Caprice and Rondo (42 page)

‘Perth?’

‘St John’s town of Perth in Scotland. The first King James built a Carthusian monastery there, prodded by his cousin Bishop Kennedy and his English Queen, who was a granddaughter of John of Gaunt. It still has the occasional Prior from Ghent, and organises some of its finances through the Carthusian convents in Bruges, much supported by the Adorne family. That is why Anselm Adorne’s brother became a lay monk at Montello at the end of his life. And why Adorne makes gifts to the Cartusia in Scotland.’

‘Does he?’ said Tobie.

‘Yes. His son Maarten served there. Now Maarten’s a Carthusian monk at the Holy Cross monastery in Bruges. His grandfather died in the same place nine years ago, and his sister Margareta is a Carthusian nun. It’s a very ascetic order,’ Gelis said. ‘They may not welcome visitors. Kathi said she had to wait here in Treviso.’

‘We don’t want to see the choir monks,’ Tobie said. ‘If he’s paralysed, the vicomte must be living apart. In a hospice, perhaps.’

‘They are not a hospital order.’

‘Then how did he get there?’ said Tobie.

‘Money,’ Gelis said. ‘Presumably they were paid a lot of money. Perhaps he has his own servants and nurses. Did you know that …’ She hesitated.

‘What?’ said Tobie.

His brusqueness seemed to reassure her: she glanced at him, and
then resumed. ‘Gregorio tells me that Tasse retired to live quite near here. The little maid who used to serve Marian de Charetty, my predecessor in the marital bed. Tasse is dead now, of course. As is Marian, and Primaflora, who followed her.’

‘You sound as if you blame Nicholas,’ Tobie said.

‘Only for attracting bad luck,’ Gelis said. ‘He was in another country when each of them perished. I suppose we are only unfortunate, all of us, that we met him. Should we perhaps be riding on?’

S
HE
HAD
BEEN
RIGHT
about the trees. They had only twelve miles to travel, and quite soon, as they left behind the vineyards and grazings, Tobie welcomed the fact that the fiercest heat was no longer continuous, but increasingly dissipated under a dappled green canopy. Soon, it became apparent that the road they had begun to traverse led not through random trees, but into the outlying groves of a forest. The men-at-arms, who were paid by the Bank and knew each other well, closed up watchfully, cursing the servants who were less accustomed to the saddle and fell behind. Gelis’s man, chosen from the Bank’s workshops instead of its stables, was especially culpable, straying from one side to the other and lingering behind trees like a man with the flux. Then he would spur on his horse, and scamper up and talk to the Lady. They saw him waving his arms. Once, he seemed to be holding his hands out for her to sniff. And another time, instead of catching up, he cried out for her to come over to where a blackened patch told that something had been burned.

Had there not been a good beaten path, they might even have lost their way with his antics, although after a while it was obvious where the monastery was, because of the numbers of people they met coming towards them, picking their way through the woods with baskets and bowls and loaves under their arms stamped with the initials of the Blessed Virgin and St Jerome. It was the day for alms, it would seem. One of the groups had a wheelbarrow, and another a sledge pulled behind them, although both were empty. They all stopped when they saw the horses, and the men would pull off their caps and hold them until the cavalcade had gone past.

Then they had to climb to the gates, where they dismounted and the porter asked them to wait. Gelis said suddenly, ‘It was March, when Adorne was here.’

‘What?’ Tobie said. Now they were out of the trees, he could see that the monastery was surrounded by vineyards, climbing up the slope of the hill behind the church tower. He saw the end of a vegetable garden, and a bakehouse and a dairy.

‘When we all left Venice three years ago. Kathi and Adorne and his son travelled home this way. Then four days later, John and Father Moriz
and Julius and I left for the Tyrol the other way, reaching Trento by the river. You came with us as far as Padua.’

He remembered. He had been on his way to Pavia. Nicholas had just snatched his child and disappeared. It had been the second last time Tobie had parted from Nicholas. He said, ‘Was that when it happened?’ At least, nothing seemed to have happened. Jan Adorne presumably mentioned the old man when next he met Julius, which must have been in Rome that December. And Julius, in the throes of his new passion for Anna, had forgotten about it until now. Julius, although inquisitive, was selective in the matters that interested him. Julius had been as reasonable a friend as most men hoped to have, but all the same, Nicholas had shot him.

Then the porter broke into his thoughts, returning with an authoritative figure in white who gazed with disdain at Gelis, and, addressing himself to Tobie’s dust-laden physician’s gown, hood and cap, imparted, in Latin, a lofty dismissal.

Gelis said, ‘Say how surprised we are, considering the hospitality he has just clearly proffered to the suffering and the needy. Ask how many came for alms today.’

Tobie asked, and relayed the answer. His Pavian Latin was better than the Procurator’s. ‘Five hundred. He finds it hard to believe that we are needy. They do not have travellers’ quarters or a hospice. They are a silent order.’

‘We know that, of course. We had hoped,’ Gelis said, ‘that the Prior would extend to us the same kindness he showed three years ago to our friend the Duke of Burgundy’s eminent councillor, and benefactor of your order, my lord Anselm Adorne, Baron Cortachy. His brother was, we believe, a religious here.’

She had spoken directly, this time, to the Procurator, in the same French-Latin as his own. The Procurator looked from her to the doctor and back. Then he said, ‘Exceptions were made. I am sorry.’ The belligerence had faded a little.

‘It is impossible even to admit a single physician?’ Tobie said. ‘Would you have turned away my late uncle Giammatteo Ferrari?’

He did not often invoke his famous late uncle, with whom he had not seen eye to eye. He was all the more surprised when Gelis broke in, disrupting his strategy. ‘I am sure you would find Dr Tobias professionally helpful. But I myself wish to speak to the Prior. We request admission for three: Dr Tobias, myself and my colleague.’

Tobie gazed at her and then stared, as did the Procurator, at the sturdy, liveried form of her servant. The Procurator said, in a tone of finality, ‘In that case, madame, I am afraid there is no question of entering.’

‘To discuss certain matters of forestry,’ Gelis serenely continued, ‘of particular concern to ourselves, as officials of the Casa di Niccolò. And of
even more concern to my companion, as representing the Lords and Commissioners of the Arsenal, reporting to the Council of Ten.’

There was a silence. The Procurator said, ‘I have misunderstood. I am sorry. Perhaps the two gentlemen and the lady would be kind enough to come in?’

Waiting, wild-eyed, before Christ Crucified in a spartan reception-room, Tobie addressed Gelis under his breath on the subject of her cheerfully insouciant companion. ‘He’s the Bank’s head carpenter! He doesn’t come from the Arsenal!’

‘He did. He used to examine their trees,’ Gelis said. ‘Montello is one of the Arsenal’s principal forests. If this is mismanaged, Venice can’t get the timber she needs for her ships. Sit and watch this.’ Then the door opened, and the Prior of the monastery entered.

Tobie’s heart bled for him before the interview had lasted five minutes. Tobie thought he knew Gelis. He had forgotten how much she had picked up from Nicholas. He had forgotten how alike she and Nicholas were, in many ways. With seductive calm and pitiless logic, the lady of Beltrees, partner in the Venetian Bank of Ca’ Niccolò, detailed for the Prior, with the help of her timber adviser, all the transgressions of the monastery of the Blessed Virgin and St Jerome, situated in the Arsenal’s forest of Bosco del Montello.
Charcoal-burners
admitted? Sheep and cattle permitted to pasture? An absence of ditching; a patent neglect of the requirements of thinning, trimming and sealing; the evidence of flooding caused by the unwise admission of mill-dams? And if, as would be freely admitted, much of this was the responsibility of the commune, what of the ravages of five hundred pilgrims, allowed to traverse the forest when coming for alms, and departing, if the eye were to be believed, with something of far greater value? How much prime ship’s timber was carried off weekly in those barrows and sledges, to end up as firewood?

And then, the gambit that had worked so well round a hundred conference tables: How could the Prior be blamed, when his mind dwelled, as it should, on higher things? Perhaps a little help was what was required, rather than an adverse report to the Lords and Commissioners. What if a lumberman were employed, to patrol or even live in the forest? What if the alms were to be given outside, rather than inside the wood? What if …? The timber expert, consulted, produced a few sensible, inexpensive ideas which the Prior, now supported by his senior religious, believed he might well recommend to the commune.

Surprisingly, wine was brought. Unsurprisingly, when Gelis, gracefully expressing her gratification, turned the conversation harmlessly to the pious work of the monastery, the Prior was relieved and happy to answer her questions.

Almost, Tobie had forgotten why they had come. It was, therefore,
with something approaching a shiver that he heard Gelis say, ‘And Lord Cortachy mentioned, I think, that an old friend of my husband’s was here. It was my other reason for calling. I believe we owe a great deal to your care of M. le vicomte de Fleury?’

She was clever. She sat, pure as an angel, with her throat and hair veiled, and the silken fall of her hood caught at her breast with a reliquary brooch worth more than a few Montello oak trees. The Prior said, ‘The name of my lord your husband is known to us, of course. We have often wondered whether there was some kinship.’

‘A distant one only,’ Gelis lied. ‘But Lord Beltrees has always interested himself, of course, in the old gentleman’s welfare. You may not even have been aware of the source of the payments. They continue satisfactorily?’

The Prior looked at his bursar, who coughed. The bursar said, ‘We would not wish to complain.’

Tobie let out his breath. Gelis said, ‘If it is inadequate, of course you must tell me. This is a personal matter, and has no bearing on our business arrangements.’ Her voice was almost normal. Until he heard it, Tobie hadn’t realised the strain that she, too, had borne until now. The old man was alive. He was here.

Then the Prior said, ‘I am sure there is nothing that cannot be simply adjusted. But day and night help is expensive. His own servant, however devoted, is no longer young, and deserves relief.’

‘Who could refuse that?’ Gelis said. ‘We shall talk of that soon, and in detail. But first, I should like to meet and thank the servant you speak of. And perhaps, on behalf of my husband, to look upon my lord the vicomte himself, however briefly?’

If they knew that her husband was no longer in Venice, no one mentioned it. The lumber expert, full of wine, was allowed to depart. Tobie followed Gelis and the Prior out of his quarters and across the immaculate domain to where, against the encircling walls, the cabins of the monastery’s own little infirmary clung to the slope of the hill with its well and its plot of tilled ground, in which flowers and vegetables seemed to be growing together. There were juniper bushes, and some lavender, and a sturdy vine arbour for shade, with a few stools and a small table within, and a litter, with someone sleeping on it. The cicadas shrilled, and you could hear a hum as of bees: the prayers drifting up from the church. There was no sound from the cloisters.

A man in the robes of a lay brother rose and came forward, bowing, and waited. The Prior said, ‘This is Brother Huon, to whose tender care M. le vicomte undoubtedly owes his life. Brother, the lady is Egidia, wife to my lord Niccolò de Fleury, a kinsman of the vicomte’s, and his protector. You have heard of the Banco di Niccolò. And this is Master Tobias
Beventini da Grado, physician and nephew of your great hero of Pavia. I leave you together.’

He left. The monk looked from the lady to the doctor, his straw hat gripped in his hands in an attitude of uncertainty, even wariness. His tonsured scalp gleamed, smooth and rosy above a face browned by sun and withered by years, which yet had white lines of laughter radiating from the weak eyes, and a touch of stubbornness about the gentle mouth. Tobie said, ‘One doctor meets another. I am glad.’

‘Oh no!’ the man said. ‘I have no training. I have a small experience of remedies, that is all. The sick in the infirmary are cared for by a visiting physician.’ He smiled and added, ‘We have no one sick just now.’ He was watching Gelis, whose gaze was resting on the arbour.

She said, ‘Then that is the vicomte?’

‘He is sleeping,’ the monk answered quickly. He did not offer to take her across.

‘You have been with him a long time?’ said Tobie. ‘Perhaps the lady might sit, while you tell us a little about him?’

‘Her husband is a relative? Another relative?’ the monk said. He hesitated, and then led the way past the arbour to where a low house stood on its own, its door open, with a bench set in the shade under the thatch, and some stools. Gelis sat, and Tobie followed her slowly, using his eyes.

The motionless form on the litter had not stirred. The man was lying on his back, with a thin coverlet drawn up to his chest, and his loosely clad arms resting on top of it. The hand Tobie could see was heavily veined, but its long fingers, though thin, were not wasted. The sick man’s head, turned away, was concealed by a mane of combed, silvery hair, which merged into a full, curling beard. The hair, unusually for an ailing person, was glossy, and everything about him looked cared-for and clean.

Tobie sat down saying, smiling, ‘You are to be congratulated,’ and then realised what the monk had just said.

Brother Huon returned the smile. ‘He is an easy patient. He was clean-shaven, but shaving is tiring. We stopped at the time of the seizure and then did not restart.’ He turned to Gelis, who had suddenly spoken. ‘Madame?’