To Lie with Lions (80 page)

Leaving Les Ponts-de-Cé, he was offered an escort, but chose to travel insignificantly and apparently unarmed, in a worn tunic with a hat on the back of his head and a packmule of the kind a travelling craftsman might have. He hired a boy to accompany him. He was given anything that he wanted, and carried inside his shirt a pouch of jewels, two of which had a name. Louis had been generous.

He elected to journey back along the Loire valley, with the intention of striking north some way between Tours and Blois. He had been out of touch with the Bank for five weeks, but knew from de Commynes that Astorre’s company at least was intact, and little in action. His pendulum told him daily what else he needed to know. He planned to travel quickly, once he had paid a visit to Chouzy.

A prince should spend a third of his revenue, someone said, on his spies. You could say much the same of a merchant. He had no reason to doubt the record of Clémence de Coulanges and of Pasque, loyal for nearly four years to Gelis and to himself, if you excepted what had happened at Veere. Even so, he commissioned agents to check it. Reports suggested that they had spoken the truth: both had been found through the Abbey of Notre Dame de La Guiche. Pasque belonged to one of the many peasant families who supplied their daily servants. Mistress Clémence had been reared there, a dependant of the seigneur Bernard de Chouzy and his wife. They still took an interest in her, it appeared. They had come, in his absence, to visit Clémence and Pasque at Dijon.

It seemed natural; he could see nothing sinister in it. Nevertheless, since he was passing, he meant to make some enquiries, and rode unescorted and unmarked in order to do so. He left the Loire five miles short of Blois and, turning up the valley of the Cisse, rode slowly past the walls of the manor of Chouzy until he reached Coulanges beyond, where he reserved a room in a primitive tavern. He stopped at the Abbey of La Guiche on the way, and they told him all he wanted to know, even showing their records. He could see nothing wrong: the only other piece of local gossip they furnished he had already half guessed. He might have regretted his own small charade except that he was enjoying it, and he was perfectly sure, from long experience, that he was not being followed. There was even a proverb. ‘It’s gone to Coulanges,’ they said, when something had vanished.

The valley was beautiful. Sunk on the edge of the forest of Blois, it brimmed with the scent of hot grapes, hanging heavy in the groves just above, and reverberated to the rumble and splash of the flour-mills, devouring the first of the grain of the petite Beauce. This time he could dismount and talk to the hot-faced families he found working above the sparkling water. He sat with the boy, breaking bread with them, and listening to the snatches of laughter and song. Two of the Clarisses he had met at La Guiche passed, riding mules, their gleaming wimples directed towards him, and once he saw a servant cantering past, with the Chouzy blazon on his sleeve. Later, when he had eaten and slept for an hour in the tavern, he took his horse alone and found his way through hamlets and orchards back to the Loire, where the late sun lit the sandy banks and cool water. Tying his horse, he stripped to his small clothes, and swam.

Here he was alone. The river of kings carried him onwards in silence. He became aware of the broad unchanging harmony of its passage, decorated by the liquid surge of his body, and the sweet,
high flourish as it surfed about distant stones. He heard birdsong, and music, and words filled his mind like the scent of the grapes. His senses woke. Behind, in another dimension, a man was speaking in Greek. Bessarion, discoursing on Plato, on Platonic love. What he felt now, loosed to the sun and the water, was not Platonic love. It was unbearable.

Just then, he saw the men on the shore, two of them, leaning against their mounts, talking. He noticed them because of the horse, a prince of a chestnut with a cream-coloured tail, loosely hobbled, its nostrils flared, patiently watching as if it were waiting for him. Then behind, half out of sight, he saw the girl.

He knew her. The blaze of emotion stopped his throat so that he had to fight to stay where he was, against the push of the current. He saw the face, pale as a Venetian mask above the light robe, but the hair about it was brown.

He exclaimed. The girl vanished. The grooms, when he looked for them, had gone as well, and all the horses. When, lifting himself out of the water, he stood where they had been, he could see nothing, not even a hoof-mark. And behind, beyond the reedy bushes that sprang by the shore, there was nothing either: no road, no trace of a building, merely the orchards heavy with fruit, and a copse of beeches, with the smoke of a hamlet rising beyond them.

Tell your doctors that you never have waking dreams
. The girl had been no one he knew. The girl had been no one.

The sun was sinking. The air, losing its heat, made him shiver. He had turned to step back into the water when the nearest hedge trembled, and he faced about, thinking he was wrong; it had been real; the grooms had come back. Instead, three different men stepped out and began walking towards him.

These were neither grooms nor casual footpads. The sun burned like fire on their helms, and the light on their chain mail and cuirasses danced sudden and bright as a spout of dazzling hot water. They all carried clubs.

He could do nothing against them but run. He flung round to do so, and met the first blow from the three others behind him.

It was not much of a fight. He nearly succeeded in dragging them into the water, and indeed had the satisfaction of seeing one of them fall with a splash. He didn’t have time to discover whether he drowned, because the blows were coming too fast: on his head and face, on his belly and shoulders and back. They weren’t going to kill him with swords, evidence that armed men had attacked him. They were going to beat him to death. It went on, rather nastily, until at length he lay on the ground, unable to raise his arms any longer, and
one of them knelt and raising his truncheon, brought it down deliberately across both of his shins. He heard the bone crack as he cried out. Then they stood up, breathing heavily, and looked down at him. One of them spat.

When they had said anything, they had spoken in French. Floating in and out of nothingness, dizzy with pain, Nicholas made a civilised effort. ‘At least tell me. Who was so very timid that he dared not face and kill me himself?’

Someone answered, but he could not make out what he said. A helmetful of water brought his hearing back, and some of his sight. The man repeated. ‘We were to tell you. Monseigneur feared that if he set eyes on your carcass, his natural reflex would dispatch you too soon. We had orders to deliver a complaint on behalf of his grandson. Monseigneur looks forward to completing the sentence in Scotland.’

Monseigneur. Scotland. Grandson …

Jordan de Ribérac
.

Fat Father Jordan, who had not needed to follow him, for he had guessed where he would go. Fat Father Jordan, who had ordered a beating just short of death for the knave who had so inconvenienced him. For the apprentice who, this time, had inconvenienced the vicomte de Ribérac very seriously indeed.

Nicholas let his eyes close. When he opened them, intending to speak, he saw the trampled strand, the broken bushes, the blood that lay in cakes all about him, but the men-at-arms were no longer there. He lay and watched the unvarying river, until darkness fell.

After all, he had gone to Coulanges.

In Antwerp, Gelis had reached a decision. The idea had struck her some weeks before, just about the time the news arrived about this short trip that Nicholas was taking. He had Julius with him, and it was not known when he would return, or to where. He had gone, it seemed, to the Loire.

It was then the end of July. It meant at best, he could hardly be back by September. It meant, very likely, that he might not be back for some time.

She said nothing, but began to make her arrangements. When they were complete, she called in both nurses and told them her plans. She was closing the house. They were sailing immediately for Scotland.

She knew she had given them almost no time. She saw the wrinkles of distress and perplexity begin to line Pasque’s face – Pasque, with her happy dreams of the Loire finally dashed. Her compatriot’s expression gave nothing away; Mistress Clémence stood obediently throughout, showing no hint of distress or of pleasure. Merely she said, ‘Without his lordship, madame?’

‘I have decided,’ said Gelis, ‘that it is unseemly for Jodi to be brought up in a fortress. Apparently my lord is to be away for some time, in which case it will deprive us of nothing to live somewhere else. He will follow us.’

Pasque muttered under her breath. Mistress Clémence bowed her head, but somewhere in the thin-boned face Gelis thought she saw a flicker of interest. Mistress Clémence said, ‘The sieur de Fleury knows we are leaving?’

‘He will find out,’ Gelis said. ‘It is only a small change of plan. As you know, we are all to spend the winter in Scotland.’

They accepted it. There was no reason why they should not. They were merely returning earlier than the master had expected; and returning without him.

She wondered how he would like that, when his pendulum told him. She knew that he, of all people, would appreciate her yearning for freedom after the anxieties and dangers of Antwerp. She knew that he of all people knew that the dangers of Antwerp were as nothing to the dangers of Scotland, where Simon de St Pol had taken up residence. She had told Mistress Clémence that Nicholas would be sure to follow. Which of course was the truth.

She did not know, making her plans, that by the time she set forth, Nicholas would be riding to Chouzy, and the pendulum upon which she was relying was about to be stilled.

Whenever Nicholas had marsh-fever, the face of Tobie was the first he saw floating above him, with its fluffy bald head and round nostrils and disapproving small mouth. It appeared always after some time: a week perhaps, or occasionally even longer. When, therefore, it materialised on this occasion, Nicholas said, ‘What day is it?’

The acerbic expression did not change. Tobie said, ‘You have been here for two weeks.’

‘Where?’ said Nicholas with vague interest. It could be almost anywhere. Cyprus, for instance. He wouldn’t mind being ill with Tobie in Cyprus. When Tobie didn’t answer he said, mildly insisting, ‘Come on, where?’ His chest, curiously, didn’t like supplying his voice with much volume. Thinking about it, he realised he was quite badly hurt, as well as weak from the fever. Further thinking about it, he remembered what had caused the injuries. He remembered, too, the horses, the men and the girl who had vanished. He mentally cancelled the question and remarked disagreeably, closing his eyes, ‘O God, our crucified Redeemer.’

‘What’s wrong?’ said Tobie with anger.

It
was
Tobie.

Nicholas opened his eyes, as far as he could manage. Tobie, sitting beside him with his short lips and shining pink scalp and assortment of comical worry lines, said, ‘You’re in the manor of Chouzy. They found out who you were from your lad, and sent a man to the Pays de Caux to Astorre. They volunteered me to come. The Berecrofts boy’s with me. Your lad has been paid off.’

‘Thundering Poison,’ Nicholas remarked. ‘You didn’t consult me.’ He felt like Death chained at the feet of Fame, but perceived that some sign of
esprit
was required. As the pain penetrated, he remembered more of what had caused it. He was not yet capable of pursuing the problem of why Tobie had been with Astorre, or what Robin was doing here. He found Tobie was supporting him in order to give him something to drink.

Tobie said, ‘Here. They found you by the river. You’d had a bad beating. Your ribs are damaged. One leg is snapped and the other cracked. They’ll mend; they’re only stiff because I’ve bound them. And then you got yourself some marsh-fever, which is why you’re addled, as usual. Now you’ll sleep, and when you wake I’ll bring in the people whose house you’re in. You owe them a lot.’

He heard the words through a somnolent fog. Tobie always did that: sent you to sleep just as you were about to grasp the key of heaven and hell. When he woke, his hostess was sitting at his bedside, or so he assumed her to be: a fair young woman, expensively dressed, with a three-year-old child asleep in her arms. She smiled. ‘Eh bien, your doctor was called away, and I offered to sit until he came back. I am the dame de Chouzy. You feel better, my lord? I am glad.’

Nicholas said, ‘I am told that I owe my rescue to you.’

‘Ah! Others would have helped,’ the girl said. ‘But how could I let suffer the employer of my husband’s own kinswoman? Clémence works for you, does she not?’

‘For me and my wife,’ Nicholas said. ‘Our debt to her is almost as great. She has been …’ His voice died. Although his eyes continued to rest on her, he had forgotten what he was saying. She rose, still carrying the child, and the door opened. His eyes followed her. His mind was elsewhere. She said something.

‘He is not fully awake,’ said Tobie’s voice. ‘It is nothing to worry about. But I shall watch him now. Thank you.’

The door closed, and Tobie sat down. Nicholas said, ‘Why are you here?’ He paused and then said, collecting his breath, ‘I am awake. Why are you here?’

‘Volterra,’ said Tobie. ‘The canonical irregularity of blood-shedding. You have it here as well.
Par saint Georges, mes enfants, vous avez fait une belle boucherie!
Thus the Duke riding into Nesle, I am told.’

‘Louis is extremely sickening as well,’ Nicholas said. ‘So you are looking for a desirable private practice, like Andreas’s?’

‘What are you looking for?’ Tobie said. ‘They say de Commynes has left the Duke for the King.’

‘I’m still with both,’ Nicholas said.

‘Hence the beating?’

‘Not at all. The beating was a private commission. Six former Archers of the King’s guard, if I am not mistaken, in the employment of the vicomte de Ribérac’

‘Jordan!’
said Tobie. He added, after a moment too long, ‘Because of what you did to Henry?’