Niccolo Rising (47 page)

“Because I like it,” said Claes. “I did learn letters. But my mother died. Now I have all I need.”

“I think,” she said, “that you were lying when you said you wanted to marry one day.”

He said, “Yes, I was lying. But that doesn’t mean that I can come between you and your future husband again.”

She said, childishly, “You don’t want to?”

He sat up. He said directly, “Would you ask it of me? A servant?”

She had struggled up, too. “You’re not a servant,” she said. “In my eyes you are Nicholas.”

He said, “Because I’ve done what I’ve done, you daren’t think of me as Claes. But I am a servant. And a bad one. I’ve wakened you too far, Katelina. But what overcame me will overcome someone else, one day. You don’t need a paragon of a husband. You carry delight in your own body. You know it.”

She didn’t speak. She watched him dress, the first time she had seen a man cover his body, he supposed. She must be wondering if it would be the last. There was nothing he could add, or do about it. When he was ready he stood by the bed, looking down, and she spoke then. She said, “If he knew about this, I suppose Jordan de Ribérac would kill you.”

It had occurred to him. He said, “He won’t know. Don’t worry.”

Her face was pallid white. She said, “Why did he mark your face?”

He said, “He wanted me to spy for him on Simon. I refused.”

“Why?”

“Why did I refuse? Because if Simon gets killed, I don’t want to be
charged with the blame. A charming family. They hate one another.” He thought about it for a moment.

She said, “Claes?” in an odd voice, but when he looked at her, she said only, “Be careful.”

He said, “Of course. I must go.”

She sat very still, the sheet folded about her like a habit, and he didn’t try to embrace her. Instead he bent, and lifting her fingers, kissed her hand like a gentleman.

She shivered, and he left quickly.

He didn’t realise that, once, he had called her Katelina. He didn’t understand, in the slightest degree, what he had done.

Chapter 21

H
EADACHE-GREY
, the first day of Lent dawned over the city of Bruges and smoke began to rise, with reluctance, from its chimneys. In the bright and well-ordered house of Adorne the children rose, and were groomed, dressed and marshalled for Mass in the Jerusalemkirk with their parents, household and guests. Afterwards their guests broke their fast and left, including the widow of Charetty and her two daughters, who curtseyed daintily and were kissed by the demoiselle Margriete.

The two daughters, unusually silent, were taken off to their home by a manservant while their mother made her way to the town hall, where the city was wont to mark the day with a feast of freshwater fish and good wine. She did not know, or care, where the male members of her household were, or how they had passed the night.

Tilde had spent it crying. No one could blame Father Bertouche for bringing home the four little girls (he was in his bed today). It was a pity that the van Borselen child had broken into the party so forcefully, but no doubt Claes had been rescued eventually from her attentions. Someone – a servant; the sister Katelina perhaps? – would have to find the child Gelis and take her off home. It was not Marian de Charetty’s concern.

She supposed Felix had spent the whole night with his new girl. Now he had got the knack she supposed, also, that she would have to speak to him, or half the servants in Bruges would claim to be bearing to him. Failing his father, the best regulator of that situation was a wife.

She needed help with Felix. But wives had fathers. As it was, she kept falling over the pawnbroker Oudenin at every step. She returned home after the dinner in time for the annual inspection of weights and measures, and found Claes had forestalled her and was already busy in the yard, stripped to shirt and a very old doublet. She left him alone and went to the kitchens, where she found Felix cajoling one of her women. He had won a sack of bells in the lottery and wanted them sewn on Claes’ clothes.

Claes’ clothes were already in the kitchen being pressed, and a great tear repaired. He had been pushed into the canal, said her woman, clearly believing it. Felix, his eyes brilliant with sleeplessness, clearly didn’t. Neither did she. Claes had the same look as Felix, and his red scar crossed a cheek healthy as tallow.

Ash Wednesday. A day she had always hated.

Later there was a brief scene when Claes came in for his clothes and found bells all over the doublet and jacket. Forced by Felix and his friends to get into them, he went straight out of the door and came back in due course with a flock of goats, which he led jingling into the house and up to and through Felix’s room, where they stood bleating and defecating anxiously. Felix was angry, but his friends, screaming with laughter, made him see the joke. A man, debited, no doubt, to Felix’s educational equipment, came later to clean up the room, while someone snipped off the bells and Claes, in his old clothes again, got the keys of one of the cellars, and had a cart harnessed. A moment later, the Widow saw it rumbling out of the yard with Claes driving and one of the yard lads beside him.

Felix had gone off, without seeing her or asking her permission. Henninc, queried sharply over the cart, reckoned that no good had come of trying to make an apprentice into a soldier. Six months ago that was a good boy, who would never have thought of driving out of the yard in his mistress’s cart, in his mistress’s time, without asking.

“So why did he want it?” she said.

“Why, he’s gone to get his lottery winnings,” said Henninc. “A mail glove was all he got, but that’s but the token. It could be a shield he has to collect, or a helm maybe.”

“Or just the other glove,” said Marian de Charetty. “In which case he’ll look a fool with a cart, won’t he? All right. We’ve got other things to bother about. Show me the scales that were altered.”

The cart did not come back for some time. Catherine was fetched by friends, and returned later to say that there were dried-fruit stalls in the market place, and the van Borselen girl had been there in a worse temper than ever. Gelis, the fat one. Gelis had nothing to say about having Claes as a squire at the Carnival, except that she had had the dullest time she had ever had in her life, and had gone off home by herself. She didn’t say who Claes had gone off with, but guess what. Gelis had a new hand-warmer. And guess what it was?

Naturally, a silver-gilt apple. Marian de Charetty wondered, wearily, if Claes had handed it over before or after his clothes were covered in bells. Or perhaps last night he had carried it with him. You never knew whom you might need to bribe – or reward – at a carnival.

At dusk, after everyone was indoors, the cart arrived back in the yard and she could hear the cellar door being unlocked. There was a tramping of feet which went on for a long time. Then the yard boy,
looking cheerful, tapped on her door and said that there was some good new stock just come in, and would the demoiselle like to see it for the inventory? She folded a shawl round her shoulders, took a lamp and went out, her key bunch rattling. The wind blew under the fluted voile on her head with all its matronly gofferings, and tugged where the folds bound her chin. Claes was in the cellar alone, kneeling among sacks with the candles lit. She shut the door.

He turned his head and said, “I took the yard boy because he’s a bit simple. He thinks half of this is wool. Look.”

She walked to him and bent. Some of the sacks were already unpacked. Behind them were boxes, whose lids he was lifting. She saw, firstly, a packing of straw, and then metal, glinting dully. A steel cuirass, with another beneath it. Shoulder guards, nesting one into another, and thigh-pieces, and coudières. A sack of something which might have been cabbages, but in fact were iron helmets, in the German style. Another box of massive body-armour. Marian de Charetty let drop the lid of that box, and sat on it, saying nothing.

Claes, working quickly, pulled open the last of the sacks and checked their contents. Then, picking up his candle, he whirled it in an extravagant gesture, and bringing it over, set it beside her. “Well?”

She said, “I heard you won a mail gauntlet.”

His skin was suffused, oppressed after all the bending. But no one had a smile as wide as Claes. He tapped a barrel, and then hitched himself on top of it. “Two dozen others in there, from the Hospital of St John. If anyone wants to know, that’s all I won. You bought them from me, and Thomas will take them south to Astorre. Of course, he’ll take the rest too, mixed up with the stuff I bought on the way north. That lets us outfit fifty more men than we contracted for. They supply the horses, and we supply the armour.”

He was speaking to her man to man, as he often did now. She took her eyes from his rolled-up sleeves and the purple bruises all over his arms, and said, “And what am I paying you for the barrel of gloves? I had better know, I suppose.”

“Not too much. They’re old ones. I’ll write it into the ledger. Of course, you don’t pay me anything. All this came from the arsenal at the Hospital by arrangement with the Adorne family. There is no record of it, and none of us has ever heard of any of it, except for the barrel of gloves.”

It was cold in the cellar, and the three or four candles he had lit did little to warm it. But she was far too stubborn to let him away with all this. She crossed her hands on her knees and said, “So how did you pay for it?”

“With promises,” he said. “I’ll tell you when Messer Adorne and I have had our meeting. I came across something interesting in Milan. A way to profit the Adorne family and the Charetty company. Messer Adorne doesn’t yet know the details, but he was willing to make this
much of an investment. And as I’ve said, we can put fifty more into the field, whether the scheme works or not.”

She said, “Yes. I gathered you wanted me to buy Astorre an army. I don’t see any weapons here.”

“No. Well,” said Claes. “I told you Messer Tobie was going to Piacenza. He had a commission to buy guns and powder for Thibault and Jaak de Fleury. I asked him to get fifty
schioppetti
for captain Astorre as well. Handguns.”

“And pay for them?” she said.

“You know,” said Claes, “it’s a wonderful system. The Medici bank are backing Milan and King Ferrante of Naples, so their Milan manager – that’s Tommaso’s brother Pigello – is quite willing to advance us the money for the handguns, as well as recruiting money for Thomas to pick up fifty more men than Astorre is expecting.

“Then we go to the Duke of Milan and offer him fifty fully-armed splendid gunners provided he draws up another condotta. Then with the money from that, we pay back Pigello and the gunsmiths with a great deal left over.”

She said, “Captain Astorre had not been made party, then, to this delightful scheme?”

“He doesn’t like handguns,” said Claes. “But Messer Tobie does. And so does Thomas.”

“But Meester Julius doesn’t?” said the Widow. “Or have you forgotten that I have a highly paid notary with the company whose job, I should have thought, was precisely to do with matters of commissions and contracts and purchasing?”

From a smile, his lips reformed in a small, bloated shape denoting conjecture. He lifted both hands and laced them on top of his head, narrowing his eyes against an invisible rainfall.

She said, “It’s not such a difficult question, if you haven’t got a headache.”

He removed his hands. His smile, leaping back, acknowledged the hit. “It
is
difficult as far as Julius is concerned. He’s a clever man. He’d rather listen to you or to Tobie than me.”

“Meaning,” she said brusquely, “that Tobie has your measure, and Julius hasn’t. So why not say so?”

He said, “Has Felix been drinking?”

He never let a misunderstanding exist between them without cutting clean through. She should have remembered. She said, “Yes. He missed you. The bells … The goats …”

“Yes. I’m sorry,” he said. “But I haven’t much time to find a place where I can start. You’re giving him money?”

She said, “Not for jousting armour.” And as he still looked at her, “Not for ermine-tails either,” said Felix’s mother.

“Then –” he began to say, and interrupted himself. Then she heard it too. Felix’s voice, calling outside.

She said, “Should we –?”

“No. Let him see it all,” said Claes. “No details. Just a little underhand deal he’s to keep quiet about. He will. It’s his company.”

“But –” she began.

The door opened on Felix and his ermine-tails. His shallow eyes were full of suspicion. He said, “They told me you were both here.”

“Well, I hope so,” said Marian de Charetty. “Since I left orders you were to be sent here as soon as you condescended to come in. Where have you been?”

“Out,” he said. “What’s all that?”

He took the candle from Claes and poked about, all the time she was telling him. He came back with a pointed helmet and stuck it on Claes’ head unexpectedly, making him wince. Felix stood back and giggled. “Only one thing worse than that,” he said, “and that’s the stuff you had on when you arrived. Why don’t you pick out a set and buy it from us?”

Marian de Charetty, rigid, opened her mouth. Before she could speak, Claes said, “I’ve got all I need. Besides, you’ll want to pick the best of it for yourself.”

Felix grinned. “The best of what? That’s battle armour for soldiers stamping about in the mud.”

“My mistake,” said Claes.

“I should think so,” said Felix. “You don’t seriously think I’d appear –”

“Of course not,” said Claes. “You see, I had all that teaching by captain Astorre. I forgot you hadn’t.”

Marian de Charetty said, “I’m cold. Felix, take that lamp and light me back to the door. Claes, that’s enough. Blow out the candles and lock up.”

Claes, rising obediently, began to walk over to blow out the candles. Her son, his back to his mother, stood red-faced in his way. Felix said, “What do you mean, Astorre taught you and didn’t teach me? What do you think Mother got him for?”

“Your father got him,” said Claes. “For a bodyguard.”