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

  They had reached the end of the curious interview and were about, he thought, to be dismissed when someone tapped on the door and Nicholas opened it. When he came back, his manner was the same, but there was a change of some sort in his face, which was already coloured with the open air. He said, ‘I’ve disturbed your rest. Alonse will take you back to your rooms. Send if you want something to eat; you know Astorre’s cooks are always superb. I’ll have someone bring you at first light tomorrow to go over the detail.’

  ‘And that’s all?’ said John. His annoyance at the dismissal was justified. It was only mid-afternoon. Instead of intervening, Father Moriz trod peacefully to the window. He was aware that the gaze of Nicholas followed him.

  Nicholas said, ‘If you’re not tired, there are a hundred men out there, and you know at least half of them. Go and enjoy yourself. I have some things I must do.’

  ‘The camp has visitors,’ the priest said. The perpetual haphazard traffic between buildings, tents and sheds had coalesced at one point into a huddle of horses and packmules with, here and there, the ruddy glitter of steel. In the middle he thought he glimpsed the high shape of a veil, and the folds of a gown on a side-saddle. As he watched, grooms ran up to the leading horse and began to lead it to another part of the encampment.

  ‘A lady,’ remarked Father Moriz. ‘But not for you, Nicholas, it would seem.’ He heard footsteps coming to join him and knew it was John, and that Nicholas had stayed where he was.

  Nicholas said, ‘I am enthralled. Alonse is waiting.’

  Below, the procession had stopped. Father Moriz remained looking down. Captain Astorre, fastening his points, came trotting into view. Taking the reins from the groom, Astorre turned the horse round and began to bring the leading members of the cavalcade towards the door of the house in which they stood. John turned. He said, ‘Is it Gelis, Nicholas? Astorre is bringing her here.’

  Moriz turned as well. Nicholas stood by the door, gazing outwards. There was only one staircase. Whoever it was, there was no avoiding meeting her now. Nicholas said, ‘It is not Gelis.’ There were footsteps below, and then the clatter of Astorre’s spurs on the stairs, followed by other, softer feet. With a hiss of impatience, Nicholas drew back until he stood with the furthermost wall at his back. His expression was lost in the shadows. Moriz remained at the window, his fingers holding back John. The clatter reached the top of the stairs, and the threshold.

  Captain Astorre, bent double, came into the room, his face red, his eye glittering madly. He straightened. On his shoulders, miniature of his stave-bearing father, was a grey-eyed child, crowing, his brown hair tight-curled in the damp, his rotund cheeks merry with dimples. John straightened. Father Moriz increased his grip, studying Nicholas.

  ‘Well!’ said Captain Astorre, looking round. ‘What’s all this about a room of his own, when a lad wants the house of his father? Here are his nurses to tell you as much. And where is your father, then, young Master Jordan?’

  The boy looked round the strange room, cast into dusk by the strong light outside. Reassured by Astorre’s jovial voice by his ear, the child seemed quite at ease. He looked first at the window and smiled at Moriz and John, although they too were strangers. Then the smile, travelling on, reached the wall. ‘M’sieur mon p’p … a … a … a!’ said Jordan de Fleury, in the moderate shriek of a child who has found a promised toy, and is pleased as much with himself as with the enjoyment ahead. ‘R’garde! R’garde! R’garde!’

  Nicholas stood free of the wall. ‘Eh bien, c’est M. JeMoi,’ he said. ‘Comme tu est gros.’ He spoke direct to the child, his voice calm.

  ‘Nenni! ‘Suis ici!’ said the child. It was more than an announcement. His head tilted.

  ‘Go to him, then!’ said Astorre, raising his hands. But before he could lift him down, the child in turn had stretched his arms to his father. ‘I am here! Where is maman?’

  Beside Moriz, John le Grant breathed through his nose. Moriz continued to grip him. At the door he could see two women standing still, saying nothing. The nurses. Astorre hesitated, looking at Nicholas. And Nicholas, after the shortest pause, strode forward and sweeping the boy into the crook of his arm, looked him in the face.

  ‘Toujours! Encore? That the gentlemen stand aside from the window?’ And when the way was clear, the man with the child took their place, talking. His voice was low, but the child’s was clear and confident, as if reciting some incantation. ‘Horses! Boats! Cows to be milked!’

  Then the child said, ‘But she is still busy?’

  Nicholas turned, facing the room, still with the child in his arms. ‘No,’ he said. ‘She is coming. She is coming here.’ His gaze fell on Moriz, who felt himself wince. The same gaze travelled over John, and Astorre, and the two women who stood in the doorway.

  Nicholas said, ‘Ta maman will be here in three days.’ On the hand spread to hold the child so securely was a mark. Father Moriz knew what it was, and that it had not been there earlier in the day. Tracking Gelis, Nicholas had not realised that the child was so near. Or this encounter would have happened, as intended, in private.

  Father Moriz said, ‘Your son will be tired. Let the nurses take him,’ and was surprised to find his help accepted.

  Nicholas said, ‘You hear that? To Mistress Clémence. I shall see you tomorrow. You will get fatter.’

  ‘Always,’ said the child. The woman Clémence, coming forward, lifted the child and set him on his feet, curtseying to the room before she went out, the elderly maid at her heels. He had had his nurses, then, through all his absence. Moriz knew about them from Mistress Margot, and thought, momentarily confused, that he must send to Venice to tell Mistress Margot and assuage some of her fears. And of course, those of the mother as well. Then he remembered what had just been said. The lady Gelis was coming herself. In three days she would be here. And what would happen then, he could not predict.

  Astorre, wiser perhaps than anyone, had left. Moriz was afraid John would linger, in the belief that Nicholas wanted their company. On the contrary, the engineer had walked to the door and was waiting for him, too, to leave. Nicholas watched them sardonically. Moriz wondered what resources of imagination or skill or ingenuity, what quality of callousness had enabled him to carry off what had just happened, betraying nothing, jeopardising nothing. So far.

  That night, he said aloud to John what he felt. ‘There is nothing now to be done but to wait.’

  To the rest of the camp, the three days that followed were little different in character from the busy, brawling good humour of the month that had passed. Certainly, Astorre took time, now and then, to drop into the temporary nursery of Master Jordan de Fleury and show him how to wield his new wooden sword. Mistress Clémence, who could unbend now and then, would send him away with one of her exceptional pies, and Astorre came to the view that she was rearing the boy well enough, although she didn’t cackle like Pasque at his jokes. Astorre suspected that little Pasque, as a matter of history, was not unaccustomed to the attentions of rough soldiery.

  Father Moriz, too, was reassured. He spent time with the child and both nurses, and sometimes found Nicholas there, looking entirely at home in a way that both touched and surprised him. For Nicholas, those sparing but regular calls were the only departure from a schedule crammed with meetings and paperwork. There were no more boisterous excursions into the exercise field. Only, as the bruises started to fade, the weal on his finger grew angrier.

  John, as well as Father Moriz, knew what it meant. He was sufficiently aggravated, by the second day, to remark on it. ‘So where is she, Nicholas? Where is Gelis?’

  And Nicholas, looking at him with indifference, had pulled open a drawer and, spreading a map, had said, ‘There. No, since last night possibly there. If you have five minutes, I can show you exactly, if that is what you really want to know.’ The pendulum lay on the desk. It looked like an ordinary pebble.

  ‘I want to know why you are doing it,’ John had said. ‘You know she is coming. She�
��s got to come.’

  ‘Of course. So she should have a welcome,’ Nicholas said.

  The foreboding which others experienced had already touched Mistress Clémence, an expert in the aberrant conduct of fathers. Studying M. de Fleury, she had watched, unsurprised, the dulling of the glow brought about by those long leisurely days at sea, and distrusted the extreme urbanity which seemed to have replaced it. Either M. de Fleury was unmoved by the approach of his wife, or was able to cover his feelings by a feat of acting which defied the imagination.

  She held this view until the third day when, coming to visit the child, he took Mistress Clémence aside and informed her that his wife was expected tomorrow, and that he wished her to travel with him to meet her.

  ‘But naturally. I shall prepare Master Jordan,’ she had said.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘The boy is not to come. You will be there instead, to assure my wife of his wellbeing. I have arranged to meet her at the palace of Hesdin.’

  ‘The lady is staying there?’ she had asked. The palace was empty. Everyone knew the palace was empty.

  ‘She will be taken there. I have the Duke’s kind permission. I have in mind,’ continued M. de Fleury, ‘to show madame some of Hesdin’s particular splendours. You will be pleased, I hope, to accompany us.’

  She was disturbed. She would have thought him a little drunk, were it not that she had placed him as a temperate gentleman, except when it suited him. Even as she agreed, Mistress Clémence conveyed mute dissatisfaction. She disapproved of what happened at Hesdin. She agreed because her Christian conscience (and human curiosity) would not have allowed her to refuse. A good nurse is the link between child and parent: the person who interprets one to the other and is respected by both, if not loved. Although she had been loved, in her time.

  The following morning she set off to Hesdin with a liveried escort from the company. With her rode Nicholas de Fleury, husband and father, ready now to end a long parting.

  Chapter 6

  MOVING INESCAPABLY in her turn towards him, Gelis van Borselen was conscious that, whatever she did, her foe her husband was watching her. She made no effort this time to evade him. She wore the ring which his pendulum knew, and travelled slowly, because he would not expect that, and it might disturb him a little.

  She had thought, sitting alone, considering – hour by hour, week by week – what she knew of his mind, that the summons would come on the day that marked the third anniversary of their marriage. But he, no doubt guessing as much, had amused himself by avoiding it. The command, when it came, arrived at an hour of no special portent, and she left immediately, so that he should be in no doubt that she was willing.

  It would have been a relief to be tracked by human beings, by spies such as ordinary businesses used. Instead, she was being monitored by a shadow, and felt reduced to a shadow herself. A shadow, an echo. Whereas no one could monitor Nicholas, who moved to his prey like a cat, traced from field to field, grove to grove by the streamers of terrified birdsong.

  She had one servant with her, and an escort to protect her whole baggage, which she had been expected to bring. Despite her leisurely progress, she might, by hastening, have arrived at his camp before dusk, but instead chose to pass the night at an inn in St Omer. She spent money freely. It was her marriage endowment from Nicholas. There was plenty of it.

  Movement by night from a town was forbidden, or possible only for officials or burgesses. Nicholas was neither, but gold or threats must have served, otherwise she would never have been roused by a terrified maid in the night, with a message that she was to dress and depart. Outside, her own escort had gone and strangers waited. The sergeant carried a note in the script that, in Arabic, in Italian, in Flemish, she had seen on tablets in Africa, in Venice, in Spangnaerts Street: the quick, clear, tutored handwriting of her husband. She was to go with his soldiers to Hesdin, leaving her maid and her boxes behind. He did not mention the child.

  Because of the child, she must go. She understood perfectly what was happening. As she had drawn him from Scotland and Bruges, dispatched him painfully on fool’s errands, chasing the will-o’-the-wisp of the child, so he now held the same lever. Only he, the ultimate engineer, manipulator, Master of Secrets, would use it in his own way, and this time to punish her.

  Wherever she was going, the child would not be there. Whatever, whoever awaited her at the end of this night, she did not think it would be Nicholas. It was strange then that, wrested from her bed, thrown on horseback, she found herself possessed by a vast and painful excitement, a surge of exhilaration that fell upon the chance, at last, to ride fast and hard to where, of all the world, she longed most to go.

  The journey occupied four hours, and was made with fresh horses, changing twice to maintain the highest level of speed. No one spoke. Gelis van Borselen was a good horsewoman, and had set out well rested from Bruges at a pace whose agonising slowness she had cause now to be thankful for. She regretted only that, riding, it was not practical to arrive at her destination as finely gowned as she would have preferred. The boy of the Sinai desert, the travel-stained woman of Venice were due to be forgotten. Then she bit her lip, thinking how seldom appearance had ever had anything to do with him, or with her. The night fled by, and in the torchlight no one saw that sometimes she wept unawares as she rode.

  They arrived with the first of the dawn. Already her shadow was moving before her when she saw a powder of lights far ahead and, suddenly, the high ruddy twinkle of glass. She had known, since they entered the parkland, that this was not the road to the Burgundian camp. She was being brought somewhere else to stand trial for what she had done. All the same, even when coursing the green wooded vale of the Canche, she still dismissed the ducal château as a likely destination. Hesdin was too unsubtle a choice for the subtle Nicholas of this brittle war.

  And again, Nicholas had used her expectations to trick her. The great building blurred in the distance could be nothing other than Hesdin, enchanted theatre of marvels. The towers and turrets crowded the sky, and presently the walls could be seen, and the great sculptured mass of the gatehouse. The vaulted entrance was dark, but there were lights visible throughout the château, its walls flushing now with the dawn. Even unoccupied, a ducal stronghold would merit a garrison.

  She saw the flash of armour from outside the entrance, and discerned double doors standing open, and men-at-arms in the tunnel behind them. She could not see who else waited among them. Then her sergeant brought her troop to a halt and, jumping down, helped her dismount. She found with anger that she was shaking, and was curt with him, to show she was not afraid. She saw she was to go onwards alone. She shook back her hood and walked forward.

  Within the vault, no one moved. Her eyes strained, she thought she could distinguish civilian headgear mixed with the helms: the hat of the governor, perhaps; the veil of some lady proposed as her servant or chaperone. She was a van Borselen, related to princes. She would be treated with ceremony. She was sure, then, that Nicholas was not here, or if he were, that he waited for her indoors. Inside Hesdin, palace of mischief.

  She was still thinking so when she realised that among the anonymous watchers was a man of greater height than the rest, richly and quietly dressed. His identity was lost in the gloom, but she knew him as if he had called. It was Nicholas.

  He let her traverse almost the whole way to the gatehouse before he stirred, and strolled out with his shadow to meet her, alone in the roseate light. She stopped and waited.

  Once, from a window in Florence, she had looked down on someone she thought was fashioned like this: brown-haired and solid and calm. She had forgotten, till now, how different Nicholas was. It was like forgetting birth, or the sea. The seething, chopped tides of the sea, with combers of violet and crimson emerging. The walls of the palace were red, and behind him the spires of the gatehouse were burning like torches. He lifted his head, deigning to give her at last his attention, and met her gaze with his own.

  Time stopped. For
almost five months she had meditated on what she would say to him, and how she would say it. She had planned it in anguish and bitterness. She had not forced herself further: to visualise how he would look, or what she would feel when she saw him. Perhaps he had not either, or perhaps the long silence from which, bemused, she began to emerge was deliberate. She realised that her escort was waiting behind her, and that the group by the gatehouse was murmuring.

  Now the sky flamed; the air they breathed was dyed red; the palace windows glittered and burned. She choked, her throat clearing at last, and saw Nicholas smiling at last: the brilliant, deep-dimpled smile that filled her with horror. Before she could speak, he unloosed a hand and, smiling still, indicated the way through the yards to the palace.

  ‘Walk over with me,’ he said.

  Clémence de Coulanges heard the words from the entrance, and caught the suffocating change on the young woman’s face. It arose perhaps from debility. Once of exceptional looks, the girl had grown hollow, as many wives did in a crisis of marriage. The husbands were most often unmoved, unless to guilty bad temper.

  To Mistress Clémence, M. de Fleury had shown nothing that morning of either impatience or temper. They had been at Hesdin for an hour. All the time his wife’s cortège approached, dim against the dawn light, and even when the Lady dismounted, M. de Fleury had stood motionless; had indeed let her walk for some distance before he moved forward to greet her. Then, cruelly perhaps, he had said nothing. Mistress Clémence saw that the Lady herself was struck dumb, either from fear or from nervousness. The silence, as it stretched, became ominous, like the deadening of sound when a cannonade stops. Then M. de Fleury had uttered four simple words.