The Unicorn Hunt: The Fifth Book of the House of Niccolo

by Dorothy Dunnett

Tobias Beventini arrived in Alexandria and held a fraught conversation with John le Grant in the midst of the spice market, as a result of which a number of letter packets marked cito, cito, cito left for various ports. Two berths were booked on a fast galley going to Venice.

  Anselm Adorne, Baron Cortachy passed through Beersheba and Hebron and entered Jerusalem on the eleventh day of September. Having visited the Mount of Olives, Bethlehem, Jericho, Nazareth, Galilee and seven other places, he arrived in Damascus on the sixteenth of October, where he was met by the Vatachino agent called Martin, and accepted a courtesy invitation from the sub-agent of the House of Niccolò, carrying out instructions from his colleagues further west. John de Kinloch, impatient to reach Rhodes (where he was to remain) had been brusque, but nothing upsetting occurred.

  Lambert van de Walle acquired a rash, and Pieter Reyphin contrived to buy a barrel of wine. Jan Adorne continued his diary. Towards the end of October, the party took ship from Beirut for Cyprus. The man Martin went with them.

  Leaving Achille in charge, John le Grant and Tobias Beventini set sail for Venice. In Venice, Julius held back the invitations to two receptions and questioned Father Moriz, not for the first time, about what exactly Nicholas had been doing in the Tyrol. He learned, to his surprise, that Gregorio had been sent for from Bruges.

  Discussions opened with the ambassadors of the lord Uzum Hasan on the island of Rhodes, attended by Nicholas de Fleury and, subsequently, by Ludovico da Bologna, Latin Patriarch of Antioch. The Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller of St John was not unsympathetic to the proposals brought to the table, but there was some dissidence among the Knights from the Genoese sector.

  A message arrived at the Burgundian camp at St Omer causing Captain Astorre, that thoroughly professional soldier, some disquiet. He applied for permission to visit his patron in Venice and was refused. Concealing (he thought) his relief, he dispatched his apologies to Master Gregorio in Bruges. Master Gregorio left for Venice accompanied by some large wallets of papers and Margot his mistress.

  A packet made its way up to Leith and was delivered to Michael Crackbene when he put in from his current voyage. It contained information, but no summons to Venice. Govaerts, the Bank’s Scottish agent, continued to receive the usual dispatches and deal, as best he could, with the demands and enquiries proceeding from Beltrees, from the noblemen Semple and Hamilton, from the Berecrofts family through all its generations, and from the King. Simon de St Pol and Mistress Bel of Cuthilgurdy each made appearances from time to time in the Kilmirren district, but neither communicated with him. Meeting Whistle Willie these days, he spread his hands and shrugged. It had been found that he had no ear for music, and flutes made him dribble.

  The party of Anselm Adorne, Baron Cortachy, arrived on the island of Cyprus and was treated to a grand reception by the monarch King James, who with solemn pomp invested the baron with the Order of the Sword, a Cypriot order of knighthood and a fitting successor to the honour the Baron (Equites Hierosolymitani) had just received in Jerusalem.

  His niece Katelijne, a recent ornament to the Convent of the Clares, attended the ceremony and congratulated her uncle, who was visibly moved to see her well and composed. One of the young men in the party, no doubt her cousin, flung his arms around her and kissed her. In due course they took their leave of the King and set sail for Rhodes, where they arrived too late to meet the delegates from the lord Uzum Hasan of the White Sheep Tribe of the Turcomans, who had had occasion to visit the Hospitallers and had left the previous day.

  In the Castle of Angers, René of Anjou summoned his newest page Henry and, when the lad arrived, sent him to find his grandfather, the vicomte Jordan de Ribérac, to whom he delivered a letter. The seal was familiar, and the superscription showed that it had come via Marseilles from Egypt. Jordan de Ribérac, scanning it, said, ‘I fear, monseigneur, that I shall have to ask your permission to leave. A matter of business in Venice.’

  ‘Can I come?’ said Henry.

  To his surprise, his grandfather seemed to consider it. Then the old man said, ‘No.’ The fat old man. Chamberpot Jordan.

  In Bruges, the Princess Mary said, ‘And your niece Katelijne is better? You have heard? Is she coming home? Does she know the lord James my son is here in her cradle?’

  ‘I’m sure she does,’ said Margriet, dame de Cortachy, taking the baby to give the wet-nurse some rest. When she gave it her finger to suck, it stopped screaming. Her fingertip was shrivelled and pink, and had grown too tender for sewing. The Duchess had told her she was wearing herself out, but it was the least she could do, with Anselm still being away and Lord Boyd so impatient of noise, even from his own grandchild. She eased her finger out of its mouth, and it screamed.

  On the island of Rhodes, a feast was given for Anselm Adorne and his son by the Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller of St John of Jerusalem and his nephew the Prior of Capua. Sharing the honour of a place at high table was Tobias Lomellini, the Genoese Treasurer of the Order.

  In praising the Order for its generosity, the sire de Cortachy referred to recent Ottoman threats against Rhodes and urged the Order – speaking of course in his own voice, and not that of the Pontiff or Burgundy – not to abandon its historic distrust of the Republic of Venice.

  It was then the thirteenth of November. Two days after the Baron’s departure, the Council of the Order met and resolved to inform James, King of Cyprus, that the Order would not oppose any pact he wished to make with the Sultan of Cairo, and with the Grand Karaman and the seigneur of Candelore, the Muslim neighbours of Uzum Hasan. Subject to the outcome of the forthcoming meeting in Venice, certain funds were being held by the Order against the arming of such putative allies.

  Anselm Adorne sailed towards Brindisi, with the intention of making his way, via Naples and Rome, back to Bruges.

  Katelijne Sersanders became seventeen years old to outward appearances, and inwardly approximately three times that age. She gave up attempting to rewrite Jan’s Royal Book in any language.

  The agents of the Vatachino communicated with one another: Martin in Syria to David de Salmeton in Cairo; David de Salmeton to Egidius; Egidius to the address which was only that of a company of couriers. It was agreed to stand back and leave the developing situation to Anselm Adorne.

  Nicholas passed the first day of his new decade in Rome, among those delegates who had answered the call of Pope Paul and Cardinal Bessarion for an anti-Turk pact among the Italian princes. Seven days later the meeting took place, and such assurances were received that the Pontiff ordered salvoes of joy to be fired wherever Christians were gathered.

  Discussing it later with his Rome agent, along with Lorenzo Strozzi and a pleasantly drunk Cardinal’s Secretary, Nicolas said, ‘Will it stick?’

  ‘Our bit will,’ said Lorenzo, speaking for Naples. ‘We need all the help we can get. But Milan won’t sign in the end. And I don’t know about Florence. You know the Medici: they don’t want to lose trade.’

  ‘It won’t stick anyway,’ said the Secretary. ‘Not when all the Western powers turn their backs, having something worse to worry about. You don’t know what I know.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ Nicholas said. ‘The Lancastrian King is back on the throne of England.’

  ‘That’s old,’ said Lorenzo. ‘The King of France helped put him there.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the Secretary.

  They looked at him.

  He said, ‘But you don’t know on what conditions. The King of France wants England’s help in his wars. And England has promised it. And so France has declared war on Burgundy.’

  There fell the silence of genuine shock. Then Nicholas cleared his throat. ‘So what happened to Edward of York?’

  ‘My lord?’ said his agent. ‘That I can tell you. He fled to Holland. And was given shelter by the governor of Holland, the, lord Louis de Gruuthuse of Bruges.’

  ‘What!’ said Nicholas. He put his hand over his cup. He said, ‘The Duke of Burgundy’s lieutenant-gene
ral is sheltering the deposed English King?’ His hand was trembling with suppressed laughter.

  His agent said, ‘Yes, my lord. In a private capacity, as you would guess. The Duke is not officially aware that the King is within his domain.’

  ‘While the Hôtel Jerusalem, in the same town, is harbouring Thomas Boyd and his royal wife from Scotland, early and fervent supporters of the Lancastrian King. How very difficult,’ Nicholas said, ‘for the poor wife and relatives of the peripatetic Baron Cortachy and his heir.’

  Lorenzo gave a chuckle, then sobered. With marriage, he had become a shade portly. ‘It’s funny, but look. There’ll be no money coming now from the West. If the Turks are going to be stopped, we have to do it between us.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Nicholas said. ‘I’m doing nothing on Tuesday.’

  He stayed until Twelfth Night was well over, amassing facts and making his adjusted calculations. In a period of intense activity and little sleep, he lay awake all through one night bothered by an illogical fancy that drew his thoughts towards Florence. The next day he was called to the Curia, and the opportunity to change his programme was lost.

  When he did stop in Florence, going north, he felt nothing more than traces of emotion to do with Godscalc, and perhaps the child he had befriended, who had died. He called on old Alessandra to give her news of her son, and found her frail and short-tempered, as if she could see the last page of her account, and did not like what she read. At the end, she said, ‘You did not take my advice.’

  They had been talking about spectacles and about silk. He cast his mind back.

  ‘Oh, business!’ she said. ‘You have grown like all the rest: you think business consists of nothing but percentages, contracts, delivery dates. I thought at one time you had some understanding of people. Charity.’

  Then he took her meaning, although he was still surprised. He said, ‘I was grateful for your letters. One’s wife is less easy to command, perhaps, than one’s sons.’

  ‘I should not blame you,’ she said, ‘if you had fallen out of charity with that one. I should get rid of her. As for my sons, since you make the comparison, I did no more than order their lives until they were capable of doing so for themselves. If you have all you came for, I am tired.’

  Anselm Adorne arrived in Rome on the eleventh of January. The Cardinals of Rouen and St Mark were amiable, as was that popular churchman, the Chancellor of Burgundy’s brother. The Pontiff agreed, hardly solicited, to give a second audience to the counsellor of his dearest son, the redoubtable Charles, Duke of Burgundy.

  In point of fact, the Pope had some cause to be interested in those countries the Baron had visited, as had Cardinal Bessarion. The Cardinal’s sympathies were Venetian, and the Pontiff’s – surprisingly, fortunately – were not. In the end, the Baron came away with the prize that he had hoped for, or one of them. A post in the Pontiff’s own household for Jan Adorne, graduate of Paris and Pavia, his son.

  To Jan, of course, it set the stamp, at last, on his future, and made the whole slogging business worth while. Their lodgings rang with his jubilation. His cousin Kathi said, ‘When?’

  ‘When I’ve seen you all safely back in Bruges. I’m to come back immediately. If we hurry, we could be home by February. I could be back here by May. I shan’t have time, of course, to write out the Book.’

  ‘You wouldn’t,’ said Kathi, ‘take a small wager?’

  ‘Why?’ he said.

  The girl said, ‘Well, do you think you can go back to Bruges yet? With the Princess of Scotland giving birth in your house beside the traitor Boyds, father and son, and Edward of York rampaging about incognito in Oostcamp as guest of one of the Duke of Burgundy’s governors?’

  She looked earnest rather than smug; but Jan was still vexed. She had been like this, virtually pickled in vinegar, since they picked her up from Cyprus in November. He wondered if Nicholas de Fleury could possibly have arranged it all. Claes. He had been in Rome when the big conference was being held. He’d gone north quite recently. They said he was making for Florence and Venice.

  In a way it was no surprise therefore when his father came to mention that, unfortunately, they would not be able to go straight home to Bruges. Instead, he thought Jan would find it amusing, as a treat, to spend a little more time in Italy. Florence. Bologna. Ferrara. Even Venice. Venice in the days before Lent was surely something they might allow themselves, after all their privations.

  But Jan knew it wasn’t the allurement of Martedi Grasso that was drawing his father. It was the diabolical plotting of Claes.

  A galley of the Knights Hospitaller of St John, putting off from Rhodes just after Twelfth Night, began a rough journey west, bearing with it a contingent of Knights and the same experienced, much-exercised Turcoman delegation from the prince Uzum Hasan which had already visited both Cyprus and Rhodes. Their destination this time was Venice.

  The lawyer Gregorio, after a difficult crossing of the Alps, finally made his way to the Ca’ Niccolò in Venice along with Margot his mistress. They received a welcome from Julius, together with a faint impression that he thought they had come to see what he was spending on parties. Cristoffels and Father Moriz showed genuine pleasure, and took them off very soon to find the doctor and John and exchange gossip. Later: ‘And so where is Nicholas?’ Gregorio said.

  ‘Coming,’ said Tobie. The word, or its echoes, sobered the lawyer. He looked at Tobie and John, and saw a warning. Later, the three of them met.

  Shutting the door: ‘It’s Gelis, I assume,’ said Gregorio. ‘We know she travelled part of the way south with Adorne, and for a while she was thought to be dead.’

  ‘She came to Egypt,’ said John le Grant. He cleared his throat. ‘There was trouble in Cairo, and she found her way to Mount Sinai. We don’t know where she went after that. But she’s supposed to be coming to Venice when Nicholas does. You don’t know where she is?’

  ‘She moves about,’ Gregorio said. ‘She’s been in Genoa. She writes to her family. Every now and then she disappears, or perhaps she just wants some privacy.’

  ‘And the child?’ Tobie said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Gregorio said. ‘No one, not even Margot, knows where it is now, or if it’s alive. And I have no information about it. Margot made a promise to Gelis, and nothing that I know of would make her break it.’

  He left presently, being tired from the journey, and Tobie sat for a while in silence with John.

  It seemed, although no one had spoken, that something had been said. John said, ‘I think you should do it. You know what Gelis made him go through. Margot would listen.’ After a while he said, ‘She was married once, wasn’t she?’

  ‘He is dead,’ Tobie said. ‘She never lived with him.’

  ‘But Margot has been free ever since? Do you know why she hasn’t married Gregorio?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tobie. ‘She consulted me.’

  John’s freckled face with its white chin was intent. ‘It’s a medical matter?’

  ‘It’s private to them,’ Tobie said. ‘But it has a bearing. There is deformity in Margot’s family. Some are born normal; some are brutes. Every generation suffers from it, and they all know, as she does, how to nurse the afflicted. That is between you and me.’

  John said, ‘Does Nicholas know?’

  ‘No,’ said Tobie.

  After a while Tobie said, ‘I shall go and see her. But if she agrees, we should have to tell Gregorio.’

  Then it was February, and they were all there, in Venice. Few of them would recognise all the threads which had brought them there. Most of them were aware, now, of the kind of calendar of which they were part, although they might not have counted the stages. The sixth, which had started in Cairo, had brought the game, lure by lure, to one field.

  In the north, soon, another hunt, another season would open. It was time that this one was called home.

  Part V

  THE PRISE

  Chapter 47

  NICHOLAS DE F
LEURY arrived last in Venice, with no more ceremony than, say, a ducal chancellor performing his annual audits. The boat went to the mainland to collect him, since he had given the precise time of his arrival: communications had never ceased flowing between himself and the Bank. He had with him the small household he had collected to look after his personal needs, and he had asked for no one to meet him but a clerk with a box of the most recent papers.

  He read them through sitting under the hood on the misty voyage to the collection of islands that called itself Venice. His small staff, mostly Catalonian, stood huddled in the open air, talking in low voices as the Grand Canal opened before them. He proposed keeping them with him.

  By the time he stepped ashore at the Ca’ Niccolò, he had added the news of the last few days to what he already understood of events in the ten months since he was last in Venice, and the five since he had departed from Cyprus.

  That much was essential. What was also essential was a sense, impossible to obtain at a distance, of shifts of balance less quantifiable. He gave his mind to it now, accomplishing, swiftly, his practised patron’s arrival into his Bank.

  The six he wanted were there: Gregorio and Julius, Tobie and John, Cristoffels and Father Moriz. Margot had come with Gregorio, but was off on some woman’s business. Diniz had been left to manage Bruges, but had given his willing consent to the investment of the gold that should have been his. One supposed that investment was the word.

  And Astorre, of course, had been forbidden to leave the Duke’s camp, which was perfectly sensible. He would have sent him back himself, had he come.

  He had summoned no one from Scotland but had had notified Antonio Cavalli in the Tyrol who had set out at once, he was told. Naturally. Cavalli was a Venetian: the Palazzo Cavalli was not all that far from the Banco di Niccolò. Or he might lodge at the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. That was close to where the Scots usually stayed.

  Nicholas knew, from those who were watching Adorne, that the Baron was travelling north with his son and his niece. Why the girl was coming he could not imagine, unless van de Walle and Reyphin, both continuing home, had been considered inadequate chaperones.