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

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Arrived at the old lady’s house, Gelis refused to feel guilt at Bel’s manifest disappointment that the boy was not with her. The child was none of her business. Nicholas was not a widower yet. Instead of chattering about the progress of Jordan, Gelis described for her the present horrors of Dean. The Castle, with three children in it since Saturday, was a place of unrestrained uproar. The Princess, her moods vacillating between apathy, acceptance and anger, wanted the children with her at all times. Further, in a misplaced effort to help, the King had dispatched his other young sister to stay, with Katelijne Sersanders in attendance.

  ‘Then you’re lucky,’ had been Mistress Bel’s comment, as they sat on either side of a board, eating dinner. ‘There’s a hard-working lass with a touch for young children. But you’ll ken her better than me. From Bruges like yourself, and she stravaiged all over Egypt, as ye stravaiged all over Africa with your man. She did what she thought right for the child, not for him. She doesna take sides.’

  Gelis did not contradict her, for what she said was quite true. For what it was worth, Katelijne Sersanders made her own decisions. Gelis said, ‘She’s young; she likes to be in the midst of this drama or that. But she has her own troubles at present. Her aunt is still very unwell. In fact, her uncle was glad of the chance to send Katelijne away for her own sake.’

  Bel looked up. ‘She gets over-tired.’

  ‘It may have been that. But I’m told that Dame Margriet is to go back to Bruges as soon as the weather allows. Dr Andreas and her husband will take her, while the girl is away. They felt Katelijne had done more than enough, and shouldn’t be asked to abandon her life here. They are probably right.’

  ‘You ken that but she doesna?’ said Bel.

  ‘The Princess was asked to help keep her busy at Dean. By the time the girl leaves, her aunt and uncle will have gone.’

  ‘That seems cruel,’ said Bel. ‘Where is her brother?’

  ‘He has been found some task to keep him away for the moment. I think it is cruel,’ Gelis said. ‘But it may have been what Margriet wanted. She hoped that Katelijne would marry in Scotland. The girl was young to nurse a woman in childbed.’

  ‘From what I have seen of Katelijne Sersanders,’ said Bel, ‘she will marry whoever commonsense tells her to, and will have as many children as she knows will be reasonable, while conducting a perfectly satisfactory life that has nothing to do with either. In Kathi, the fire burns in a different place.’

  She spoke in earnest. Gelis was almost tempted to respond in the same vein. ‘You talk as if I could be jealous,’ she said.

  ‘Do I?’ said Bel. ‘Well, that would be foolish. It would presuppose love, or at least ownership. And even if that were to be the case, it is not the girls in his life that you should fear. Or not unless they are as clever as you are.’

  Gelis pushed her plate away smoothly. ‘He is not a lover of men.’

  ‘Heaven forgive me,’ said Bel. ‘Could you have known Umar in Africa, and think of nothing but physical love? There are two kinds. There are two hundred kinds, come to that. And if you are going to be jealous, you had better be jealous of them all, for one of them will take Nicholas from you.’

  Her gaze was direct and uncompromising. Gelis met it in the same way. She said, ‘This is not a subject I want to discuss,’ and Bel, shrugging, desisted. They rode to Beltrees next day, a Wednesday, in the rain, with Oliver Semple and two grooms to guide them.

  She had expected something grandiose and found it, inside. But the buildings themselves, when they had ridden the length of the gentle grey loch and over the brow of the hill, were simple in line, although the architect had been given, or taken free rein to embellish the gutters and windows. The principal edifice was a tall restored keep, to which a new range of buildings had been added. A company of horse could have found quarters within and outside the walls of its courtyard, and the guest-chambers were equally spacious. There were signs of an elaborate garden. It had been built, Gelis guessed, both as a challenge to Kilmirren and to match it. Certainly, it would be an adequate station for defence or attack. It was not, however, the flamboyant base for a barony.

  She said as much to Bel, walking through the principal room of the tower and opening one of the windows. Bel licked her finger and, joining her, removed a spot on one of the painted panes. She rubbed it squeakily dry before answering. ‘You think he wants a title for Jordan.’

  ‘I’m sure he does,’ Gelis said. ‘And, of course, for himself.’ Bel was looking at her. She waited to see what the old lady had to say.

  Bel said, ‘I wouldna quarrel with that. I’ve changed my mind these last days. I’d like fine to see Nicholas de Fleury settled here. And yourself. And the bairn.’

  ‘Would you?’ said Gelis.

  ‘Why so surprised?’ the old woman said. She turned aside and shifted a basin, rearranging the flask at its side. Both were of silver.

  Gelis said, ‘I slept with Simon.’

  ‘Everybody has,’ said the old woman. ‘You’ll not do it again. Nobody does.’

  ‘I kept the baby from Nicholas,’ Gelis said. ‘You were against that.’

  ‘I wasna against your wedding,’ the old lady said. ‘And he’s got his child now.’

  ‘You blamed him for Lucia’s death,’ Gelis said. ‘He’s killed others. He nearly killed Simon, and Adorne. He nearly killed me.’

  ‘Did he?’ said Bel. ‘I thought the fall was an accident.’

  ‘I wasn’t talking of Hesdin,’ said Gelis. ‘He tried to get me to–’ She stopped.

  ‘What?’ said Bel of Cuthilgurdy. ‘What, Gelis?’ The cold light on her face made her look older even than fifty-two. Then slowly her expression changed and, stretching one hand, she shut and fastened the window while she drew Gelis away with the other. Her fists were puffy and small; her touch so light Gelis could hardly feel it. Bel said, ‘Come to the brazier. We’re not going to talk if you don’t want to. You’re saying, if I understand you, that Nicholas is not to be trusted, and I won’t say you’re wrong. But ye came back.’

  ‘For Jordan,’ said Gelis. There was a painting with a watered silk hanging, and a walnut firescreen, and an inlaid desk with a beautiful hour-glass standing on it. The cushions were of tooled leather with tassels.

  ‘And you are staying for Jordan?’ the old lady said. ‘If Nicholas makes Beltrees his home, you would stay here? Or if he goes, will you let him?’

  ‘Let him?’ said Gelis.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Bel. ‘You are holding each other. That much is obvious, even to me.’

  They stood facing one another. Gelis turned and touched the basin that Bel had aligned. She said, ‘So what were you trying to do? Beggar him?’

  Bel smiled. It was a tired smile, but with a good deal of mischief still lurking there. She said, ‘Just say I was trying to save him from spending it on something much dafter. But I’d help him win to a title. For Jordan’s sake.’

  Gelis said, ‘Which Jordan? If Nicholas wants to establish a dynasty here, don’t you think he’ll get rid of both Jordan de Ribérac and Simon? Unless they get rid of him first.’

  ‘They arena here,’ said Bel of Cuthilgurdy. ‘And he is. Come. Master Oliver will expect us downstairs.’

  They did not talk of Nicholas directly again, Bel being, as Gelis knew, an (astute) respecter of boundaries. In the days that followed they gradually fell into something extraordinarily like their old easy companionship, riding, walking and talking on the boundless variety of subjects on which Bel had an opinion, usually provocative. It was a respite. But, as the days went by and Nicholas failed to appear, an end had to be made. Bel made no objection when Gelis announced her departure to Dean, and they rode back to Bel’s house and parted. She had been away for six days.

  Returned to Dean, Gelis found that nothing had changed save for the departure of Katelijne in the wake of a summons, it seemed, from her brother. The reason was not crystal clear, except that it had to do with her ailing aunt Margriet. Wiping compas
sion from her freckled young face, the lady Margaret proposed that Dame Gelis could be her attendant instead. Dame Gelis, in a single smooth diplomatic operation, made her peace with the Countess, persuaded Margaret that the Countess’s attendants would be far weaker card-players than she was, and extracted herself from Dean with her nurses and Jordan. In any case, Jordan wanted to go back to Edinburgh and say his long poem for papa.

  It was a disappointment for everyone when the High Street house, when they reached it, proved to have no word of papa. Depositing Jordan, Gelis rode down to the counting-house in the Canongate and fared no better with Govaerts. M. de Fleury had left for the coast and had not yet come back. Applied to, Archie of Berecrofts took off her cloak, gave her warm drinks, and explained apologetically that her crazy husband had been for over two weeks at sea.

  ‘At sea!’ Gelis exclaimed. ‘I thought –’ She broke off.

  Archie grinned. ‘He’s a secretive bastard. Wanted me to go with him. He had this idea of arriving before anyone else at the herring grounds, but his big ship from Danzig wasn’t ready. So he took the new doggers from Leith. Two of them.’

  ‘They won’t get very far,’ Gelis said.

  ‘They don’t have to. The grounds aren’t all that many miles off. But a dogger can’t stand up to a Hanse ship. I thought they’d be back before now, glad of whatever fish they had managed to catch.’

  ‘Has it been stormy?’ she said.

  ‘Nothing out of the way,’ Archie said. ‘Nothing that Nicol and Robin, for God’s sake, couldn’t handle.’

  He smiled, so that she shouldn’t guess how erratic the weather had been, and that his anxiety was far keener than hers. Nor did he say, because he assumed that she knew, that Anselm Adorne and his wife had departed for Bruges in her absence. It was only when, leaving, Gelis asked after Katelijne and her aunt that Berecrofts realised that the girl was no longer at Dean; and Gelis learned that Katelijne had not come back to Edinburgh.

  Gelis said, ‘I am sure there is no cause for alarm. She will be with Sersanders her brother.’

  As was often the case with the van Borselen, Gelis was not just inadvertently right, but catastrophically so. Having seen off his uncle and aunt, Anselm Sersanders followed his predestined plan and crossed to the west coast of Scotland. After a sojourn of two days at Ayr, he was able to greet and board the great ship of his uncle. On the same day, the fourth of March, Sersanders wrote and dispatched a farewell note to his sister at Dean.

  In this he told her, in the kindest way possible, why their uncle and aunt had gone home without her. In his pride and delight he went further, and informed her where he, Anselm, was going, and why. It did not occur to him that his ship might wish to stop overnight for fresh stores, or that a courier from Ayr to Dean Castle might arrive, in hope of reward, the same day.

  Kathi read her brother’s letter alone and sore-hearted. Love had prompted her uncle to spare her; he had not known that she did not want to be spared. The sprawling writing continued, uneven in its excitement. Guess what, Kathi! Uncle Adorne had a ship freighted and hiding all winter in Donegal. It was coming to pick up her brother at Ayr. He was to command it in place of his uncle, and Martin of the Vatachino was coming to help him. And they were going to return from the north with a fortune.

  So far as she knew, her brother had never commanded a ship in his life. He was similarly ill-equipped to deal with feminine logic, believing that, dazzled by the bravura, she couldn’t work out with ease what a herd of puerile merchants was blundering into. Exasperated, she put her mind to a little hard reasoning.

  The ship was fully freighted, deliberately positioned in Ireland, and hiding. Ships had been known to do that before fairs, to scoop a valuable market. They hid from rivals, and also from pirates. But there were no fairs in the north worth this trouble; her uncle would hardly circumnavigate Scotland to end up in Bergen op Zoom.

  But the fortune was to come from the north. Was the ship concealed because the trip was illicit? Martin of the Vatachino would have no qualms, she was sure. But Uncle Adorne, magistrate and Burgundian councillor, engaged in illegal trade?

  It was possible. Driven by unusual provocation, it was possible. So what illegal profit could tempt a man to sail north at the tail end of winter?

  There was one. Thinking of it, Katelijne remembered what the lady Gelis had said about the whereabouts of M. de Fleury. Still thinking, she went to make arrangements to pack, while searching her memory for someone else who had talked of the north, but not recently: someone who had stayed with her uncle in Bruges. Then she remembered who it was.

  She went and found the lady Mary and lied. She said her brother had summoned her.

  The Countess was in one of her moods. ‘You want to leave?’

  ‘I must. Today, my lady,’ Kathi said. ‘But Dame Gelis will be back very soon, and Jordan is happy here. I was telling him today how you bought his father’s lovely parrot three years ago. And then you found a new house, with little birds with great red beaks all round it.’

  ‘Poffins,’ said the King’s sister. To Kathi’s distress, her eyes filled with tears. ‘Our little house on Nólsoy that summer. We were safe. He taught me –’ She broke off. A tear rolled down her cheek and Kathi took her hand in both hers.

  ‘The Earl your husband taught you to fish. In the Faroe Islands.’

  ‘Only on Nólsoy. I told you, we were hiding. All through the summer, ships came into Tórshavn from Iceland, for stores and shelter and pilots. We had to stay hidden.’

  ‘Iceland,’ said Kathi.

  ‘From the cod-fishing in Iceland. Sometimes they came in with dead men, or wounded. Everyone fights over stockfish: a single ship’s load is worth seven hundred pounds, did you know? They fished all that summer we spent there. Then the Earl and I left to come south. Our baby was born at your uncle’s in Bruges. Jamie, my darling. I shall never see Nólsoy again. I shall never see Tom again,’ the Countess exclaimed, and cried harder.

  Later, she tried to recover her calm. ‘M. de Fleury said I must be patient, or I could endanger Tom’s life. I must think of Tom, not myself.’

  Kathi gritted her teeth. She said, ‘It was M. de Fleury who helped you escape.’

  The Countess gave a watery smile. ‘And his shipmaster, Crackbene. Crackbene had friends in the Faroes who helped us. But yes: without M. de Fleury, Tom and I would never have been together in Nólsoy, with the poffins.’

  ‘Dear M. de Fleury,’ said Katelijne.

  ‘Why?’ said Betha Sinclair, coming in with a brisk curtsey. ‘What has he done?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said the lady Mary, drying her eyes. ‘We were just talking of Nólsoy.’

  ‘Were you?’ said Betha Sinclair. ‘And persuading Kathi, I hope, not to leave.’

  Kathi could not tell them the truth. She could only repeat that her brother had called her to Edinburgh. She found herself moved and distressed by their determination to keep her at Dean. She rode off wretchedly in the end, with Betha standing foursquare and cross in the doorway, and Jodi waving happily from the arms of his nurse. Margaret, pleased to have one keeper the fewer, was already tormenting poor Pasque.

  Katelijne travelled quite a respectable distance before she ordered her escort to turn about and spur to a gallop. They were surprised, but they did what she asked. Ayr was not far away.

  Chapter 21

  HALFWAY TO THE islands of Orkney, with the Svipa pitching and rolling and the sea crashing green into her waist, it occurred to Nicholas, as it still occasionally did, that he was happy. Since this could have nothing to do with the weather, which had been consistently fearsome, it must have evolved from his memories: home-made rafts on the lake at Geneva; his first tuition from John on the voyage to Trebizond; his first command of his own ship at Lagos. And despite all that later had happened, the tranquillity of the Nile and the Joliba; the sail with John, full of hope, to Alexandria; the cloudless small passage from Gaza. The voyages, high in expectation, here to Scotland. The healing sweetn
ess last spring, with his son.

  But of course, past contentment was not the sole cause of his pleasure. He liked the physical challenge, and the camaraderie, and the isolation from the rest of the world. Isolation from all responsibility save that owed to the ship and its men.

  This ship named the Svipa, the Whip.

  He spoke to the helmsman who was lashed, as he was. Lutkyn Mere was a pirate, of Danish birth, and spoke several languages. Most of the crew did; although at present he had to converse in broken Danish with Yuri and Dmitri, the Muscovite father and son. There was an Orcadian related to Mowat who spoke all the Scandinavian tongues, and two from the Baltic, fluent in German. Between them, they could navigate from Finland to Greenland and back. The rest of the seamen had spent the last years crewing and fighting with Crackbene. He had known them all by name before twenty-four hours were out. He would trust few of them on land and all of them at sea.

  John and Moriz had reached, he supposed, the same conclusion. John the mathematician, whose calculations Crackbene respected. The dwarfish chaplain from Augsburg who, through resolution or prayer, had found his sea legs at last, and his appetite. And Robin, whom he had not meant to bring at all.

  When Berecrofts the Younger wouldn’t come, Nicholas had had to make up his mind quickly. He had made this decision before: to allow a boy to prove out his manhood. Felix de Charetty his step-son had died. This voyage, central to all that he planned, was unusually dangerous. He had not pretended otherwise to Archie of Berecrofts – but he had not said, either, what their real destination was. Had he known, Berecrofts might not have allowed Robin to go. It had therefore been the decision of Nicholas, not of Archie. He knew what Moriz thought of it, and of him. Then he looked at Robin’s ecstatic face, and listened to his shouts as he raced up the rigging with Dmitri, and thought that he had been right. Dmitri was only a year older than Robin, and Yuri had brought him. It didn’t strike him that Robin was happy because he was happy.