Niccolo Rising (32 page)

“Why?” said Julius. “If it’s Anjou and the French and not Ferrante, will you cross back to him?”

“With my gold? It’s tempting,” said Tobie. He had pushed his hat to the back of his scalp, and his face with its neat, curled nostrils was passive. He said, “You should have taken our numerical genius with you to count it. Where was Claes last night?”

“Second column from the left, third name down,” Julius said. “I haven’t got a copy of the list yet, but they’re selling it in the yard for beer money.”

“Well, let’s get it,” said Tobie. “I’ll find Claes. Does he always do this?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been in a new town with him before,” said Julius. “I suppose he’s looking for something.”

“Safety in numbers,” said Tobie laconically.

He did not trouble, when Julius had gone, to send for Claes, as he knew from his uncle what Claes was doing, and where. He simply rammed down his hat, brushed off the short black gown of his profession and, wrapping himself in his cloak, set off for the delightful mansion of the Acciajuoli.

Chapter 14

T
HE MILANESE
house of the Acciajuoli lay between the dust and mud of the cathedral and the dust and mud of the Castello, not far from the merchants’ piazza. There were unbroken lines of arcaded houses in squared stone and red brick and worked marble. There were impressive blocks with projecting eaves and arched windows and coats of arms over the doorways. There were churches, some inside enclosures. There were towers and staircases and balconies and upper-storey projections in timber that sheltered the streets and sometimes arched across them.

The big bell of the Broletto clanged out as Tobie left the crowded market streets for ones where there were fewer women, and the men, meeting briefly or hurrying to get in from the cold, wore wide or tall or draped hats, or the black caps of the professions, and kept warm in heavy gowns over padded damasks. Tobie looked in peoples’ faces as was his habit, and drew conclusions about the health of the city. Now that the Duke had it in hand, it was well run. The under-nourished, the crippled, the surgically punished were not to be seen in this quarter anyway. You would find them where the common houses were, and the workshops. And other afflictions known to the medical man, such as the burns and dull ears of the armourers.

But misery was not what Tobie mostly remembered, from his days calling there as a student. He remembered the heat, and the din, and the cheerfulness. In winter, you could get hot roasted chestnuts in Milan anywhere. He used to eat them with his friends, swinging his legs on a bench by the anvil, and shouting to them and the smiths. It was talking to the smiths, he sometimes thought, that made him the kind of doctor he was.

The house of the Acciajuoli was the sort that banking families liked to build. It was wide rather than tall, with a good big double-door that led not to a room, but to a short vaulted passage which ended in a square courtyard, pleasant even in rain, with evergreens placed on the cobbles, and a rank of solid buildings on its far side which presumably held the
stables, and the horses brought with such pains for Pierfrancesco Medici of Florence, who had married an Acciajuoli. Somewhere, he could hear the mewing of goshawks. To one side, a balustraded flight of steps gave access to the principal floor. The porter, who had displayed no surprise at his arrival, showed Messer Tobias Beventini up the steps, from which a narrow balcony ran along the face of the building. Part of the way along this was another door which opened on his approach. Immediately inside was his uncle.

“Well, turd,” said Giammatteo Ferrari da Grado. “You were in no hurry to come. Here is where you put your cloak. You are prepared for what is going to happen?”

“I don’t know what is going to happen,” said Tobie coldly. “I can only repeat. There is no connection whatever between this boy and myself. Whatever he has done is his own responsibility.”

When little more than his own age, his uncle Giammatteo had been professor of medical logic at Pavia University, founded by a Duke of Milan. In a long career spanning thirty years Giammatteo had never moved from the faculty except to minister to the current Duke, its protector. Or, of course, to give his services, at a price, to those of the well-born and the famous whose appeals or whose politics touched the Duke’s heart.

When Tobie, resoundingly qualified, had rejected the sedate satisfaction of university life in favour of rampaging about with merchants and mercenaries, Maestro Giammatteo had publicly washed his hands of him, thus neatly preventing his nephew from exploiting his name. That, and the other things he had said at the time had not endeared him to Tobie. Neither had the fact that, although well over sixty, the professor was florid and hale, with all the positive features in his merry face which Tobie himself lacked, in addition to a beard and a full head of speckled brown hair.

Tobie said, “Is he here?”

“Oh, yes,” said his uncle. “As you know, he brought the horses for Pierfrancesco. Messer Agnolo and his sister made a point of inviting him back, even before they sent for me. A most amenable youth. We have all made it our business to speak to him. He shows a charming gratitude for all you have done for him. Your skilful nursing at Damme; your act of mercy at Geneva. We know how close you have been. You must see how, when you left captain Lionetto so suddenly, it might appear that the boy’s affairs had attracted you?”

“No. As I told you. It was captain Lionetto’s affairs which repelled me,” said Tobie curtly.
Affairs
, his uncle had said, with a certain slyness. Deviation had always amused Giammatteo. Tobie found it reassuring. That, then, was why he was here. It meant, at least, that his uncle knew nothing of hair dye, and love potions, and holly. Or of a possible fortune, in the hands of an enigma whom he might, or might not, bring to confide in him.

“As you now repel Lionetto, I am told,” his uncle was going on cheerfully. “Your former captain is in Milan, on his way to Piccinino. You would do well to be careful. Well, your young man is in the family chamber with Messer Agnolo and his sister and friends. You had better come with me to collect him.”

“In the family chamber?” Tobie repeated.

The professor smiled. “Playing cards, I believe,” he said with benevolence.

The leisure room of the Acciajuoli was little more than a painted cabinet, although the fireplace was handsome, and bright with a flickering brazier. All the other light in the room was placed round the card table at which four people sat, while three others stood bending behind them. As Tobie entered with the professor, one of the players turned with an abstracted smile and raised a ringer. “One moment! We crave your indulgence. Marco, Giovanni – perhaps our guests would take wine while we finish.”

The ushering servant had gone. The men thus summoned to help were two of the three standing guests, the third being a young and pretty girl. Tobie knew none of them. Smiling his social, doctor’s smile, he took a precise inventory.

Of those playing cards, the speaker was no doubt his host. This man, thickset, sallow and commanding, must be the banker – Agnolo Acciajuoli, grandson of Donato, Prince of Athens and kinsman of Messer Nicholai, the one-legged Greek who had travelled from Scotland to Bruges. And the woman next to him must be Laudomia, his sister, wife of the absent Pierfrancesco. Or half-sister, perhaps: a handsome woman, many years younger than Agnolo and dressed in Florentine fashion, her hair and sleeves crossed with jewels and her unveiled bosom and neckline in elegant partnership.

Next to her, there sat someone familiar who was not a Greek or a Florentine. A lean, dark-skinned man, young but soberly dressed, whom Tobie had last seen somewhere quite different. In the party of Lancastrian Englishmen. In the English party which had stopped to rescue Brother Gilles and had been caught in the first of Claes’ avalanches.

An Englishman, here?

Then the supposed Englishman, smiling, said something to Claes in an idiomatic French which was quite patently his native tongue, and Claes, replying politely in the same language, addressed him as “Monsieur Gaston.” The woman, laughing a little, put down a card and herself spoke to the apprentice, this time in Italian. He answered at once: not entirely correctly, but with the clear Bologna inflections he must have picked up from Julius, instead of his early Savoyard. He had an exact understanding of the question.

They were, of course, toying with him. Tobie’s uncle, cup in hand, murmured in Latin, “Why not try him in this language? Or Greek?”

Claes gave a smile, his eyes on his cards. “Maestro, spare me,” he said. “I cannot both walk on my hands and contest a game with such players.” He laid down a card and shot a glance at Tobie. It was full of conspiratorial delight. If he could, Tobie would have cancelled on the spot both the misguided, cavalier deeds at Damme and Geneva which had linked him with this dangerous lunatic. He glared at Claes, full of suspicion.

The boy’s manner, damn him, was perfect. Deferential, with glimpses of spirit and simple humour which made his elders laugh. He was clean. Beside the others, his clothes were those of a servant; but the Charetty livery was the best that the Widow could afford, and despite all the travelling, the blue cloth of Claes’ doublet had enough stiffness in it to set off his straight dyers’ shoulders. The soldier’s belt cinched his waist where the stained apron had always hung, and the high collar defined a well-placed throat and neck. His monstrous gaze and wide grin nothing could be done about, but there was equally nothing vacuous about them. It was a discovery Tobie had made at Bruges.

It was the youth’s turn to play again. The hands holding the cards were no less calloused than they had ever been, but at least the fingertips were not blue. As Tobie watched, they strayed over the sheaf of oblong cards and, picking one, laid it on the table.

There was a short silence which Tobie, ignorant of the game, could not interpret. Then the woman Laudomia, her grey eyes cold and clear, looked at him smiling and said, “Again!”

“Arabic,” said Claes. “You should have asked me to talk in Arabic. Then you would have won it all back.” The cards were hand-painted, in red and blue and gold. The pack was worth everything Claes was wearing, Tobie calculated, from his head to his toes.

“Wait,” said the Frenchman called Gaston. “Before we all lay down our hands. Niccolò my friend: what cards are we holding?”

Niccolò?

He was looking at Claes, whose colour had risen. Claes said, “You don’t know? Monsieur, you must lose a great deal.”

Messer Agnolo moved. He smiled, catching the eye of the man called Giovanni, who came and stood by him. “Tell me mine, my young friend,” he said. “What do I hold in my hand?”

“A bearing-rein,” said Claes without rancour. “Well, monsieur, you began with a nine, and never let it go. Then you picked up and kept a three and a Queen. Those were all
bastoni
. Later …”

He named one by one all the cards in the other man’s hand; and then, when he was asked, those held by the others. As he did so, Giovanni leaned over and checked them. They were correct.

Claes looked both relieved and embarrassed. “It comes from the dyehouse,” he said. “Long lists of recipes, very good for the memory. And verses. We make them up to sing when we’re stirring. By the time we’ve added in all the people we like, they can get to be very long.”

He looked round, in an accommodating way, as if ready to sing, too, if invited. Messer Agnolo said, “Do you hear that, Giovanni? You were a dyer. We shall expect no less of you, next time you play cards with us.”

Beside him, Tobie was aware that his uncle was smiling. His uncle said, “May I introduce my nephew Tobie, or do you wish us to go away while you start another game with this budding arithmetician?”

Play, it seemed, was over. Their host rose, with his sister, and came forward. Guests were seated and reseated. Introductions were made. The pretty girl was called Caterina, and Marco Parenti her husband was a merchant in Florence who used to export silk to Athens and Constantinople. More than that, he was a writer. More than that, he visibly did not care for the fact that Caterina had picked Claes to sit beside.

Giovanni da Castro was the Pope’s godson, and held a post in the Apostolic Chamber. The Holy Father made use of his business experience. Before that, Messer da Castro had been a dyer. There was a coincidence. A dyer of imported cloth in Constantinople, before the attack by the Sultan six years ago. He had escaped with his life. He was lucky.

Tobie’s expression, he hoped, remained calm. It was an Acciajuoli household. Why be surprised if all the guests once did business in Constantinople or Athens or the Morea? He remembered one member of the family who had not been mentioned. He said to da Castro, “You were luckier than Messer Bartolomeo, the brother of the Greek with the … of the kinsman of Messer Angelo’s who toured Europe raising funds to ransom him. Is there any news of him? Will he expect to be freed when the gold is collected?”

Ever since Bruges, the subject of the Greek and his captive brother had acutely interested Tobie. He was surprised when da Castro did not immediately answer him. It was Laudomia, the captured man’s relative, who said, “My dear Messer Tobias! The man was freed months ago. It was the firm of Medici who paid the ransom and who generously agreed to stand out their money until they can be recompensed.”

“By which time, of course, the rates would have changed,” said Tobie.

Monna Laudomia smiled. The Pope’s godson, entering the conversation, quickly said laughing, “It is the one thing which never stands still. But of course, the matter had to be settled to allow Messer Bartolomeo to continue trading. At a price, of course. The taxes on Christians are unbelievable. But with one thing and another, Bartolomeo Giorgio will never go short.”

“You mean,” said Tobie, “he is still trading in Constantinople under the Turks? While you had to leave?”

There was again a second’s pause, and then da Castro shrugged. “There is religion, and there is business. Sometimes, one has to choose.
No. I don’t grudge his fortune to Bartolomeo. I shall do well enough here.”