To Lie with Lions Read online

  And concealed he had been, sometimes in this house or that, but always with Mistress Clémence and old Pasque to look after him, and his mother too, when it was safe. And it even seemed that the Lady’s fears must be right, because the husband did actually come, and bring a troop of armed men to the convent, and try to torture the servants, Heaven preserve us! But the child had been taken away, and was safe, of course, with his nurses.

  Then the Lady had followed her husband to the Holy Land, so they were told, to soften his heart towards her and the child. From that she had come back full of hope for the future, only to be betrayed by her so-called friend Margot. So the father, Nicholas de Fleury the torturer, had been able to kidnap the baby at last, and have his nurses brought to the ship where the child was, and demand that they serve him.

  Nicholas de Fleury. Pasque would never forget the day she first set eyes on him; neither would Mistress Clémence, for all she planted herself on the floor of the cabin, chin up and hands clasped at her apron, as if about to complain to a tradesman. Being small, Pasque stood behind.

  He was a very big man, M. de Fleury. She had seen smiths of that build, although none buttoned up to the chin in his pourpoint like this one, seated at a tidy chart-desk like a clerk, with pen and paper before him. He didn’t rise. His voice, smartly outlining his proposals, alarmed her by the excellence of its Burgundian French: they had been told he was Flemish. His hair was brown like the child’s, but there seemed, at first, no other resemblance that hit you. His eyes, although of the same grey, were big and fixed and bright as a drunk Marseilles monkey’s. Pasque had edged closer to Clémence.

  He said, ‘I recognise you have long served my wife. I am not asking you to be disloyal to the lady, but to extend the devotion you have shown since his birth to my son. For that, I am prepared, as I have said, to improve your fees and maintain your conditions of service. If you wish anything more, you must tell me.’

  ‘Thank you,’ had said Mistress Clémence, in the bold way that Pasque would have called cheeky. ‘A little clarification, perhaps? We are still, so far as I know, in the dame de Fleury’s employment. When the child returns to her care, she may well accuse us of breaking a contract.’

  ‘The child will not return to her care,’ said M. de Fleury. Pasque shuffled.

  ‘I see,’ said Mistress Clémence. ‘Then, monseigneur, I have to ask you what prospect we have for the future, with a broken contract behind us? What are your plans for the boy?’

  ‘To rear him myself, with your help,’ said M. de Fleury. He paused. He added, ‘It is even possible that the lady my wife may join us one day. Should that occur, I am sure she would feel nothing but gratitude for your continuing care of her son.’

  Mistress Clémence said nothing. Sometimes her silences maddened Pasque. M. de Fleury waited and then produced a curious smile. Two dents appeared in his cheeks. Pasque stared at them.

  He said, ‘I am buying your commitment to Jordan de Fleury, not to me, Mistress Clémence. Be his friend, and when the day comes to part, I shall see that you both lack for nothing. I shall write it into your contract, if you wish.’

  Be his friend. Pasque grinned to herself, even as Mistress Clémence narrowed her gaze. Mistress Clémence said, ‘I am a nurse. I train a child in my own way. The dame de Fleury has been pleased to support both me and my methods. I should expect the same freedom at least.’

  ‘You would have it,’ he said. The two dimples had gone.

  Then Mistress Clémence glanced round for Pasque’s nod, and said in her firm voice, ‘In that case, monseigneur, we agree.’ And just as she spoke, they both heard a high voice outside: a child’s voice; the voice of a child calling their names.

  Upon that, M. de Fleury had opened the door, and there stood Jordan de Fleury, thumb in mouth, his upturned eyes swimming about like two fish-floats until he saw his own Clemme and Paque. The thumb trailed down at once over the sopping wet chin, and there were the two shining front teeth and the dimples, growing deeper and deeper just like the father’s. And now there was no doubt about it. Here was a man and his son, and whatever was to come, Pasque and Mistress Clémence were contracted to serve them.

  Although she had exacted the best terms she could, the decision, for Clémence de Coulanges, had been unavoidable. She owed it to the child she had reared for two years, and who still required her protection.

  Against what, she was not as yet certain. Her view of the Lady differed slightly from Pasque’s. Every nurse knew what reliance to place on the claims of quarrelling parents. Consistently the mother had hidden the child – perhaps from fear; perhaps because of threats from the father. Or perhaps from nothing but shame, because the boy had been conceived far too soon.

  Naturally, as the child grew, its precise age was no longer apparent. Yet it had remained out of sight, however far off its father might be. And this frightened lady had abandoned her son for four months, for six months at a time.

  Mistress Clémence did not believe in according blame lightly. She could judge the depths of anguish to which M. de Fleury had now subjected his lady. She saw that there was some sort of battle engaged between husband and wife. It was for her, with Pasque’s help, to ensure that the child came to no harm from it all.

  She did not realise, at the start, that M. de Fleury intended to keep them at sea for five weeks. Fortunately, she was impervious to the motion of vessels, nor could she complain of her quarters or treatment. A meeting was called, at which she explained the child’s routine and requirements, while a quartermaster made notes, like a commissary preparing for war. Everything she asked for she got. She enquired at which hours the child should be brought to his father, and was told that the boy should be kept out of sight unless summoned.

  ‘I knew it!’ said Pasque, when informed. ‘The man is set on chastising his lady, and the baby is nothing!’

  ‘Then we should be thankful,’ Mistress Clémence replied. ‘At least M. de Fleury has not abstracted the child in order to disfigure or harm it.’

  M. de Fleury himself, she had seen, bore a scar: a thin white line many years old, which scored his face from eye to mouth on one side. She studied him whenever she could, for much of a man’s nature by thirty could be judged from his body and face. It struck her, in those early days, that the well-dressed M. de Fleury looked jaded, bleak as a mercenary returned starving from war – although, of course, he had not come from war.

  His upbringing was not easy to guess. To carry such muscle and bone he had not been stinted in childhood; but then masters made sure of strong servants: the broad hands knew how to handle a sword, but might be equally at home in a workshop. Somewhere he had been taught to hold himself properly; or perhaps it was a trait born of pride. A straight back was worth more than a smile; she believed and taught that herself.

  This man did not smile. She registered the bulk of brown hair, professionally cut to dip under his cap, and the broad jaw and strong neck within it. The face was Burgundian; that curious mixture of races in which, here, the broad mask of the Low Countries predominated, although the austerely drawn nose hinted at some strain of Latin or Celtic. The whole was dominated by the pellucid and widely set eyes which in a boy’s face might spell merry innocence, but here produced the immense leaden gaze which had so alarmed Pasque. His skin was pale, unless you counted the faint jaundiced tint left by last year’s Egyptian sun. She thought, if he made a threat, he would fulfil it. She could detect no wish to be liked, or to like.

  The ship that carried them all was a small merchant vessel with no passengers but for themselves and the servants of M. de Fleury. Such a ship was almost independent of shore, carrying livestock and water and plentiful food with her cargo. There was a cow, milked every morning.

  M. de Fleury had been true to his edict, and had made no effort to see them. For the first day, in any case, she had kept the child quiet. Although it was February still, the waters of the Gulf of Venice were kind, and the boy slept to their motion. None the less, she assem
bled the ropes she had asked for, and by the time the child made his first journey on deck, she had arranged a composition of lashings among which he moved, a little uncertain, his brown hair flicked by the wind, his eyes round. That day she saw M. de Fleury in the distance, talking to one of the seamen. He moved off shortly without looking round, but she saw the child stand and gaze.

  The next day, she heard the page lifting the pail, and carried the child in his wake to witness the milking. The page, an unexceptional youth, expected the boy to be frightened or thrilled, as if dairies were unknown in nunneries. Yet, having small brothers, he talked to the boy, and gave him a drink. Coming up, they saw M. de Fleury again in the distance, kneeling over something on the deck. She felt the child halt, but a moment later, M. de Fleury had gone. It annoyed her.

  She made no effort therefore, the following day, to stop the child when, seeing the familiar figure again, the boy suddenly tugged his hand free and went forward. Did the man think the child had no wits? This was the person who had brought him from Venice, who had stayed with him until she, Clémence, had reached him. Only perhaps a matter of hours, but a child, a friendly child, would remember all that. And now he was being ignored. She watched him cross the deck in his harness, his cheeks red, his brows straight; and this time M. de Fleury looked up, and paused. Then he said, ‘Look at these,’ and sat back on his heels.

  She could not see to what he referred: she thought the objects were raisins. The child sat and M. de Fleury bent forward. The two heads, hessian brown, leaned together. She could hear the child’s high, erratic voice and the other leisurely, masculine one, but could not distinguish the words. Then the man started to rise and the child, getting itself to its feet, faced towards Clémence and said, ‘Que Jodi mange?’

  ‘Jodi?’ said the man.

  She winced. ‘I am training him out of it. He finds his name hard to say. The nuns called him Bouton de Fleury.’

  ‘I prefer either to Jordan,’ said M. de Fleury. ‘Jodi wants to eat carob seeds. There is a carob seed.’

  ‘Carobs are nasty,’ said Mistress Clémence, looking him in the eyes.

  ‘Carob seeds are very nasty,’ he agreed. He had let the child take one. Jodi opened his mouth.

  M. de Fleury said, ‘Put it in, have a taste, spit it out. Now here are some raisins …’

  The child threw the seed down and stretched out his hand.

  ‘… but we must ask Mistress Clémence if it is a good time to eat them. Is it allowed?’

  ‘I think it is,’ she said, using her agreeable voice, and the child backed confidently into her arm, pleased, his cheeks full of fruit. M. de Fleury dusted his fingers, nodded, and began to walk off.

  The child half took his weight from her arm and then stopped. The man continued to walk. Just as she thought he had gone he turned and lifted a hand, and she saw the child’s face break into its own private, generous smile, a dimple deep as a pool in each cheek. Then Mistress Clémence took him below and gave him to Pasque, for she wanted time to consider whether the reason for the long meandering journey had now been explained.

  The days and weeks that followed proved her correct. Never in her experience had courtship of lovers been conducted with the finesse of this wordless dialogue between a man and his son. It progressed as it had begun, forming a relationship which included small treats, small adventures, small gifts; but was not built upon them. After a very few days a trust formed; the preternatural tension began to relax.

  On the fourth day, M. de Fleury did not come at the usual time. The child strayed, inattentive, from one side of the deck to the other, and hardly replied to the seamen who called to him. When the man did appear, the boy slipped his hand free and went forward. Mistress Clémence halted and watched as M. de Fleury slackened his pace and strolled over.

  His appearance had changed. There was a faint warmth in his skin, and fewer hollows, and his shirt was unjewelled and creased. He looked like the student sons she remembered, who used to sleep deeply and late, and then invade her busy nursery, demanding break-fast. He stayed with the child longer than usual, and once laughed aloud.

  Mistress Clémence said nothing, but from the next day took her deck-walk much later, to accommodate whatever deferred convalescence was taking place. More: as their patron came to himself, so the disembodied ship, the meandering voyage seemed to find positive focus. The sea turned blue and sparkled with light. Approaching an island, the spaces of canvas and timber would fill with the aroma of flowers. Fish would splash in the waves and nesting birds pause in the rigging, where the nameless pennant flew among stars. Jodi said, ‘Where is maman?’

  He had asked Mistress Clémence before, and she had replied plainly as she usually did, although making no promises. And the child seldom fussed since, in the past, his lady mother had always come back, and he was used to friendly faces about him.

  But this time, the child asked M. de Fleury, who happened to be in the cabin improving his horse. Latterly it had become apparent that wooden articles bought in the marketplace lacked a certain character which M. de Fleury could supply. A knife, a brush, a paint pot and, it seemed, endless patience had already produced articles which decorated not only the child’s room but the ship, and chirped, rang or clattered to order. As its patron had revived, so the ship itself had begun to stir with new life.

  But now, the question was put, and not, this time, to Mistress Clémence. The child began to finger its toy; a stranger would think that its interest had wandered. Mistress Clémence said nothing. M. de Fleury wiped his brush, laid it carefully down and turned his full gaze on the child. They were both on the floor. He said, ‘Ta maman te manque?’

  You miss your mother? Mistress Clémence gave a dry cough. The child wanted an answer, not an abstract expression of loss. Then she saw the man had suddenly got to his feet and was holding out first one hand, then two. The child scrambled up, and let himself be lifted and swept to the poop windows.

  The man swung him round. ‘You see that land over there, far away? Madame ta mère is over there. She cannot come, she is busy. But there are horses for riding over there, and fine boats, and hound-puppies, and cows to be milked. And one day you and I and Mistress Clémence and Pasque will sail to that shore, and find some boats, and some horses, and will ride to where maman will meet us.’

  ‘Soon?’ said the child. He looked up and round.

  ‘Soon,’ said M. de Fleury. His voice was easy but his gaze, turned to Mistress Clémence, was dense and unyielding as pewter, as it had been when first they met.

  That time, the play with the horse was resumed and the child, she saw, was content. Only, several days later, he said again to the man, ‘And so, where is maman?’

  And the man, looking at him, picked him up and seated him again in the crook of his arm and walked again to the windows. ‘Why, you see that land over there, far away? Madame ta mère is over there. She cannot come, she is busy, M. le bouton.’

  ‘Horses,’ said the child.

  ‘But there are horses for riding over there …’

  ‘Boats.’

  ‘And fine boats …’

  ‘Puppies.’

  ‘And hound-puppies, and cows to be milked.’

  ‘Soon?’

  ‘Of course, soon.’

  The next time, man and boy chanted the recital together, and Mistress Clémence got up and left. To Pasque she said, ‘My head ached.’

  Although a peasant, Pasque also came from Coulanges. She said, ‘He hates his lady wife. Do you believe he is truly planning to meet her?’

  And Mistress Clémence replied, after a while: ‘He is taking a great deal of trouble to attach the boy to himself. His purpose I do not know. He tells me we are sailing now for Marseilles.’

  ‘To land?’ said Pasque. When she was pleased, she displayed her very few teeth. When she was extremely pleased, she would dance.

  ‘Eventually. He is in no hurry. Then we have to prepare the child for a journey through France. Provence; Burg
undy. To Dijon in Burgundy.’

  ‘Dijon?’ said Pasque. ‘The vicomtes de Fleury come from near Dijon. Ser Nicholas wishes to show off his son to his mother?’

  ‘Hardly,’ said Mistress Clémence. The family château at Dijon was a ruin. M. de Fleury’s disgraced mother was dead; the grandfather locked away in his dotage. M. de Fleury was without brothers and sisters. The child would find no aunts or uncles to greet him at Dijon, no cousins to play with.

  ‘Then why Dijon?’ said Pasque.

  ‘I have not been told,’ said Mistress Clémence. She had herself considered the question. The child’s mother might have been sent for, or have demanded a meeting. It might be nothing to do with the child, but merely denote M. de Fleury’s return to the world of affairs. The head of a bank could not vanish for ever. And a child of two years had no place in a bank.

  ‘M. de Fleury has an army,’ Pasque remarked. ‘They say it is a good way to train up a boy, to put him among men in an army.’

  Quite simply, Nicholas de Fleury had bought himself time. For five weeks the vessel of which he was owner floated in the Middle Sea, and gold made it invisible. Even when he finally set foot on shore at Marseilles, quietness followed him still. He was well served, and although René its ruler was absent, the comté of Provence embraced the child and himself with the spring.

  The child bloomed. To the uninitiated, Nicholas de Fleury reflected the blooming: a sunlit wall of unknown composition. The journey continued northward through France. For as long as it lasted, Nicholas conducted his life with perfect and costly simplicity, as he had done for three months. Then, reaching Dijon at last, he sat down one day in his room and, taking out his pen and his seals, sent out the commands that would set into motion the plan he had already long formed: the plan interrupted that night in Venice, as he stood with the child in his arms and studied the weeping, desperate face of his wife.