Gemini

Before the alphyne suld he stand, for quhy

  In thar placis oftsys discord is sene.

  Neir-by the iugis tharfor suld he bene.

  THIS TIME, WITH a royal prince at his side, there was no hope that Nicholas could enter Leith unobserved. The King had sent a cavalcade with his own Guard to fetch them. Henry, his chin elevated, his gaze straight ahead, was among them. If you’re about to be hanged, I don’t know you. They were then delivered, at a fast trot, to the Castle, Hearty James being accorded royal honours, and the Burgundian who fled to France with the Duke of Albany with pointed suspicion. His crate, being unwieldy, was to follow along with his baggage.

  Rushed to the Presence, he contented himself with endorsing what he had already persuaded Hearty James was the case. His grace the Duke of Albany had felt in conscience opposed to his country’s policy, and had hoped to enlist the help of the King of France to persuade his royal brother to renounce his friendship with England. The King of France was, of course, sympathetic for many reasons, and proposed to send an emissary soon to make the same point, and to urge the King of Scotland to heal the rift with his brother. It was highly unlikely that the King of France would expect more from this than a polite refusal. One could see that such exchanges might go on for some time. But the truth was that the King of France was wholly unable to send more than an envoy. His war with Maximilian occupied all his forces. Whatever the Duke of Albany hoped from France, he was unlikely to get more than a few years’ free lodging, during which time the political situation in western Europe might have radically altered. The Duke was being offered a bride, and had accepted. He had settled in France and (implied Buchan) might well be left there, to everyone’s benefit.

  Calm down. It is distressing; he is your brother; but there is nothing to worry about.

  Approached with finesse, the King might have accepted it more calmly. As it was, with the impertinence of Dunbar Castle fresh in his mind, James was scathing. Reconciliation, indeed! Was it likely? Of course, Sandy thought that France would send an army to rouse discontented Scots against England. No doubt Sandy thought he would lead it. Once he realised that no army was coming, he would leave France and come back to take his punishment like a man, and settle down.

  With variations, this was presumably what the King had been proclaiming ever since the siege of Dunbar. Whitelaw, who was present (his spectacles dim as soiled ice) had no doubt pointed out, with the rest, that any kind of sentence passed in absentia would simply drive Albany irrevocably to France. But now, with Albany not only remaining in France but about to be married, the situation might be thought to have changed.

  ‘And M. de Fleury?’ the King was saying. ‘Why is he here? A Burgundian, a guest in this country, he takes the part of the King’s own brother against the King. What did Louis offer him to be his man?’

  ‘A pension for life and the comté of Fleury, my lord,’ Nicholas said. ‘I refused.’

  ‘Because you are to be a double agent,’ the King said.

  ‘My lord, the King of France has no need of me in order to obtain information from Scotland. No. I felt, with my lord of Buchan, that time is on Scotland’s side. France cannot use force until her own war is finished. Whatever his grace of Albany may say, he will not be required to decide his own future until then. It is why it seemed best to allow him, if he wished, to leave Scotland.’

  Nicholas paused. ‘I share my lord’s deep regret at the loss of life at Dunbar. It was inadvertent, I am sure. My lord Duke’s artillery was not accurate to that degree.’ Avandale was there as well, but he supplied no support, not even a nod of affirmation. His reasons were different from Henry’s. Before the King, they must not seem to be in collusion.

  Unexpectedly, the support, such as it was, came from Buchan. ‘De Fleury did refuse. It looked genuine. Sandy was furious.’ It wasn’t graciously put, but it was said, and all the more convincing, perhaps, because it was cursory. Vaguely, Nicholas wondered what the Duchess Eleanor had told Hearty James about him, nearly three years ago. Not vaguely at all, he remembered what the Patriarch had said of the Duchess’s health. He hoped it wasn’t true. Both the Tyrol and her own country needed her.

  He was dismissed with something like truculence and got out before anyone captured him. Parliament, long since summoned, was due to meet within the next week. Princess Margaret was also due to report for her wedding at Nottingham. What the King should do about Sandy and Margaret would have to be decided immediately. Nicholas had already had a note from Argyll, summoning him to the tavern. When a second messenger came, he tipped him to turn a blind eye and went off to his house.

  There was a large crate stuck in the doorway, with Kathi and her brother Sersanders pushing from outside, and his wife Gelis pulling within. Gelis’s face was pink with laughter and she exclaimed when she saw him, in an exaggerated mixture of delight and despair. She looked beautiful enough to consume on the spot, and he saw no hope of a mattress for a very long time. He made a suggestion, and very soon the crate had slid indoors, leaving a strong smell of lard on the doorpost and an excited ballet of dogs in the street.

  They collapsed into chairs, leaving the box on the floor. Mailie, beaming, came in with a tray. Gelis said, ‘Something told me you were back. They haven’t put you in prison?’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ Nicholas said. ‘I was led away by bad influences and the glamour of royalty. Is this all we have? I’ve been eating ship’s food for a fortnight.’

  ‘There is more. You could lick the door while you’re waiting. So what’s happening?’ Gelis said. It was fair enough. Sersanders also needed to know, and he would tell Berecrofts and the rest. Nicholas talked as they ate. From Albany and the French, he went on to speak about Bruges, addressing himself to Sersanders and Kathi at the end.

  ‘So you see, it is settling. Diniz suggested that the time is quite near when your uncle might think of going back. But I have one piece of sad news. Arnaud has lost his wife. She didn’t recover from the birth of Aerendtken. Friends have taken the little girl and the baby, but he is very distressed. Antoon is helping. He is now a canon of Lille: I called and saw him. And I saw Julius and Moriz in Cologne. Julius would like to come here, but only, I think, because business is slow. With a little help, it should recover.’

  Gelis said, ‘He might be better out of Cologne. It must remind him of Anna.’

  Kathi said, ‘What did Moriz think?’ He always forgot, when away from her, how slight she was, and how brilliant her eyes. Robin was well, and the children: he had established that right away, as he had been reassured about his superior page Jodi.

  He said, ‘Moriz has worked hard at the business and is loath to see it abandoned, I think. But it isn’t fair, either, to leave him and Govaerts stranded in Germany. Their help was only meant to be temporary. What is happening here?’

  He listened to all of them. First the business, then the Court news. Mar was back from the Don and the Spey, fulminating against Tam and all the Cochranes, and everyone’s Constables and bailies, including his own. The Queen was pregnant again, and had vacated the marital bed till next summer. ‘Ludovico da Bologna was talking about that,’ Nicholas said. ‘That is, he was discussing the Queen with a clerk in Bologna who wants to write a book about women. Father Ludovico knew her father. He says you and your uncle told him a lot on the journey to Poland. Your uncle thinks the Queen secretly wants to be like the Great Margaret. You know? The one who ruled Scandinavia for ever?’

  ‘It just felt like it, I expect,’ Gelis said. ‘So you gave Father Ludovico all the gossip? How was he?’

  ‘Hungry,’ Nicholas said. ‘Rather like me. No. I’d better go. I’m supposed to be reporting to Lang Bessie. Newly home from the sea, I deserve a good welcome somewhere, and she’s clean.’

  Gelis said, ‘That’s why you wanted the food? You’re going to be drinking with Colin Campbell all evening?’

  ‘That’s why,’ he said. ‘Shall I show you what’s in the box?’

  ‘I want to guess
,’ Kathi said. ‘Why don’t we all guess? Nearest correct answer gets to run away with the King, maybe? Nicholas, wasn’t it risky to go on those raids, and garrison the castle with Sandy, and travel with him to France? You could have found yourself labelled a forfeited traitor.’

  ‘Except that I had told everyone beforehand,’ Nicholas said. ‘I even made a discreet call at Aubigny, on my way back from Dijon. Everyone but King James knew the plan, and approved it. Once Sandy had made up his mind, he was best out of the kingdom. I could talk to him. There was a chance he might listen.’

  ‘But the King didn’t know. You were entirely dependent on the King’s trust in his advisers. What if something happened to change that?’

  ‘Then I start on the Queen,’ Nicholas said. ‘And help her become another Great Margaret.’ He was on his knees. ‘I need a hammer. And a pair of shears. And something to lever with.’

  Ten minutes later, they were all on their knees. ‘You win. I couldn’t have guessed,’ Kathi said, awe in her voice. ‘The drinking-man’s nose. The eyebrows. The chin. When did he have it done?’ And as an afterthought: ‘Does he have wrinkly hands?’

  ‘Hugo always does wrinkly hands. He began it three years ago, before they decanted him over to Soignes. This is just the left outside wing. He’s working on the royal portraits now. Does it remind you of a riper Tommaso?’ Nicholas said, his head tilted sideways. ‘Or is it just the fringe?’

  Before them leaned part of the altar-piece for the Trinity Church, painted in a haze of alcohol by Hugo vander Goes in his recuperative retreat at Rosenklooster in the forest of Soignes. Before a dazzling organ (recalling a munificent gift of his own), knelt Edward Bonkle, provost of the Collegiate Church of the Holy Trinity, Edinburgh. The Provost’s body was solid. His surplice and amice fell into exquisite lines. His face was, to the life, that of the good-natured father and businessman Canon Bonkle, to whom the King’s Flemish mother had entrusted her church. Mary of Guelders had probably known Bonkle merchants in Bruges all her life, as Claes and his friends had known the Canon’s bastard son John. One of the Canon’s bastard sons, John.

  And now this, standing before them: testament to the skills of a magnificent, falling-down-drunk painter, who once raucously vied with them all, turning out coloured escutcheons in the chaotic prelude to the Duke of Burgundy’s wedding: Fourteen puking sols a day for all this!

  Sersanders said, ‘Hugo. Oh, Hugo the madman. What can we do for him?’

  ‘I did ask,’ Nicholas said. ‘He’s really best where he is. He has a brother there too. They relax all the rules and let him out, and people visit him—Colard; Maximilian even. But you know Hugo. There’s always something. He’s not appreciated; he’s never going to finish all his commissions; he can’t get over Elizabeth. Pass the Rhenish. When it all gets too bad, they play music till his head clears again.’

  He stopped. He said, ‘He kept talking about the Duke of Burgundy’s wedding, and asking who was Duke of Burgundy now.’

  ‘You’d better go to your meeting,’ Kathi said. ‘We’ll take care of it.’

  WHILE HE HAD been indoors, the autumn light had begun to fade, and the windows of Lang Bessie’s tavern were yellow with lamplight by the time Nicholas ran up the back stairs to Argyll’s rooms. With Colin were Mr Secretary Whitelaw in his smeared glasses, and Will Scheves in plain clerkly black instead of the robes of the Primate. Argyll said, ‘Nicholas. Sit. Drew is with my lord of Buchan. We wish to hear, obviously, all that you were not able to say at the Castle, as soon as the ale has come. You know Henry de St Pol?’

  It was not the non-sequitur it seemed. ‘I’m afraid so,’ Nicholas said. ‘Shall I …?’

  ‘No, no, someone else will bring it,’ said Colin Campbell of Argyll. ‘In fact, we shall not wait. Tell us your opinion of the Duke of Albany, and what is liable to happen in France.’

  He presented his report about Albany. It included a résumé of all he could discover about the size and quality of the French and Burgundian armies at present in the field, their length of service, their armaments, and the finance in prospect for their replacement. Among other things, he had spent a lot of time chatting to bored members of the King’s Scottish Archers. And at Aubigny.

  To that, as a bonus, he added his opinion of what was liable to happen in countries other than France, and particularly in relation to Rome, Genoa, Rhodes and the aspirations of Turkey. He had verified, before he left France, that the attack on the Knights Hospitaller at Rhodes had reached its height in July and had been resisted. The island was probably safe until the following spring. He did not mention Ludovico da Bologna’s determination to seize his attention over that; or the fact that he had not introduced the subject at the Castle, or indeed on the voyage from France. The Earl of Buchan’s confessor was William Knollys, Preceptor for Scotland of the Order of the Knights of St John. He did not mention, either, the Genoese Prosper de Camulio, absent Bishop of Caithness. He did not need to.

  At the end, no one at first said anything; then Argyll removed his contemplative gaze from Nicholas’s face and glanced at Whitelaw. Whitelaw cleared his throat.

  ‘A good submission, sir. We are grateful. We shall assimilate it, and return to you. As to the Duke of Albany: it is evident that King Louis cannot immediately exploit his presence, but will harbour him against the future. You say, and I concur, that King Louis must realise in the interim that the Duke possesses no value as a hostage, and will not be allowed to return merely to foment unrest. The summons for treason must stand.’

  ‘But not a sentence of forfeiture, and certainly not a justification,’ the Archbishop said. ‘The King would not agree to his death.’

  ‘On some days, he would,’ said Colin Argyll. ‘But no. I agree. In the light of all Nicholas has told us, we must treat this stage by stage. First, a continuation of the summons for treason, as you say, which demands the Duke’s presence in Scotland but leaves open the matter of proof and of punishment. Then a pause, we hope, during which the Duke comes to realise that he has discarded a princely living in Scotland for that of a powerless retainer in France. And then, perhaps, the opportunity for a genuine reconciliation between his grace and the Duke which embraces the alliance with England. What is that noise?’

  It came from below, from the galleried front rooms of the tavern. One of the voices was that of a woman, and one was that of Henry de St Pol. The third, recognisable to them all, was the voice of John of Mar.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Nicholas said.

  Fast as he was, Argyll overtook him. ‘No. Go back. You are not supposed to be here.’

  It was true. Nicholas stopped. Whitelaw stepped down beside him. Argyll ran on, and Scheves followed. Of course, they had more power than he had to halt this. Argyll had men down below.

  From the inner stairs, where he stood, Nicholas could witness the whole scene like a play. So could the customers, two floors below, who were already beginning to crowd the bottom steps, peering upwards. The muffled voice of the woman, Lang Bessie, came from one of the gallery rooms, testily commanding both visitors to go away. The visitors, John of Mar and Henry de St Pol, were outside her door, glaring at one another. Mar had a knife in his hand, reversed for hammering. As Argyll arrived, he turned it blade outwards. Henry’s hand went to his waist.

  Colin Campbell of Argyll put a strong, friendly hand on his shoulder. ‘Dhia! What a commotion! You want a girl, come and I’ll find you one.’

  ‘I have one,’ said Henry. ‘Thank you, my lord.’ He was eighteen: the Prince three years older. His eyes had never left Mar’s. His face was pale.

  Mar also spoke. ‘Go away.’ He was addressing Argyll, and Will Scheves behind him. In the darkness of the upper stairs, Nicholas and the Secretary were invisible. Nicholas, finding a pair of spectacles in his grasp, handed them up, and felt them taken.

  Argyll had answered. ‘Certainly, my lord prince, if you will come with me. I have some good wine upstairs. This is too public a place for these matters.’

 
Johndie Mar paid no attention. Even in the poor light, you could see the red flush that coloured the whole of one cheek, and the tension that tightened his jaw and his neck. A boy came thrusting his way upstairs, bearing something, a mixture of excitement and fright on his face.

  ‘A second key,’ said Johndie Mar. ‘Now kindly open this door.’

  Behind the boy, three men had appeared. One, at a nod from Argyll, stayed below, barring the stairs to the crowd. The other two slowly mounted the steps. There was no way for Mar to go except upwards. Whitelaw hastily turned and led the way up and into Argyll’s office, which was separate from his parlour. Nicholas waited a moment. Below, Argyll had taken the key. He turned it quickly, speaking Lang Bessie’s name, and opening the door a short way, pulled the woman out and into the arms of the two henchmen behind him. She looked at Mar as she came, and screamed, for the Prince had steel in each plunging hand, aimed at her face. ‘Slut! Any man’s filth!’

  Argyll was not wearing a sword, but Henry was. The woman escaped, dragged downstairs by Argyll’s men. Johndie Mar’s dagger hit nothing, but his sword, changing direction, sliced across towards Argyll and St Pol. Henry parried it.

  It was, Nicholas was to think later, through no self-effacing wish to protect the Household Controller; the blade was coming towards Henry as well, and Henry was trained to save himself. There was a clash and a blister of sparks in the gloom, and then a mutter, the trample of feet and a flash as Mar changed position and lifted both blades again. The woman had gone. The two servants obeyed a signal to halt. Henry ducked and retreated, sword in both hands, towards what had been Lang Bessie’s room, and Mar followed. There was no fear of Henry attacking Mar. There was every likelihood that Mar was about to do his best to kill Henry.

  Nicholas suddenly saw that Argyll was going to do nothing. He said, ‘My lord?’ And when Argyll looked up, threw him down his own sword. Henry saw it.

  So did Johndie Mar. He laughed. He said, ‘So the Burgundian is your hireling? Whom does he want you to kill, Colin? This pasty-faced heir to Kilmirren, which would suit M. de Fleury? Or me, the King’s brother, which would suit every one of you, because I detest England as Sandy and Margaret do?’