s fleet was the one to materialise. They sailed into the Water of Forth, and there found Sir Andrew Wood, with the full Scottish squadron around him.

It was a short fight. The hope of the English, it seemed, had been to establish themselves on Inchkeith, the mid-estuary island which lay between Leith and Kinghorn. Balked of that, they tried nothing further, but turned picturesquely and left, sustaining a brisk rear engagement until well down the coast. After a while, the Scots let them go. No ships had been lost. They had been evenly matched, and Howard’s personal animus had not altered the odds. By mid-August, he and his fleet were back in Sandwich.

At the ensuing council in Avandale’s house, the Chancellor had an announcement to make. ‘Word has just come. The army which threatened Rhodes has withdrawn. The Sultan of Turkey, its leader, has died.’

His voice was grave, rather than triumphant, and it was a moment before anyone spoke. Struck down before fifty, Mehmet the poet, the drinker, the visionary, the amalgam of cruelty and tolerance: the man
who, aged twenty-one, had won the legendary Constantinople from Byzantium, and had developed the fleets which had made him the most intimidating magnate of his time.

The driving power behind advancing Islam had gone, leaving a vacuum. Mehmet’s eldest son had died before him, strangled on his own father’s orders. The other two lived, and would already be vying for power. King Edward of England might well be emboldened to break the peace, and risk papal displeasure. The Turkish war had lost its urgency, for this year at least.

So Edward of England might now feel morally free to attack—but would he do it this year? The verdict, among those debating round Avandale’s table that day, was that he would not. Howard’s venture had failed. Edward had sent no army to support it, or to reinforce Gloucester, waiting in vain on the Border. There might be—there would be—trouble still on the Marches, where there remained vengeful men with energy to spare while their food and their pay and the good weather lasted. But the main threat from England would come next year. They had time to plan.

The meeting over, Nicholas and Anselm Adorne walked uphill to the High Street; impeded as ever by the onslaught of eager bodies who wished to sell something, or extract news or impart it, or establish a personal forum on a question of public importance. Fresh from the sea, it was a change to be among pigs, and horseflies, and children; and banging from the hammermen’s shops, and disputatious clamour from packed, busy markets. Every brosy face on the causeway had a name, or a nickname. However unavoidably courtly their clothes or glittering the chains of their chivalric orders, this was also true of themselves. Everybody called Nicholas Nicol, and quite a few called Adorne Seaulme, an unexpected tribute from the horseless class which he received in good part. Life in Edinburgh was heavily communal, as it was in the Canongate, whose smells and noise were considerably worse. Adorne said, ‘Come to my house for a moment.’ He meant his own house, in the same street.

Kathi was there. It was an extra pleasure, like the coolness and quiet. Perhaps because he was used to the dyeyards, Nicholas functioned at work without reference to his surroundings: the crowded premises of the two Berecrofts houses shook his concentration no more than did the silence of a Greek cell. When he was not working, it was different.

Kathi looked the same. No, that was not true. Between them, Robin and her children had achieved the impossible: had anchored her to normal living; had absorbed the extremes of energy which had made her life so exhausting, and left her—not calm, she would never be that, but less volatile.

Nicholas himself had once been the same; perhaps still was. Together, they had engendered a form of articulate and genderless lunacy which he
did not allow himself to dwell upon now, for it could not have continued, if only because it put her under too much strain. She was still very astute. She was saying, ‘How extraordinary, you managed to walk up from the Cowgate without buying anything.’

‘I didn’t,’ said Nicholas, defensively. ‘I bought another goose. It’s being delivered. Would you like one?’

‘I have three,’ Kathi said. ‘No household containing Hob need ever fear thieves. Come and have some food. Are you wondering why you are here?’

‘No,’ said Nicholas. ‘I am trying to stay happy for as long as possible.’

Adorne said, ‘Don’t look at me. It’s Katelinje’s idea.’ Already, his face was lighter, as it had looked in the summer evenings this year when, for the first time since Phemie’s death, he had begun to entertain like-minded friends, bringing together singers and verse-makers: Jock Ross and his son-in-law, the goldsmith’s cousin; the clerk Stobo; the young man from Dunfermline who had studied at Paris with Jan. Even, once, Blind Harry, suddenly welcome at Court and on campaign. With, of course, Willie Roger and his songsters. Sometimes, among the like-minded friends, with the King’s approval, were visiting envoys such as Ireland, and Leigh.

Tonight, it was only Kathi, flanked by Nicholas and her uncle, seated before a table of savoury dishes, and attended by polite, silent servants. The wine-flagon was a fine one, of glass, which Nicholas had last seen at the Hôtel Jerusalem in Bruges. It seemed lucky, when so much else had gone, that it had survived.