The Unicorn Hunt (64 page)

‘I know Martin,’ said Nicholas. He took the wine Cavalli had brought him and looked at it regretfully. He said, ‘But, of course, you said the contract was sealed.’

Cavalli looked at the Duke, who was frowning. There was a beading of wine on his fur. ‘Recent events have unsealed it,’ said the Duke.

*

‘You’re drunk,’ said John le Grant enviously.

‘I’m not,’ Nicholas said. ‘You’ll be telling me the Duke is drunk, next.’

‘So?’ said Father Moriz. They had been pacing the floor, waiting for him. They looked nervous. It surprised him that they thought anything could go wrong.

‘So we’ve got it,’ Nicholas said. He sat down, and did his best to enunciate clearly. ‘He gets his loan: six thousand pounds in French money and two thousand in Scots. We have a licence to mine the Inn alum for three years, and the new silver seams as soon as we can get a man through to Lyons. I knew Sessetti and Nori when they were with the Medici at Geneva. The Duke wants us to send him Astorre. I have to see the Duchess in private, but Innsbruck will manufacture the cannon: Father Moriz will set up the smelting and then go on to Venice.’

‘And you?’ the priest said. He sat down, looking breathless. ‘Wait. What about the deal with the Vatachino?’

‘Cancelled,’ Nicholas said. ‘Smacks for ungentlemanly conduct. Martin bribed a couple of men to be nasty, and they were a little too nasty for the Duke’s political comfort. And personal comfort: he might have been killed. So no contract. And only three chamberlains.’

‘So you’re staying,’ said the priest.

‘John and I will set it up and stay over the summer. No Alexandria. I’ll send somebody later.’

‘Will you?’

‘Egypt can wait,’ Nicholas said. ‘So can the gold. This is bigger.’ He realised too late that neither Moriz nor John had put the question. A third man had come into the room.

Father Ludovico de Severi da Bologna, Patriarch of Antioch, wore the unorthodox habit, heavily stained, of his original calling as a wandering Observatine friar of the Franciscan Order. His girdle had, perhaps, been used as a lead-line for pig-lard and his battered crucifix was the size and weight of an axe-head. There was no sign of his hat. Where Father Moriz was short of body and leg, Father Ludovico was of medium height and stoutly boned, from his nose to his considerable rib-cage. Apart from the ruddy skin of his face and his tonsure, all his surfaces appeared covered by an explosion of curling black hair.

Nicholas knew him. The history of the past decade had been punctuated by thundering collisions between himself and the Patriarch in various parts of the world. Father Ludovico had been last heard of in Sweden, trying to bring the Pope’s peace to the
Scandinavian wars. John knew him from Cyprus. John had known, Nicholas realised, that da Bologna was here. He had just kept quiet because he was sulking.

Nicholas said, ‘The wine wasn’t as wonderful as all that, and I only got to try six of the women. Father Ludovico, go away.’

‘I’ve just come. I see Satan has got you again. You are helping him in Christ’s work?’ said the Patriarch, casting an eye on his fellow priest.

‘He managed the drink himself,’ said Father Moriz. Nicholas was entertained.

‘And so tell me about the cannon,’ said the Patriarch, sitting down.

There was the kind of silence that often occurred in his presence. Then Nicholas said, ‘You’re not getting it. It’s for the King of Scotland. Anyway, we’ve done you a much greater service. We’ve shown Duke Sigismond how to get rich. If you want money, come back in six months.’

‘The Turks may be in Vienna in six months,’ the Patriarch said. His voice rolled.

‘Well, they may go away again. Bessarion had a low opinion of Vienna.’

‘Money, how?’ the Patriarch asked with apparent interest. ‘Ah! The silver mines! And, perhaps, the alum? You are exploiting the Tyrol alum in defiance of the papal monopoly?’

‘No,’ said Nicholas eventually. ‘That is, papal markets won’t really suffer. We’re sending ours north, beyond Flanders. Scotland takes alum from anywhere.’

‘I see. And the silver?’

‘Oh,’ said Nicholas airily. ‘The silver has nothing to do with us. We stumbled across it. But the French are sending to mine it. They’ve a lot of experience. Lyons.’

There was the kind of silence that happened sometimes when he spoke, as well.

The Patriarch was smiling. His eyebrows, unlike those of the younger priest, arched like shredded black wool. He said, ‘And the cannon?’

‘I told you. For the King of Scotland,’ Nicholas said. ‘It took a lot of trouble to arrange all of that. I shouldn’t like anything to disturb it, or there wouldn’t be any money for anything. You
are
here for money?’

‘The Pontiff,’ said Father Ludovico, ‘is much concerned for the soul of Duke Sigismond, since his return to Mother Church. The spiritual health of all the Germanies concerns him. Partly. Chiefly, I came to see you.’

He had been afraid of it. All the happy wine in his system disappeared. He said, ‘In this weather? Why?’

The Patriarch of the Latins in Antioch sat down and stretched his feet to the stove. His boots were patched and his hose were heavily felted. He said, ‘The Lord visited me with an inspiration. We like to keep an eye on you. I wondered if you’d heard the latest from Scotland. Is there anything to eat here? I had a hen from that woman Gertrude, but that was this morning.’

He had been here since morning. Nicholas could see Moriz and John exchange looks: eventually Moriz got up. ‘I’ll see to it,’ he said, and went out.

‘An expert on metals, so I’m told,’ said Father Ludovico. ‘No doubt he prays over them. It must teach him a lot. You were better off with Godscalc. Pity, that.’

‘What about Scotland?’ said John, which was helpful of him.

‘Oh, gossip. You may have heard it already. Couriers getting through?’ the Patriarch said.

‘They’re not as persistent as you are,’ Nicholas said. ‘What news?’

‘Well, the King’s married – but you knew that: you helped him celebrate. Then his sister went off with her husband – but you knew that too. I’m sure you knew that. Then Anselm Adorne went, and was created a knight – Were you created a knight? Will God never cease to surprise us? Then Sir Anselm went back –’

‘Back?’ said Nicholas.

‘To Scotland. That would be after you left. The death of poor Godscalc. You gave up material things in order to be at his side. The Lord will honour you for it. And it will please you to know that your friend Anselm Adorne reaped the benefit.’

John had stopped looking at him. ‘In what way?’ Nicholas said. But he guessed.

‘The land,’ the Patriarch said. ‘The land the poor silly girl forfeited when she absconded. All the estates belonging to Arran her husband. The King partitioned it out. This servant, that friend – even some musician, I hear, received plenty. But Sir Anselm – now there’s royal generosity – was given a barony. He is Heere van Cortachy now. A good bit of well-paying land in the north-east, so they tell me. And since Adorne is to lodge the Princess Mary in Bruges – did you know that? – the King has been properly lavish with bits of Boyd land to help the new Baron there with his expenses. That is,’ the Patriarch said, ‘although the King wouldn’t mind Thomas Boyd’s head on a hat-stand, he wouldn’t let sister Mary come to want.’

‘So the Princess and her husband are staying in Bruges?’ Nicholas said. The door had opened and Father Moriz came in, a servant following. A hearty smell of meat joined the thick air from the stove.

‘By now. At the Hôtel Jerusalem, with the good Vrouwe Margriet as his hostess. The new Baron himself, of course, is not there, and so will escape any ignominy. Is that ale? Take it away.’

This time, Nicholas refused to respond. The Patriarch, intent on the board, had already unfastened his knife-case.

Father Moriz took a seat not far off. ‘The new baron? You speak of Anselm Adorne?’

‘Now my lord of Cortachy,’ elucidated the Patriarch, filling his mouth. ‘Back from Scotland with more on his mind than trade meetings. He’s planning to travel this spring. Quite a programme. Rome, of course. Genoa. Egypt. He should be in Alexandria by the summer, and Cyprus and Rhodes, they say, just after that. A holy pilgrimage, naturally. A visit to friends. The Levant is stuffed full of Adornos. A son’s going too, and a niece. They say he’s leaving next month, with the Duke of Burgundy’s blessing.’

It was like one of his own traps. So neat, so comprehensive, so final. Anselm Adorne, waiting only for his departure, had scooped the honours in Scotland and was now proceeding to forestall him in the Levant. And so the snare could be closed.

‘No,’ said Nicholas.

Father Ludovico concentrated on his food: his mouth was as full as a nesting-box. Behind the mess was a smile.

John said, ‘Nicholas –’

‘No,’ said Nicholas for a second time.

Father Moriz said, ‘I think, Nicholas, that you will have to listen. And, very likely, have to go.’

He did not need to listen. He knew why the Franciscan was here. Ever since the first missions of the Observatine monks to the East, Ludovico da Bologna had travelled the world, from Persia to Tartary, from Rome to Egypt, from Poland to Germany at the bidding of Popes. At the bidding of Bessarion, Cardinal-Protector of his Order. He had lived in Jerusalem for years, and had failed, as Nicholas had, to reach Ethiopia.

Because Nicholas travelled too, they frequently met. And wherever they met, it seemed to Nicholas, his private and business activities were immediately commandeered for the Patriarch’s purpose, which was to cajole and threaten Christians and Muslims alike to halt the advance of the Ottoman Turk.

For that, he preferred Nicholas to be in the Levant, not
submerged in a vast operation for Duke Sigismond. The threat to spoil this winter’s work was real enough. The other threat, it was clear, was that posed by the discerning, the increasingly competitive Anselm Adorne.

Shrewdly, the Patriarch was proposing a scheme which was not in itself unattractive. Nicholas had always meant, at some point, to visit Egypt. David de Salmeton was there. The gold was worth looking for. The agency needed attention. He had eighteen months still to run of his penitential exile from Scotland. And on the most private level he did not think, at the moment, that he could contemplate another meeting with Gelis.

Nevertheless, the fact remained that he did not want to go to Alexandria soon, or stay long; and he resented being manipulated. So his first impulse had been to refuse. He had refused.

But he knew all the time that he would go, because he could not stomach what else he had heard. He didn’t like what had happened in Scotland. He objected to the fact that, having been pleased enough to see the Bank in the Tyrol, the Duke of Burgundy had now apparently given Adorne the key to the Levant. He could not allow all his plans to be endangered by an adversary as smooth, as adroit, he now knew, as Anselm Adorne.

The Duchess Eleanor gave a farewell feast for her three visitors in the early spring, when the ways had cleared and all the preliminary work for the mining was done. She held it at her preferred castle of Meran, for the tumultuous double courts had again separated, with their horses and dogs, their hordes of servants and permanent and semi-permanent guests; the chaplains, the entourage of honour, the Court Master, the stewards, the Marshal, the chamberlains (lacking one). The men she and Sigismond liked to keep about them: the lawyers who were also humanists; the highly qualified churchmen who collected books and advised, and wrote poetry in their spare time. They had an astronomer. They had had the Patriarch of Antioch for a short time and had been thankful, as always, when he left.

Her father had been a great poet, writing in English and Scots before and after he was freed to rule his country. Her sister the Queen of France had composed verse. She and Sigismond collected books and commissioned translations: there was always a room full of scribes somewhere, some of them men of renown. Sigismond had good Latin but little French: she had had a French romance put into German for him, and had helped with it herself. German was very like Scots.

Books kept her company when he went off to his castle on the lake to put the romances into practice. There was a fiction that she didn’t know what went on in Sigmundsburg, even while she was sending doctors to women in childbirth, and bringing their young to fill places at court. But she had friends: Albrecht of Bavaria, who sent her books, and Mechtilde of the Palatinate. And books and manuscripts were always coming from Augsburg. She had got one from Rome to give to the Abbot at Neustift. She had used books, long ago, to placate the Archbishop. Their advisers borrowed them. Their advisers stayed with them, she sometimes thought, because of them. And they were a pleasure, sometimes, in themselves, if not always. She was not as intellectual as Mechtilde, who had founded a university.

She had found that the young merchant Nicholas had an interest in medical and mechanical treatises and was reasonably familiar with the classics, but had read few romances. He was comfortable to chat to and play cards with, and he could sing. She called him Nicol, which indicated a measure of guest-friendship but not more. He and the priest and the engineer had been accepted by their equals well enough once it was plain they spoke German, and were not the Welsch, the French-speaking Burgundians no one could tolerate. None of them presumed.

She thought, and so did Cavalli and Lindsay, that Sigismond had dealt with the mining contracts extremely well, and he was happy, in any case, to leave the detail to others. He would want to know, however, exactly how and when the loan money would come.

She knew how he would spend it. On buildings. On roads, if he listened to what everyone said and was wise. On war, if he didn’t and wasn’t. If the loan hadn’t come in this fashion, he would have raised it from some other source, with far more potential for harm. This way, they might be able to afford all that Sigismond was going to spend anyway.

Now the planning was done, the equipment here, the lodgings for the workmen arranged. A mine was a temporary village, needing cabins, water, ovens, a church. It had interested her to visit the three men in the office they used in the castle. The last time, she had found de Fleury alone at the table, his fingers slowly smoothing a map. The placid occupation was contradicted by an air of extraordinary tension. Then she saw the jewel strung from his hand. He was divining.