Gemini (23 page)

Which was when Nicholas sent the
Karel
to collect them.

Already anchored and waiting at Berwick, Crackbene had scattered drink-silver and threats through the fishing fleet and set off at the first word from the south. At Newcastle he found the slime-heavy vessel and boarded it with distaste, discovering Tobie emerging from his shoddy cabin. Tobie said,
‘Mick!’

‘Not much of a seaman, are you?’ said Crackbene. ‘Well, Mistress Sersanders? And these’ll be the young sprouts? How’s your husband?’ And presently, sitting by Clémence at the crippled man’s side: ‘How did we know? We guessed you’d have enough sense to come, and not enough to choose the right ship. I’m to take you to Berwick and wait there for your father and Nicol to join us. It’ll give you a good rest, and some nourishing food. I’ve got some on board, too. I’ll wager Master Tobie’s missed his fried minnows and seethed mutton gobbets. And I’ve got a nice bit of pork belly in lard.’

‘That wasn’t fair,’ said Robin, in his light, gasping voice. He was smiling. Tobie would have been pleased, had he still been present to see it.

‘Oh well,’ said Crackbene. ‘You’re one up on him: you’re not seasick.’

Cushioned and comforted, they were in Berwick in days, and passed from the
Karel
to Tom Yare’s big house at The Ness, to wait and to recuperate. Tom and his wife made them readily welcome, although Tobie perceived on their faces, in private, the expressions Robin would learn to confront for the rest of his life. And he did not tell Robin, as they rested, what he had learned about Nicholas on the voyage.

Had Nicol not thought to tell them? Crackbene had asked. Well, they had better know now. Remember that little rat Henry? Well, Henry was not only in Scotland, but now living with Nicol after trying to kill him and Wodman. Remember old Jordan, the grandfather? Well, where was he but in Edinburgh, planted over the road, breathing murder. Remember the King’s brother, Mar? Well, Nicol had riled him again, and there he was, wanting his blood.

It had come out, and, to Tobie’s displeasure, it had also come out that Kathi knew this already. Wodman had sent an account of it all to her uncle. But her uncle being in prison, she had opened and read it.

And then, of course, Crackbene had exclaimed, ‘Prison!’ and listened in turn, deeply startled, to the news from their side.

Watching then, Tobie deduced that Crackbene knew nothing of Phemie’s involvement. He continued to watch. In Berwick, later, Yare happened to mention her name, but only to say that Mistress Kathi’s friend had left Haddington, and was now biding with her cousin at Roslin.

So the pregnancy was not public knowledge.

No doubt Kathi had made the same deduction. She never spoke of it. In public, she led Tom Yare rather to talk of what was happening in
Scotland, and Yare, responding, conveyed caustic details, in his soft Berwick burr, of the great tournament that was to end the royal English Almoner’s current visit to Scotland. He’d heard her brother was involved with the jousting, and Nicol of course—anything for a ploy—and big Tam
and
Dob Cochrane and that wee hoor St Pol. Even Davie Simpson had been recruited, they said, to give them the benefit of his grand Archer’s training.

‘So when is all this?’ Kathi had enquired brightly.

But Yare didn’t know. The Almoner wasn’t staying in Yare’s house, thank God, and it was up to the Governor to see to him on his way south. Anyway, even if Nicol or Archie were delayed, Master Robin was comfortable here. They were free to wait here as long as they liked.

Kathi thanked him, with warmth, and so did Tobie. Inside, he felt seasick again. Nicholas. Simpson.
That wee hoor, St Pol
.

Tobie didn’t like Henry either. Only the wrong people liked Henry. For Henry’s own sake, the boy should have been settled, for life, in Madeira. As it was, he was being used as a pawn. Tobie could imagine Simpson at the King’s ear: ‘Why not let the boy home? What would look better in this élite corps than a golden beauty like Henry?’ The voice of malice which, by chance, had achieved more than the speaker could guess.

And so Nicholas had taken Henry into his house. And now he, Tobie, was bringing him Robin.

G
RANTED THIS ROMANTIC
view of himself, Nicholas would have reminded Tobie of Tobie’s age (forty-seven), and observed that he himself was as yet perfectly capable of dealing on or off the tournament field with sixteen-year-olds, twenty-year-olds, and even Davie Simpson, who was a year older than he was.

He was probably right. He was never to find out, as the trial took place during the rehearsal for the passage of arms, and not the tournament itself, which he never saw.

He had not been greatly surprised, on the eve of the event, to find Davie Simpson sitting in one of the half-erected rough stands, smiling in his direction. Well, at last. Nicholas smiled back, wading and leaping over the exercise ground. The fifteenth horseload of mixed sand, earth and straw plodded in and disgorged itself at his feet, plus some inadvertent manure: he skidded round it. Orchardfield lay in the lee of the royal Castle: the smell rose to its windows, winking in the mild midday sun. Practice performances were supposed to take place at Vespers, but Will Roger had squashed that, having the music and the procession to rehearse, while the carpenters had to be reminded that the fence posts were still piled in the huts.

He had tried to get Nicholas to take part in the singing, the fighting, or even just to dress as the Shepherdess, but Nicholas had refused, while being foolishly pleased to be asked. He shouldn’t have been here now at all, except that he knew Henry was coming; and the two Cochrane cousins had urged him to watch. They were defending the Shepherdess. It was only part of the programme, none of which would be carried out properly until tomorrow: traditionally, the Vespers rehearsal was for young tyros and townspeople, cheered on by their parents and friends. He sat down beside Simpson, nodding to the others also taking their places, and turned his full attention to the only enemy he possessed who was not a St Pol. It struck him as embarrassing that, having caused havoc over three continents, he should end with a small, winsome Scot as one of his ultimate adversaries. It was true that most of the others were dead. It was also true that David Simpson was a highly skilled soldier and dealer, who had threatened Gelis, and who had already, in the past, tried to dispose of Nicholas and wrest away Jodi.

Simpson was dressed in clerical black and, below the shallow black hat, it could be seen that the black waves that once brushed his neck had been finely shorn by a craftsman. Below the brim, the lazy, brilliant eyes smiled. Nicholas said, ‘Davie! Do you have a tonsure as well?’

He didn’t raise his hand very fast, but in any case, Simpson’s iron fingers took his before they reached the edge of his hat. Simpson said, ‘My dear, don’t give me away. Prosper would hear, wherever he is, and be devastated. How are you?

‘Enjoying your hollow-ware,’ Nicholas said. ‘Has Camulio gone? Laden with profits from investing with Newbattle?’

‘Of course,’ Simpson said. ‘Your loss was his gain. I do understand your timidity: your wife will demand an explanation, I know. And what will she say about the loss of your brood mares to young Henry de St Pol! His account to the Guard, so I hear, was quite convulsing. Persuading Eck Scougal to sell him all the beasts you had chosen, and lifting your own groom as well!’

Nicholas knew the account had been convulsing. Henry had given it, under his nose, one day at the Castle, when surrounded by some of his rather young, drunken friends. Taken to task later on, he had been impudently unrepentant. ‘You always said I should interest myself in new projects for Kilmirren. The Abbot of Melrose wants horses. So does Knollys. I thought of looking into shipping arrangements at Leith. You wouldn’t mind that? You haven’t bought Leith, Uncle?’

To David, now, Nicholas merely said, ‘It’s all right. I’ve taken out shares in a peat-face.’ Henry had walked on to the field, with a group of the same younger friends, and one or two older members of the Guard. No one of great importance was here: he was free for once of Sandy Albany and Liddell, now almost coaxed back to the trust he had enjoyed
before leaving. He saw Sersanders, one of the organisers, talking to Roger.

He noticed, with mixed feelings, that Henry’s horse was not the usual kind, bred to stand the shock of the joust, but was the one that Eck had trained for Nicholas himself, and kept after he’d gone. He wondered whether, in such a short time, Henry could have mastered its management, and concluded, again with mixed feelings, that he probably had. He had seen how Henry could ride: straight-backed and austere as a knight, or low in the seat like a Tartar, horse and rider a single, flexible unit, moving as one. Even for someone riding from birth, he was good.

Simpson said, ‘Take your eyes off him, my dear, or people will wonder why you have invited him into your house. Indeed, I wonder myself.’

Wodman had spurred on to the field. Nicholas said, ‘Well, it was either Henry or you. I’d rather know where to find my assassin. Although I can’t understand your timidity at all. I shivered last year when Gelis reported your threat; and now I find you are leaving the job to a boy.’

‘I am leaving the
attempts
to the boy,’ Simpson said. His vivid, dark features glowed, and he drew his open hand in the air to explain himself. ‘You don’t really think, Nicol, that I expected him to succeed? No. These are the Vespers. The genuine event will occur when your wife and son join you. I pin my hopes, my dear Nicol, on your marriage. She will come, sooner or later, if only to see what you are doing.’

‘I expect she will,’ Nicholas said. On the field, they were lining up for a mêlée. ‘But will you be there?’

‘I plan to be,’ Simpson said. ‘And if by any chance I am not, you would not survive to profit from it. I have my protectors. I should add also, perhaps, that I do not keep objects of great worth at Beltrees … Shall we watch?’

Once, when Henry was seven, Nicholas had watched him take part in a children’s mêlée, which had ended in a near-fatal quarrel. John of Mar had been involved. Old Berecrofts had been sitting beside Nicholas then, gazing with pride upon Robin, his graceful young grandson.

This contest was nothing like so elaborate: just a field full of young horsemen banging at each other with clubs. A flourish of trumpets began it, and another, crossly repeated, signalled that the happy contestants were now supposed to disengage. It was patent that Henry had learned to manage his horse, which had been trained for Persian riding and responded to aides of great subtlety. The effect was spectacular, although the horse, used to ball games, was nervous. Nicholas could see Wodman speaking to Henry as they all trotted off.

Simpson said suddenly, ‘Why … Good day, my lord. We are honoured.’

He was looking past Nicholas, towards someone whose settling weight made the bench shake.

‘Such, I fear, was not my intention,’ said Jordan de St Pol’s indolent voice. ‘But in the open air, I can bear company I should perhaps find intolerable under a roof. I came to speak to Claes here.’

Nicholas turned, not very fast. Where two spectators had been, the fat man now sat at his elbow, engulfed in a voluminous gown, his wide hat shading his eyes. The lower face, seen more clearly in sunlight, was firm and clear as an apple: without blemish and almost without wrinkles. Seventy years had marked a line between his thick brows and one on either side of his mouth, that was all. Fat had smoothed out the rest. Fat, or the freedom from care that went with freedom from conscience. They had not met since they had reached their adjustment over Henry.

Nicholas said, ‘And then you are going to take part in the jousting?’

‘No more than you are, my cautious Claes,’ Kilmirren said. ‘Or our mutual friend here, Love’s Lover. Have you seen his bodyguards? There, and there. And, of course, Claes, you have your own: stout Sersanders over there, who would come running at once, but might not be in time. Indeed, if David and I did not dislike each other so much, we could sheathe our knives in you at once, David on that side, and I on this. What do you think?’

The question was addressed, past Nicholas, to David Simpson. And Simpson, his voice sweet, said immediately, ‘Of course. And as the senior, my lord, please take the first stroke.’

It was like listening to Henry. Nicholas, seated foursquare in the middle, recognised, as Simpson did not, all the cold amusement behind the flat tones of St Pol’s ironic suggestion. And in Simpson, more than twice Henry’s age, the same faint thread of uncertainty, as he contributed to what he thought was the dialogue.

The dialogue which—
I came to speak to Claes
—was in fact conveying something, with supreme effrontery, at this moment. Which was saying, unless Nicholas was mistaken: My dear Claes! Much as we hate one another, Simpson and I, we have cause to detest you far more. So we have joined forces against you. Afterwards, of course (admire the bodyguards!), poor David will have to watch out.

Was it possible? Or was he manufacturing fantasies?

Jordan de St Pol smiled into his eyes. He said, ‘Forgive me, dear boy. I did not mean to spoil your enjoyment. Let us watch the field.’

He had been right.

The field contests continued, and Nicholas remained where he was, tranquilly flanked by the fat man and Simpson. Willie Roger brought on a choir, which fell below his requirements. There was some shooting, then a foot contest with blunt swords, then a short interlude with musicians, while the barrier was put up. That was followed by some jousts proper, with lances fitted with coronals. Sersanders took part with Henry, who was repeating his success on the same Persian-trained horse.
Groomed by Adorne, Sersanders was a fine jouster, and out of courtesy spared Henry a little, to Henry’s displeasure. After a jarring encounter their contest was stopped, and another couple rode up.

Throughout, Henry’s grandfather said nothing but watched, his eyes narrowed. He, too, had once been a champion jouster, and had commanded the King’s Archers in France. He kept his lips shut, but his stare, following Henry, was that of a pawnbroker assessing a bankrupt. Nicholas turned his back on him, but made no effort to leave.