Niccolo Rising (23 page)

He said nothing, but rested on her unaltered the same kindly gaze. He would not delude her about Felix, and she must not delude herself. She heard herself saying, “It is not Felix’s attitude which concerns me,
but yours. You protected Felix, and from that stemmed the trouble that followed. To be turned off now must seem the height of ingratitude.”

Again, he cut through all she intended to say. He said, “Of course not. I had meddled long before that. I put myself in the market-place.”

He had been reared on French, and his Flemish still held an undercurrent of it. His own voice, when he was not play-acting, or mimicking, was soft and even and practical, even when uttering such a remark, which silenced her for a moment with the very complexity of its implications. Round a guild table; in the midst of some subtle, three-sided negotiation in a Hanse office, she sometimes thought of Claes, and of the dawning, in increasing numbers, of moments such as these.

She said, “Then you may be able to guess who has already approached me to ask for your services.”

The smile she received now was like none she had ever received round a guild table. “So I may,” he said. “But I don’t think you would expect me to tell you.”

She rearranged the papers before her. “I have had a request from Ser Alvise Duodo the Venetian,” said the Widow. “If I wish to release you, he will give you work on board the Flanders galleys till spring, and then give you some training on the homeward voyage which will obtain you a paid post in Venice. He would interview you.”

“And the other?” said Claes gravely.

“The other comes from the Dauphin. The Dauphin Louis of France, who is staying at present with Meester Bladelin. He remembers clearly, it seems, meeting yourself and Felix on one of his visits to Louvain. Felix engaged him in conversation about hunting. He proposes for you a post with his huntsman, combined with that of – he said – a resourceful errand lad. The post, he said, was too menial for a son of mine.”

“But Felix wants it,” said Claes.

This time she chose not to answer, watching him; waiting for him to return the stroke in this delicate game … the fourth, the fifth, the sixth such conversation she had held with him, perhaps, since she had found him grown, suddenly, out of childhood. Six such conversations, sensibly spaced.

Mabelie had called twice, not being able to dispense with … conversations.

Claes said, “Or no, I see. Felix longs to be the Dauphin’s huntsman, but he doesn’t know yet that there is a third offer. Then I give you best. I don’t know what it is.”

“It is mine,” said Marian de Charetty steadily. “That you join captain Astorre and his mercenaries on their trip to Italy, and if he finds you suitable, stay with him to fulfil any contract he may make on my behalf. When the contract ends you may choose to stay, or return here.”

He changed colour. An involuntary response was the last thing she
had expected: in her turn, she was shaken. Even then, she could not tell whether he felt pleasure or fear.

To give him time, she said, “You and Julius have always maintained that the mercenary troop ought to be the most lucrative side of the business. Astorre has given me good reason to think that is so. The Duke of Milan and the Pope are recruiting mercenaries for the Naples war: we have well-trained lances on reserve pay who have only to be called. Captain Astorre with the best of these will go overland to Milan before Christmas. If Astorre obtains a contract, he will send for more men by the spring.”

He said, “But the Flanders galleys would take me out of reach of my lord Simon just as effectively.”

That was to test her. But her thoughts on this matter had occupied many nights. She said, “Do you suppose you are being chased out of the city by Simon? There is no question of that. You maintain that the shears fell into the water and became entangled between you. My lord Simon, it seems, will say nothing, except that he regrets the disgrace to his rank in being led by his temper into chastising a servant. For him to seek you out now or attack you would make him a laughing-stock.”

“And you don’t think
I
would attack
him
?” said Claes.

“I think I know you,” she said. “That is why I have asked Astorre if he will take you. There are things you need to learn.”

“Such as how to fight,” he said. His tone was neither joking nor bitter but idle, as if his thoughts were quite elsewhere. He said, “Demoiselle, I am content, as I told you. If you know me, you know that.”

She said, “But you have put yourself in the market-place,” with a little sadness. And then, as he did not answer, she said, “And, you must know, the city is concerned. They won’t press charges for what has happened and they won’t order me to send you away. But it would be wise to leave Bruges for a while.”

She broke off again. Claes said, “Geneva lies on the way to Milan. Will captain Astorre call there? Is that what you mean by having something to learn?”

When Claes wanted to know something, there was no avoiding the vastness of his gaze. He did not look distressed, although his face was more hollow than it usually was, with the faint rainbow colours here and there that reminded Felix, he said, of St Salvator’s windows.

Claes had come to her from the kitchens of Jaak de Fleury of Geneva, whose late niece’s bastard he was. Michelle her sister had been Thibault de Fleury’s second wife. Her sister was dead, and Thibault old and out of his senses, but Jaak de Fleury continued to flourish. And his horse and his ass and his wife and his fine trade and banking company with its headquarters in Geneva.

Life was not fair. She had not seen Jaak for many years, not since Cornelis died or long before it. All she and the de Fleury company had in common now was their trading connections, stiffly maintained
because both houses depended on them, but involving no warmth, no personal interest, no friendly contact. She did not like Jaak de Fleury, and he did not like her.

And if she did not like him, she could imagine how Claikine must feel. Although he had never spoken of his time in Geneva. Not consciously, anyway.

Now she was sending him there, however briefly. She looked directly at him and said, “Yes, Astorre will call at Geneva. What are you afraid of?”

He was looking at his darned hose, and smoothing one knee with a finger from which the blue dye had almost worn off. In the small cabinet meant only for Julius, he seemed to occupy all the air and all the floorspace, even though he was folded double on the low stool. He laughed suddenly and said, “You’d be surprised, demoiselle. I suppose, of ridicule I haven’t invited.”

“Then you should learn how to deal with it,” the widow said. “As I said, you have a lot to find out. Captain Astorre has no objection to teaching you. You will learn also from Julius. Indeed, I hope there are some things Julius might find himself learning from you. When you are not here, his totals for Felix’s scholastic equipment frequently depart from the credible.”

The finger on his knee stopped, and he looked at her.

She answered the query with a calmness she did not need to pretend. “Yes. Julius wants to go to Italy also. I hope, by the way, that you thanked him for what happened at Sluys.”

Claes said, “Yes, of course. Why does he want to go with Astorre? What will you do? Who would help you here with the business?”

Her anxiety dissolved, for a moment, in amusement. She said, “Why shouldn’t he go? Julius is ambitious. A well-led band needs a notary, a paymaster, a treasurer. He would do well, and it would give him the authority he longs for. And as for the business, I don’t believe Julius really thinks that pawnbroker Oudenin will supplant him before the end of the contract. But Julius does know that I will not make him a partner, now or in the future. I need someone cleverer.”

Silence.

Everything she said, she knew, had been understood. Everything she thought … almost. She said, “I think I can manage. I may make a temporary appointment. That is my concern. Your concern is your immediate future. You have three offers. Which will you take?”

She could see him physically take the decision: straightening his arms so that his big hands hardened on his knees; firming, with a long inhalation, the muscles which had held him politely at attention on the low, backless stool.

He said, “You have considered that, by law, you would receive a fee from the galley commandant or the Dauphin for releasing me from my apprenticeship?”

She was answered. She kept her voice, in spite of it, steady. “Every time I look at my debit column, I consider it,” Marian de Charetty said. “If you go to Milan for me instead, I shall demand large profits in compensation. Do I take it you have decided for Astorre and Italy?”

His resignation was marked. “I have no alternative,” he said. “I was brought up obeying your every word. You send me to Milan. I go there.”

“Such martyrdom!” said the widow. “We shall try to survive your departure.”

“I’m sure you will,” Claes said abstractedly. His mind, it appeared, was on the business. He said, “As to the dyeshop, I think I’ve heard you and Meester Julius suggest that if the fulling and the finishing were to be farmed out, Henninc would enjoy giving all his attention to the dyeing, with Lippin to help him. And a cheerful sort of clerk – we all know they are about – could work with jonkheere Felix, now he’s ready to be interested in what goes on in the business. The investment side at Louvain can run itself for a bit, but it really needs to attract more money. Julius says. I wonder if Astorre and Julius and I could help?”

She said, “You can certainly help. If you get a contract to garrison Naples, it will give the business here some real capital.”

“Yes,” he said. “Of course. But I was thinking of something else. If you like, you could send us south with a trading caravan. You know. Merchants and men of business going to Italy and needing protection. Merchandise to be escorted over the mountains. And what would pay best – the job of taking boxes of letters and bills and bulls from the Flanders banks to their Italian headquarters. A winter courier service. The banks would give you a fee, and I could carry them all on this trip. They could send silver even, with an armed escort this size. And if they were impressed by us, they might approach you to hire men another time. You’d have to train your own couriers.”

“I should,” said Marian de Charetty slowly. Slowly, in tribute to the implications of all he was saying and the scale, she began to suspect, of the decision he had actually reached. He was eighteen.

She had known she was sending him from Bruges, and security. She had known she was forcing him to go to Geneva, where all his early misery must have been. And despite Astorre’s prediction that the Naples war was defensive, that there would be no fighting next year if ever, she had known that she was sending Claes to learn the business of war, and take part in it, and that when or if he returned, he would be altered.

Yet he had to learn to defend himself. And he
had
meddled, as he had said.

She looked at him, and he said, “It is for the best, demoiselle,” and gave a quick, comical grin of reassurance.

She smiled in return, with composure. She was good at that.

Among the merchant-princes of Bruges, the most useful social event of that autumn was the banquet given for the commander of the Flanders galleys by the Duke’s wealthy Controller Pierre Bladelin. It was held in the Controller’s russet brick palace with its octagonal tower and steeple in Naalden-Straate.

If the Duke had been present, it would have been held in the Princenhof, which would have been more interesting because, as everyone knew, there was a new bathing basin and several sumptuous retiring rooms (they said) filled with fruit and flowers and sweetmeats and perfumes and other unusual luxuries, for the use of the bathers before, during and after immersion.

While in residence in the past the Duke had been known at least twice to pick a new mistress from the society invited to meet him at the Princenhof. If such a lady proved fertile, the fortune of that particular family would be made. The Duke was quite prodigal towards all his bastards, and none of his mistresses or their previous or subsequent husbands had ever been known to censure him.

Katelina van Borselen had heard it all discussed often enough in her own family, and in that of her cousins. The subject came up again now, with their handsome invitations from Bladelin. The de Veeres had accepted, and so had her father. Her mother being in Zeeland, Katelina, regally trained, proposed to attend in her place.

The de Veeres agreed that, as it was, Controller Bladelin’s house was grand enough, as it had cause to be, considering the appointments he held and the years he had enjoyed the Duke’s favour, in spite of being born to a dyer of buckram.

Katelina, who had forgotten this detail, added it to the others already occupying her as she swept through the Controller’s doorway, and under the wrought tabernacle and the shield and the handsome sculptured effigies of the Madonna and her host in adoration.

At this function she did not expect to meet dyers, or their sons or their notaries. But did dyers stick to dyers, and hence might ostracise the enemies of their own kind?