Gemini (82 page)

‘No. What did you make of her?’ asked Bel.

‘We got on very well,’ said Adorne, ‘so long as she remembered which of us carried the purse. She knows she is intelligent. She will make a good marriage partner for somebody.’

‘But not for you,’ Bel suggested, her shapeless face innocent.

‘Not for me,’ he agreed. ‘Bel, you know what I am asking. It is for Nicholas. He carries responsibility enough.’

‘You are asking me to take Bonne. For how long?’

‘Until January,’ he said. ‘Or earlier, if you are a miracle-worker who can find her a husband. I should like to see Nicholas free of these tangled relationships, and able to get on with his own life.’

‘He is free,’ she said. ‘Julius likes to be inquisitive, but I am not holding Nicholas back. He knows virtually all that I know.’

‘As does Mistress Clémence?’ he said. ‘I suspect you chose her for Jordan. You have never said how you met.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘But you can imagine. She’s French, and I was in France with the two Scottish Princesses. I knew she’d be fine for the bairn, but it was the time of the war between Gelis and Nicol, and I didna want to propose her myself.’

It was understandable. Adorne wondered when Nicholas had discovered the complicity, and what he thought of it. He waited, and then said, ‘I thought perhaps you knew her because of your grandchildren. You mentioned them once.’

‘Did I?’ she said. ‘Maybe I did. Well, I’ve only the one grandchild now. And since Henry Arnot kindly let out that my ae son was in cloisters, you have to suppose that I have a married daughter. I have.’

‘In France, then,’ he said. ‘And if Clémence wasn’t her nurse, she was connected to your son-in-law’s people? The family who couldn’t come to her wedding?’

‘Ask her,’ said Bel.

He studied her. ‘But you’d rather I didn’t.’

‘I suspect Nicol would rather you didn’t,’ she said. ‘But you must please yourself. As for the lass Bonne, I ken nothing about her, but if it will help you and Nicol, I’ll take her over the season. Is there anything more I can tell you?’

‘You are generous,’ he said. ‘And in return, I shan’t ask the question I’d put to you, if I were Nicholas.’

‘And what would that be?’ she said. ‘Why is an old besom like me so tolerant of a devil like Jordan de St Pol of Kilmirren?’

‘Yes,’ said Adorne. ‘That is it.’

‘Aye.’ she said. ‘There’s a half-answer to that, which he knows. There’s a whole answer that maybe he guesses. But that’s between him and me and St Pol.’

S
HE WENT TO
Elcho the following week, accompanied by a doubtful Father Moriz, brought to authenticate her credentials. The Prioress, whose manners were beautiful, charmingly set the small chaplain to entertain Sister Monika in German, while she heaped praise upon Bel for opening her hospitable doors to the poor young orphan, the demoiselle Bonne.

Bonne, brown-haired, stalwart and formidably composed, sat with her hands folded throughout, saying little, but watching the nun and the priest with something close to private amusement. Sister Monika, it had been established, was to stay at the Priory over the festival. Bonne did not look sorry.

The Prioress rose to arrange for refreshments. Left alone with the girl for a moment, Bel said, ‘She’s a right talker, isn’t she? What are the other nuns like?’

The blue eyes turned upon her. ‘The same as everywhere,’ Bonne said. ‘Dull.’

‘But safe, I suppose,’ Bel remarked. ‘I mind being glad of some nuns when I got back from that trip to Africa. What did ye hunt with the Graf? Bear?’

‘Sometimes,’ Bonne said.

‘It’s more deer about here, but it’s lively, and I ken a man with some falcons. What about shooting?’

‘Shooting?’ said Bonne. Her voice was mild.

‘With a crossbow. At the butts. Have ye not done much of that? And there’s snow sports, of course, but that depends on the weather. Moriz!’

‘Yes?’ said Father Moriz, rising smartly.

‘She thinks I’m blethering. Come and tell her Yule in Stirling’s not so bad. I had one look at her shoulders, and I knew she was a lass who could kill things.’

Bonne looked for the first time uncertain. The Prioress was re-entering the room. ‘Perhaps,’ said Father Moriz testily. ‘But, my friend, it does not do to scream the fact all round the cloisters. I hope, demoiselle Bonne, that you can put up with this woman. Nations have tried in vain to subdue her, but she still insists on going her own way. You’ll have a terrible time.’

Across the room, the Prioress had turned. Sister Monika sat, looking worried. ‘Yes, I can see that,’ said Bonne. Her face, to a searching eye, had almost cleared. She said, ‘You had no need to arrange this. I am grateful.’

‘It was Lord Cortachy’s notion,’ Bel said. ‘But don’t go and tell the St Pols, or they’ll set the pigs on him.’

S
ETTLING INTO HER
life as a spy, Katelinje Sersanders, lady of Berecrofts, launched into a busy and profitable winter among all her friends, including the ones she was spying on.

Unlike Nicholas, whose qualms she respected, she had no objection to steering her mistress out of trouble. She made no effort to attract the confidences of Jamie Boyd, and was fairly confident that his royal mother would not press secrets upon her lady-in-waiting. Those she proposed to pick up for herself, which shouldn’t be difficult. The King’s elder sister was older but not much more mature than the girl who had fallen passionately in love with Thomas Boyd, her official husband, and who had allowed Nicholas to orchestrate the escape, the exile, the return which had saved her life, if not her marriage, and brought her back to remarry in Scotland. Mary still thought of Nicholas as her friend, but had been shaken by his desertion of her brother in France. Kathi, who never had problems with interfering in Nicholas’s affairs, worked to
present the idea that Nicholas, while a firm supporter of Sandy, was deeply concerned to reconcile the absent Albany with the King. This tended to be the view of most of Albany’s friends, including James Liddell. The others lumped him with Anselm Adorne as a self-seeking foreigner who had enchanted all the royal sisters and brothers and had probably slain John of Mar. Kathi killed that rumour stone dead wherever she found it.

She still climbed the ridge regularly to her own house, which was officially outside the burgh, but not far from the Hamilton mansion in the Cowgate. She had told Robin what she was doing. As she expected, his first instinct was to forbid her; his second, one of well-concealed bitterness that he could not do this in her place. His third, of course, was to agree. If she hadn’t told him, he would always have wondered whether she had been afraid to put him to the test. Robin of Berecrofts was a grown man with a disability, wonderfully managed, and there were few things not within his tolerance now. His friends knew what they were. Paradoxically, that fact in itself was the one that wounded him most.

She liked the Cowgate. It used to be full of rubbish and dung, but as the city spilled outside its walls, tumbling down from the ridge to the long ravine on this, its south side, the richer families and wealthier churchmen began to build on both sides of the stream, and rakers came morning and night to clear the droppings of the town cattle, on their way up the slopes to the Burgh Muir, leaving a clear way for the through-burn that cleansed it. The slopes themselves were being built on as well. Apart from the vast sprawling complex of the Blackfriars, houses were beginning to spring up in the wynd of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Field, and the ways that led to the south and the west. The Clerk Register’s house was on the rising ground at that end of the Cowgate, close to that of James Liddell, where Julius obediently spent so much of his time.

All in all, it was a good place to collect information. You never knew who you would meet, from Nowie Sinclair to the Abbot of Dunkeld, who had the richest single house in the street; or from the Master of Soutra to a Cant or a Bonkle or a Cochrane. Then there were the household attendants like herself, to every degree, from the kitchen maids to the stewards and chamberlains who managed their masters’ affairs, including their personal buying. By now Kathi knew, as they did, the best place to go for a pendant, or a piece of red leather, or a casket, or a new supply of fine shoes. As one familiar with Flanders, she was allowed by the lady Mary to place direct orders abroad. Sometimes, the Princess and her sister would prefer to interview the suppliers themselves, and they would be brought to the house—trim, well-doing men and women, not at all shy—to display what they had, and explain it. It was something the King especially enjoyed. His officials might clinch the transaction, but James liked to preside in his closet, animatedly discussing the merits of
this chain or those bolts of rare cloth with one of his familiar suppliers, and perhaps treating the man—or goodwife—to some ale, and a suitable gift when a feast day came round. He enjoyed a bit of genuine argument, but he always drove a hard bargain, of course, in the end.

Today, she was going to the Tolbooth, with a commission which she had been saving for a day when key people, such as Andro Wodman, ought to be there. He had lost his brother John recently; snatched away on the verge of a bishopric, and was only now returning to the consular duties he shared with her uncle. He was also returning to the orbit of Julius’s crusade to legitimise Nicholas. As a former Archer and employee of Jordan de St Pol, Andro Wodman must be at the top of Julius’s rota by now.

The quickest way to the crown of the ridge was to climb through the burial ground of St Giles, in summer as crowded with notaries and their clients as with graves. In winter, only the custom-built shelters were occupied, but the barking of dogs came from the homes of the Provost and curate of the church, and the drone of children’s voices from the school. She passed Tom Swift’s big house, which her uncle had often rented, and which actually stood in the kirkyard, which she had once thought peculiar. Everyone she met greeted her. From the top, you could look down the ridge and see the Firth of Forth, a broad grey band in the distance, with the hills of Fife sprawling beyond. She thought of shellfish and wanted to laugh, with the lightness of heart she always felt close to Nicholas’s house, or indeed when she thought of him, anywhere.

The High Street itself was full of stalls, but she pushed her way past them to the Old Tolbooth, and the expensive booths rented yearly from the burgh Provost, Great Dozen and deacons. Mostly the same traders leased them, but after the Martinmas reshuffle, it always took time to locate everybody. Sometimes they even moved to the town tenement by the kirk style, which had a pair of booths to rent out, and a tavern below. She hoped to find Wodman here.

There were about thirty small chambers, some on the north side of the old public building, and some on the south. Others had been constructed underneath in the vaults, and some were tucked into landings and crammed under the stairs. There were five booths and a desirable cellar fitted into the bellhouse. Sometimes they held back one or two cells for a prison. The privies were old, and luxury goods and documents didn’t drown out the smell, so that even in winter, the fleshers’ offices were almost welcome. She poked her head in most of the doors, and had a clack with Isa Williamson and Hector Meldrum, a sergeant of the mace who lived in the Canongate and rented the small cellar here, not being able to afford the four pounds Isa paid. Another of the dear booths had gone to Drew Bertram, the younger brother of Wattie, which didn’t surprise her, as Wattie was Provost this year. The stairs were crowded, and
so were the crames. She had to fight all the way up to the bellhouse loft to see Henry Cant, another of Wattie’s fellow merchants and kinsmen (by marriage) who profitably shipped on the
Marie
. She did some business with him, while people came in and out, and pigeons banged on the window, knowing he’d feed them and not knowing he’d cook them as well.

The Cants were like that: prosaic. Originally merchants in Ghent, they finally settled in Flanders and thus become Cants rather than Gaunts. No one knew whether they were originally Scottish or not: like the Bonkles and the rest, they lived and married on both sides of the Narrow Sea. As well as the Bertrams, the Cants were closely connected to the Prestons and the Napiers and the Rhinds. Thinking of Efemie, and the Bonkles and the Knollys family and Lord Avandale; looking at Henry, natural son of Thomas Cant, and young John Ramsay, Janet Napier’s slick by-blow, Kathi sought to understand, yet again, why illegitimacy mattered to some people and not to others.

The truth was that if you were lucky, like Julius, and were proclaimed as a bastard from birth, then there was really no problem. The trouble came with people like Nicholas, whose mother had maintained to the death, helplessly, insistently, fruitlessly, that she was innocent. Nicholas did believe in her innocence, as he had believed, against all the acids, the birth-date she had given him. He had been badly hurt by the blackening of her name—and his own—by the St Pols and their fellows. When, for the sake of his family, he had deliberately stopped seeking to vindicate her, it could not have been easy.

To that extent, then, Julius’s campaign was justified. But against that, Nicholas had already faced that difficult choice and had made it. And even if he were wrong, it was now very apparent that proof of Sophie’s innocence simply did not exist. The whole search was only causing more heartache, in making more and more clear how determined the St Pols had been to shed Simon’s wife and her son. A child weaker than Nicholas would never have broken out of his class. And paradoxically, she supposed, it was Julius he had to thank for it.

She hadn’t found Wodman or the other person she was hoping to find, although she glimpsed Dr Andreas, official chaplain to the Guild of the Skinners, swirling past in his gown with a wave. Gib Fish wasn’t there, although he was on the Council, and neither was Tom Yare, their Treasurer. She had almost given up when she heard Jamie Boyd’s voice, speaking to somebody. It came from a booth, one of the wooden pents under the stairs of the bellhouse, next to Hector’s cellar door. It had been empty, before. She wouldn’t have heard anything now, except that Jamie’s high voice hadn’t broken yet. He was protesting. ‘I wouldn’t lose it.’