Niccolo Rising (34 page)

Tobie said, “Da Castro. Now there’s a point. Why was Giovanni da Castro there tonight? There’s a world shortage of alum. The deposit at Phocoea is best, and Venice and the Greek’s brother Bartolomeo have the Turkish franchise of it. It can’t be in their interests to have a rival mine opened. So why entertain the Pope’s godson, who’s hoping to raise money to find one? Why entertain you and me, knowing that you knew from Quilico of another mine and thinking that I did?”

The large eyes shone. Claes waited expectantly, as if for the end of a nursery story.

Tobie opened his mouth and produced a sneeze. He pulled out a kerchief. He said through it, as bitingly as he could, “My guess is that the Acciajuoli are backing both you and Giovanni da Castro. In exchange for the profits of the new mine, they’re going to pay you to help da Castro exploit it.”

He blew his nose. Claes said, “May God bless you,” and went on looking at him intelligently. Tobie said, “Isn’t that right?”

Claes said, “Oh, no. I’m sorry. No. Giovanni da Castro hasn’t begun to look for alum yet. He isn’t in any special hurry. I think he was there because the Acciajuoli would be glad if I killed him. Of course, the Phocoea alum interests don’t want another alum mine found.”

Tobie said, “They’re buying your
silence
?” He felt a spasm of awe, and wiped it off with his kerchief.

Claes said, “And yours, of course. They think you know what I know.”

Tobie gazed at the former apprentice. “I should be hard put to it,” he said, “to sustain that impression.”

“About the information they’re buying as well,” said Claes cheerfully. “It’s a new contract. I’ve sold them a courier service. That’s why M. Gaston was there, and Marco Parenti and the Strozzi sister. That’s nothing to do with alum. That’s ordinary business. The Charetty company provide the couriers and I provide the special information. They hoped, they said, that you would stay in Milan maybe and
supervise it. You don’t provide anything. You just collect money and look as if you did. And keep quiet about alum.”

He paused, and his brow wrinkled earnestly. Claes said, “The trouble is, if you don’t collect the money, they’ll think you aren’t going to be silent.”

Tobie said, “Thank you very much. You’ve embroiled me in a plot to safeguard an alum monopoly. Now you’ve linked me with spying.”

“Spying?” said Claes. “I wouldn’t know about that, Master Tobie. Ambassadors spy, and envoys and special agents. I don’t move in those circles. I just overhear things brokers’ clerks talk about, and dealers’ stewards, and smiths and carters who know where horses are going, and food is being collected, and money paid. Gossip. Nobody notices someone like me.”

“Claes,” said Tobie. “Tell me about the cannon that had an accident on its way to the King of Scotland. And the avalanche that fell on the Lancastrian English. And this famous knack you have with puzzles and numbers. And then try to make me believe that you’re sitting with straws in your ears, picking up stable gossip.”

Sitting cross-legged, Claes gazed back at him. He looked exactly like someone with straws in his ears. He looked like a large, clean-shaven hermit about to make out a case for a new hut. Bitterness filled Tobie. He saw no reason not to tell Claes exactly what he thought of him.

Tobie said, “You want to be rich, of course. You want to force the people of Bruges to bow to you instead of beating you. You want clothes and jewels and a mistress who isn’t a servant, and you want to parade them in front of Jaak de Fleury and his wife, and Katelina van Borselen, and captain Lionetto and the Scotsman Simon. You’ve picked Julius’ brains, and got him and Astorre safely off to battle, and you’ve got an excuse to go straight back to Bruges with secrets to trade, and no one to answer to but a vapid youth and a widow who needs an intelligent, lively young person to help her. Will you marry her, Claes?” said Tobie. “I’m sure she’d have you. You have such a way with the girls.”

Claes said, “I told you I don’t want a partner. You became involved by mistake. You’ll hear nothing more about any of it.”

He spoke in a different voice. Nor did he look like someone with straws in his ears.

Tobie said jibingly, “In spite of someone knowing that I know all that you know?”

Claes said, “All they’re concerned about is preventing the appearance of a new alum mine. If you withdraw, they have nothing to worry about. You’re the only person who could have found it.”

Tobie’s eyes opened, watering. He sneezed, and was not blessed. He thought, quickly and intensively into his kerchief. He took his nose out. He said, “I see. So much for hair dye and love potions and all the talk about plant patterns? Quilico
didn’t
tell you where he thought the alum might be?”

Claes said, “Only that it was in Lazio, which is a very large area around Rome, and inside the Papal States. That’s why there’s no point in backing da Castro. As soon as it’s found, the Pope and no one else will exploit it.”

Tobie said, “How wise of you not to have told me. I might have embarked on the whole scheme myself, with my uncle’s protection. I still could, couldn’t I? Find the mine, if it exists, and produce proof of it. Because the Phocoea company won’t otherwise pay to suppress it, will they?”

The friendly look had returned to Claes’ face. He said, “I don’t see why you shouldn’t do just that, Master Tobie. Someone might as well have the use of the information.”

Tobie said, “Why not you? You said you didn’t need a partner.”

“Oh,” said Claes. “That was for the courier service. No. People would talk, wouldn’t they, if I spent weeks tramping hillsides and interviewing Levantine merchants and alum miners. Sooner or later, other people will find the deposit anyway. It offered a quick profit, that’s all, for someone who could give time to it now.”

“I see,” said Tobie. “And what have you told the Phocoea operators?”

Claes unfolded his legs to the floor and put his hands between them. “That they’ll have proof by the spring that an alternative mine does exist. If you want, I’ll tell them the proof will come from you. If you don’t want that, I’ll tell them that there’s no mine.”

Tobie said, “They won’t believe you.”

Claes smiled. He said, “You’ll be safe.”

And, of course, he would. Because of Giammatteo.

The candle wavered. Half an hour. It must almost have gone. Tobie said, “You know you deserve what’s happened. You set it all in motion. If they don’t believe you, they’ll do to you what they hoped you’d do to Giovanni da Castro.”

“Then I’ll have to hurry, won’t I, and dig up some secrets to defend myself with?” said Claes. His gaze was profoundly amiable. He said, “If you don’t want to make the decision at once, I needn’t say whether you are withdrawing or not. The friends of Phocoea don’t expect my report till the spring.”

Which was shrewd. It was an offer Tobie liked. And there was no need, either, to make a specific reply. Ignoring the alum question as if it had never existed, Tobie said, “I want them told
now
that I have nothing to do with your courier service.”

Claes said, “I understand. That’s easily done.”

“So now you can keep all the profits,” said Tobie. “What will you do with the money?”

“Force the people of Bruges to bow to me instead of beating me,” said Claes. “Invest some of it.”

“Oh?” said Tobie. He rose from the bed and smoothed his crumpled gown. “A little property somewhere? A share in a wine tavern?”

“Both those things. What do you think of handguns?” said Claes.

Tobie stopped picking feathers from his skirts. He said, “You’re going into business?”

“Well, I’m in it already,” said Claes. “The money belongs to the Charetty company. Captain Astorre ought to have handguns. And there are a few other things a credit would be useful for, apart from buying property. Louvain needs more capital.”

“The Widow?” said Tobie. “You’re doing all this for … She’s willing to take money from this sort of source?”

“There’s nothing wrong with a contract for a courier service,” Claes said blandly.

“And she doesn’t know about the alum scheme either? Only the Greek and Anselm Adorne,” Tobie said. “You know, I’m surprised about Adorne. A man with a family church protecting a Turkish monopoly. You won’t deny that’s what it is, even if the Venetians are working it?”

A further thought struck him. “Christ. And if what you’re saying is true, protecting it at the expense of the
Pope
?”

He hoped he looked horrified. He was afraid he looked the way Claes was looking. Claes said, “I didn’t say Adorne knew any details. Anyway, trade and high thinking usually manage to put up with each other somehow. That was a knock on the door.”

Tobie had heard it. He said, “You didn’t arrange …”

Claes got up. Large, smooth-skinned, sunny, he looked capable of every athletic feat Tobie had ever heard of. He could imagine Claes exerting himself happily for hours and hours, with one girl or several. There were two beds. Vistas of endless embarrassment opened before him.

Claes said, “Don’t be worried. No one will ever mention alum to you again, unless you open the subject first. And as far as you know, I am running a perfectly respectable courier service. I’m going back to the inn. Stay if you want to.”

Status had to be maintained in some fashion. “That depends,” said Tobie unhurriedly. He strolled to the door, and opened it on a small, charming person with a coral necklace and one exposed breast. He said, “
Cateruzza!
”

“Second column from the left, third down,” said Claes. “They said you used to come from Pavia to see her. I thought you’d like to know she was still mixing trade and high thinking. I’ll leave you the lantern.”

Tobie stood at the door to the shop, and watched Claes find his way past the herbs and the pestle, and leave.

Tobie sneezed.

“May God bless you,” said Cateruzza musically from beside him. The sneeze, he saw, seemed to have unveiled her other breast.

He shut the door. He felt surprised. He felt tricked. He felt like
investing all his recent blessings at once – quicker than at once – in the revealed and trim lap of Cateruzza.

That was when Tobie began to enjoy Milan. He saw Claes a few times after that, discussing practical things. Girls, alum and spying were never mentioned.

Julius was annoyed about the courier service. Even when it was explained to him how much money it would put into the company’s coffers, he was resentful. He had expected Claes to go with them to Naples. He didn’t see how Claes, having been appointed to Astorre’s army, could suddenly elect to do something quite different. It annoyed him even more that Astorre didn’t seem to mind.

The only one who seemed to mind was Thomas, who would have Claes’ society when he set out north to collect the rest of the company. And, perhaps, some of the men at arms, who had got used to Claes’ serial representation of Astorre fighting his way through the duchies of Europe, collecting screaming cooks who had to make veal jelly, and smoked ham and pounded pork fried in the way that he liked it, until there was no tent big enough for his cooks, his latrines or his belly. Claes also did a superb imitation of Lionetto, which Tobie did not wholly appreciate.

Captain Lionetto had arrived in Milan, and he and his former medical officer had had one clash in public already. Lionetto had a new cloak lined with dormice, and was covered in coloured stones which this time were quite clearly not glass. Someone was being very good to Lionetto, and Tobie suspected that it was not Piccinino, who had hired him. Nor was it the Medici, about whom Lionetto had told two shocking stories and professed an attitude of deepest contempt. Especially when he heard where Astorre had placed his money.

Tobie had told Astorre about the encounter, less to shake Astorre’s trust in the Medici than to invoke Astorre’s vigilance in case Lionetto sent three men after him, Tobie, with hatchets. It spoiled his pleasure at the thought of remaining in Milan over Christmas, which he had been at such pains to arrange. Julius had complained about that as well.

It had fallen to Tobie to point out that Brother Gilles was in no shape at present to travel. Despite captain Astorre’s fading interest, someone had to attend to the poor fellow’s leg. He undertook to do that. Then to deliver the monk to the Medici in Florence. Then to join Astorre and Julius and the others in Naples, where they would have spent the winter getting fat and surrounded by leeches of one sort or another. By that time, the spring fighting should be about to begin. Astorre would fight. Julius would count the wounded. He, Tobie, would heal them. Wherein lay the objection to that?

“It’s that girl,” Julius had said. “Isn’t it? By God, you’re as bad as Claes. I never see him either.”

“The trouble about you,” Tobie had said, “is that you think nobody is
busy except yourself. Girls? Claes is at the Castello, learning to be a little soldier called Niccolò. The Duke’s Chancellor insisted, if he was going to protect the ducal packages. Me? I’m going to Piacenza tomorrow with Thomas and Manfred. We’ve the guns to order for Fleury, and I’m buying handguns for Astorre.”

“He didn’t tell me,” said Julius. “Out of the
condotta
fund?”

“I suppose so,” said Tobie. “Either that, or Claes is playing cards for money again.” He slapped the notary’s shoulder, which was solid and made his hand sting. He rotated it abstractedly all the way to the door, looking satisfied, while Julius sat and stared after him.

Chapter 15

G
OSSIP, HURRYING
over the Alps with departing Papal delegates, got to Bruges before Thomas or Claes. It included a tale that captain Astorre had won a useful contract for the Charetty company, and was sending to call south his fighting-men. Gossip, less believably, tried to make out that the Charetty had won some other contract to supply an accredited courier service between Flanders and Italy, run by – but no. The greatest lords, the greatest men of business in northern Italy entrusting their dispatches to Claes, that scatterbrained lump of an apprentice, who had marched out of Bruges with the company just three months before? Was it likely?