Gemini

  The French-English truce? Genuine enough at the time, the Bishop thought, but now being used to trap larger fish. ‘Maximilian is horrified. He now knows that England has been cheating him, and never intended to help him with archers. More, he knows he can never defeat France on his own, for the Estates of Flanders will now refuse him men and money. So—who will take a wager? Maximilian and France will make peace.’

  ‘And England will take her revenge on France, or on Scotland, or on both?’ Adorne said.

  Camulio said, ‘We are not speaking of England, but of Edward. Edward is impulsive and angry and, I am told, not very fit. Sick men take risks.’

  Adorne said, ‘They may, but Parliaments are more cautious. I doubt if Edward will be allowed to attack France, but he might send Gloucester back north in the spring. And if he does, what will Albany do? Nicholas? We need a report from the interior.’

  ‘Then I need one from the exterior,’ Nicholas said. ‘Where is Liddell?’

  Nowie Sinclair smiled. His nephew—Henry—who had been watching in silence, stretched suddenly and smiled also. Since Orkney, it had become clearer that this was one of the Sinclairs to watch. He was contracted, by God, to marry the granddaughter of Princess Joanna.

  Nowie said, ‘Sir James Liddell is back in Dunbar. But you are right. Sandy sent him to London. He was escorted by Dickon’s own servant, and they paid him forty pounds for his trouble. My reading is that Gloucester demanded to be reassured that Sandy’s intentions and loyalties were unchanged, and Sandy obliged. Also, Sandy wanted some encouragement for Bell-the-Cat.’

  ‘Bell the cat?’ said the Bishop of Caithness. They were talking, for his benefit, mostly in Latin and French.

  ‘The Earl of Angus,’ Nicholas said. ‘He got the nickname from arresting the King. He lives in a very large seacastle close to Dunbar, and Albany would like him as a possible ally. Angus is holding back, because he may lose land to a rival branch of the family favoured by Gloucester. I think he’ll still hold back, just as Sandy is watching the honours roll in, and weighing his chances. My report from the interior says that Sandy will have decided by Christmas whether he wants to oust James, or will be content with what he has. My prediction is that he will be content, provided that James remains calm. There are a few hotheads in Dunbar, but Liddell isn’t one of them.’

  ‘And what is your view of the King?’ Nowie asked. ‘We are so fortunate, Nicol, to have someone like yourself in constant company with him. You have not told him, for example, of his brother’s secret undertaking at Fotheringhay, for that would lead to immediate civil war. So long as you avoid telling the King, Gloucester may deduce that we lack the means to overthrow Sandy. It may encourage him to come north in strength.’

  ‘Or it may not,’ Nicholas said. ‘He cannot be sure. We may have the power to dispatch Sandy, but prefer to win him to stay here, in his own country with his brother. Or we may not have the power to dispatch Sandy now, but news of his treachery would soon change the balance.’

  The nephew—Henry—said, ‘So why not take the risk and announce it now, during the winter, when England can’t interfere? Then all those who don’t want Albany as King, or England as overlord, will cross to help you.’

  He was young. Also, Albany had divorced his aunt, and bastardised his three cousins. Nicholas drew breath, but Adorne replied. ‘It is possible. On the other hand, men have committed a great deal to this peace. In breaking it, lives would be lost, and the Stewart family split, perhaps needlessly. Events overseas may lift the pressure from Scotland, and give us time to shape a new order. I think, with Nicholas, that we proceed slowly, and change what we can, and tolerate meantime what we cannot.’

  ‘A Christian sentiment,’ said the Bishop of Caithness.

  ‘A humane one at least,’ Nowie said. ‘I hope we can afford to maintain it. So. You think, Nicol, that the King can tolerate it as well, so long as his friends keep him calm? But at the same time, the lords you can depend on will keep their men close to Edinburgh and prepared, through the winter? Good. And now to more pleasant things, my lord Bishop. I trust we have not marred your felicitous arrival. These are difficult times.’

  ‘There are princes,’ said the Bishop, ‘who would weep with joy to have no more to contend with.’ Nicholas avoided Lord Cortachy’s eye. If anyone knew, it would be Camulio.

  • • •

  RETURNING, NICHOLAS DID not pass the church of St Matthew but, by arrangement with Nowie, was met there and admitted by a servant who then left him alone.

  Candles had been lit. St Bartholomew flourished his flaying-knife. St Roche showed the plague-spot on his leg. Amid the reptilian mass of stony grotesqueries, it was obvious that all the pillars were solid; none more so than that by the Lady Chapel, with its merry capital of blowing, plucking and drumming musicians, including the determined man with the bagpipes, abalala durie. It was necessary to view these things with good-natured acceptance.

  A door creaked. Adorne’s voice said, ‘May I join you? Or not?’

  Phemie’s bier had lain there, below the east window. Nicholas said, ‘More than anyone else.’

  Adorne came forward: a spare, graceful man with clear eyes. He said, ‘I have been here many times. This is your first, since Tam and Will died?’

  Nicholas said, ‘They were both here, the day I came to see Phemie.’ There were garlands as well as demons round the pillars, and upside-down flowers thick within the towering vaults of the ceiling, forty feet over their heads. He added, ‘We sat and drank and told stories round the fire in the sacristy. It didn’t feel like sacrilege.’

  ‘A dear man, Tam; and mild as a novice in arms, except when in thrall to his latest enthusiasm. It can happen to anyone. Have you ever wondered,’ Adorne said, ‘what Archie Holyrood does with the Abbey treasure in time of war?’

  He had seated himself on the step to the Lady Chapel. Nicholas let himself descend to the floor among dragons. ‘Treasure? No?’

  ‘Yes. He puts it in the Castle, of course, if he can, or locks it away in the Tolbooth, or with Wattie Bertram, or Swift. If Edinburgh’s barred, he’ll spread it around. Craigmillar, Blackness, Newbattle and, of course, here. That’s when masons come in useful.’

  ‘I didn’t notice anything,’ Nicholas said.

  ‘You wouldn’t. They were also doing some genuine work. But I shouldn’t mention it to Knollys,’ Adorne said. ‘You know he was Lord High Treasurer himself for a year? Thirteen years ago. He has a secure house at Torphichen, and remains glad to rent out its secure rooms; but I don’t think Archie wants to be badgered. Nowie, of course, esteems the Preceptor as we all do, but with personal reservations. You have been told to leave Knollys alone?’

  ‘I have been told to leave everyone alone,’ Nicholas said. ‘For the moment.’ As time went on, the white heat of his anger over Lauder had died, as the killers had probably done, on the spot. That put the blame on the men the killers were trying to please, and the mad and glorious folly that had sent Tam on to the bridge, and Leithie to help him, and Will to gallop about getting angry. Anyway, no one had been punished because it was not a time to make enemies. And some recompense had been made: Leithie’s young Archie would probably get the good land at Cousland that the Prestons and Cochranes held under the Sinclairs, and Leithie’s widow had been given the prize money Leithie had earned bringing the wine-ship back from Orkney. It had angered Nicholas, to begin with, that the few lands of both men had been forfeited, as if they deserved to die. But unless that happened, of course, the law would have to be invoked. And the King would re-grant them, in time.

  Adorne was speaking again. ‘Nowie feels protective over his tenants. You may find that, in the long run, he has forestalled you. I have to tell you that I have been interfering as well. Mistress Bel knows. I have set myself to search out the man who put the St Pols on your trail. I want him caught for your sake, of course, but there are other considerations. Whoever he is, this man also knew more than he should about Sandy. He could create a
rift between Albany and the King.’

  ‘He won’t,’ Nicholas said. ‘I don’t think he was interested in Sandy or me. All he wanted, surely, was to hound the St Pols into danger. Otherwise, why drag them in? He could have got rid of me by himself. Look, it’s over. I don’t want to know who did it. It’s four months ago; I can’t think there is any more danger. And if there is, I’d rather risk it than have Simon’s private affairs dragged into the open. Tell Bel, and anyone else.’

  ‘Only Kathi,’ Adorne said. ‘But we think there is nothing shameful about it: nothing that would reflect on the St Pols. You must trust us. We don’t agree with your theory, but we’re not as gallantly perverse as Julius. We think the message came from the Border country; from a resident, even, with friends over the river. We think you were the target. Perhaps he thought you a traitor to the King. Perhaps he knew you weren’t, and wanted you out of the way. Plenty of Borderers have a good understanding with the English. And he needn’t dirty his hands: the St Pols’ dislike of you was well known.’

  ‘It’s a nice theory. But why pursue it?’ Nicholas said. ‘Some small two-facing laird in the Borders isn’t going to damage the King’s trust in Sandy. He won’t get near him, for a start; that I can promise you.’

  His voice had sounded, he thought, as it usually did. Despite that, the other man’s face altered in the flickering light. Adorne said, ‘The King wants you with him through Yule? To entertain him?’

  ‘And Sandy. And Mary. Everyone will be at Court but the Queen and the Princes. It is the crucial time. If they are going to live and work together, the foundation for it has to be laid now. As you can imagine, it won’t be especially delightful for me, but there are other players and other musicians, besides Will. It won’t be as fine, but nothing ever will be as fine, and they won’t notice it. And it will free me to help in other ways.’

  Adorne said, ‘You think that excellence will never return, but it will. Nothing ever stays still. A branch dies, and the sap gathers, and bursts forth elsewhere. Would you rather be preached at by Camulio?’

  ‘I don’t think Camulio would convince me,’ Nicholas said. ‘And I couldn’t ask him the favour I am about to ask you. Would you and Bel and Kathi save your theory until after Yule, and meantime leave it alone?’

  ‘And after Yule?’ Adorne said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Nicholas said. ‘Perhaps my mind will have caught up with my emotions, or the other way round. The graves are too fresh, just now.’

  Adorne’s eyes were full of pity. He said, ‘I have just told you. I think this had nothing to do with the St Pols.’

  The bagpiper played, silently, placidly. The wild men leered. There was a beautifully scrolled Latin legend above the stairs to the sacristy which, translated roughly, stated that wine was strong, the king was stronger, women were stronger still, but truth conquered all. The present conversation, elegantly scrolled, would make just as much sense.

  It wasn’t Adorne’s fault. Nevertheless, Nicholas replied with uncharacteristic savagery. ‘Of course it had to do with the St Pols. It killed them.’

  IT SEEMED, AT that point, as if a steady nerve would carry everyone through the precarious journey that lay ahead. The threatened conflagration had been quelled and a kind of template produced which might steer them clear of another. Nicholas returned to the Abbey, but Anselm Adorne, saying nothing, went straight to the comfortable, well-appointed house in the High Street where Nicholas was once to be found and spoke to Gelis alone.

  Something about him must have startled her, for she closed the door and seated herself and him at once. ‘Something is wrong?’ She knew they had both been to Roslin.

  ‘With Nicholas, no. With myself, perhaps. That is why I am here. Gelis …’

  He hesitated, and she sat quite still, watching him with that pale, Arctic gaze below the heavy van Borselen brows. Once, he had thought her cold, but now knew that it was self-control he was witnessing. He said, ‘I do not have his full confidence. I hope that you have.’

  There was a silence. Then she said, ‘I know all that matters. I wouldn’t expect to be told everything.’

  ‘This matters,’ said Anselm Adorne, ‘but he is concealing something about it. He is a good actor, but I have known him from boyhood. I need to know what he is not telling us. There is no stain on his own life; I am sure of it. He is lying to preserve someone else. There was nearly a tragedy—there was a tragedy—over Adelina. It must not happen again. He cannot protect all the world.’

  ‘He thinks he can,’ Gelis said. ‘So why is it important?’

  Again, he hesitated. Then he said, ‘I have been trying to find out who told Simon that Nicholas was secretly going to York. I have a clue: the message came from the Borders. Nicholas will not listen, and has asked me to halt the enquiry. He either knows the answer, or means to pursue it himself.’

  ‘He will know,’ Gelis said. She spoke with unemphatic certainty. He had been acquainted with Nicholas from boyhood, but Gelis had fought to understand him, on and off, for eighteen years. She added, ‘You are saying that you—and perhaps others?—have had to promise to leave it alone, but the rest of us haven’t?’

  ‘That,’ he said. ‘Or I hoped the name of the spy might suggest itself.’

  She said, ‘No. I don’t know, and if Nicholas has asked you to stop, it’s for a reason. Whatever it is, leave it to him.’

  ‘Do you think he is infallible?’ Adorne said. ‘Simon and Henry died. Nicholas himself would have died, had I not been there. He is one of the most remarkable persons I know: a doer of startling works; a man who finds wisdom through his mistakes. But there is one area where he is still blind; you may say heroically blind. He has still to learn that life is not a noble fable for children; that honour is not sacrosanct; and that, for the desirable good, one may be forced to walk naked of the garment of loyalty.’

  She said, ‘I don’t want you to teach him.’

  They looked at one another. Then he said, ‘No. But I would rather he learned this lesson from a friend; and I would be that friend.’

  He wanted her to know how grave it was. He was using her to warn Nicholas that he was reneging. He had considered the possible hurt, and the danger, and had weighed it against the public good. It was what Nicholas ought to have done, and had not.

  ON A MONDAY in early December, the Parliament of Scotland met in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh for the first time since March. The monarch led the procession of state from the Abbey of Holyrood, filling the winding defile with banners and singing and incense, silks and velvets and furs and fine, gentle gems. It was reminiscent of the wedding cavalcade of the Queen, except that the King rode with his brother; and Avandale, Scheves and Argyll were now missing. So also, it transpired, were the small lairds who normally made up the tally. The assembly, when it finally settled, numbered only fifty-eight. It was sufficient, however, to appoint the committee which was to consider the new offices proposed for the right high and mighty Prince Alexander, Duke of Albany. The committee sat down to its deliberations, which they were to complete for the Three Estates in ten days.

  The Queen in Stirling, sadly debarred from these events by ill health, was well enough by the Saturday to attempt a recuperative sail with her eldest son and her suite. It took her to the Governor’s jetty at Blackness, where she was met by that gallant poet and jouster Sir Jock Ross of Hawkhead, once a favourite of her late father. Within the hour, she had arrived at her own Palace of Linlithgow. It was the seventh day of December, the eve of the fifty-eighth anniversary of the birth of her Keeper, Anselm Adorne, Baron Cortachy; which occasion his sovereign lady had chosen to mark with a feast.

  Considering what this had entailed, Lord Cortachy and Saunders his nephew looked as marvellous calm as two pax-boards to the many guests from Linlithgow who counted them friends. Of course, when you got up to the hall, everything would be of the best. With Seaulme directing, the wagons from Stirling would have been stripped in a trice, and the linen, the staff, the provisio
ns all punctually dealt with—none of your beans with their pods on, or windy meat here. Even the Master Cook would have to keep his mouth clean, or dip his hand in the swearing-box. There! What did I tell you? Wax lights. And the Queen’s own patterned hangings. And linen napkins, all new-chopped from the roll.

  Of course, his lordship’s own house in Bruges was a palace with its own kirk, and his cousins were doges in Genoa. That was why the Genoese Bishop was here, on top of Nowie Sinclair and Will Knollys and a few others you wouldn’t expect in the same room—as well, of course, as all the ones you would. Kathi, the spunky wee niece, chatting with Jock Ross and the comfy widow that once had Cuthilgurdy. The bald Italian doctor, him that was a dab hand at itch of the purse; and the unchancy one, Andreas from Vesalia, that some people thought dabbled in magic.

  Julius, the lawyer from Bologna who looked so rich and grand, but could keep you roaring over a wine-cask. The Scandinavian shipmaster, Crackbene, with the fine armful of a wife, jabbering away at the Queen in her tongue. Big Nicol’s clever lady, as good as a man in the warehouse, and the laddie their son, a well-mannered wee loon, standing listening to the young Prince. And the Prince glancing at Big Nicol, who had not been the same since Will Roger lost his head—or, to be sure, had it half cawed off him—at Lauder. Yon was a shame. The two of them on the fiddle and drums, late at night, fleeing with Danzig beer, and making up verse about every bastard at court, so dirty and daft you could shite yourself. Those were the days.

  ‘Poor Uncle,’ said Kathi. ‘Doom threatens the nation, and he has to give a party for himself. We thought you wouldn’t come.’ It sounded challenging. She added quickly, ‘Not for personal reasons. I know you advised against this.’

  ‘I was probably wrong,’ Nicholas said. ‘And your uncle deserves to be honoured.’

  Her uncle deserved to be honoured, and so she hadn’t protested; but she understood Nicholas’s unease. The truth was that the supper was more than it seemed. It was an excuse to bring together men who could not appear in Edinburgh, but could inform the Queen of what was happening there. Avandale, Argyll and Scheves were all privately here, and Avandale’s kinsman recently departed from Edinburgh Castle: John Stewart, Lord Darnley, who had commendably saved his young kinsman Johnnie Ramsay at Lauder, and who had daughters contracted to the heirs of Argyll and Jock Ross.