To Lie with Lions (87 page)

She said, ‘You are here to rest from your office. Why not? I benefit from the fruits of your labours; it is only right that I should wish you refreshed.’

Julius said, ‘You have many friends as skilful as I am, or with secretaries who would be glad to advise.’

‘Then I wonder why I am not using them?’ the Gräfin said. ‘Really, why should you be assailed so by doubts? Because for the first time I have allowed my hateful business to fall into oblivion for three or four days? I have forgotten it, and I expect you to forget it as well. Or if you cannot, come and take wine with me later, and we shall please everybody by computing my customs dues, or the profit from the sale of a vineyard.’ He had not understood, until he arrived at her chamber, that she would be alone, and at ease in her bedrobe. He stopped.

‘Julius! What are we to do with you?’ she said. Rising, she crossed to shut the door at his back, and then, taking his hand, led him across to a seat, from which he gazed up at her. Her eyes in the candlelight were of that dense blue approaching to violet, and her hair fell divided over her shoulders. The black ends curled at her waist; the upper strands lay on her robe like embroidery. She said, ‘You did not go with Gustav last night?’ She wore the scent she always wore. He did not know what it was.

He felt himself flushing. He said, ‘It was kind of him to ask. I was tired.’

The scent receded. She sat down opposite, on the feather pillows of a day bed hung with linen. She said, ‘He wished you to go. It is a clean house. The girls would have done you no harm.’

He burned with embarrassment. He said, ‘I’m sorry …’

Anna lay back. She was smiling. She said, ‘I am honoured that you resisted, but you should have gone. I meant you to go. I suggested it.’

He said, ‘You want me to leave.’

‘No! No,’ she said. ‘How have I frightened you? You have paid me homage as a gentleman should. Had we lived in earlier times, you might have offered me exquisite poems. I was content. Then I wondered if you did not expect more of me than chivalrous dalliance.’

Julius swallowed. He said, ‘I have never wanted more than the Gräfin wished to give.’ He sat on the low velvet stool, his limbs at ease as if set on a side-saddle, his pulse sharp as the thud of a mallet.

She said, ‘I know all your attributes, Julius, except for one thing, which I hoped Gustav would tell me. The Graf Wenzel was an old man. I loved him. But when I do not seek the financial advice of my friends, it is perhaps a sign that I desire something more from there’

He began to rise. ‘Anna!’

‘… Which I should like to be sure they can give me. Are you a virgin, Julius?’

‘No,’ he said. He could barely speak.

‘Neither am I,’ said Anna von Hanseyck. ‘There is nothing then, is there, to delay us?’

He had started to tremble. He said, ‘You mean – ’

The violet eyes smiled. She said, ‘I am not asking you to marry me, Julius. I am asking you to show me whether or not I should like to be married to you.’

Her robe had parted a little; one of the long, straying locks was clinging half to her skin. He knelt before her, and she stretched a speculative finger, then two, to the sodden throat of his shirt. She said, ‘You are so hot, Julius!’

He stayed all night. Long after, he remembered thinking, at the height of the experience, that he could have died at that hour, and not grudged it. When he finally woke, the sun shone through the lawn of the hangings and she lay, naked still in his arms, smiling at him. She said, ‘Show me what you will do, when we are married.’

The marriage was not quickly achieved, for there were kinsmen to summon, ceremonies to be arranged, contracts to be drawn up. They were signed in the great hall of the castle, below the Hanseyck coat of arms, with his new step-daughter grave at his side. Then his wife led him into the banquet and they sat upon the great chairs together: Julius de Bologna of the Banco di Niccolò and Anna von Hanseyck, his bride.

He had written to Nicholas. The Cologne agent had sent his separate, studied account. Nicholas, receiving both, read them in silence, and then dispatched his congratulations, with a gift.

By that time, Nicholas himself had begun to prepare for his April departure. He worked with a progressive sense of achievement accompanied, characteristically, by a precarious and growing elation. He had succeeded. He was going to succeed. He began to recover, unremarked, the unwarranted soaring of spirits which had propelled him, in his volatile boyhood, into so much trouble at home.

Chapter 41

T
HE SNOW WAS
not, in the first place, the fatal factor, nor was the sudden, peremptory freeze: Nicholas held the belief that he no longer found extremes of climate exciting. In any case, on that particular day, he was fully occupied in his house in the High Street, chatting to Mistress Clémence and Jordan; discussing with Gelis the routine appointments of family life.

The organisational talents of Gelis were inclined to rile Govaerts; Nicholas had adroitly identified a distinct sphere of power for each which left him under the jurisdiction of neither. In these sessions, he generally found something amusing to argue about; her views could be mordantly shrewd. In theory, it kept alive and continued the family relationship that now contained them. He did not find it easy.

He was not especially receptive, accordingly, when Kathi Sersanders skipped into the room, followed by a crimson-faced porter. The Nor’ Loch was bearing. Might Jodi take part in the revels?

He perceived, of course, all the goodwill behind the suggestion, but thought it preposterous and said so. He was taken aback when Mistress Clémence, of all persons, disagreed.

‘The child is growing up in captivity. He requires some stimulation. If he is with another family, and muffled, Lord Beltrees, I for one would expect him to be safe.’

‘Archie has all these nephews and nieces,’ Kathi urged. ‘And it would show Robin that you trust him.’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Nicholas. Simon was in Kilmirren, but he had agents. So had Martin.

‘Go yourself. You can skate. Take the lady Gelis. So long as you keep away from the Berecrofts and Jodi, you can watch them.’

‘I have been taught to skate,’ said Mistress Clémence. ‘If I am seen there alone, it will convince any watcher that the boy is safe at home with the house guard and Pasque.’

‘Well, perhaps,’ Nicholas said. ‘But you must not go alone.’

*

All the rest of the year, the Nor’ Loch lay in its hollow below the steep ridge of the High Street and mirrored the Castle in its flat reedy expanse. Turned to ice, it now reflected the red of the sunset and the torches streaming downhill towards it, while braziers winked on its surface and candlelight began to glow inside booths. The ice, rubbed by skates and pitted with boot- and hoof-studs, unrolled like a half-frosted painting beneath the busy feet of the crowd, and from the Lang Gait to the Castle, the whitened banks threw back a scribble of noise: the excited screaming, the snatches of drumming and whistling, the yapping and barking of dogs, tinny in the sparkling air.

Tobie said, ‘I thought only Netherlanders made sport on ice. Where did you learn?’

‘In the Netherlands,’ said Mistress Clémence.

Her face beneath the white cap and hood was benign, and her skirts were correctly shortened to take account of the skates. She was taller than he was. Tackled privately, he had protested at the whole idea of escorting her, until Kathi’s elevated eyebrows had reminded him that the safety of Jodi was in question. He watched, out of the corner of his eye, a group of pretty girls laughing, stumbling and screaming. He had recently had cause to realise that the girls he noticed were getting younger and younger.

Mistress Clémence said, ‘Were you at the Carnival in Venice, Dr Tobias? It must have been rather different two years ago.’

He thought of mist and water; of exquisite buildings and floating awnings of silk over the piazze; of the masked figures, mysterious and elegant, drifting from this or that performance of theatre or poetry, observing the artists of mime and of balance, following the delicate music of consorts over bridges and through garlanded alleys. He thought of the light-wreathed Canal, and the gilded flotilla of boats hung with tassels with the masked figures within, and the tables laden with wine and with delicacies. He thought of the agonised search for a child, and all that had followed.

‘I prefer this,’ Tobie said. ‘So, probably, does Jodi’s father. It will remind him of Bruges.’

‘He was an exuberant young man, I believe,’ said Mistress Clémence. A circle had formed round a tumbler, rearranging his limbs to the scrape of a fiddle. Smells of warm food drifted across from the booths. In a corner, a group of eight people were dancing to a pipe and screaming as they fell down. A man passed, hauling two sliding children. There were no princes here; none but the populace and burghers of Edinburgh. She added, ‘It is an art, to enjoy life at different levels.’

There was a note in her voice that he put down to censure. He said,
‘I doubt if he could return to that kind of simplicity, even for the sake of the child. Or not unless his active life were to be curtailed.’

‘He requires some supervision,’ she said. ‘A return to the simple life, as you call it, may be a periodic remedy that should not be ruled out. Unfortunately, he does not seem to care for Dr Andreas, an excellent physician. I find the young demoiselle, Katelijne Sersanders, extremely sensible.’

‘I know. She ought to have been a nurse,’ said Tobie irritably. A moment later he said, ‘There they are. Which is Jodi?’

The Berecrofts party seemed to include half the Canongate; he recognised the bright cheeks of Archie surrounded by a mob of small children and one or two older, including Archie’s own. Robin, in the manner of boys, had subtly thickened in the six months of Tobie’s acquaintance. His waving hair clung to his neck and his voice, neither broken nor shrill, had chosen a level which Whistle Willie said was light baritone. He was a good-looking boy, and there were three pretty girls tugging at him. Tobie felt elderly.

Mistress Clémence said, ‘Jodi is the child in the brown hooded jacket with the red scarf. Between the two youths.’ She had pulled her hood over her face.

Tobie said, ‘The boy won’t recognise you?’

‘We shall stay at the east end of the loch. He will remain under the Castle, and will be taken home in an hour; you will not have to suffer for very long. Have you treated many children, Dr Tobias?’

He didn’t want to talk about spots in the throat. He said, ‘My work has been largely in army camps.’

‘I understand. But that often entails childbirth and women’s infections, does it not? And if undiagnosed, an infection can spread when the soldiers come home. I suppose a good doctor examines everyone in his camp before they disband?’

‘Either that, or catch them on shipboard,’ Tobie said, refraining from citing examples. ‘You can’t send them home with a diagram.’

She said, ‘You must have been glad to change eventually to a civilised court. I was sorry to hear of the death of your uncle.’

Betha or Phemie had been gossiping. He said, ‘We didn’t get on.’

She said, ‘People of similar temperament often do not. A spell in the field might have broadened his knowledge, and a spell of teaching might have enabled you to pursue your experiments to their proper end. I take it, since you have published nothing, that you have not completed them?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Tobie.

Her face, or what he could see of it, remained undisturbed. She said, ‘It is as well to be reminded, now and then, of why one selected
one’s profession. There, I think, is Lord Beltrees at the Halkerston entrance. Should we move closer?’

Darkness was falling. The flaming brands swirled like the hairy-tailed besoms of comets, and the smoke from the torches badgered the cloudy white breath of the revellers. Nicholas wore a stained sheepskin jacket and scarf-cap and was skating slowly, looking about him, but maintaining his distance from Jodi. Tobie, watching with interest, saw a demoiselle in a large knitted hat disengage herself from a group of young men and skim like an arrow towards the indolent skater. Nicholas stepped aside with unhurried skill and let her flash past; she emitted a howl and cannoned through a circle and into the fire-eater, who inhaled when he ought to have blown. A vociferous crowd closed about the bellowing man. The voices of Nicholas and Kathi, soothing, could be heard in its midst. Tobie started to laugh, began to move, and was stopped.

‘I think that gold has already anointed the hurt,’ said Mistress Clémence with dryness.

Nicholas emerged from the crowd, which was now laughing, with Kathi at his side. Both appeared to be arguing, and she was carrying her hat, which was smoking, and had apparently been used as an extinguisher. Her coat, like his, was unkempt and curious, with the grey and oat-coloured burnish of sealskin falling under her wind-whipped brown hair. They moved past, still disputing, to where Tobie saw Gelis standing cloaked, where Nicholas must have left her.

Iceland, Tobie thought. The source of the garments, the raillery, the easy, intimate camaraderie. For a moment he saw again the Nicholas of the dyeworks at Bruges, employing all his voices and faces, expatiating, complaining. The girl, with the face of an affronted kitten, was replying in kind. Then, breaking off, Kathi swept up to Gelis and clutched her by the arm, expostulating, her free arm waving, while on the other side Nicholas did the same. Gelis, listening, smiled and replied, and the next moment the three had moved off, linked together in mild animation.

‘As I said,’ remarked Mistress Clémence. ‘A sensible girl.’

Viewed from the height of the ridge, the rink – seventeen hundred feet long, four hundred broad – appeared a long gut of fire, from which arose smoke and smells, music and laughter.

Simon of Kilmirren turned from his window and said, ‘Well? It was your offer, I believe. To perform whatever final acts I might require.’

The red-haired man beside him was already sitting. He said, ‘But that, my lord, was before the family received the recent special
attention of the King, and before you yourself had to leave Court. Also, I have to say that the incident of the cart was singularly ineptly carried out.’