Gemini

  The kingis stait that he mycht represent.

  THE FUNERAL AT Paisley Abbey was unlike that of Lord Hamilton, and when it was over, children did not compete in dangerous races with sledges. Of such a pair, one had now come to his grave, and the other, tall and grey-eyed and solemn, had today been cursed by the dead youth’s grandfather and told to get out of the church: ‘They brought you here to gloat!’ But young Jordan had stood without moving, and so had Gelis his mother behind him, while the Abbot hastened forward with others of sense and compassion: Robin’s grandfather; neighbour Semple of Elliotstoun; the lord of Torphichen; the young men of the Guard who had come to carry Henry’s coffin. In the end Andro Wodman, helped by his stick, had taken the fat man by the arm and turned him away, while Bel went first to Jordan, and then to Kilmirren.

  Julius, standing by Kathi, had wanted to help, but she had kept him back, to stay beside Gelis. Since Nicholas wasn’t here, Gelis should be supported. Kathi had also brought her own daughter Margaret, but not for Gelis’s sake. Young as she was, Margaret was a stout friend to Jordan, even though he had left their house now, to prepare for his higher studies elsewhere. Once he had gone, Margaret would miss him, Kathi knew.

  The ceremony ended. Afterwards, no one wished to stay there for long. The neighbours and the men of the Guard were offered hospitality, as was proper, but Kathi made her excuses and left, and Julius left with her. Gelis and Jordan had already departed to spend the night with Tam Cochrane’s kinsmen, and she had allowed Margaret to go with them. Kathi wondered how sorely Gelis was remembering her last visit to Beltrees, when Robin had been the bait, and David Simpson had died in Nicholas’s place. Someone still wanted to kill Nicholas, and had caused the tragedy they were mourning today. But if today had been perceived by anyone as a lure, it had failed, for Nicholas wasn’t here. It struck Kathi to wonder whether Gelis had come in part for that reason: to observe anything or anyone out of the way. But what brought her of course was more than that. Henry had been her sister’s son, and her sister had been married to Simon.

  Bel of Cuthilgurdy had also left. She had wept at the funeral: something rare for that small, composed woman; and when Kathi had gone to speak to her, she discovered that Bel was not returning to Kilmirren. It did not surprise her. After three weeks as the self-appointed mainstay of that obese, stricken, bitter old man, she was exhausted. Now that Andro was here for Monseigneur, she said, she felt free to go back to her home. Stirling was a short ride away: she would sleep in her own bed tonight.

  Kathi, returning to her other children and Robin in Edinburgh, had been more than ready to alter her journey and come with Bel instead, but Bel, after hesitating, had refused. Then, Kathi didn’t try to insist. But when Julius set out with her presently, and they came across Bel’s small cavalcade on the road, Julius asserted himself. Of course Bel should not return home alone. He and Kathi had to spend the night somewhere. They would diverge to Stirling, and travel to Edinburgh tomorrow. If Bel didn’t want him, he would stay at Cambuskenneth, with Abbot Henry.

  Julius, when he liked, could be irresistible. Bel agreed, even knowing, Kathi supposed, the inquisition she might be inviting. But, in fact, it did not come. It was a thirty-mile journey, and they were weary. It was more than that. Although she had watched Julius and his insatiable curiosity at work, even here, Kathi knew he realised now that it was fruitless to try and legitimise Nicholas. She had learned of St Pol’s explicit denial from her own kitchen: You made the old man so wild he bloody disowned me. Since then, she had thought of Julius more kindly. However wrong-headed he might be, he had tried to help Nicholas, over and over. For all they kept quarrelling, he must be the oldest friend Nicholas had. And his greatest pleasure, still, was the excitement he found wherever Nicholas was.

  They were within sight of the Burgh Port of Stirling after a hot, tiresome journey when, without warning, their way was blocked by a group of dark horsemen. The men who stopped them were faceless: they wore expensive weapons and armour but carried no emblems. Their own men, of course, were also armed: Julius, never backward, was already offering battle to the opposite captain, who neither answered nor shifted. At the same time, Kathi noticed, there had issued from the Burgh Port in the distance a troop of well-guarded horsemen, riding sedately. They, too, bore no distinguishing marks, and their cloaks hid the quality of their dress. As the gates closed behind them, they began to string out, moving more quickly. Of them all, only one glanced across.

  Julius had seen him as well. He called out in surprise, turning aside so that one of their captors, thinking him about to escape, leaned across and seized his reins roughly. The mysterious cavalcade continued regardless. Then the man Kathi had already noticed leaned over, speaking to someone, and the next moment detached himself and trotted over. The captain threw down Julius’s reins and went to meet him. They spoke. A moment later, the soldiers detaining them saluted and went, following their fellows along the Edinburgh road. They were free.

  Their rescuer approached, and pushed back his hood.

  ‘Nicholas?’ Julius said.

  It was, of course. He was wearing his stand-by expression: one of tranquil authority. ‘Kathi? Mistress Bel? I’m sorry. They were under orders to hold everyone back. Let me take you into the town. You’re going home?’

  ‘We’ve come from Paisley,’ said Bel. ‘Do you have to follow your friends, or can you spare us a night? You’d be welcome.’

  ‘I hoped you’d ask me,’ he said. His face, the versatile face, had given way, for a moment, to something he hadn’t controlled; and you could see the same attrition, for a moment, in Bel.

  Julius said, ‘You look terrible. You’ve spent the night drinking, you dog. What was all that about?’

  Julius. What could you do with him?

  OFTEN, IN HER dealings with Bel, Kathi had felt herself under scrutiny, and had realised very soon that this applied to any person of either sex who was connected with Nicholas. She believed she had passed the invisible test, whatever it was, and found proof, if it were needed, during the night and morning they all passed in Bel’s house in Stirling. They had come to support Bel, but the situation was made bearable, in the end, by the presence of Julius, whose few observations on the funeral were entirely prosaic, and who preferred to talk about other things. For him, Nicholas outlined, on promise of secrecy, what had clearly been a momentous meeting between the Queen and the Duke of Albany; and watching Bel’s absorbed face, Kathi was relieved that she, at least, had received a respite from the burdens of the day.

  Bel had a well-ordered house, trained to deal with any contingency. Julius, content in mind and in body, lingered at table, and left it deep in strenuous argument. ‘Why not simply kill Albany?’

  Nicholas, sharing a settle with Kathi, had treated it seriously. ‘The purely practical reasons against? Because the King doesn’t want it; and, at the moment, couldn’t be blamed for it anyway. Because it would consolidate the faction that already exists behind Albany and his two sisters, who might well invite England to come back, get rid of the King, seize the Prince’s guardianship from the Queen and rule in his name, probably through the half-uncles, throughout young James’s entire minority.’

  ‘And the less than practical reasons?’ Bel said. She had eaten nothing.

  ‘Because we promised him—I promised him—that we wouldn’t.’

  ‘He’s an idiot,’ Julius said. ‘So why not kill the King, or free him on condition he abdicates?’

  ‘Same reason,’ Nicholas said. ‘Civil war, bloodshed, with the weaker party bringing back England. As it is, we’ve got peace; the King ruling with Albany’s help, and a council of sorts to advise them, even if it isn’t as strong as the original one. And the Prince is still safe, in the Queen’s custody.’

  ‘And you’ll be at his side,’ Julius said. He had said that before. His slanting eyes gleamed with satisfaction and mischief.

  Nicholas said, ‘No. You’ll be at his side. If he’s daft, he needs someone about hi
m who’s dafter.’

  Julius swung a desultory punch and Nicholas answered it, mildly. The marks of excess (Julius had been right) had receded, and Nicholas had behaved, once in Stirling, as if this were a day like any other. Indeed, he had made only one untoward reference in Kathi’s hearing, and that had been a question to Bel. He had said, ‘How is he?’

  He hadn’t mentioned a name. Bel, round and taut as a tabour, had answered immediately. ‘Vindictive. Otherwise he wouldn’t have survived any of it. He pitched into the boy, into your son, in the Abbey. Gelis will tell you. Like he pitched into you, Julius tells me, in his house. You may not have enjoyed it, but it was a God’s blessing to him.’

  ‘I am glad to have been of service,’ Nicholas said.

  Then Julius came along, and the subject was dropped. But it was the only reference. And it pertained to Fat Father Jordan.

  Tobie had talked about the odd, tenuous relationship between Nicholas and Bel. Tobie had found out quite a lot about Bel, and believed that Nicholas knew at least as much. Tobie had investigated the young woman at Chouzy in France, whom Tobie and Robin had once met, and whose nom de fille was Claude d’Échaut, or Shaw. She was Bel’s daughter. There seemed no doubt about that; or that her father, also called Shaw, must have been Bel’s second husband, or lover. And then you had to remember that the wife of Fat Father Jordan, and the mother of Simon and Lucia, had been called Aleis Shaw.

  Which connected it all to the St Pols, and accounted for the silence of Nicholas. Whether or not it had anything to do with his birth, he never volunteered anything about the St Pols. And it was time, whether he wished it or not, that that changed. Abbot Henry had said as much, and her uncle Adorne. If only Julius were not there, she would have broached the subject herself.

  But Julius, being there, had found topics even more interesting. ‘So what about the stupid business at Lauder? I could have told you Tam Cochrane would go his own way. You should have been there. Someone said you had drawn up a blacklist of the killers. Do you want any assistance?’ Kathi looked at Bel, and Bel closed her eyes.

  Nicholas said, ‘I’ll tell you if I do. At the moment, we don’t want to antagonise anyone. Anyway, we don’t really know who they are.’

  ‘I heard Fleming and Crawford and Alex Home,’ Julius said. ‘And Will Knollys has a finger in most things. And what about the message that told Simon you were going to York? Who sent that? It was meant to kill you. It was just luck that it drowned Simon and Henry.’

  ‘Yes, wasn’t it,’ said Bel, heaving herself up. ‘Kathi, hen, I’m for bed. Will you see me upstairs?’

  In her chamber, Bel put Kathi into a chair, and sat down herself. She said, ‘Now, now. He’s not a frail reed, our Nicol, and he knows Julius through and through. Let them be. Julius will keep treading on toes, just to see what will happen, and Nicol will give as good as he gets. Sometimes a good hearty blow does more for a pain than a tickle. Have you and he spoken about Will Roger yet?’ She knew everything.

  ‘Yes,’ said Kathi. ‘Indirectly. He will come to it, later.’ She shook herself. ‘I’m sorry. I forget that he can deal with these things now.’

  ‘Oh, he needs us as well,’ the small woman said. ‘Especially Gelis and you. I think we’ve turned out a good man, between us.’

  ‘And the future?’ said Kathi. ‘Who wants him out of the way, Bel? Who sent that message to Simon?’

  The colourless eyes studied her. ‘Some say it was your uncle,’ Bel said. ‘Even sober men like John and Tobie and Father Moriz were wild enough to consider it. But there’s Andro to say that it wasn’t: that he saved his life when he could have killed him, there at Heaton. And for the same reason, it wasna Andro himself.’

  ‘You know it wasn’t my uncle,’ said Kathi. She felt frightened.

  ‘So does everyone else. It was but a rumour. Like Nicol, he is envied. Your troublemaker may be someone like that: just a man who resents the Burgundians.’

  ‘But he had to know that Nicholas was going to York,’ Kathi said. ‘Only we knew that, all of us: the House of Niccolò, if you like. Us, and the high-ranking men who arranged it all—Avandale and Argyll and Whitelaw, and Liddell and Albany—whose entire plan depended on Nicholas coming back safely. No one else …’ Then she stopped, seeing where she had been led.

  ‘So it couldn’t have been Simon’s father,’ Bel said. ‘I could have told you that. When Jordan embarks on a piece of wickedness, he takes pleasure in signing it. Or if he doesn’t, I can usually tell. No: Jordan de St Pol wasn’t the author of the sad, sad thing that ended today.’

  She got to her feet. ‘Lassie, we both need our beds. Tell me, is your uncle about?’

  Kathi jumped up and took the small, puffy hand she was offered. ‘He’s in Linlithgow with my brother. Why?’

  ‘Tell him to come by and see me one day,’ said Bel of Cuthilgurdy. ‘And give me a wee cheep as you go. You’re a grand lassie, Mistress Katelinje Sersanders of Berecrofts.’

  The door gently closed. Carrying to bed the small, dry kiss that was her wee cheep, Kathi heard, from below, the comfortable flow of men’s voices: Julius and Nicholas, disputing languidly over something. Bel had been right. While Nicholas had such friends, he was safe.

  THE ELABORATE, DIFFICULT programme, object of so much anxious thought, slowly began to unfold. The semi-avuncular Earls of Buchan and Atholl and their younger brother, the near-Bishop Andrew, stole out of the Castle, and reached a satisfactory understanding, part of which involved the retiral of Scheves, and the promotion of Andrew to be Archbishop of St Andrews, with the financial help of the town. The uncles returned to the Castle (leaving behind a certain amount of unexplained luggage), and the lords Avandale, Argyll and Scheves vanished from Edinburgh.

  The Duke of Albany and the Provost laid polite siege, with a small force, to the Castle of Edinburgh, accompanied by a number of cannon and some handguns, but no ammunition. Carriers of wine and provender were stopped on Castle Hill and requested by bowmen to go away. The Governor of the Castle issued a furious complaint, followed by an order to lift the siege under pain of artillery fire. The Duke of Albany and the town bravely repeated their demand that the King’s grace of Scotland be instantly released. The Governor (the Earl of Atholl) refused with equal firmness, but did not fire his guns, which was as well, since they would have flattened the town.

  After a siege of over a month, in pleasant weather, the Castle found itself starving, and sent its thinnest envoy to announce its surrender. The date was Michaelmas, that time in late September when the Dozen and the Heid Court went about the business of choosing Provost, Dean and officers of the Guild of Edinburgh for the following twelvemonth. In the final, flamboyant act of his term, Wattie Bertram, in the clean doublet and sark brought by his wife in a basket, rode by my lord of Albany’s side into the Castle on the newly let-down drawbridge, and after an interval emerged again with a pedestrian escort of honour, at the head of which rode Sandy Albany, with the King sharing the saddle behind him. The King had a fixed smile, but Sandy’s was large and damp and looked genuine. They rode together all the way down to Holyrood between cheering crowds, briskly assembled, and feasted together all night. The King, it was seen, was not hungry, but Sandy made up for it.

  ADORNE SAID, ‘YOU wanted to see me?’ The day after the feast, it was the first opportunity he had had to ride to Stirling.

  Bel said, ‘Aye, I did. There’s something I want you to know. There’s something needs doing, and I don’t know who else to turn to. Forbye, it’s in your own interests.’

  Adorne said, ‘You don’t need to say that, Mistress Bel. You only need to say, as I am sure you can, that it is for Nicholas.’

  Later, leaving the house, he thought to call on the young lady Bonne, placed these several months in the august home of the late Sir William Charteris. His widow, by birth a Stewart, was perhaps too well connected to produce husbands for impecunious foreigners, and none had so far appeared. The nun, Sister Monika, was permanently settled in E
lcho, and had washed her hands of the whole affair. The girl Muriella, a handful, was now with Malloch cousins in Edinburgh, in a bleak farm on the far side of the Nor’ Loch. She had sung, with her brother, in the memorial service held in the Collegiate Church of the Holy Trinity for Will Roger. Adorne had been there. So had Kathi. So had Nicholas.

  Thinking of it, Adorne found himself again moved, as he had been moved to tears by that glorious, unbearable ceremony. And if he felt so, he could not imagine how Nicholas had felt. Years ago, lost in the toils of his miserable plot, Nicholas had sat there, in that beautiful church, and denied the music that Will Roger had made for him. Then Roger had forced him out of his isolation, and had given him in return a burnished talent, and a pass-key to happiness. Next had come the great Marian work they had created together, and after that, alone or with Nicholas, Roger had been spurred to compositions, from sacred to lyrical, that he would never have troubled to create on his own, enriching the lives of all his hearers, whoever they were. If much of the inspiration for the church had been Flemish—through Bonkle, through vander Goes, through Adorne and his friends—then much of what had followed was owed to Will Roger. The foundress, the Dowager Queen lying in her Trinity tomb, had died too soon to know it; but in the north aisle lay someone who did—Bishop Spens, who had also built nearby, and had become one of the sardonic circle of Will Roger’s admirers.

  All those living were there, although only some, like Nicholas standing apart, were able to offer the dead not only their grief and their love but their voices, floating aloft, traces of the mind of God in the sky. They had sung the ‘Stirps Jesse’ again, from Willie’s marvellous responsory, and all the other music was his. At the end Nicholas, adopted into the body of singers, had disappeared in their company, leaving unexplained the last piece of music, performed with John Ramsay and written, you would say, with all the beauty of Nicholas’s voice and that of young Johnnie in mind. The text was not elegiac, nor was the singing, which was triumphant.