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Gelis prepares for their meeting with care. She is not like Katelina, who wore her unplucked brows as a sign of pride (of her slovenly nature, Gelis had told her during their last quarrel, and now could never repent). Her face, her hair in its careful symmetry, the shape of her body beneath her clothes – these are weapons, to be used for attack or defence as the situation requires. Her first meeting with Nicholas van der Poele in six years requires all of her arsenal.
She has plans in place. She has learned to defeat a man with her charm, her brains, and her body. As he walks up the stairs to meet her, she wonders which one will be needed. All of them, certainly, to some extent, but one will have to play a leading role. She will have to make it impossible for him to ignore her.
Then he walks in, looks at her, and she sees the jolt in his body as he takes her in. For a moment he is vulnerable, and unable to hide it.
It ought to be an easy battle – this, out of all her weapons, she wields with the most skill – but she remembers Bruges, remembers his hand on her back as he guided her through the fair. He also has weapons that could hurt her.
It is not weakness, she tells herself. It is a struggle she has built herself to win.
*
She remembers that he escorted her even though he had other duties pressing on him, simply because she had asked. It had not been out of affection; he had only met her once, and she was not a pleasant child. But that was Claes, who worked to keep everyone happy, from the maid accompanying Tilde and Catherine to a fractious girl who insulted him and claimed him in the same breath.
She’d thought about it often, afterwards. It was not unusual for a servant to aim to please his masters, or anyone of rank he encountered. But Claes had treated everyone in the party with equal consideration. Gelis suspected that he simply thought of them all as people. Now, she suspects he thought of them all as people he could manipulate by making them happy.
Claes was clever with people, and that was a skill she respected. She compared him to Katelina, who failed to manage her Scottish engagement, then failed to manage their father on her return. Her mother, who was respected by neither her husband nor her daughters, and her father, the half-brother of a famous man, with neither the wit nor the charm to better his station. Claes, she’d thought when she heard of his wedding to Marian de Charetty, had less than any of them, and did more with it.
*
She pricks at him: because it disrupts his plans: because it bothers him: because she can. She does not deny that she enjoys this. It is also part of her plan. Nicholas, she knows, delights in watching his designs unfold. How he feels about seeing them disturbed is something she is looking forward to discovering.
It is not often she allows herself this. She is poor and her family is dead – in order to avoid what that ought to mean for her, she must be charming. Gelis is accustomed to keeping her thoughts inside her head.
Pricking at Nicholas is a rare treat.
*
They travel to Africa. She doesn’t explain her decision to join the expedition: she doesn’t need to. There is nothing for her in Bruges. This is better than that.
Nicholas probably knows that, but he says nothing. It could be a sign of respect, or simply part of his plan of avoidance. Sometimes this is also a plan that suits her.
Diniz asks her, of course. He doesn’t have it in him not to, and he has not yet grown enough to restrain these impulses. She opens her eyes wide and tells him that she is here to protect his virtue: he doesn’t believe her, but it makes him blush and stop asking. Which is the best one can hope for with Diniz. Katelina had patience for him, but then again Katelina was only ever angry about things that concerned her. Gelis is angry about everything.
She smiles at the seamen, smiles at Raffaelo Doria, smiles at the King and his wives. Nicholas appears unbothered, although Godscalc frowns at her, and then attempts to have a very earnest conversation about being careful with men. He makes the mistake (his second mistake) of doing so in front of Bel, who starts laughing half way through. This has the benefit of bringing the conversation to a close, and thus spares Gelis from having to end it. She suspects she would not have been kind.
Bel, afterwards, is kind: after a fashion at least. She doesn’t say anything, but she looks at her, and looks at Nicholas. Bel is not unobservant, even if she is wise about when to speak.
*
The river is wide, and the forest around it thick and low. Gelis does not get tired of watching it, even if the sun makes her head hurt after a while. In the maps of her world, this is a blank space: she wants to see what is in there. She knows Nicholas has maps in his cabin, and would show them to her if she asked. She does not choose to ask. There are other ways to relieve her curiosity, and a polite conversation about maps would disturb the current state of discord in their relationship.
The river Gambia makes the cobbled streets of Bruges look small. She is not keen to return.
Gelis is content to wait in the boat while Nicholas and his men visit king Gnumi. These are the steps that need to be taken at this stage in their journey, and she has no reason to disagree with Nicholas’s policy. There would be nothing to gain from insisting, yet Nicholas seems surprised, and then suspicious, by her acquiescence. Perhaps her strategic acts of argument have become too frequent: it would not do to create a general anticipation of resistance to his every move.
On the other hand, it appears there is something to be gained from occasional acts of agreement. Resistance, after all, is only effective if it is meaningful.
He looks ridiculous when he comes back: sweating, exhausted, happy. Relaxed, in ways he has not been since they started this journey. This tells her something about Nicholas she isn’t sure she wants to know. What his body means to him. What he can do with his body. She knows it would be better if she did not think about his body.
He pats her on the head, like a child or a dog. It is a gesture without design.
It occurs to Gelis that this might be the only time Nicholas is without designs.
*
She is allowed to sit with him while he is feverish; a foolish choice, but one she will take advantage of. His mumblings are not usually clear, but sometimes both clear and not clear.
“Katelina, no not Katelina, not her, but her. Not her.”
There are many ways to interpret these words, and she could drive herself mad trying to decode them.
He isn’t smiling, but the dimples appear and disappear at random, his beard shaved by his physician, his cheeks now vulnerable to the eye.
“I am sorry.”
He is looking at her, but she isn’t sure if he’s seeing her or her sister. He looks sincere.
It would be unfair to question him while he is ill. But the world isn’t fair, and neither is Gelis.
“What are you sorry for, Claes?”
A flicker of a frown: he doesn’t like that name. She doesn’t need to use it now.
She leans closer. His eyes are unclear, but trying to track her face.
“Nicholas. What are you sorry for?”
His lids close, and he breathes carefully for a few moments. She doesn’t move away.
He turns his head, and sleeps. She can’t decide if she’s disappointed. It wouldn’t do to abandon the game so early on, after all.
*
It starts to worry her, what she wants: what it is becoming increasingly clear she wants.
It is an interesting object of analysis. Her mind lays out the conundrum: here is a man who has seduced her sister, and who is capable of seducing Gelis without even exerting himself. He is dangerous to her sense of self. It would be wisest by far to distance herself, there is no question about that.
Yet she is not going to. She cannot make herself, and that is interesting. A desire not only to engage with him, to have his attention, to beat him – this all she knew about herself. But also the desire to have his good opinion, his respect, his eyes on her body. To have, she speaks out in the quiet of her mind, his body against hers, in all the possible ways. That she wants this is perhaps less surprising than it could be – Gelis is able to look upon her younger self and interpret its actions – but that she is incapable of walking away is new. A lack of control which should be frightening, but which she notes with almost laconic interest. This is what is in her, this desire. And it is unquestionably true that she will be incapable of not acting on it, should occasion arise.
She passes him in the hallway: they turn their bodies to face each other, but do not touch. She keeps her eyes on his shirt, his ear, the wall behind him, and keeps on walking. There is no halt in his steps.
And yet.
It catches her at awkward moments, in the middle of her lessons or a chat with Zuhra, and suddenly she cannot think of anything beyond pressing her face into his neck. His hands are large, and as competent around a woman’s waist as in devising a wooden toy. They could span her waist, she thinks. Start there, and keep her between his fingers. Keep her there, but give her freedom to move her own hands, to feel his arms under her fingers, his shoulders, his neck, the curve of his jaw. She would poke at his cheek and see if she could make the dimples appear. She likes to poke at him, after all: but how would that be in this setting, if he allowed her? And in allowing her, also allowed her to be vulnerable?
This desire could ruin her, she knows. And yet, she cannot extinguish it.
*
The opportunity does not arise. She asks, as directly, as she can, and is turned away.
Later that night, when she goes to his room, she expects to be rebuffed. But it appears she has used up all his strength, for his arms come around her, and she touches his mouth, and then. And then.
At some point, a moment of clarity: this is her weakness more than his, and she will not recover from it. Gelis does not pause, but she closes her eyes, and presses her face against Nicholas’s shoulder. She will think about this tomorrow, when he is gone – she will have time to think about how to arrange her life. She will have freedom, and more knowledge than she has now, useful knowledge. This will be a useful experience, even if it will hurt.
Then Nicholas’s fingers touch her face, and she bites him. He laughs, and allows her to push him over.
*
He leaves, but she has the satisfaction of knowing that she has taken a part of him, a part he did not wish for her to have. She puts him aside, and works on other things; Timbuktu has much to offer her in the way of business, of knowledge, of people. She enjoys the freedom she has here, to learn, to act, to bargain; to find out how things, and people, work, and how to make them work. She is building up an infrastructure of knowledge that can be applied to anywhere. One day, she might choose to apply it on Nicholas. She knows she will have to apply it on herself at some point.
Gelis does not expect him to come back. It would be unreasonable to do so – Nicholas left to find something he knew did not exist – so there is no point in waiting for his return.
But he does come back.
*
Gelis leaves before he comes to himself. Perhaps it is because she cannot bear to look at him (this she intimates, delicately, to Zuhra). Perhaps she leaves so that he may find himself without her interference, and the burden she would be (this she allows Umar to deduct). Perhaps, so that he will follow her, if and when he wishes to (this, wordlessly and with stubborn eyes, to Godscalc). To herself – she knows that these are all true, and more besides. It is better for her not to be here. His presence is also a burden on her, and it is a relief to leave it behind.
She is beginning to know her own mind, and what it can do. It does not yet frighten her. She suspects that at some point it will.
*
Nicholas comes back to Bruges; more than a year after he healed, months after he had returned to Europe. Gelis has kept track of him, and made her plans. She is capable of engineering a meeting, and it will be useful to see what he’s going to do.
But when he sees her, he looks happy; happy and broken and vulnerable in ways he never would have allowed himself to be seen five years ago. Her brain, her cool analytical brain which she prizes above all things, it tells her that she has broken him, she has won, this is it. He has not touched her in years and he is still broken. She could do what she liked with him.
And yet, it is not her brain that becomes alight when she sees him. Gelis ceases to consider the why and concentrates only on the how – how to find him alone, how to get him to her room, how to meet him flesh to flesh when he is there. She continues to focus on the how for days and weeks – there are maneuvers to be executed, and her brains enjoys this work – even as she knows that at some point there will have to be a reckoning. Because what is she doing. What is she doing.
There are things she has knowledge of, even if she chooses not to put them together yet. She suspects what the final deduction will be, and prefers to postpone it.
She tries to think about Katelina, but it does not help. Gelis isn’t sure she ever liked Katelina (her analytical brain tells her she did not, and that this feeling was returned), but they were allies when no one else was there. It is up to Gelis to defend her, or to honour her, or to avenge her. What is the appropriate revenge for a man who has bedded a woman without loving her? For whom a woman has dishonoured herself and all those around her?
What is the appropriate revenge for a man who has made you love him, even when you don’t want to?
At Easter she makes them take time apart, to consider things. There are two paths ahead of her, but she wants neither. She knows what she will become if she chooses either of those lives.
Yet there is a third option. Scotland had offered her a place before, and work, and friends, and a new world in which to be. She could go back. She could leave (could she? With Nicholas and his smile and his hands and his heart that she now owns, all in Bruges?) and become a different Gelis, a wiser Gelis, a Gelis less poisoned by her own heart. It would be the smart choice, she decides. She would be happy there.
Having made that choice, she indulges herself for the rest of April – she will not be toxic to him now, and therefore there is no reason not to touch him. She allows herself to wonder at him, the strength of his body, how he bends it at her hands. What they do together, and what she can do with him – she knows she will not be that with anyone else. It is to be savoured, while she has it.
She intends to tell him before she leaves. A clean break, with time for him to anticipate, and to consider. To wait and then to reconcile himself. Better for them both to make it absent and gradual. Gelis trusts neither herself nor Nicholas to stay the course otherwise.
*
She waits for the blood to arrive. It does not come.
*
When she comes to visit him before her journey, her plans are made and her purpose clear.
It will not be a worse life, she realises as she sits on the floor before Nicholas. They are too intimately entwined now to separate; they can no longer be honest with anybody else, and can only be honest with each other. There is an equality in that, which she appreciates. Will appreciate, once she has beaten him again, and beaten the world, and the fate that put her in this position.
She does not regret it, but she also does not hide when he holds the lamp over her, sees the stains of tears on her face.
What will burn him will also burn her; it is a burden they will share over the years, and she would not relinquish any of it.