Caprice and Rondo (83 page)

The other man’s gaze remained shrewd. He said, ‘I believe that. But the saviour of a nation is not always one of its own. Sometimes the Messiah comes from outside. You are a clever man, and a powerful one — for an apprentice.’ His lip curled.

Nicholas said calmly, ‘I was not bred to lead.’

‘You were not bred to follow,’ Acciajuoli said. ‘You study others. You know how to infect them with enthusiasm; how to rally them in adversity. You plan, you organise, you communicate. In what you do undertake, your confidence, one notices, is enviably absolute. What do you lack?’

Neither of them was smiling, now. ‘Arrogance,’ Nicholas said.

‘No,’ said the other man. Deep in thought, he had ceased to shiver. ‘Ambition, perhaps. And not, I think, because you are afraid to launch a great undertaking, and fail. You are not ambitious because you were born to be content.’ He fell silent. He said, ‘If none of us had interfered, you would be content still, would you not? Managing her business for Marian de Charetty; growing old peacefully with your children in Bruges.’

‘My children?’ Nicholas said.

‘You have step-daughters,’ said the other man. He made a sudden, irascible movement, not without an echo of pain, as if the empty socket in his thigh had rebelled against his standing so long in the cold. He said, ‘Then, if you are not the principal, consider that you may be the forerunner. In which case, you are right to safeguard your line. And you are wrong in treating the world as your cabbage patch: sowing, exploiting and moving on. It is time you set to planting for life.’

‘My children?’
Nicholas repeated, as if he had not heard.

‘A figure of speech,’ Acciajuoli said.

M
UCH
LATER
, Julius came back. He brought Anna to Fioravanti’s house, where his host and Pietro his pupil plied them both with Chiot wine, while Julius poured out in aromatic detail the tally of his triumphs since winter. It was the money from Uzum Hasan’s jewels that had established the business, taking the place of poor Ochoa’s lost gold. Julius was solvent. He had appointed an agent in Novgorod. He was prepared to spend a few weeks in Moscow in order to establish another, with Nicholas’s concurrence and help. Then they could all go home.

‘Well, you can,’ Nicholas said, when his congratulations had been given and his own news briefly recounted. ‘You can go home whenever you like. But I’m under contract to the Grand Duchess to stay. And ask Rudolfo exactly what that means. Acceptance or prison.’

Julius stared at him. He looked remarkably well: hard and bright-eyed and vigorous and wholly recovered. Anna, smiling, sipping, watching Nicholas, hardly spoke. She was not discourteous, and her manner to Julius was unchanged, but it was possible to guess that the bloom of marriage had dimmed. It was even possible to guess that Julius had not noticed it.

Now he said, a little blankly, ‘You don’t know what you’re saying. I didn’t come to stay here for ever. I didn’t even mean to come here in the first place.’

Anna spoke, her voice quiet. ‘He’s trying to say, Nicholas, that of course we can go home when we wish, but that you must go home too. Forget what brought you here. Forget why you thought you couldn’t go back. If you don’t go back, you may regret it for the rest of your life.’

Nicholas felt very cold. He saw Fioravanti’s frown of concern, and the interested look on the face of Pietro. Julius had flushed.

He had used the pendulum within the last week, and everyone he cared for was living. Julius could not have possessed later, and worse news than Nicholas had. Nevertheless, he felt rigid with dread. He said, ‘Why should I go back?’

Anna said, ‘Can you trust your pendulum, Nicholas? Have you sensed nothing? Did you feel nothing last summer, when you were with Uzum Hasan? David de Salmeton travelled to Edinburgh and tried to seize your son Jodi, killing his bodyguard and attacking the old dame he was visiting. They got Jodi away, and sent him to Gelis in Flanders, but de Salmeton has set up business in Scotland, and so has another man you will know — Andro Wodman, who was there when Jodi was attacked. Wodman has gone into partnership with Anselm Sersanders. And de Salmeton is in favour with everybody, trading abroad, befriended at Court. He is staying in Scotland, he has said, until summer. Then he will cross to Bruges, and seek payment, at leisure, for all the damage done to him in the past. Gelis. Jodi. Kathi. Tobie. Everyone.’

‘How do you know?’ Nicholas said. His voice sounded dry. He could not be there by the summer. He could not be there at all.

Julius said, ‘The Bruges office has been trying to find you. As soon as they knew where we were, they sent couriers. I got a message at Novgorod. I have another for you.’ He handed over a letter.

It was in Gelis’s writing. Nicholas didn’t open it. He said simply, ‘Rudolfo?’

But the architect slowly shook his dark head, his face sympathetic. ‘The Grand Duchess won’t let you go.’

Anna’s face was pallid and puzzled. Even Julius looked shocked. Nicholas said, ‘I can’t come. Julius, you’ll have to go. Please go. Please help them.’

‘Of course you can go!’ Anna said sharply. ‘Isn’t it worth it? Isn’t it worth at least trying, even if Zoe’s men were to kill you? Don’t you owe Gelis that much at least?’ She stared at him, the bones of her face stark through the flesh. (
If Julius were dead, would you love me?
) ‘You can escape! Surely you can escape, with our help! Nicholas, what are you thinking of?’

Of Gelis. Of Jodi. Of Kathi. He said, ‘You might be killed as well. No. Go. Go and help them.’

Then Anna rose to her feet and said, ‘I do not think I wish to share a room with a self-seeking coward. Goodbye.’

The door closed. After a moment Julius also rose, murmured something apologetic and followed her.

The architect said, ‘What will happen?’ He glanced at Pietro, who looked surprised, and then left.

‘They won’t go,’ Nicholas said. He had put the letter away. His jammed hands rattled into each other, and his heart was in torque to a windlass.

‘You believe so?’ said the other man doubtfully.

‘I know so,’ said Nicholas. Which, of course, was the case. Which left David de Salmeton in Bruges. Which left all those he loved unprotected. Or unprotected by him. Or unprotected by him, except in a way they would never know.

And now, he felt he had too much to bear.

Chapter 35

I
N
B
RUGES
,
AS
ELSEWHERE
, the months of silence passed, bringing apprehension but not yet the pain that the months of revelation would inflict. The only reports that reached Spangnaerts Street without fail had to do with the achievements in Scotland of the former Vatachino agent David de Salmeton.

De Salmeton was remaining in Edinburgh. He was deepening and expanding his Scottish involvement: riding north with King James to quell risings; encouraging the King to favour Italian merchants; and guiding Prosper de Camulio to better relations with the English King and the Pope. In trade, he was competing directly and astutely with the Berecrofts family, and with Kathi’s brother Sersanders, and his efficient, undesirable partner Andro Wodman. Since the previous year, de Salmeton had attempted no further assaults. The menace, dressed in mockery, lay in that remorseless stream of small notifications, for this deal or that, which burst upon the desks of half the merchants in Bruges every time a Scots cargo came in.
I am here. I am waiting
.

Waiting for Nicholas.

News came, of course, from Astorre and John le Grant with the Duke. Winter had not stopped Charles of Burgundy from his impassioned attempt to consolidate and safeguard his south-eastern frontiers and, with Savoy as his ally, to punish the Swiss, and to crush young Rene of Lorraine (
With the aid of God and St George, I go to liberate the subjects of Burgundy
). Ambassadors, floundering after his train, found themselves placed on a col three thousand feet up, deep in the snow, in order to witness a parade of the Burgundian army, much as their brethren in Persia, in broiling sunshine, had once watched a review of the army of Uzum Hasan with its hundreds of tents, its silver, its gems, its state robes, its carpets. Of the two, the Duke had bigger guns, but no camels.

On Ash Wednesday, the Duke accepted the honourable surrender of Grandson, the significant little mountainside fortress at the west end of
Lake Neuchâtel; but thought it necessary, to the distaste of the foreign ambassadors, to hang or drown four hundred of the defenders. Three days later, faced with twenty thousand of the Swiss confederation and its allies, the Burgundian army took flight, and the Swiss re-entered Grandson, reverently to clip the thickets of dead from the trees. The Duke and his ageing half-brother the Grand Bastard Anthony escaped with their lives, as did most of the army. Among the thousand slain was Jean de Lalaing.

Overrunning the Burgundian camp, the Swiss soldier boys broke into Paradise. All the riches of Burgundy had been brought to the field by its Duke and lay now abandoned, to the tune of hundreds of millions of marks, together with artillery, handguns, thousands of axes, crossbows, lances, horses and tents. There were more than six hundred precious banners and standards, many with the Duke’s device
Je l’ay emprins;
I have dared.

In their counting-houses and their clubs, the merchants of Flanders heard the news with muted scorn and bilious fury. Diniz Vasquez, describing it to his family and partners, still found it hard to believe. ‘Astorre says they lost everything. The Duke’s clothes, his jewels, his manuscripts, his tapestries, the gold from his chapel. The rabble had it cleaned out before their officers could collect it, and as a result, the whole of the Confederation has turned into a vast underground amateur market, with twenty-thousand-ducat jewels changing hands for three francs. They also got two thousand Burgundian whores, but they knew the value of those.’

‘So is the Duke retiring?’ said Gelis. Now, with Moriz and Govaerts away, she and Tobie were the only ones left he could talk to.

‘You don’t mean it,’ said Diniz. ‘After a slight reversal like that? It only happened because of a misunderstanding. No. He’s off to Lausanne, to muster an international army and do some real damage. I wish we could get Astorre and John out.’

‘So do I,’ Gelis said. ‘But the good commanders are all that is holding Burgundy together.’ She let the subject drop, for these days she did not talk very much.

It was much the same, that winter, with Katelijne Sersanders. Stoically, she ministered to the morning sickness of her cousin’s child bride, both before and after the wedding; and as the weather improved, Agnes reciprocated, in a gingerly fashion, by coming to gaze at the encouraging sight of Katelijne tramping about, looking virtually normal, after presenting her husband with a second child. Aware, herself, of the necessity of producing a son for Arnaud and Anselm his father, Agnes was shocked by Kathi’s apparent insouciance. If her own first-born was a daughter, she would die. But Kathi didn’t even seem to think it mattered: she had
greeted the appearance of a son exactly as she had welcomed Margaret. Incomprehensibly, her husband Robin had behaved no differently either. You would think that sons and daughters were the same.

Had she been a little older, Agnes might have detected, beneath a layer of anxiety, a certain well-concealed satisfaction in both parents. In truth, Kathi was properly sensible of the need for heirs for the family business, and Robin was not blind enough to think this unimportant, although personally he preferred little maids. They disagreed, amiably, about the child’s name (
wait till it’s ripe, and then boil it through twelve Ave Marias
) before agreeing, amiably, on a compromise. Kathi had an idea that Tilde was planning already to marry it to her new daughter Lucia, which would give the Berecrofts family a nice interest in Madeira, and that of the Vasquez a nice interest in Scotland. She pondered, in between worrying, over the amazing predictability of merchant marriages, and then thought of Bonne and Jodi and went back to worrying.

As the intransigent months gave way to spring, outside news began at last to trickle in. In Venice (Gregorio wrote), Doge Mocenigo had died, worn out by his ten Turkish concubines rather more than by his exploits at sea. The Sultan of Turkey had recovered from his sickness of gout, the Queen of maladies, and the Turkish armies were moving westwards again: the governor of Albania, Francesco Contarini, had been killed in the fighting. There was plague in Rome. Despite or because of it, the Pope had imposed a punitive crusading tax on tentless Burgundy, and Jan Adorne, defiant in celibacy, had found himself unable to leave for the coming birth of his brother’s offspring in Bruges.

Her uncle, Kathi noted, was not stricken. As burgomaster of the councillors of Bruges, Anselm Adorne had little time these days for anything but the management of the city, and perpetual journeys abroad as its representative. After entirely friendly exchanges between Scotland and Flanders, he had given up his post as Conservator of Scots Privileges in Bruges, opportunely for James of Scotland, who was to make political capital out of it. On the list of appointments routinely reviewed on the King’s attainment of his majority appeared the name of Anselm Adorne, divested of his Conservatorship ‘partly on the grounds that he was an alien.’

Brought this news by her husband, Kathi had been rendered thoughtful. ‘Do I detect the hand of David de Salmeton somewhere in this?’

‘I don’t know,’ Robin had said. Firmly happy, confident in his marriage and in his work, he carried still, as she did, a cache of painful misgivings. He jogged the baby, who hung over his shoulder, and added a casual question. ‘Your uncle didn’t tell you who the next Conservator is to be?’

For once, she misread him. ‘No, but I expect we shall hear. Not you, or Archie, or Sersanders, because you’re all connected with Adorne. A Scot
with good connections abroad. John Bonkle? Too naïve. Thorn Swift? Not too young, but possible. Same with Haliburton. John Napier? Too important to travel so much. Andrew Crawford, or perhaps even Richard?’