Read To Lie with Lions for Free Online Page B

And now he was being ignored. She watched him cross the deck in his harness, his cheeks red, his brows straight; and this time M. de Fleury looked up, and paused. Then he said, ‘Look at these,’ and sat back on his heels.
    She could not see to what he referred: she thought the objects were raisins. The child sat and M. de Fleury bent forward. The two heads, hessian brown, leaned together. She could hear the child’s high, erratic voice and the other leisurely, masculine one, but could not distinguish the words. Then the man started to rise and the child, getting itself to its feet, faced towards Clémence and said, ‘Que Jodi mange?’
    ‘Jodi?’ said the man.
    She winced. ‘I am training him out of it. He finds his name hard to say. The nuns called him Bouton de Fleury.’
    ‘I prefer either to Jordan,’ said M. de Fleury. ‘Jodi wants to eat carob seeds. There is a carob seed.’
    ‘Carobs are nasty,’ said Mistress Clémence, looking him in the eyes.
    ‘Carob seeds are very nasty,’ he agreed. He had let the child take one. Jodi opened his mouth.
    M. de Fleury said, ‘Put it in, have a taste, spit it out. Now here are some raisins …’
    The child threw the seed down and stretched out his hand.
    ‘… but we must ask Mistress Clémence if it is a good time to eat them. Is it allowed?’
    ‘I think it is,’ she said, using her agreeable voice, and the child backed confidently into her arm, pleased, his cheeks full of fruit. M. de Fleury dusted his fingers, nodded, and began to walk off.
    The child half took his weight from her arm and then stopped. The man continued to walk. Just as she thought he had gone he turned and lifted a hand, and she saw the child’s face break into its own private, generous smile, a dimple deep as a pool in each cheek. Then Mistress Clémence took him below and gave him to Pasque, for shewanted time to consider whether the reason for the long meandering journey had now been explained.
    The days and weeks that followed proved her correct. Never in her experience had courtship of lovers been conducted with the finesse of this wordless dialogue between a man and his son. It progressed as it had begun, forming a relationship which included small treats, small adventures, small gifts; but was not built upon them. After a very few days a trust formed; the preternatural tension began to relax.
    On the fourth day, M. de Fleury did not come at the usual time. The child strayed, inattentive, from one side of the deck to the other, and hardly replied to the seamen who called to him. When the man did appear, the boy slipped his hand free and went forward. Mistress Clémence halted and watched as M. de Fleury slackened his pace and strolled over.
    His appearance had changed. There was a faint warmth in his skin, and fewer hollows, and his shirt was unjewelled and creased. He looked like the student sons she remembered, who used to sleep deeply and late, and then invade her busy nursery, demanding break-fast. He stayed with the child longer than usual, and once laughed aloud.
    Mistress Clémence said nothing, but from the next day took her deck-walk much later, to accommodate whatever deferred convalescence was taking place. More: as their patron came to himself, so the disembodied ship, the meandering voyage seemed to find positive focus. The sea turned blue and sparkled with light. Approaching an island, the spaces of canvas and timber would fill with the aroma of flowers. Fish would splash in the waves and nesting birds pause in the rigging, where the nameless pennant flew among stars. Jodi said, ‘Where is maman?’
    He had asked Mistress Clémence before, and she had replied plainly as she usually did, although making no promises. And the child seldom fussed since, in the past, his lady mother had always come back, and he was used to friendly faces about him.
    But this time, the child asked M. de Fleury, who happened to be in the cabin improving his horse. Latterly it had become