Caprice and Rondo (82 page)

The Grand Duchess, having found a barbaric country, was intent first on imposing upon it an appearance at least of the magnificence of the courts of her forefathers. The second Byzantium, the third Rome must have splendid buildings, opulent dress and gold plate, formal ceremony. Only after that could come the roads and bridges, the fortifications, the arms. For anyone who wished to be an importer, a factor, or a ducal adviser, it required careful planning.

It was not a handicap, on the whole, to be in the Troitsa. Fioravanti visited several times more before Christmas, by grand-ducal permission, and proved a mine of information about outlying lands, for his grand design for the Uspensky had taken him to study churches in Novgorod, in Suzdal, in Vladimir. He also acted as courier between the prisoners
and Julius, who did not qualify for frequent access, and had to suffer the Brothers Ostafi and Gubka when he did. It did not disturb him too much: his eyes glowing, he was already anticipating deep and profitable negotiations in Novgorod. He brushed aside Anna’s misgivings: every ruler allowed dispensations at Christmas, and the Patriarch and his companion had surely expiated their crimes, if it was a crime to represent the Latin faith instead of another, and to bring the sins of Venice to mind.

When the Christmas festival ended, without the reappearance of either Father Ludovico or Nicholas, Julius made enquiries and returned, full of amused exasperation, to Anna. ‘They’re holding them for debt.’

Sometimes, she didn’t see the humour of things. ‘So tell me,’ she said in a cool voice, and sat on the chair, not the settle.

Julius was enjoying himself too much to care. He threw himself on the settle. ‘After the Patriarch left us at Fasso, he travelled round the Black Sea and lost all his possessions to robbers on the coast of Abkhazia. That’s one story. His servants say that they were managing to beat off the thieves, when the Patriarch went insane, stopped the fight and handed the robbers not only his purse, but all the costly gifts meant for Duke Charles of Burgundy. That is, he claimed they weren’t robbers at all, but starving Latins fleeing from Caffa. Uzum Hasan’s envoy returned home in disgust, and the Patriarch proceeded to Moscow, living on loans. He can’t repay what he borrowed.’

‘But Nicholas could,’ Anna said. She stared at him, her brows lined. ‘The jewels! Why did Nicholas give us the jewels? You must take the rest back.’

Julius laughed. ‘He gave us the jewels because he didn’t want Father Ludovico to waste them. They’re going to finance the new business: you know that. Anyway, Acciajuoli says Father Ludovico doesn’t want to get out. It suits him to wait, collecting news of what’s happening in the south and keeping a Latin presence in Moscow. If Zoe wants her Italian craftsmen, she’s going to have to let them have their own chaplains. And if there’s a Latin community, it’s the Patriarch’s job to supervise it.’ He reflected, smiling. ‘He’s a crafty old devil.’

‘No doubt,’ Anna said. Her colour had become extraordinarily high. She added, ‘He has no right to keep Nicholas prisoner. Take the jewels back. I want Nicholas with us at Novgorod. If he isn’t with us, I am not going.’

It was the worst quarrel — the only quarrel — that Julius had ever had with his beautiful wife. It was brief, and her voice was never once raised. At the end of it, he rode off with the jewels, and a day later returned, tight-lipped, and threw them before her. ‘Nicholas sent them back, with a note. They are for the business. The Grand Duke won’t release him or the Patriarch, whether they pay their debts or not. We are
to go to Novgorod, and set up an office, and report back. He will help all he can. He may be free by then.’

‘No,’ she said.

‘Then I’ll go without you,’ said Julius. ‘And you can waste time in Moscow by yourself.’

Then she had turned. ‘Does money matter more than I do?’

He shook his head. ‘Anna, of course not. But what can you do, what can I do in Moscow? Nicholas is under restraint. They won’t let him out. Where is the harm in using the time to some purpose?’

She said, ‘If we’re going home, we have to start while it’s winter.’ She broke off. She said, ‘We’re not going home, are we? Because Nicholas can’t travel, and you won’t abandon him, the snows will melt before we could leave.’

‘I was trying to tell you,’ said Julius. ‘We might as well go to Novgorod. And report back to Nicholas. And hope he is free soon after that. Then we can go. You will see Bonne by autumn.’

She came to him then, not wild, but sweetly tender and sad, and he and she made their peace. Thinking about it all later, Julius had to admit to being perplexed by her variable moods. Unless, of course — he sat up with shock — unless, of course, she was with child. His child. A son. An heir. A real dynastic marriage. He remained for a while in a state of half-serious, pleased contemplation; and felt a little ashamed, because he did not care much for Bonne.

Very soon after that, as he had hoped, he and Anna joined the fleet of sledges that called at their door and were on their way, in convoy, to Novgorod. They would be back in Moscow, he hoped, in a month.

A week later, the elderly Florentine from the Morea called on the Patriarch of Antioch in his apartment in the Troitsa monastery, and told him that he and his companion were free.

‘The Archimandrite has given his permission?’ Father Ludovico exclaimed. ‘The Grand Duke is agreeable? The soldiers of the garrison have been informed? What a pity that they could not all have done so seven days ago, when the party was leaving for Novgorod.’

‘One could, I suppose, overtake them?’ Nicholai de’ Acciajuoli said. ‘If that were Signor Niccolò’s preference. But our eminent friend from Bologna has serious plans to discuss with him, and the Grand Duchess herself has desired him to remain in Moscow. What am I to tell her?’

‘That I am honoured, of course, and shall remain,’ Nicholas said. ‘What more could a man want than this?’

H
E
DID
NOT
MEAN
IT
, of course. But he was conscious, as he spoke, that behind the irony lay the deeper irony that once, when his exile
began, he had thought to persuade himself that, indeed, he had all he desired. He wondered where Paúel Benecke was now, if indeed he were alive, and had not met a fate like Ochoa’s. He tried not to think of Ochoa or Anna, for it meant opening a vent to the wretchedness that underlay all he did, and if that were to be broached, he could not continue.

He had no news from the West, from his previous life. Now that he could use his pendulum again he was doing so, sparingly. He knew that Gelis and Jodi were both in the Low Countries, and he had touched Kathi, once. She was safe. The stab of relief made his heart ache, for he had no right to feel it. He had forfeited the right to feel it for Gelis and Jodi as well, yet nothing but death could change that. He had not known, until recently, that love could exist in such different forms.

He filled his days. Living now close to the castle, he saw much less of the Patriarch, having taken up residence in the house and workshop of Fioravanti, with whom a strange unofficial partnership had grown. Blessed with an early grasp of mechanical principles, Nicholas had benefited from years of working with John le Grant and, later, Moriz the priest: his fascination with the subject went back to Donatello’s experiments with perspective. So he was drawn to something he recognised as a radical advance on what he already knew, and spent the dark days, and the days of lengthening spring deep in discussion over plans and designs at tables littered with instruments; and in sheds filled with gritty samples of brick, and fragments of plaster, and buckets of evil-smelling mixtures of mortar. The cathedral of the Uspensky was to be Muscovy’s triumphant proclamation to the West: Russian in style, but incorporating the best the world had to offer in materials and design. The princes of Muscovy would be crowned there.

During all this time, Nicholas continued to strengthen the connections he had already established, on behalf of Julius’s business, with the small trading community, both inside Moscow and outside it. Already, for the building of the cathedral, elaborate plans had to be laid to ensure that the materials, the masons, the labourers, the scaffolding experts were commissioned and brought into Moscow during those periods when travel was possible. Couriers passed between Nicholas and Julius, rapt in building his business at Novgorod, and entranced at this new dimension. Anna never wrote; but at least she did not abandon her spouse and go home.

Lastly, for fastidious adviser in all this, Fioravanti had obtained the services of the one resident who had both Greek and Florentine blood; who had business links with the West and the Levant and who was also close to the work’s greatest patron. Nicholai Giorgio de’ Acciajuoli, having politely sacrificed several weeks of his leisure to act as escort and interpreter during grand-ducal audiences, finally agreed to move into the architect’s household.

He seemed to find it amusing. As an individual, he proved, as
Nicholas had always suspected, to be a superior bastard whose superiority was perfectly justified. After a period of wary adjustment, Nicholas suddenly learned how to deal with him. Fioravanti was a brilliant visionary, but the Greek with the wooden leg provided the rapier tongue, the cynicism, the wit that gave spice to their lives together. Nicholas fed Julius in Novgorod with work, and prayed that he wouldn’t come home. For one thing, Acciajuoli would eat him alive.

In March, Rudolfo’s son left, bearing two white gerfalcons for the Duke of Milan, who was fond of Fioravanti, and would also have building work to be done in the future. Acciajuoli, learning of the proposed trip, had been encouraging. ‘But of course, Nicholas, you will be returning as well? The proud husband and father, so long deprived? Even if they won’t allow you in Bruges (and so I hear, although I cannot imagine why), you might be reunited with your family in Cracow? In Danzig? In Lübeck?’

Nicholas considered this willingly. ‘I thought of it,’ he said. They were standing on the site of the cathedral, now being cleared of the errors of Messrs Miskin and Krivtsov and the persevering masons of Pskov.

‘That is a good sign,’ said the Florentine. His long-nosed face was blue in the wind, and his beard almost white. Below the costly black fox of his hat, he looked like an ikon, or a figure by Rublev from one of the pulverised frescoes shovelled up over there; an eye and two fingers admonishing from an old barrow.

‘A good sign that I was thinking?’ Nicholas said. ‘But then, I thought how much cheaper it would be if they paid their own expenses to come all the way here. And the advantages. Egidia could manage the house, Marfa the Mayoress, and the boy would keep us all merry. He must be seven; old enough to be taught to watch out for your leg.’ He smiled generously.

‘You have decided,’ Acciajuoli said, ‘to be tiresome. Very well. I merely wondered, now that we know what we do, whether you had elected to spend your future in Russia.’

Now that we know what we do
. Nicholas had thought of spending his future in Caffa, or with Uzum Hasan. Uzum Hasan had not spent the winter preparing to go to war with the Turk. He had marched north, as a show of strength against those rulers who might have aided his rebel son; then he had returned to his base. Barbaro was still with him, but only because his routes home were all closed. For the foreseeable future, the ruler of Persia would be battling against his own family, not the Turk.

And the Crimea, of course, was quite closed, although there was some news he had heard with mixed feelings. Oberto Squarciafico, carried to Constantinople with the Genoese he had betrayed, had been instantly executed by the Turks. The ousted Khan Mengli-Girey, on the
other hand, had been shown clemency by the Sultan and freed, ready to return one day as Khan of the Crimea.

Nicholas did not find it hard to believe. He was prepared to hear that even Karaï Mirza had been spared. For, of course, the Turks had not invaded Caffa uninvited, after the widow’s son had been imposed as Tudun. Enraged by Genoese interference, the well-born supporters of the two deposed candidates had combined to invite the Ottoman Sultan to intervene. Which he had done, to effect. The channels between Qirq-yer and Constantinople had always been open, as Nicholas had known.

So, plot within plot, thread within thread, the Crimean conspiracy had played itself out, with the wisest and coolest heads winning. Nothing had quite been as it appeared; he had known that. But Squarciafico, thank God, had lost, with the widow’s ducats spilled from his satchel, and the widow herself could cause no more dissent, or her son. Nicholas wondered whether the same, one day, would come to be said of Zoe-Sophia, this formidable Duchess who some time, for sure, would have sons, and who would eye the young, shambling Ivan her step-son, so much their inferior. Some mothers, some timid mothers failed to fight for their sons, and gave up. Some gave up, it might even be, because they glimpsed the harm it might cause. But Nicholas would put nothing past Zoe.

Now he turned to Acciajuoli and said, ‘Why? Do you think I should stay?’

And the man had said, without his customary irony, ‘It depends, does it not, on your reasons? It happens, sometimes, that a country and a man come together at the right moment: that the man’s imagination is gripped, and he sees not what is before him, but what could be there. Might this happen to you?’ The large, dark eyes held his own, as if the question were of consummate importance.

It came to Nicholas, strangely, that to Acciajuoli, it was: that this was why the Greek from Florence was here; that to receive this answer was his only reason for coming to Muscovy. And then he saw beyond that, to the significance of the question itself, which he had never considered. For Nicholas had no interest in the future of Muscovy, any more than he had felt for the Crimea and Persia; any more indeed than he had felt for Bruges and for Venice, except in so far as they affected his experiments with the Bank. Any more than he had felt for Scotland, when he had used that, also, for his own purposes.

He said, ‘Muscovy is not my country. I have no country.’