She had tied her robe in haste. He untied it, and drew the soft pads of his fingers slowly over her skin, down and down. He said, in sudden anguish, ‘Perhaps last night was wrong. It was wrong. I should have been patient.’
She took his hand where it rested. ‘Is that what your fingertips tell you? Would you rather have waited? Would you rather have something to remember, or nothing? Then no more do I. If this is all there is,’ Gelis said, ‘I shall thank God for it.’
His fingers were travelling again: shivering now, they spread and smoothed back her robe, and then parted his own. He drew a long, steadying breath. ‘It is a leave-taking,’ he said. ‘And therefore reposeful, and a little grave, and sparing of all undue exertion until … For as long as might be.’
‘Desire with self-control,’ Gelis said. ‘As the classicists say.’ Her tight-squeezed lashes were soaked.
His hands, circling, stroking, were bringing her inside his robe. He had to lengthen his breathing to speak. ‘It should be easy,’ he said, with soft bitterness. ‘It should be easy. We have had eight years to learn.’
IN THESE, the last days of the campaign at Nancy, it was Captain Astorre’s crowning joy to find his lads collected about him again.
They were not precisely lads, except in relation to himself and elderly Thomas, his henchman. Captain Astorre was fifty-eight years old; and the oldest of them, his prized gunner John, was ten years younger than that. You could even say that the youngest, Robin, was not really his, although he had trained him for a spell on the Somme. But in the months he’d been here, the fellow had won a place in Astorre’s esteem, that was true. Deft, hard-working, steady under attack, he had a nice way about him. A nice deferential way, unlike that of his old sparring partner, Dr Tobie. By God before a certain battle in Italy, Tobias Beventini had never risked so much as a sore toe in battle. He’d made up for it since. Astorre had fought under Skanderbeg in Albania alongside Tobie.
Tobie and Robin had arrived in the cold of November. Next had come freezing December and trouble, of the kind you got when a war was petering out, and snow was threatening, and men were desperate to leave. But soon, the trouble had shrunk to its proper size, for one day the captain had been in the cookhouse, complaining, when Robin had burst through the door, bringing slush and snow and a freezing draught that nearly put out the fire in the oven. Then Robin had said, ‘It’s M. de Fleury.’ And by God, young Claes had followed him in, with Diniz, the lad who directed the Bruges business with Gelis van Borselen, and last, had come the Widow’s notary, Julius.
He still thought of them like that, even though Marian de Charetty was dead, and young Claes, who had married her, was now a broad-shouldered man in a mantle as big as a bear, who pulled off his fur cap and stared at him.
‘You’ve got smaller,’ said Claes.
‘To fit my wages,’ snapped Captain Astorre.
Then they had hammered each other on the back, and he had greeted the others.
The best of it was at night, when he had heard or deduced all their news (Claes had returned to his wife; the German Gräfin had proved the menace they took her for) and he was able to sit them down before a fire and a modified feast, and tell them about his war. It was, of course, due to end in a week or two. (Thomas had grunted.) The besieged Lorrainers in Nancy had now started to starve: the two months were up; their supplies were finished; and L’Enfant René had not returned with an army to save them, despite pawning the silver and scrounging a loan from Strasbourg and obtaining thousands of francs from the King of France on the quiet. The Swiss Confederation had authorised the young man to enroll mercenaries, but mercenaries had to be paid. No one would come. Nancy would have to surrender. (Thomas had grunted again.)
‘You sound sorry,’ said Claes.
‘Well. The Swiss are great fighters,’ had said Astorre. ‘Their skirmishing, you might say, is a treat. But what with the weather and one thing and another, I suppose you would have to call a good formal battle a luxury. We’ve had some trouble getting powder from Luxembourg, and our food’s a bit low. I’m glad you brought what you did. Mind you, I’ve seen better ducks.’
‘Complaint noted,’ Claes said. ‘What about your own men?’ He did all the speaking, Astorre noticed. Diniz was always quiet before Nicholas, and the lawyer sat looking upset. Tobie and John had said very little after the first shock of the trio’s arrival. Then Claes said, ‘You haven’t mentioned David de Salmeton.’
‘Little turd,’ Astorre said. ‘John and Tobie saw him: I was away the day he came through. They’ll tell you what happened.’
‘Came through?’ Claes said.
It was Tobie who answered. ‘Hearty James was only here for a day. Then he went off with an escort to Innsbruck, David de Salmeton with him. They’ve gone for the winter.’
‘Good riddance,’ said Astorre.
‘How?’ said Claes.
It had been the doctor again, who chose to answer. ‘International string-pulling. Duchess Eleanor of the Tyrol is Scottish, royal, and a sister of the first wife of Wolfaert van Borselen. Wolfaert is a cousin by marriage of Gruuthuse. Anselm Adorne sheltered the Duchess’s niece when she was exiled from Scotland, and one of the Duchess’s friends is a Scots lady called Bel of Cuthilgurdy, who seems to have Andro Wodman at her service. David de Salmeton makes threats: prosecution is not entirely possible: steps are therefore taken to send him where he can do no harm — for the moment, at least.’
‘Eleanor will feed him to the dogs,’ Claes said. He sounded shaken. He laughed. ‘I needn’t have come back from Russia.’
‘Of course you should,’ Astorre said, glaring at him. ‘Where should you be but here, like a man?’
Thomas, who once had the pleasure of bear-leading a girl half over Europe for Claes, allowed himself a snort at that. ‘Or in someone else’s bed like a man,’ remarked Thomas.
Which was all very true, Astorre granted.
IN FALLING SNOW, intelligence freezes. Burgundy, shivering in its camp before Nancy, did not know that the cantons were slowly opening their borders; that from Lucerne and Zurich, Berne and Soleure and the depths of the Oberland, ten thousand soldiers for René were being brought to assemble in Basle, a week’s march away; that several thousand more were beginning to collect in Alsace. In the Burgundian camp, they only knew that success appeared certain, for the town they were besieging was dying. In Nancy, all the horses and dogs, all the cats and the vermin would soon be finished; the breaches made by the Burgundian guns were growing larger; and the garrison’s powder was practically done. There was no fuel for heat. The warmth came from the flames of their cannon-smashed houses, burning unquenched in a landscape of ice.
They did not surrender. Waiting, in the snow and the cold, the besiegers also started to suffer. Cut off from fuel and food, the weakening army, depleted since Grandson and Morat, depleted further by desertions, began to grow sullen and sick. While the Duke stormed about camp, taking the flat of his sword to grumblers, Tobie tramped from tent to tent with his box. In unoccupied moments, Nicholas and Diniz went with him. They had done this before, in Famagusta.
By then, Nicholas had achieved a footing for himself in the company, in appearance much the same as before, although perhaps more subdued, as befitted a man who had turned his back on them, and had now returned on a whim. His treatment by his own former partners was different, displaying a caution modified, no doubt, by the knowledge he wished they did not possess. They had the sense, at least, to keep their distance, even if Diniz had shown signs, since Ghent, of forgetting to do so. On his side, he made no advances. He could have turned round and gone home: David de Salmeton was threatening nobody. He did not.
Hardship and proximity sometimes brought about lapses. Checking the armoury with John, stiff-fingered, their breath congealing on their unshaven jaws, Nicholas had commented, once, on the clever disposition of tools. For a moment, John had continued, without speaking. Then, ‘Your wife’s idea,’ he had said, glancing round. ‘She’s a remarka
ble woman.’
‘I know,’ Nicholas said. And while the other man faced him still, his nose red, his cheeks blue, Nicholas continued, ‘And you made a bloody awful job of that frog. I had to put in two new bolts and a lever.’
John grunted, and returned to his work. He had not mentioned Adelina. No one had, since he had made his first, brief report, to save Julius from having to do so.
Julius and he rarely spoke, and the others were careful. In fact, the situation was a little better now than it seemed. Against his expectations, Julius had kept him to his word about a fight on the journey from Ghent. It had taken place, but with poles instead of swords; and although they were both shaken and stiff the following day, nothing serious happened. Julius had won.
That night, alone with Nicholas in the dark, Julius had suddenly spoken. ‘Was Anna a whore? Did she sleep with others? Did she sleep with you?’
Nicholas had claimed as much, he recalled, in Tabriz. He had been angry with himself, as much as with Julius. Nicholas said, ‘I have never lain with her. I have never touched her. I told you a lie.’
‘But she asked you,’ Julius said.
It would do no good, this time, to prevaricate. ‘Yes, she did,’ Nicholas said. ‘It was part of the punishment, that was all. On the day she chose to destroy me, I was to be told who she was, and be appalled by what we had done together. Not that she was unwilling to get rid of me earlier, if chance offered.’
The other pallet had creaked. Julius spoke, with a kind of dull horror. ‘If she was Adelina …’
‘You know what happened to her as a child. And to me. It helped her, when she grew up, to blame me. She hoped to remind me of it all. Jaak and Esota. Adelina and me.’ He did not enjoy speaking of it. He had never spoken of it before. It was true, so far as it went. But what had consumed Adelina as Anna, and what might have consumed him had he let it, was not a manufactured attraction. Between them, something had called. That was where the tragedy lay.
After that, Julius had been silent, and in the days that followed, had not raised the subject again. But although he was remote, he was no longer an enemy. He was a man wrestling with anger and doubts, who had a new future to find.
Nicholas accordingly left him alone. But Robin sometimes rode at his side during the short daylight hours, dark with buffeting snow and crowded with difficult work: the incessant scouting and foraging; the short, fierce clashes with outlying marauders; the daily detail assigned to road-clearing and barricades, and to the securing and rationing of food and ice-melted water. The forgework on horseshoes and armour. The repairs to the freezing, splitting fabric of the camp and its furnishings, and the task to which all the rest appertained: the slow, sparing firing of cannon at Nancy’s crumbling walls so that the Lorrainer marksmen were reduced, and quiet and sleep were impossible. And meanwhile, the besiegers had to be seen to: to be kept in health, to be heartened and exercised.
In a month, Robin had somehow absorbed the sense of all that, and could be seen to be what he was, which was not a merchant nor even a squire, but a man to whom a battlefield was a natural place to be: a place of orderly management, with corresponding opportunity for the quick-witted, and excitement, and perhaps glory. He was good with other men. With Nicholas, he spoke only of war, gleaning from him all he could tell of foreign countries and weapons and tactics. He said, once, stopping himself apologetically, ‘I’m sorry. You must be sick of it, sir. But I can’t believe that I’m here, and with you.’
‘And when it is over?’ Nicholas had said.
And Kathi’s husband had said immediately, ‘What will you do? Surely they will let you stay now? You could take this army anywhere.’
With Tobie and Diniz, who were not enchanted with war, there was a hardening of perception as the snow thickened and the degree of privation increased. By then, Nicholas had had his ducal audience in the Commanderie, and had visited the Bastard Anthony and his brother and the other captains — de Bièvres, Lannoy and de Chimay, Jacques Galeotto and Josse de Lalaing. Diniz Vasquez had been in garrison once in North Africa with the Grand Bastard and Baudouin, and Simon de Lalaing and his son.
Because of his Portuguese blood, Diniz saw more of the Duke than the rest, and he had come to act as alternating conduit and buffer between Tobie and his Burgundian counterpart, the doctor from the Duke’s mother country of Portugal. Matteo Lope came from the frontier stronghold of Guarda, and was not unfamiliar with the Vasquez plantations on Madeira. Nicholas, making time to accompany the physicians; warding their chain of supplies; executing, without being asked, the worst and most squalid of tasks, was an unexpected, poignant reminder of the same man among the starving in Cyprus, succouring the dying behind the walls of a besieged city, instead of before them.
It caused Diniz, returning soaked from one such round, to burst out, as he had not done for years, against the horror and waste of siege warfare. It led Nicholas, unthinking, to set aside his own rules and try to explain the work of Fioravanti, so that John, engrossed, plunged into the talk. For a moment, the air was full, in the old way, with ideas and objections and counter-objections until Nicholas suddenly excused himself, and left.
Tobie had followed him out into the smothering snow, and across to the stables, where he had begun to talk to the horse-master. He showed no sign of particular stress; opening his stance as he spoke to include Tobie. Leaving, he walked down the lines, and Tobie walked with him. Tobie said, ‘You must be used to this cold.’
‘Cold with discipline, yes,’ Nicholas said. ‘Unregulated cold is more troublesome. I wanted to make rapturous noises about Clémence. She risked her life for Gelis in Ghent. You know how she cared for her and for Jodi, and kept me informed. I want you to separate so that I can marry her.’
‘From what I hear,’ Tobie said, ‘you are already devastatingly accommodated, although you don’t seem to appreciate it. What are you doing here? David de Salmeton has gone.’ They had come to the end of the building, and he stopped. A horse blew on his shoulder.
Nicholas said, ‘The King of Portugal has still to come.’ His eyes rested on Tobie’s face.
‘And you think he will bring Jordan de Ribérac,’ Tobie said. On the other man’s face, lightly bearded, was the ghost of the scar given by the vicomte de Ribérac to Claes vander Poele, born to the wife of his son and repudiated. Tobie said, ‘If he comes, will you kill him? He led the Vatachino. Kathi told us what Wodman said to you about that.’
Nicholas said, ‘That isn’t why I am here. Did you really think that it was?’
‘I don’t know,’ Tobie said. He hesitated, and then made up his mind. ‘Did Gelis tell you what … what Thibault de Fleury said of de Ribérac?’ Carefully, he had said neither your grandfather, nor your other grandfather.
His dilemma had been noted. ‘How difficult it all is,’ Nicholas remarked. Then he suddenly seemed to relent. ‘I should like to hear, some day, about Thibault de Fleury; but not perhaps now. I’m glad that you went. It can’t have been easy.’ He waited and then said, ‘But you want to say something?’ He looked patient rather than anxious.
‘Jordan de Ribérac threatened the Charetty family,’ Tobie said. ‘You were to be reared as an apprentice, or you and they would all suffer. Marian educated you, without de Ribérac realising it. She sent you to Lou-vain with her son, knowing that as Felix’s servant you would learn as much as he did. In the end, as we know, she defied him. That was when you were given your scar.’ The horse pushed at him, and he ignored it.
‘I see,’ Nicholas said.
‘I thought you should know,’ Tobie said. He paused. ‘Before we go back. Did you mean to kill Julius?’
Nicholas laid his hand on the prodding nose of the horse. ‘I regularly mean to kill Julius,’ he said. ‘I usually manage to restrain myself, but not then. I had been divining. I was not on very good terms with myself afterwards. But for that, I might have used force against Anna.’
‘But you didn’t,’ Tobie said curiously.
‘No. I d
idn’t try to kill her,’ Nicholas said. ‘I left it to others. I left her in Caffa, knowing that it was going to fall.’
‘Knowing?’ Tobie said.
‘Oh, yes. I spent some time and effort analysing what was going to happen to Caffa,’ Nicholas said. ‘The Khan would confirm. But I didn’t tell Anna. Nor, I’m afraid, the Genoese.’
‘I think,’ said Tobie, ‘that I would have done the same.’ He stood looking at Nicholas. He said, ‘Despite Astorre, I don’t think we are going to be home for Christmas.’ It was a grim joke. Christmas was two days away.
On Christmas Day, a hundred men died in the Duke of Burgundy’s camp before Nancy, frozen to death by the cold.
On the same day, a short way to the south, an enemy force of eight thousand men scaled the range of the Vosges, and prepared to cross the plateau which would take them to Nancy. Three days after its departure, René’s Swiss army also moved out. The King of Portugal, on his way from Paris through Rheims, was then exactly four days away.
IN GHENT, despite some natural disappointment that the Duke was not present, the Christmas festival was extravagantly splendid that year, with bonfires in every street, and skating parties on the canal, and coloured lanterns and bells and the making of pretty snow figures, dressed to look like the lady Marie and her Imperial betrothed. Sugar pastries and wine were sent by the Duchess to all the almshouses. It was assumed that, whether or not Nancy had surrendered, the Duke had retired for the winter.
In the Hôtel Gruuthuse, the Gräfin Anna von Hanseyck (as she still called herself) renounced her fast and began eating again, as if she thought there was something to live for.
In Scotland, Bel of Cuthilgurdy spent the festival with her son, but seemed pre-occupied.
In the Casa di Niccolò, Venice, the director Gregorio and his wife sustained the quiet success of their Bank and their marriage, and tried not to diminish the joys of the season for the sake of their son. Nevertheless, for them, and for a short-sighted Italian in Poland, and a capable monk in Cairo, it was a time for troubled reflection.