To Lie with Lions (24 page)

The woman lowered her gaze. ‘And you, like M. de Fleury, speak the tongue of the Queen, and so must be especially welcome at Court.’

‘I have met the Queen once or twice,’ Kathi said. ‘I expect M. de Fleury knows her much better.’

‘He is at the Castle now,’ said the nurse. ‘The King likes to bring them together. The King has asked to see Master Jordan tomorrow. I am to take him to their chambers.’

‘And the lady Gelis?’ said Kathi.

‘Only the child. As mademoiselle perhaps knows, the Queen … is young.’

She said nothing more. Kathi looked at her. She said, ‘You will be with Jordan?’

The woman said, ‘Perhaps not all the time.’

‘I see,’ Kathi said. ‘When do you go?’

‘In the evening,’ said the nurse. ‘After supper. It is late, for a child.’

‘We are often there in the evening,’ Kathi said. ‘My mistress will snatch any excuse to attend a feast, or a dance. If we happened to be there, I might see you.’

‘It would be an honour,’ said Clémence de Coulanges. ‘If there is any change, the lad Robin makes a good courier. You know it is his dream to be a page to M. de Fleury?’

‘I should never have guessed it,’ said Kathi wryly. She paused, to gather her courage. She said, ‘Mistress Clémence. You were at Hesdin. What happened?’

The woman’s eyes met hers directly. The woman said, ‘You were in Alexandria, I believe, when M. de Fleury was told that his wife might be dead?’

It was put as a question. Perceived as an answer, the implication took away speech. ‘Hesdin was an accident,’ Kathi observed at length.

‘Hesdin was an accident, deeply regretted. Here is Jodi and this is where we must leave you. Beyond the door is the courtyard, and the archway leads direct to the garden.’

‘Thank you,’ said Katelijne. The nurse inclined her head and retired, the child racing ahead. She had not expected her to smile; in that one discreetly contrived meeting, Clémence de Coulanges had conveyed and gathered all that either of them needed to know. Her mind thronged, Kathi walked down the stepped slope from the mansion.

She had met the adult Gelis van Borselen only twice: the last time on that fraught night in Venice. Since then, so far as was known, Gelis had kept silence about the whole episode. The initial fault, after all, had been hers. And Kathi’s part in uniting M. de Fleury with his son had been less, on the whole, than that played by the lawyer Gregorio and Margot now his wife, or by the doctor, Tobias.

She was prepared then for civilised behaviour. She was unprepared for a young woman she hardly recognised as Gelis van Borselen seated under the trees, lightly gowned in the warm autumn air, her fair hair parted over her shoulders. Archie of Berecrofts was sitting beside her.

He scrambled to his feet. ‘Kathi! I thought you were bringing the parrot. ‘

‘I did. Robin and Jordan can teach it together. Unless you mind?’ She smiled down at the pretty woman below her.

Gelis van Borselen said, ‘Not at all. The parrot seems to have become an integral part of our lives. Come and sit. I am told Nicholas expects to be here. We have been talking about this prodigious Play he is evolving for Christmas. Will your uncle be here in time? Perhaps he or your cousin will act in it.’

Kathi sat on the rug beside Archie. ‘He should be here, but I don’t think he’d take part. Jan isn’t coming. He has to get back to Rome.’

‘And the Earl and Countess of Arran?’ said the other woman.

‘No one knows. But you’ve heard that the second Boyd baby is born, a daughter this time?’

‘Just as weel,’ said Archie cheerfully. He picked up a well-riddled apple and tossed it. ‘A wheen too many knaves round the Scots throne already. Is Nicholas directing the Play? I thought he’d got Tom Cochrane over from Beltrees.’

‘He has,’ Gelis said. ‘And another man, his factor in Renfrewshire. Oliver. Oliver Semple?’

‘You haven’t met him?’ said Kathi. ‘But you’ve been to your castle at Beltrees? M. de Fleury has taken you?’

‘Not yet,’ Gelis said. Her eyes, of a very clear blue, held a look of perpetual amusement. ‘Should he? Is it worth seeing?’

‘It ought to be,’ said Archie. ‘No, that would be clyping.’

‘Go on,’ said Kathi. ‘Tell her.’

‘It’s a fine, ample tower,’ said Archie, obeying good-naturedly. ‘Theiked with skaillie, and lined with panelled joined work throughout. Nicholas saw to the building, but left Govaerts to manage the gear. Cochrane put up a scheme, and a neighbour-woman offered to help him. Bel. Bel of Cuthilgurdy. You know her?’

Bel had been in Africa with Gelis and M. de Fleury. Gelis said, ‘Yes, I know her. And so?’

Archie said, ‘So Bel and Cochrane got the notion they were outfitting Cafaggiolo. When Govaerts was sent all the bills, he thought the Bank would have to sell up to pay them. I never heard what Nicholas said when he found out. But you ought to see it. And the wee fellow would like it just fine.’

‘Go and see it,’ Katelijne said. ‘If M. de Fleury won’t take you, we shall. Or Master Cochrane. There’s a lake, and meadows and hills. It’s a beautiful place.’

‘Oh, I know the district,’ said Gelis. Beneath her smiling gaze, Kathi fell temporarily silent. Of course she did. It was close to the home of Jordan de Ribérac and Simon his son. Kilmirren was at
present unoccupied, but it was not hard to imagine why Nicholas de Fleury had not encouraged his wife to return west.

But that was behind them, or should be. Kathi said, ‘Go to Beltrees. Take Jordan. Get M. de Fleury to go.’

‘And become a country laird?’ Gelis said. ‘It would suit the Vatachino, I suppose.’

‘Business isn’t everything,’ Kathi said.

‘Tell Nicholas that,’ said Archie; and then flushed with embarrassment. ‘But of course –’

‘But of course, at heart Nicholas is a family man,’ Gelis said.

Kathi took her leave presently. M. de Fleury had not succeeded in arriving, if he had ever intended it, and she was not invited to meet the child she had once helped to steal. She thought, looking back as she left, that perhaps Robin’s intuition was right, and this softer Gelis, the Gelis of Bruges and their courting days, might truly mean that she and M. de Fleury had mended their marriage.

If not, it meant something else, that she would rather not think about.

Next time, leaving Haddington, Katelijne Sersanders needed no special advice, since the King’s youngest sister, the fount of all royal information, was travelling with her. It had not been difficult to arrange an excuse to visit the Castle. Will Roger was adept at deception, and Margaret’s only stipulation had been that if she were going to dance, she should not have to talk to her miserable namesake, the Queen. It was going to be Kathi’s job to do that, in sign language.

It was a little unfair on the monarch. After two years of marriage, her grace the Queen’s grasp of English was reasonably good: she had some phrases off pat.
This is a disgrace
was one of them.
This would never happen in Denmark
was another. Her frame of mind was not due to lack of material comforts, esteem or loving attention; rather to an excess of some of these things. The King needed heirs, and she was childless.

It was not Jamie’s fault, as his courtiers would gravely explain, before bursting into suppressed laughter. Jamie had been known to rise from his table, wife in hand, in the middle of dinner; or skip off during a dance; or disappear in the course of a hunt, dragging Margaret. Margaret, wearing her steady smile, always went with him. She never conceived.

His sister, aged eleven, had several theories which she aired again on the journey to Edinburgh. ‘She doesn’t like what he does. Sandy knows what he does. They used to share the same girls.’

‘Then he’s probably very good at it,’ Kathi said. Their servants, riding about them, could hear perfectly what they were saying.

‘But I wager that they would never do it that way in Denmark. Anyway, he broke the church rule.’

‘My lady …’ began Katelijne warningly.

‘It doesn’t matter. Everyone does, everyone knows. You can’t be married and keep off for ever. He started a year ago. He told Sandy.’

‘She must have been frightened,’ said Kathi.

‘I don’t know about frightened. She was angry: she gave him great scratches. But of course, she couldn’t complain once the time came. Six months. She hasn’t conceived in six months. She’s fourteen, and childless.’

This wasn’t about James and his disappointments. Kathi knew what it was about. She said, ‘My lady, your turn will come.’

‘When?’ Margaret said. ‘The King of France has a son, the Duke of Burgundy has a daughter, the King of England has babies, and all of them have to wait until James gets a baby on Margaret, because his baby’s marriage has to come before mine. It isn’t fair,’ Margaret said. ‘I want to be married.’

‘You will be,’ said Kathi. She had already told Phemie what Robin, in his young, calm way had told her. Thank God, this Margaret was too young as yet to conceive. Bleezie Meg, the farm laddies called her. She was a Stewart.

Slightly feverish with laughter, like the courtiers, Kathi visualised her forthcoming unscheduled encounter with Nicholas de Fleury placed side by side with a crisis of dire royal carnality, and wondered if he could handle it. She was happy to think that, on past form, he could. Then she remembered the child.

Although she had accompanied her mistress many times to the Castle since August, Katelijne had always avoided M. de Fleury as she had until now avoided his wife. As with his wife, she had not been above snatching a look at him. Unlike the lady Gelis today, he had always been formally dressed, in cap and doublet or pourpoint or jacket. Apart from that, she could only describe him in negative terms: that the exhaustion of Venice had gone, and the despair and the anguish, if they were there, were invisible. Will Roger had said he was happy. He had his son, and his wife. The whole shabby business might be over at last.

The King’s lodgings were in David’s Tower and the men were still there, it appeared. To Margaret’s disgust, she was expected to join the ladies in the Queen’s parlour, where someone was singing and someone else was playing a spinet. Kathi was thankful to see Willie Roger, an expression of martyrdom on his face. He began to cross over to join her, but she was forced to sit between Margaret and the
Queen. There were six or seven of her grace’s own attendants already there, most of them pretty young matrons and most of them in varying stages of pregnancy, which was why they had been selected.

As a very active small person herself, Katelijne Sersanders always felt depressed beside Margaret of Denmark, who possessed a pale clear Nordic face with plucked brows, and a pretty pink mouth, and white polished hands, and opulent shoulders half concealed by the round modest neck of her gown. She was given to hennins, perhaps because high veiled cones were less easy to shed than more approachable headgear. They were always bound with massive bands of great jewels, and she always looked as if her head ached. If it did, there were no compensations. According to Meg, the apothecary and Dr Andreas supplied the King with her dates every month.

Meg was going to give trouble. Expecting a grand occasion, she was discovering that there were no guests, no great lords; no one, in fact, but the present company, soon to be joined by the King and his brothers and by M. de Fleury, with whom they had been attending to business. From the subdued levity around her, Kathi judged that the business had been going on for some time, and was liquid in character. She engaged in stilted conversation with the Queen while watching the door. Will Roger went back to the spinet and played as if filling in time.

The Queen, catching something of the surrounding atmosphere, suddenly began to explain the delay. ‘All last night they talked business. These are great events. This will be a year the world will remember. You know my lord is to lead a Scottish army to France?’

She was as bad as the other Margaret. ‘My lady?’ said Kathi. ‘Perhaps this is not something to speak of in public’

‘These women have none but base tongues,’ the Queen said. ‘Messer Nicol is to make my lord a war leader. Like Alexander, King Arthur, Charlemagne.’

‘Ghengis Khan. Mehmet the Conqueror,’ Kathi said.

‘They are not Christian!’ said the Queen.

‘No, of course not. Your husband will be a great Christian warrior. M. de Fleury is arranging it?’

‘M. de Fleury will lead his own army. My lord the King will seize back his loyal Brittany, the land of his fathers!’

‘His aunt married the Duke,’ Kathi said.

‘He will take back Saintonge!’

‘Where?’ said Kathi.

‘He will become Duke of Guelders, his mother’s heritage!’

‘I thought the Duke of Burgundy had been promised the dukedom of … it doesn’t matter,’ said Kathi. ‘You mean he is
going
away? My lord your husband?’

‘Soon!’ said the Queen. ‘Messer Nicol is arranging it. As soon as they can build us some ships, and the Three Estates can vote us some money.’

‘When the apricots come,’ Kathi said. She didn’t translate it into Danish. She sat furiously sympathising with Gelis, tied to a man who did this. She was so angry that she missed the opening of the door when it came, and only when the music died did she turn her head and catch sight of the glimmer of white in the entrance. Then she saw that Mistress Clémence was being brought in, her hand steering a small boy in skirts.

The Queen jumped up. The Queen said, ‘I will bless no more children! Take it away!’ Her voice trembling, she had shouted in English. Below her, all the wired, nodding heads turned.

Kathi stood quickly too. She said, ‘It is the son of M. de Fleury, madame. He has not come to be blessed. It is M. de Fleury’s son, come to join him.’ Across the neatly tiled floor, beyond the spinet where Roger had risen, the child stood looking up. He must have been wakened to come: his round face was drained of all colour and his eyes were enormous and black.

The nurse said, ‘Madame, we shall wait somewhere else.’

The King had sent for the child. He would not be permitted to leave. Kathi moved, but already Whistle Willie was speaking. ‘Or, your grace, he could sit here by his nurse until his father arrives. This is a boy who can play on a whistle. He could play the spinet, I am sure.’