Niccolo Rising (60 page)

“The business,” said Felix. He said it flatly, and not with the disbelieving contempt he had felt, when he had feelings. He said, “He said just now it was to keep the business straight until I could run it. As if I would want it this way. As if my father would have ever, ever asked you, expected you … to …”

“Marry one of his apprentices,” his mother ended for him. He heard
her draw a deep breath. She said, “No. Your father would never have wanted that. But your father is dead. I am here. My life, too, has to be lived. It is not even the company that your father made; it is quite a different one, and will grow more different still. I want to stay with it; spend my days thinking about it. But I couldn’t do it without help. Until you are ready, there has to be a man close to the business. Felix, I don’t want a man who will take your father’s place. I only want a friend.” She paused. She said, “And it will be known, I promise you, that Nicholas is only a friend.”

He felt his face burning again, because such denials should be remotely necessary. It sounded so reasonable. Except that he was the heir, and Nicholas was hardly older than he was. And Nicholas, everyone knew, was his servant.

His mother said, “Men have different gifts at different ages. Sometimes we must stand by and see others take the prize, but our turn will come. It would be a small spirit which would hold another one back. In Nicholas, you and I have a friend. In you I have a son. What can ever change that?”

Something moved on his cheek, but he couldn’t imagine that he was crying unknowingly. He said, “Just now, he said that he would leave if you wanted it. He said that I shouldn’t expect you to choose me instead of him at this moment, but I could ask you, and you might, later on.”

His mother didn’t answer. Then she said, “How could I choose you instead of him? You are my son. Wherever you are, you are chosen. And Felix, how are you better off if Nicholas leaves, with all his opportunities lost, and the company fails, and my way of life has to end? Is that the way a man takes his place in the world?”

He knew then from the cold at his chin that he
was
crying. He said, “It was at the Poorterslogie,” and pursed his lips against the pain in his throat. He glanced, through flickering eyes, at the table and saw that she had lifted her hands again to her mouth, and then to her brow. Under their shadow she said, “I would go through this whole day again, to spare you that. You should have been told. I was wrong. To be fair, I should be the one really to leave. Perhaps one day you and Nicholas will decide to leave me. I deserve it.”

Below her hands, her lips had twisted as if in a wry smile. But then she took her hands down, and he saw that her face was striped with tears, and that the tears ran over skin already shiny with weeping. Then he was beside her, and they had their arms round each other, and their wet cheeks were pressed together. It was the first time ever that she had admitted to being wrong. Adult to adult. She had said so.

Somewhere during the disconnected exchanges that followed, he heard himself telling her that he wanted her to be happy. Somewhere in the same passage, he learned, without anything being said, that some of his mother’s happiness was bound up with Nicholas. It was not entirely news. It was what, after all, had been behind much of his misery. But he
had shared Nicholas before, especially with women. His head on her knee, he let her stroke his hair until her composure came back. Then he said, “It’s done, I suppose. If you really want it, I’ll help you.”

An adult could afford to be magnanimous. He was her son, and chosen. She was a woman, and weak enough to need the help of Claes, his servant. He could spare her that. Of what, in detail, it would entail: of how, in detail, he was to face the events that lay ahead, he would rather not think. Today, his poor mother could rely on him.

He waited for her to drop a kiss on his brow. She hesitated, and then just massaged and patted his shoulder, as he got to his feet. Her eyes were wet and anxious, watching him. He sniffed, and bent over and kissed her firmly instead.

Chapter 28

M
ESSER
G
REGORIO
, working quietly with one eye on his open door, heard his mistress’s step and had already risen when she came into the room. It was to request him, as arranged, to summon all her workers and her household to the biggest of the dyesheds and to put a box there, beside the pay-trestle, for her to stand on. She spoke calmly and without a tremor, although her lids were a little red. She added, “Henninc will help you. I have asked him to come to my room so that he may receive the news first.” Impeccable. Impeccable from beginning to end as a piece of sheer human management. Only the deferred breaking of the news to the son had been a mistake. One could hardly see how the son’s own servant could remedy that.

Gregorio of Asti did as he was asked, and soon Henninc, his face flushed, his lips pursed, came to join him. Like himself, Henninc, he noticed, answered no questions from his underlings. Soon, noisy as starlings, there streamed from house and yard into the dyeshop the whole sum of the Charetty employees, from the journeymen dyers to the boys who cared for the tack; from the regal authority of the cook to the maids who swabbed floors and cut vegetables.

Then the demoiselle, in her good clothes, came out. Not escorted by her new husband. The youth who followed her into the yard and, catching up, gave her his arm was, Gregorio saw with fascination, her own son, Felix de Charetty, with a rather pale face and a jacket that didn’t assort with his doublet. They had reached the dyeshop when a door banged and the architect of the whole affair came purposefully over the yard. Heads turned. The smiles, Gregorio saw, were without rancour. Claes hurtling, late, into the yard. Now a courier and very grand, but still Claes. From a distance, tall and well-built, he had a presence. Close at hand, of course, it was different.

Now he came into the dyeshed, looking about him. On his face Gregorio could detect no shadow of triumph, or shame or embarrassment. He had been looking, evidently, to see where he, Gregorio, was
standing with Henninc. They were near to the lady and her son, but not beside them. Pushing through, Nicholas got to the same place and stood, turning his face to the Widow. She mounted her box, and everything got very quiet.

She was not unused to this. She had run the business, after all, since her husband died. She began by thanking them for the help they had been to her, and for their loyalty. She went on to talk about the difficult times after her husband died, and about the changes in the sort of work people wanted, and the sort of business that made and didn’t make money. She said that it had been shown, over the last year, that the Charetty business was a very good one, and provided it changed with the times, could be even better. Perhaps one that could be very rich indeed. She was glad to tell them this, because she hoped they were all going to be able to stay with her and share in what was to come.

In all this she had had great help. From her manager Henninc, most of all. From Meester Julius, who was away but who would return and help her still more. But also, from one of themselves. From Claes who, now that he was a courier, they had learned to call Nicholas. For the past six months many of the good ideas about running the business had come from Claes. He had a gift for this. He could take the gift to any company and help to make it a great success. But to persuade him to stay with the Charetty company, she, the owner, had decided on an important step.

Nicholas was a young man, with a fine future. She was therefore making him managing partner of the business. As before, Henninc would manage the yard, and would give Nicholas his very good advice, as he had given it to her. Messer Gregorio would act, meantime, for Meester Julius and help him when he returned. And her son, Felix, would be at Nicholas’ side to keep him right and, in due course, take her place as supreme owner.

She paused there, for the murmurs, the head-turning, the ejaculations. With discretion, Gregorio scanned his companions. Henninc, still flushed, stared directly ahead, looking at nobody. The boy Felix, standing very straight below his mother, glared at the crowd as if he hated them. Beside him Nicholas stood quite still, wholly concentrated on watching. Watching everyone, Gregorio saw, from his wife to those people who must have been his friends round the dye vats.

The Widow said, “You will have to be understanding with Nicholas, and help him as much as you can, because he has taken on a very large task for all of us. But I think you may thank me for not bringing in some stranger. You know each other. He has been here for a long time. Of course, his appointment has brought another problem. As you know, I am a widow, and vulnerable as a woman is. I have not wished to take a husband who would be pleasing to me but perhaps not to you, who are, in a way, also my family. Now I am faced with sharing my house and most of the affairs of my day with my new manager.”

Felix dropped his gaze. Nicholas, instead, lifted his to the platform. Marian de Charetty looked at him, and smiled. She said, her voice steady, “There seemed to be only one sensible solution. I asked him if, without prejudice to the business, in which he will have no share, he would combine this appointment with marriage. He agreed. A marriage contract between us was sealed this morning.”

Silence. Then a sound like a whine, with a murmuring undercurrent. Then a rumble of words. The high notes were from women. The smiling faces, Gregorio saw, were all women’s. And the thought, plain as if gleefully shouted. A lusty boy in her bed! Good for the Widow!

The Widow herself stood smiling. A stiff smile, but a real one. If she was trembling, it didn’t show. She had courage. But of course she had courage, to agree to the whole thing in the first place.

It was a woman who shrieked, “Three cheers for the demoiselle!” and it was women who began cheering, although the men had mostly joined in by the third. Their faces were diverse as the faces of men about to fight a battle. They didn’t know what they felt yet. They wouldn’t know until this was over, and they were huddled in some corner together.

Marian de Charetty was saying, “Thank you. It seemed right to mark the occasion. I see the sun is still shining. If you will move into the yard, Henninc will take some of you to help him bring out a wine cask, so that you can drink our health. And your own. And that of the company.”

It was over. The demoiselle, helped by her son, was stepping down from her box. Hesitantly, some of her people were already moving forward to speak to her. She began to take their hands, one by one, smiling and speaking briefly. Henninc had gone, busy with his commission, and silent. You could see Nicholas follow him with his eyes, and then one or two of the brasher men stepped up to him, and soon a small group surrounded him, and more and more.

He made no attempt, Gregorio saw, to join the demoiselle and create of the occasion a bridal reception. The experimental jokes he appeared not to hear. The questions about his work and theirs he answered readily, with excitement even, so that some of it infected the professional men among them, who began to press closer and ask more. He finally moved out, in a wide knot of people, and found an old barrel to sit on while they crowded round him. In a while, laughter rose. Others crossed the yard to join him.

There were still sufficient paying court to the demoiselle to make it a fair division. Messer Gregorio walked to where she stood with her son and said, “Demoiselle, my congratulations. The Duke’s controller could not have spoken better, or more wisely.”

“I had Felix to advise me,” she said. “Is the wine coming?”

It had come. Without haste, the crowd around Nicholas dissolved, or rather reshaped so that it came with its nucleus to the trestle where the cups were being laid. The wine was poured. The Widow, raising her
cup, gave a toast to the company, and they to her. Then, with her son, she left for the house. Gregorio, interested, waited.

Nicholas said, “Well, of course I should like to stay and get drunk with all my friends, but I suppose you and I ought to go in. I’ve told Henninc they can drink themselves silly for half an hour, and then he’s to come in and join us.”

Gregorio kept his face solemn. He subdued, with a great effort, a desire to ask directly how Felix de Charetty had been won over. Or if not, by his looks, exactly converted, at least persuaded to co-operate. Instead, he said, “What made you late?” They began walking indoors side by side.

“A letter from … a letter,” said his new master. “I’ll tell the demoiselle later. I have to leave for Italy as soon as I can. The day after the joust.”

“Trouble?” said Meester Gregorio.

“Well, trouble in the sense that I’d hoped to have longer than that to arrange things. It isn’t fair to you, or to the demoiselle. I’ll get everything done that I can before I go. In one way, it’s not bad to leave early. The sensation will have time to die. People will pick a public quarrel with me, but not with the demoiselle.”

“Who would pick a public quarrel with you?” asked Gregorio.

“The person you’re thinking of,” said Nicholas without animosity. “We’re to go to the parlour. It’s the special wine.”

“And Italy?” said Gregorio, hurrying. “What’s the trouble in Italy?”

“The trouble in Italy,” said his new master, “is that Jacopo Piccinini has changed sides.”

It was so remote from dyevats and weddings and wine in the parlour that Gregorio frowned. He said, “The condottiere? He was, surely in the pay of King Ferrante of Naples. Yes, I see. The Charetty company and captain Astorre are now supporting a weakened army. Piccinini has crossed to the Angevins?”

“Piccinini is now supporting the Duke of Calabria. Yes.”

They were in the doorway. “But what can you do?” said Messer Gregorio, staring at Nicholas.

“Turn back the tide of war, single-handed,” said Nicholas. “No. There’s a fellow with Piccinini called Lionetto. I’d hate to have him on the wrong side.”

“I don’t understand,” said Gregorio.

“No. It’s just as well you don’t,” said the extraordinary youth, cheerfully. “Or you’d turn and walk straight out. I warn you. Don’t stay with this company if you like things to be peaceful.”