Niccolo Rising (16 page)

The face Felix turned to the Greek was therefore half hostile and half expectant. This was a house-guest of Anselm Adorne. He was going to be censorious, and Felix was going to be impertinent. Julius could see it coming.

The Greek said, “Messer Felix, I have a message from your friend Claes, who is in the Steen.”

He spoke in very clear Greek. Julius, disciple of Bessarion, understood him. On his feet before Felix could speak, Julius said, “Monsignore … I thought he was released.”

The Greek sighed. “Perhaps so,” he said. “It was early this morning. I should have delivered it then, but I was overtaken with affairs. Is it too late?”

Belatedly, Felix stood up beside Julius. “Too late for what?” he said.

“Felix,” said Julius. He turned to Messer de’ Acciajuoli. “Forgive us. Please tell us what Claes has said. It was generous of you to trouble.”

“It was no trouble,” said the Greek kindly. “And a very shor message. He requires you, Messer Felix, not to do something.”

“What?” said Julius.

“What?” said Felix rather differently.

The Greek smiled. “That is all. He said you would know what he meant. Forgive me.” And smiling again, he turned with care, and made towards the table of Anselm Adorne and the magistrates. Felix remained on his feet.

“Felix?” said Julius.

The Bonkle boy tugged Felix’s tunic and he sat down.

“Felix?” said Julius again, really sharply.

Under his breath, the Sersanders boy said, “I told you.”

“Well,” said Felix angrily.

The Sersanders boy said, “I told you Claes was in trouble enough.”

Julius stared at him, and then at Felix, and then at John Bonkle, who wouldn’t meet his eye. He said, “Oh my God, what has he done now?”

By then, other people could have told him.

In the pleasant little garden of the van Borselens the fountain, playing gently while the family took the air, chatting, suddenly became possessed of Satan and thrust its jets hissing into the air, to fall drenching across my lord’s head and into my lady Katelina’s satin skirts.

In the yard of the Jerusalem Church the well overflowed into the piles of newly-mixed mortar, spreading its white sticky porridge over and into the timber stacks, and the feet of the masons and carpenters who were adding the latest improvement to Anselm Adorne’s splendid church.

In the egg-market, the casing shot off a water-pump and frightened a goat, which broke its tether and demolished three stalls of eggs until someone caught it.

The waterpipe running under Winesack Street sprang a leak under uncommon pressure and the water, rising, found its way into two cellars and the bath-house, where it put out the boilers, injected the bathwater with a stream of noisome brown liquid and nearly choked the proprietor, the porter and the clients with a surfeit of steam.

The barbers’ bloodpit, sharply diluted, overflowed. Joining the rivulet from a parting pump joint, the stream moved into the Grand Market and towards the wheels of the Great Crane. This, powered by two running men, each treading the curve of his wheel, was currently raising a net bearing two tuns of Spanish White, two chests of soap and a small cask of saffron.

By bad luck the water reached the Crane from behind, striking the wheels at a time when they were spinning hard in the opposite direction. The effect was to halt the spin suddenly, pitching each running man
severely forward to the hurt of his features. The twin hooks, almost wound to the height of the Crane, then unwound even more quickly, dropping the Spanish White, the soap and the saffron and breaking every container.

Rivers of gold, rivers of white, rivers of scarlet and a scum of expensive bubbles made their way over the square and began to spread, pervasively, under the double doors of the Inn of the Two Tablets of Moses, while far across the town, at the Waterhuus, an exhausted horse drooped, a wheel of cock-eyed buckets jerked and creaked to a crawl and the level of the town cistern began, blessedly, to lower at last.

They stemmed the flood under the inn door with brooms, and then swept a path outside so that the magistrates could emerge and survey the novel carnival aspect of the market-place. The magistrates were about to emerge when Claes slid hastily in, followed closely by a trail of yellow footprints.

Halfway to Felix he slowed, becoming conscious perhaps of an area of peculiar silence.

Half the inn’s clients, it appeared, were vastly amused, among them Lionetto and his companions. By contrast Julius, Felix and all Felix’s friends stood in a huddle, looking at Claes. Adorne and the magistrates were looking at him as well, and the Greek, standing quietly beside them.

The owner of the Two Tablets, unsure what was happening, rushed to reassure. “As you asked, my lords, a constable has been sent to the Waterhuus. And a sergeant. And the town surgeon, to see to the cranemen.”

The doctor Tobias, lifting his head with some trouble, said with drunken solemnity, “No need for that. I’m a surgeon.”

He rose, arms outstretched, single sleeve dangling, and began to weave his way to the door, slapping his feet into fresh floods of colour. Rainbow bubbles rose from his heels. Arrested, he stamped, making more of them. He watched them rise. He turned and blew them, with a large and deliberate bounty towards the swaying Lionetto, upon whom they burst like fried eggs.

Julius, swiftly calculating the cost of the silk doublet under the gold and (glass?) rubies, was not surprised to see dawning rage on the captain’s roughened face. The Greek said, “Ah, there is our friend Claes, come to chastise me. But indeed, I did deliver your message to Felix. He will tell you.”

“Forgive me.” It was Anselm Adorne, intervening, in Italian. “Forgive me, Messer de’ Acciajuoli. You saw the boy this morning?”

No unspoken message from Felix, no fierce counter-appeal from Julius, no beseeching gaze from the rest of the youths prevented Nicholai de’ Acciajuoli from saying what he wanted to say.

“Through the prison window, of course. Unfortunate lad. He gave me a message for this young gentleman. What was it?
Not to do it
.”

“Not to do what, Monsignore?” said Adorne gently.

The Greek smiled. “That is his secret. Something, no doubt, they had planned together. Do you imagine it is safe to go out?”

Anselm Adorne turned his fair head and divided his gaze between the pale face of Felix de Charetty and the artless one of Claes the apprentice. “Yes. Tell us,” he said. “Is it safe to go out?”

Claes and Felix looked at one another, and Julius shut his eyes.

The expression on the apprentice’s face was not without cloud. It was, perhaps, more that of one who meant to please, and hoped to be liked for it. “It should be,” said Claes. “If everything went according to plan, it should be, monsignore. Meester Julius, is it true that –”

“My doublet is ruined,” said Lionetto. The doctor had gone.

“Meester Julius –”

“Do I understand,” said Lionetto, “that this lout is responsible for the mess that has ruined my doublet?” His admiration of Claes, it was clear, had undergone a transformation.

No one answered. Anselm Adorne, eyebrows raised, looked at Julius. Felix looked at Claes, his lips parted. Claes, persevering, said, “Meester Julius. Is it true that the Lady is coming from Louvain, and captain Astorre with her?”

“Yes,” said Julius shortly.

“Oh,” said Claes. His saucer eyes rested on Julius.

“
Astorre!
” hissed Lionetto. “Astorre!” he repeated, voice rising. “That block of criminal stupidity is coming here, to Bruges, while I am in town? Is he tired of life, Astorre? Or is he wooing the widow, Astorre? Retiring from the lost battles to take his ease in a dyeshop? Is that why he is here?”

Anselm Adorne turned. “The widow of Charetty employs him, captain Lionetto. I fear your doublet is stained. Would it not be wise to have it attended to? The way is clear outside, I believe.”

Julius said, “Minen heere, it is not known yet what caused this.”

Adorne’s smile had faded. He said, “But it will be known fairly soon. I think, Meester Julius, you should take your pupil and your apprentice back to their residence, and stay there until your mistress arrives. She, I make no doubt, will have something to say to you. By that time so, perhaps, will we.”

Felix said, “Meester Julius had nothing to do with it. Nothing. And Claes was in prison.” He had flushed.

“It has been noted,” said Adorne. “It will be our endeavour, as always, to see justice done. It is a pity the need should arise quite so often.”

But he was not looking at Julius at all, but at the Greek.

Chapter 6

W
ITHIN A WEEK
, the widow of Charetty arrived at the Ghent Gate of Bruges and passed over its bridge and through its prudent defences, thick as two castles, to settle the question of her erring son Felix. Her unmarried daughters, aged eleven and twelve, rode beside her. Behind her came five horse-drawn wagons, one smith, one carpenter, two clerks, three servants, a cook, and her bodyguard led by a professional soldier called Astorre, an abbreviation which had long since replaced his original name of Syrus de Astariis.

With the Flanders galleys almost due, she would have to have come anyway. It was an annual journey, but not one she enjoyed. Louvain to Brussels; Brussels to Ghent; Ghent to Bruges the roads had been as crowded as the canals and worse to navigate, what with other peopled draw-oxen and broken-down carts and inn-keepers’ rumours of brigands lying in wait round the next hedge.

Which was usually rubbish. Which needn’t, anyway, concern the Charetty company, which had its own bodyguard. More than that, its own band of mercenaries. So no one molested them and, at last, they had come to Bruges. For her entrance she wore a good cloak of rich mulberry and had an extravagance on her head, a voile contraption fronted with seed pearls. Astorre and all her servants behind her wore the Charetty blue, the special dye Cornelis had concocted which she preserved in his memory. Her horsecloth and those of her daughters were of gold wire and velvet, and their harness was silver. Bruges should know, when one of her burgess-widows rode into town. To erase the impression made by her son Felix.

She had forgotten how noisy it was. First the creak, the groan, the thud of the windmills. Then the long portal-arches into the city which trapped the jingle and clatter of stamping horses and the squeak and thunder of cartwheels and the din of country voices.

In the streets, the leaning houses smacked the same noises between them. In September, every workshop and every shutter was open. She
heard the rasp of a saw, and the slap of the baker and the clang of his ovens. She heard the buzz of the grinding-stone and the chime and clash of the smith and voices raised in anger and voices raised in mirth, and dogs, and pigs, and the crow of a cockerel. She heard the gulls disputing above and the uniform creak of the house signs and she heard, most of all, the clacking of looms, resounding in street after street like a clog-dance.

In the three months she had been at Louvain, there were changes as well. She noted them, and made, courteously, the correct responses to her fellows who called to her, but she made her way to her own home without stopping. Her home and her business. It was the same thing.

And here was the entrance to the dyeworks Cornelis had been so proud of: well-swept, with no grass between the cobbles: good. The reek of warm dyes and the stench of urine. Smells which disturbed other people, but not her. And there in the yard (of course: why forego the chance of an hour off their labours?) stood her loyal employees to greet her.

The dyers in their aprons, with their hands hanging like indigo pumpkins. The male house servants in neat coifs and caps and their summer cloth doublets, black at the cuffs with nose-wiping but with no unmended holes about them. And the women with decent gowns, and head-napkins carefully ironed and folded round under their chins. The grooms, without waiting, skipped to help with the horses.

In the middle was her manager Henninc, in cuffed hat and sideless coat that reached to his calves at the back and his knees at the front because of his belly, which had not got any smaller. Because of her food or her wine, she was not sure which. But an honest man, Cornelis had always maintained. Plodding, with no head for figures, but honest.

The need for a man with clerk’s training was what had led to the appointment of Julius. There he was. A sturdy stance, but one that avoided defiance. Or deference, if it came to that.
Too handsome by half
, Cornelis had grumbled at the hiring. Not from any distrust of herself: he knew better than that. But that blunt, heavy-boned face with its slanting eyes and nose so straight it might have been broken – that could cause trouble among burghers’ wives as well as the girls in the house and the market-place.

But in fact, Meester Julius had given no trouble. Either his discretion was absolute, or the opposite sex had no part in his calculations. Nor, even more mercifully (it appeared), had the same sex. At the same time, he had been a fool with Felix.

And there her son was, dashing out of the house with a stupid hat in his hand and his crimped curls bouncing. No less gaunt – was he wasting: what kept him so puny? No less boisterous. No less …

Dismounted, she stopped him with her voice before he could reach
her. “Felix de Charetty, return to the house. When I wish to speak to you, I will send for you.”

Hurt eyes: the mutinous lip beginning to bulge. Then he lowered his gaze and said, “Yes, my lady mother,” and turning, walked with dignity back to the house. Good.

Now her own daughters had dismounted and were standing behind her. Tilde and little Catherine, demure, obedient; shooting glances from under their hoods.
Look at us. Grown women with husbands to find
.

“And Henninc,” said the widow. “You are well? Come to my office in five minutes.” She took her time. She ran her eye over all her workers, all her servants, and acknowledged their bobs and their curtseys before she brought her gaze round to her notary. “And the good master Julius. Can you spare me some time, a little later?”