The dimples appeared. He said, ‘Not a lot. I am a very good liar. Anselm, you know that Martin is concentrating on the towns? On deals for the burgesses?’
‘I suppose,’ Sersanders said, ‘that he felt that you had the Court already in your purse. What do they owe you now?’
‘Not as much as everyone owes your uncle’s dear Tommaso in Bruges,’ Nicholas said. ‘I’ve decided to model myself on the Portinari. How many children does he have now? And getting his portrait painted again?’
Sersanders said, ‘I heard you were encouraging the King to have his done. And John’s rich father Bonkle would pay for it.’
‘Hugo will make a very nice job of them both,’ Kathi said. ‘Altar-pieces pay very well, and Maria’s already managed two children by the age of sixteen: they’ll need an extra panel if the paint takes long to dry. You’ve heard the joke about Henne’s Last Judgement?’ In fact, everyone had a joke about Henne’s latest. It showed the Saved and the Damned, most of them identifiable drinking companions or debtors of Henne.
‘I sent him a few tips about Hell,’ Nicholas said. ‘What’s happened? Tani can’t pay for it?’
Angelo Tani, formerly of the Medici in Bruges, had commissioned the painting for the Medici managers’ chapel in Florence. His likeness appeared on the back. Tommaso loathed him: Tommaso had been left out of the picture. Kathi said, ‘How did you guess? But it’s going to be all right after all. Tommaso is underwriting the painting and sending it to Florence for free; it’s going on the Burgundian galleys next spring. In return for which –’
‘– Memling has painted him into the picture. Naked? All the Risen were nude as a needle when I saw the piece last,’ Nicholas said, his expression distant. ‘This huge triptych. I haven’t seen Tommaso naked since –’
‘Neither has anyone except maybe Maria. No. That is, Henne painted Tommaso’s head on a piece of lead foil, and stuck the foil on someone else’s nude body. There could be an industry in that,’ Kathi said.
‘There is already. Statues, even. Ask Tobie, if he’ll condescend to mention Volterra. This triptych will be wasted on the Medici managers. You should get Jan to view it in situ, and report on Tommaso from the neck down. How is Jan? Still in Rome?’
‘And that’s another thing,’ said Sersanders. He was still flushed from the blow over the Unicorn. Kathi saw that Nicholas had come perversely determined to have all his sins forgiven at once.
Her brother said, ‘You bastard, what about poor Patrick Graham?’
‘I thought you’d like his being made an archbishop,’ Nicholas said. ‘Patron of Jan, friend of the family. Papal Nuncio soon, I shouldn’t wonder, licensed to collect Peter’s pennies and shillings and pounds.’
‘And that will make him popular, won’t it?’ Sersanders said. ‘There are those who think that Scotland deserved an archbishop, there are those who resent it. Fair enough. But to help rush it through, to outrage the King and bring about a clash with the Pope was not – tactful.’
‘You speak as if it happened overnight,’ Nicholas said. ‘With a Blackadder and an Arnot in Rome, not to mention an Adorne, the thing was hardly an impenetrable secret. It will settle. If your uncle wants some places and prebends, he’ll get them.’
Sersanders said, ‘I wasn’t thinking only of Jan. I’m thinking of Coldingham; the Tyrolean alum; all the other disputes James has got himself into. It won’t help your trade or mine if the Apostolic Camera gets annoyed and starts to call in its debts.’
Kathi said, ‘We think Jan will be all right. Chancellor Hugonet’s brother will take him. What will happen to poor Patrick Graham?’
‘It depends how good he is at keeping his temper,’ Nicholas said. ‘If he’s humble enough, James won’t think him a threat.’
Sersanders snorted. Kathi said, ‘Well, that disposes of his chances in a sentence.’
‘Quicker than a statement,’ Nicholas said. ‘Anselm, I brought a peace offering below. Will you drink it with me if I get it?’
Sersanders, predictably, rose to perform the errand himself. Nicholas said, ‘Willie Roger gave me a performance of your latest visiting-list. I thought I missed a few names.’
‘Or perhaps I did,’ said Kathi. ‘Damn Willie’s big whistle, that was private. Why don’t we meet very much? Because of Gelis?’
‘Various reasons,’ he said.
‘Gelis has your relationship and mine perfectly fathomed,’ Kathi said. ‘So has Dr Tobie. So have you. So have I. But if you avoid me, then people will talk. Call now and then. Or put all the visits together and take me out in an Eke Week.’
‘Dr Tobie,’ he repeated slowly.
Damn again. She said, ‘Oh well, it was worth trying. Courage, my friend. Courage is different from hope and intermediate between despair and presumption. It’s a finicky business being your comrade, Síra Nikolás.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. She could sense some of the things he wasn’t saying.
‘Don’t be sorry. I’m not the Unicorn, I’m the maiden. Take courage and call. I’ll be lenient,’ she said. ‘I shan’t slip anything into your wine.’
He said, ‘You wouldn’t be the first person, if you did.’ Then Sersanders came in.
She couldn’t drink, watching him talk to her brother. Again, he looked quite composed. Doctored wine. A breach of trust but, somehow, not a recent one. Not even some sly potion of Dr Tobie’s. Something much more important in his eyes, in his voice.
She wondered then if it had been in Africa; if it had been the beginning of all this; if it had been Gelis.
Courage. Courage, my friend.
You should have filled me with drink, and it would be over with. He drove the words from his mind, as he extinguished the whole of the interview he had just had, and walked downhill greeting his comrades, his friends, on the way to his Casa and the final phase of his programme.
You couldn’t be brought up in Bruges and trained by a capable woman of business without knowing that the well-being of any town, duchy or kingdom depended on its fiscal dexterity. In Timbuktu, in Ultima Thule, profit and survival depended on barter: gold for salt; fish for slippers and cereals. In Florence, in Venice, in Bruges, it depended on gold, and paper promises. Paper promises flying over the Alps, expertly sanitising the profits of usury.
Gold and silver were scarce. No country liked to export its coins or its bullion, even to Rome. Nicholas had been inestimably fortunate in possessing raw gold of his own, brought from Africa. When that was done, which would be at any time now, he would have to think about claiming the rest of what belonged to him, currently in the possession of the Knights of St John.
From the beginning, his neighbours had wondered about the purpose of the stone room in his house. The advent of Wilhelm of Hall had explained it: soon the royal hats and shoulders were covered with examples of Wilhelm’s art, and ambassadors accepted his chalices with unflattering astonishment. Wilhelm, you might almost say, had built Beltrees. After that, he made medals. And after that, an easy transition, Nicholas had offered his services to the Governor of the Mint.
The members of the Comptroller’s and Treasurer’s staffs were well-disposed men, unfamiliar with Italian book-keeping, whose task was to apply an inflexible system to an uncertain and corruptible income, often plundered at will by the Crown. The clerks did their best, and delivered their accounts once a year to the Exchequer audit. Once a year only; in summer; in June.
Meanwhile, the flaws in the structure were painfully obvious. Any man who could offer help in their predicament was bound to be listened to. And the solution was simple. Instead of changing the system, you altered the money.
Below, where Wilhelm of Hall ruled, the crucibles poured out their billon and copper, casting the bars which his printers and strikers would beat and cut into groats and pennies, farthings and placks stamped with crowns and mullets and thistles and the King’s head, all of them debased and black money.
Later, when the coining irons were removed and the lockfast boxes
taken away for the night, the furnace was ventilated again. This time, Wilhelm himself set to work with one striker he trusted; pouring out molten gold and stamping it with a pair of puncheons which no one would come to remove, because no one knew they existed: the coining irons for a louis of France.
Far from yielding a profit, this part of the business was ruinous. But of course, it was worth it.
He talked with Wilhelm for a while, and then went to bed in his office, since it was too late to return to the High Street. Before he retired, he unpacked the chessmen and laid them out one by one at his pillow.
Yule and Twelfth Night came and went, their social obligations fitted into the spinning bands of his projects. Most of his agents reached him through Gregorio or Diniz or Julius, who had gone back to Cologne. Some correspondents preferred to send word direct from as far off as Danzig. Jordan de Fleury reached the mature age of four.
Duke Charles used the winter to appropriate the Duchy of Guelders. The Pope and Sigismond of the Tyrol used it to prepare a plan to encourage Duke Charles to fight the Swiss.
In Scotland, her grace the Queen, eight months pregnant, found out at last about Simon of Kilmirren and had to have something slipped into her ptisan to quieten her. Her demands for the filthy whoremaster’s head were side-stepped by the King, with the help of his doctors and ministers. After years of neglect, Kilmirren was at last being properly managed, with thriving flocks and good crops and a healthy trade through the haven of Ayr. The estate was paying its dues to the Crown. Provided St Pol stayed where he was, the King was pleased to regard this as a form of restitution.
The Queen, increasing sullenly, let the argument founder. It would lose nothing by waiting. And she was mollified by her latest acquisition: a packet of jewels, two of which had a name.
Andro Wodman departed. Messages to Nicholas from Burgundian Artois, heavily coded, suggested that unless England promised help soon, the Duke would cancel his attack on the French in the spring. Meanwhile, every nation was complaining of piracy, even France, whose own notorious freebooters were seldom chastised by their monarch. Whether in this connection or not, the vicomte de Ribérac had been sent for by Louis.
And lastly, an event took place behind closed doors in Cologne which Julius did not report, although it concerned the Bank, as it happened, as much as his own personal well-being. The Gräfin Anna von Hanseyck, whose unofficial man of affairs he had become, invited Julius to spend time at her side in the grand hunting-lodge of one of her kinsmen, in which she was currently resident.
The place was virtually a castle, and contained in its household many capable men, the Count’s lawyer among them. After several days wholly given to the pleasures of eating, hunting and dancing, Julius voiced his discomfort. ‘You said you had work for me, lady? Your friends are wondering why I am here.’
Bonne, her daughter, had come to join them: a solemn, flat-chested girl with brown hair, sucking a comfit from the heaped supper buffet. Anna had smiled, and made room for her to sit down. They were all warm from dancing.
She said, ‘You are here to rest from your office. Why not? I benefit from the fruits of your labours; it is only right that I should wish you refreshed.’
Julius said, ‘You have many friends as skilful as I am, or with secretaries who would be glad to advise.’
‘Then I wonder why I am not using them?’ the Gräfin said. ‘Really, why should you be assailed so by doubts? Because for the first time I have allowed my hateful business to fall into oblivion for three or four days? I have forgotten it, and I expect you to forget it as well. Or if you cannot, come and take wine with me later, and we shall please everybody by computing my customs dues, or the profit from the sale of a vineyard.’ He had not understood, until he arrived at her chamber, that she would be alone, and at ease in her bedrobe. He stopped.
‘Julius! What are we to do with you?’ she said. Rising, she crossed to shut the door at his back, and then, taking his hand, led him across to a seat, from which he gazed up at her. Her eyes in the candlelight were of that dense blue approaching to violet, and her hair fell divided over her shoulders. The black ends curled at her waist; the upper strands lay on her robe like embroidery. She said, ‘You did not go with Gustav last night?’ She wore the scent she always wore. He did not know what it was.
He felt himself flushing. He said, ‘It was kind of him to ask. I was tired.’
The scent receded. She sat down opposite, on the feather pillows of a day bed hung with linen. She said, ‘He wished you to go. It is a clean house. The girls would have done you no harm.’
He burned with embarrassment. He said, ‘I’m sorry …’
Anna lay back. She was smiling. She said, ‘I am honoured that you resisted, but you should have gone. I meant you to go. I suggested it.’
He said, ‘You want me to leave.’
‘No! No,’ she said. ‘How have I frightened you? You have paid me homage as a gentleman should. Had we lived in earlier times, you might have offered me exquisite poems. I was content. Then I wondered if you did not expect more of me than chivalrous dalliance.’
Julius swallowed. He said, ‘I have never wanted more than the Gräfin wished to give.’ He sat on the low velvet stool, his limbs at ease as if set on a side-saddle, his pulse sharp as the thud of a mallet.
She said, ‘I know all your attributes, Julius, except for one thing, which I hoped Gustav would tell me. The Graf Wenzel was an old man. I loved him. But when I do not seek the financial advice of my friends, it is perhaps a sign that I desire something more from there’
He began to rise. ‘Anna!’
‘… Which I should like to be sure they can give me. Are you a virgin, Julius?’
‘No,’ he said. He could barely speak.
‘Neither am I,’ said Anna von Hanseyck. ‘There is nothing then, is there, to delay us?’
He had started to tremble. He said, ‘You mean – ’
The violet eyes smiled. She said, ‘I am not asking you to marry me, Julius. I am asking you to show me whether or not I should like to be married to you.’
Her robe had parted a little; one of the long, straying locks was clinging half to her skin. He knelt before her, and she stretched a speculative finger, then two, to the sodden throat of his shirt. She said, ‘You are so hot, Julius!’
He stayed all night. Long after, he remembered thinking, at the height of the experience, that he could have died at that hour, and not grudged it. When he finally woke, the sun shone through the lawn of the hangings and she lay, naked still in his arms, smiling at him. She said, ‘Show me what you will do, when we are married.’
The marriage was not quickly achieved, for there were kinsmen to summon, ceremonies to be arranged, contracts to be drawn up. They were signed in the great hall of the castle, below the Hanseyck coat of arms, with his new step-daughter grave at his side. Then his wife led him into the banquet and they sat upon the great chairs together: Julius de Bologna of the Banco di Niccolò and Anna von Hanseyck, his bride.
He had written to Nicholas. The Cologne agent had sent his separate, studied account. Nicholas, receiving both, read them in silence, and then dispatched his congratulations, with a gift.
By that time, Nicholas himself had begun to prepare for his April departure. He worked with a progressive sense of achievement accompanied, characteristically, by a precarious and growing elation. He had succeeded. He was going to succeed. He began to recover, unremarked, the unwarranted soaring of spirits which had propelled him, in his volatile boyhood, into so much trouble at home.
Chapter 41
THE SNOW WAS not, in the first place, the fatal factor, nor was the sudden, peremptory freeze: Nicholas held the belief that he no longer found extremes of climate exciting. In any case, on that particular day, he was fully occupied in his house in the High Street, chatting to Mistress Clémence and Jordan; discussing with Gelis the routine appointments of family life.
The organisational talents of Gelis were inclined to ril
e Govaerts; Nicholas had adroitly identified a distinct sphere of power for each which left him under the jurisdiction of neither. In these sessions, he generally found something amusing to argue about; her views could be mordantly shrewd. In theory, it kept alive and continued the family relationship that now contained them. He did not find it easy.
He was not especially receptive, accordingly, when Kathi Sersanders skipped into the room, followed by a crimson-faced porter. The Nor’ Loch was bearing. Might Jodi take part in the revels?
He perceived, of course, all the goodwill behind the suggestion, but thought it preposterous and said so. He was taken aback when Mistress Clémence, of all persons, disagreed.
‘The child is growing up in captivity. He requires some stimulation. If he is with another family, and muffled, Lord Beltrees, I for one would expect him to be safe.’
‘Archie has all these nephews and nieces,’ Kathi urged. ‘And it would show Robin that you trust him.’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Nicholas. Simon was in Kilmirren, but he had agents. So had Martin.
‘Go yourself. You can skate. Take the lady Gelis. So long as you keep away from the Berecrofts and Jodi, you can watch them.’
‘I have been taught to skate,’ said Mistress Clémence. ‘If I am seen there alone, it will convince any watcher that the boy is safe at home with the house guard and Pasque.’
‘Well, perhaps,’ Nicholas said. ‘But you must not go alone.’
*
All the rest of the year, the Nor’ Loch lay in its hollow below the steep ridge of the High Street and mirrored the Castle in its flat reedy expanse. Turned to ice, it now reflected the red of the sunset and the torches streaming downhill towards it, while braziers winked on its surface and candlelight began to glow inside booths. The ice, rubbed by skates and pitted with boot- and hoof-studs, unrolled like a half-frosted painting beneath the busy feet of the crowd, and from the Lang Gait to the Castle, the whitened banks threw back a scribble of noise: the excited screaming, the snatches of drumming and whistling, the yapping and barking of dogs, tinny in the sparkling air.
To Lie With Lions: The Sixth Book of the House of Niccolo Page 67