To Lie With Lions: The Sixth Book of the House of Niccolo

  ‘I shall remember,’ said Mistress Clémence, whose linen headgear nothing ever dared disarrange. She glanced at the child. ‘I dare say she knows all about parrots, as well.’

  ‘There is very little about parrots she does not know,’ said Nicholas seriously, and knocked.

  He had sent young Robin to say he was coming. Belatedly he had reviewed his choice of that particular messenger, and cursed himself quietly. There was a stage between obsession and idiocy. As an antidote, he had chosen to bring Mistress Clémence along with the child. An upper servant from Kilmirren opened the door, and they were shown into Bel’s chamber.

  She looked the same at just over fifty as she had when they had quarrelled more than two years before at Kilmirren. He had bought Lucia’s land, and Bel had professed to think that she, too, was homeless. She had kept her house. It had been a way of warning him, he thought, that he could not necessarily count on her. She needn’t have troubled. He saw, amused, the two women exchange stares as he introduced them: Mistress Clémence upright, composed; and Bel blunt-featured and squat, with her grey hair bundled up in a napkin. Next, Bel lifted her eyes and ran them over Nicholas, much as his armourer did. Then she looked at the child. ‘Eh,’ she said. ‘Eh, the wee man.’

  Nicholas said, ‘He understands a little Scots.’ Mistress Clémence said nothing at all but, drawing off Jordan’s great hat, flicked his hair and crossed her wrists, the hat dangling.

  ‘Never tell me!’ said Bel of Cuthilgurdy, laying a hand to her lips. She took it away. ‘And French as well? They tell me the bairn can speak French?’

  Mistress Clémence looked surprised and then brushed the child’s ear with one finger. ‘Madame demande …’

  The child interrupted, smiling with confidence at the old lady. ‘Oui, madame,’ he said. ‘Aye, mistress. God strake him, he’s near chowed aff ma prick.’

  His eyes sparkled with triumph. Bel flung back her head with a shriek. She was laughing. Mistress Clémence said, ‘Forgive him. I am afraid …’

  ‘I speak Scots,’ Jordan said.

  ‘And you have a parrot,’ said Bel. She spoke in French.

  ‘Un méchant, oui. ’Suis alloui,’ continued the linguist, with the same unalloyed confidence.

  ‘Jordan!’ said Mistress Clémence.

  ‘Oh, never heed, never heed!’ said their hostess, switching tongues. ‘Weans and wames are near the same word, with guid reason. And if ye canna understand that, the lad’s father will tell ye. Is he allowed a piece of marchpane?’

  ‘Me?’ said Nicholas.

  ‘You? It would turn black on your tongue. I was about to ask Mistress Clémence if she would like to take the wee man to the parlour. There’s something there for him to see.’

  ‘Quoi? Quoi done?’ said Jordan. His hair curled like a terrier’s round his neck, and his cheeks had turned crimson with pleasure.

  ‘Tiens! Tiens! Comme c’est gars bachique! Va-t-en, tu l’ verras,’ said Bel. The child ran off with his nurse, and she watched him. The door closed. She said, ‘I’ve fair amazed ye. How d’you think I kept an eye on young Henry there, travelling to Ribérac? What tongue d’ye think I spoke, living in Lagos? What tongue do you ken that I dinna ken?’ She turned back. Her eyes were still brilliant.

  ‘You can’t swear in Greek,’ Nicholas said.

  ‘I can so,’ she said. ‘From the same source. And if I had the beak, I’d take a lesson or two in emasculation forbye. D’ye want this child?’

  ‘I took a lot of trouble to get him,’ Nicholas said. He sat down.

  ‘I heard,’ she said. ‘Show me your hand.’

  It puzzled him for a moment; then he remembered Dr Andreas. He held out his right hand, thumb and forefinger uppermost, his eyebrows raised. There was nothing to see. He had watched Gelis glance at it also. ‘They told me you were divining,’ Bel said.

  ‘It was easy this time,’ he said. And keeping his eyes on her face: ‘Of course I want him. I want him to live with his parents. I brought Gelis back.’

  ‘Henry lived with his parents,’ Bel said. ‘And none could be prouder than Simon. So what spoiled Henry, and how will Jordan be different?’

  He could display, when he liked, a masterly lack of involvement. ‘Jordan is different. Ask Gelis.’

  Bel folded her arms, not an easy convolution and therefore all the more positive. She said, ‘Well, well. Was that what ye wanted to know? I havena spoken to Gelis since ye brought her to Scotland. I didna see her in Bruges: she’d left for the Holy Land with Anselm Adorne. I wasna in Venice. I spent time with her here, when she served the lady Mary afore you and she married. And I remember the pair of ye before that: never a kind word between ye in Africa, and never a sheet between you – or time for speech – when ye came back.’ She paused. ‘They say that lust burns itself out.’

  ‘You remember a lot,’ Nicholas said. ‘Do you remember that she slept with Simon, and tried to pass off Jordan as his?’

  ‘But you’ve forgiven her,’ the old woman said. ‘As you told me, you went and brought the lass back. Jordan is to grow up different from Henry, oh aye. Gelis has changed, oh aye aye. So have you, wha could deny it? That’s why wee Robin was sent me: Here’s a nice, fresh little lad who admires the new Nicol de Fleury. The de’il kens what harm you’ll dae him. And now Mistress Clémence de Coulanges is brought: Here’s an upstanding, principled woman who would only work for an upstanding, principled man. For shame! Ye’d mak God himself gnap on his thumbnail.’

  ‘What do you want?’ Nicholas said.

  ‘I thought I had it,’ she said. ‘I saw your Play.’

  He did not immediately answer. ‘But?’ he said eventually.

  She never avoided his eyes. Hers were round and clear; insignificant in colour; set on either side of a turnip of nose, in a shapeless face blanketed by a creamy, powdery skin with no lustre. From the paleness of her brows, she had once been fair.

  She said, ‘I have no need to tell you. I hoped you’d leave Scotland.’

  ‘So that the vicomte and Simon may come back without risk?’

  ‘Without risk to whom? They willna keep off for ever,’ she said. ‘Take Gelis with you. Take Jordan.’

  ‘And abandon Beltrees?’ he said. ‘After all the gold you have squandered there on my behalf? I forgot to thank you for that.’

  She didn’t answer. He said, ‘You know, I take it, who brought Jordan to me in Venice. Katelijne knows too.’

  ‘You were meant to stay clear of Scotland,’ she said. Her voice, which could grate, was low and curt.

  ‘I don’t always do what others want,’ Nicholas said. ‘It must be my upbringing. How sad. At least I shall spend the summers away. I have to be in Artois by June. But I am afraid I shall be back. And Gelis. And Jordan. Do you think they will approve of my Beltrees? Or your Beltrees, ought I to say?’

  She thought, turning over his answer. Then she said, ‘You havena taken them there?’

  ‘I haven’t had time. But Oliver Semple has to go back in February. He could take them. And if you were at home, you could explain all its extravagant pleasures.’

  ‘You’re speiring at me to spend time with Gelis? Why?’

  ‘With Gelis and Jordan,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ she repeated.

  ‘For Godscalc,’ he said.

  She unfolded her arms. After a moment she got to her feet with deliberation and set the door open, after which she came back. He had risen. She said, ‘Gin ye were a wean, I wad strike ye for that. Nicholas, Nicholas … what path are ye set on? What would Godscalc feel but heartsick if he saw you? Is this all his agonising was worth? Or your own?’

  He returned her gaze. His face, he knew, contained no trace of apology, or appeal, or indecision. In the distance, the child’s voice could be heard approaching. This time he did not trouble to smile. ‘Entertain her at Beltrees,’ he said. ‘Or you might regret it one day.’

  As Nicholas de Fleury remained so brilliantly visible that festive Yule and the weeks
that immediately followed it, so by contrast the house of Anselm Adorne remained quiet, though not lacking in visitors. The Baron tried not to deviate from his plan, but continued painstakingly to interweave the complicated threads of his embassy and his personal business, always looking to the future, and taking account of the new land he possessed and his increased duties in Scotland and Bruges. He continued to confer in private with Martin. He perused, too, but did not discuss with his womenfolk, the letters which came to him from Genoa and Danzig, Rome and Cologne, and his own agents and partners in Bruges. And, of course, from his daughter in England.

  He now knew, from Jan, that the plan had succeeded: that de Fleury’s new ship would not be here by the spring, whereas his own vessel was on its way with its cargo, in immaculate order, in exemplary time. He knew that Diniz, de Fleury’s Bruges manager, was uneasy over the outlay in Scotland, and over the padrone’s winter isolation from Venice and Rome and the Low Countries, as the French-Burgundian truce showed signs of wearing thin. He also knew, but could not explain how he knew, that the effort to divert, to reshape, to tame Nicholas de Fleury had failed.

  Adorne had never spoken of this to Kathi, and at present she was wholly devoted to the care of Margriet, like the other kind women and Andreas. The German priest had, he thought, recognised a little of what was being attempted, but had called to leave his condolences, not to chatter. The same applied to the three generations of the Berecrofts family. They said the young one, the boy Robin, was going to Nicholas to train as a squire. Kathi maintained it would do him no harm. Kathi was too young to remember Felix de Charetty, who had also had dreams.

  There remained the musician, Will Roger, who had begun it all with his motet. Long ago, even without Phemie Dunbar to instruct him, the Baron Cortachy had recognised that the Englishman’s truculent moods, his battery of invective and blandishments were no more than weapons: the siege machinery of his ferocious commitment to his art.

  Adorne had not attended the Play. He had not been there when de Fleury, fulfilling his promise, gave Roger the creation he had asked for; but he had spoken to those who were present, and had learned from their silence as much as from their speech. Will Roger, exchanging words after the funeral, had simply said, ‘God preserved you from watching it. It would have been wrong.’

  ‘Everyone tells of your music,’ Adorne had said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Roger had said. ‘I made music. But this man who wastes time as a merchant – this man put together shape and texture and light and matched the music to movement. Or mismatched it, out of sheer screaming arrogance. He got van der Goes – he got the best artists in Europe to copy the paintings by Lippi and van Eyck and Petrus Christus. He did the Strozzi-Fabriano Magi in its gold frame, and replaced the painted figures with live ones – can you imagine that? The dove was real – it fluttered down the nine golden rays to Mary’s cloak and nestled there. You couldn’t see the mechanism or hear it: the angels floated, the demons from Hell swirled and flew. The shepherd’s bob of cherries was real, and so were Gabriel’s garlands and the stem of white lilies. And he prodded the spoken word into it all, never forgetting that the most fearsome sound a man hears –’ He stopped.

  ‘What?’ said Adorne.

  ‘– is no sound at all.’

  Adorne did not speak. At length he said, ‘And it was done as he wanted?’

  ‘As in war,’ Roger said. ‘For the space of one day, they would have followed him into Gehenna. He could have razed Rome or retaken Jerusalem.’

  ‘Now he knows what he can do,’ Adorne said. He waited. ‘What is it? You cannot think you have lit the wrong fire?’

  ‘I think I have stamped it out,’ Roger said.

  Adorne straightened. ‘Surely not. You wanted him, and so did I, to recognise what talents he has and put them to use. Now the world knows he can do it.’

  ‘They will forget,’ Roger said. ‘A play, a piece of music are soon wafted away. They will not hold him to it, and he will not listen to me again, or to you. I wanted him to do something well, but I forgot, idiot that I am, what theatre teaches. It teaches power.’

  ‘Is that bad?’ Adorne said.

  Will Roger looked at him. He said, ‘When I train my musicians, my choir, I have absolute power for a short time. For me, that’s enough. In military life, a man learns as he rises, from humble lanceknight to captain, from captain to Constable. But in business? The patron of a company exerts power, but not over a clamouring crowd: his men are scattered, he reaches them scribe to scribe, person to person.’

  ‘You are saying that the experience of mass command was a shock? Was too much? Was something he would be afraid of applying to other parts of his life?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the musician said. ‘If I were God, I’d kiss that man and offer him pardon, provided he produced plays such as that through eternity. As it is, he has gone back to his worm-cast. He has returned to his petty affairs as if it never happened.’

  He spoke as if it were a matter of personal grievance, but there was another emotion beneath. Adorne said, ‘It is lonely, the life of a leader. The herd offers companionship.’

  Will Roger looked up. ‘What herd will he fit into now? Whatever he does, he is isolated by his own gifts. If he doesn’t put them to use, he’s in limbo.’

  There was a silence. Adorne wondered, in a detached way, if Roger thought he was drawing an analogy: if he conceived that Adorne’s own career – ducal adviser, burgomaster, royal envoy – in any way resembled that of a dyeyard apprentice. Then he realised he was being ridiculous, and smiled. He said, ‘You think he has failed to take the chance that you offered him – that we all offered him. But he can never be quite the same. And because of you, a great thing has been done.’

  ‘It has been done by a cripple,’ said Roger.

  Last of all, just before Gelis left for the west, she learned from Archie of Berecrofts that Nicholas had come to visit him.

  Since they possessed adjoining houses, this was not unusual. It seemed, however, that Nicholas had had no particular purpose, except that of commending young Robin, and of obtaining Archie’s consent to remove the boy for a little from Edinburgh. When asked where he was going, Nicholas had referred vaguely to Moriz, who had established some promising ventures on the Fife and Lothian coasts.

  It had always been Gelis’s plan to survey her husband’s new castle of Beltrees; especially since Nicholas had so markedly omitted to take her there. She waited. Through her work on the Play, she had become well acquainted with their Renfrewshire factor. As soon as Nicholas proved indeed to have left for the east, Gelis arranged to ride in the opposite direction with Master Oliver Semple. Prudently, she took Jordan with her, and Mistress Clémence and Pasque to attend him. It was cold, but her thoughts and her plans were most cheering, and Jodi liked horses. In any case it would not be very long, she suspected, before his father rejoined them.

  She forgot, because it seemed to have no present relevance, the conversation Nicholas had once begun about Jordan’s future. She enjoyed good health herself, and Nicholas displayed all his usual energy. His final visit to Jordan had been if anything over-exuberant, although against custom he had brought the child something to play with, and had extracted a promise to do with a lengthy poem he wished to hear on returning. The poem would take some weeks to memorise, which he might or might not have guessed. Mistress Clémence at least would take the hint; and the child seemed undisturbed by the imminent parting. His father had vanished on business before, and come back. Equally, since Nicholas had chosen to leave, Gelis saw no need to inform him that she and Jordan were not staying in Edinburgh. He would learn soon enough.

  Just before Gelis left, she learned with pleasure that Crackbene had come ashore in a hurry. She wondered if Nicholas had noticed that Martin had vanished. She did not know, and no one told her, that John le Grant had gone from his lodgings as well. She saw no cause at that point to regret having told Nicholas the truth about Katelina.

  Part III
br />   Spring, 1472

  THE CRAPAULT OF HELL

  Chapter 20

  TO MANY PEOPLE in Edinburgh, it was perfectly obvious why the younger Burgundian had left town. The theories did not always coincide, except in so far as all agreed that a massive money-making adventure, of advantage to them all, was about to be advanced to a brilliant conclusion. After which, as was known, Nicol de Fleury would leave to join his army abroad until the summer campaigning was over.

  The project was, of course, to do with the production of salt, for which de Fleury had the lease of the Hamilton rights on both sides of the Forth. Alternatively, it had to do with the mining of coal, extensively used in the pans, and also profiting by the Bank’s remarkable success in the field of sophisticated hydraulic engineering. Or if it were neither of these, then it was concerned with the casting of cannon, now brought to such an improved level that before you knew it (men said with a wink) Scotland would be exporting to Mons.

  Money changed hands.

  There was a rumour about precious metals, but the knowledgeable declared it ill-founded: the man had ridden eastwards, not west.

  There was some talk about fishing.

  Asked to opine on the subject, Archie of Berecrofts said less than most, although in fact he knew something. The world might think that Nicol de Fleury had dropped by to talk about Robin, but that was the tale they agreed on. What Nicol de Fleury had wanted was not a few weeks of Robin, but the company of Archie his father.

  It had been hard to refuse. The old man had refused for him. ‘My Archie’s a merchant. He’s nae mair tae say tae a line o’ dried fish than a line o’ raisins wad flush up a fishmonger.’