‘But Henry isn’t here?’ Tobie had said.
‘No.’ After a moment, Nicholas had said, ‘Tobie? Once, I gave you a paper. Do you have it?’
He had it. It was a document, drawn up and signed, which would prove, if it had to be proved, that Henry was the son of Katelina van Borselen and Nicholas vander Poele, now de Fleury.
Tobie said, ‘It’s with my notary. Why? Do you want it?’
‘Not if you don’t mind keeping it. But I wondered. Would you consider it a good idea to give a copy to Father Moriz?’
‘I think it would be an excellent idea,’ said Tobie slowly.
‘You shouldn’t have to bear all the onus. Did you know that Moriz was a native of Augsburg?’ Nicholas had asked.
‘I’d forgotten,’ Tobie said.
‘He might have friends; even kinsmen,’ Nicholas said. ‘I only mention it in case you come across them by accident. Both my sons, I am sure, are quite safe. But after Cyprus …’ He let the sentence tail off. His face, for a moment, had looked younger than it was, whereas apprehension with most was an ageing emotion.
Tobie said casually, ‘I was sorry to hear about Tasse. She might have helped you.’
He could see Nicholas draw breath, and then release it. Then he said, ‘I was sorry, too. Jodi would have been as fond of her as I was.’
That was all. Then he had gone, and now the message had come, summoning them all to the Abbey of St Maximin outside Trèves, where the Duke of Burgundy, its protector, was taking up residence. Gelis brought it to Tobie, and with it, a note from a different quarter.
‘From Anna,’ she said. ‘To tell us she’s gone to join Julius in Trèves. He and Nicholas are attached to the Emperor.’
‘She is German,’ he said. ‘She is almost in the position of hostess. And the message from Nicholas? He wants you to stay with the Duke, not the Emperor?’
‘He seems to think it is safer,’ Gelis said. She paused, and Tobie looked up. She had pale blue eyes, very clear.
She said, ‘You know what our marriage is like? You know we compete?’
A war of attrition, Gregorio had said. And Gregorio was not a doctor. ‘Yes, I know,’ Tobie said.
‘And you think us both childish. Perhaps we have both begun to think so, as well. Recently, we took a decision to end the competition this winter.’
‘And end your marriage?’ Tobie asked.
She noted his professional voice, and laughed. ‘Will it harm Nicholas even more, you are wondering? I don’t know. Whoever prevails on the day of reckoning will determine the fate of our marriage. And Nicholas, it seems, is even more anxious than you. This letter asks me to consider advancing the date.’
‘Why?’ Tobie said. ‘Or as you suggest, is it just from impatience?’
She smiled again. ‘I should like to think so, but no. He is assigned to the Emperor’s household, and unsure what will happen, or where he will be asked to go next. October in Trèves is not so very far short of December in Bruges, where he expected to be. He suggests that, when the Duke receives his reward, so should he.’
‘So he is certain of winning?’ said Tobie.
‘He is always certain of winning,’ said Gelis. ‘It is why he plays. And victory never brings him contentment, because he always chooses to play the wrong games.’
‘I saw the Nativity Play,’ Tobie said.
The smile vanished. She said, ‘I am not going to lose him to that.’
‘So who decides which are the wrong games?’ Tobie said. ‘You, if you win?’
‘I am going to win,’ Gelis said, and got up. The letters were crushed in her hand.
Tobie said, ‘Well, I shan’t try to stop you. Was that what you wanted to know?’
‘You couldn’t stop me,’ she said, and walked out. Looking after her, he felt both exasperation and pity. He wondered how in God’s name the outcome of a contest was supposed to create a bearable, never mind a lasting relationship. Unless, of course, the seeds of it were already there, and the implacable rivalry was not what it seemed.
Nearly fifteen hundred years old, the city of Trèves had once, for ten glorious years, been the capital of the Roman Empire of the West, and the home of the Emperor Constantine and his mother St Helena. Trèves had been attacked by the Franks and the Vikings, but her past could still be discerned: her two greatest churches marked the sites of Constantine’s holy basilicas; the southern gate occupied the ruined Imperial Baths; and the northern port was close to the great Porta Nigra, the massive original entrance, twelve hundred years old, whose upper tiers, ninety feet high, dominated the city.
At the peak of its fame, eighty thousand people had inhabited the great marble city of Trèves: its Prince-Archbishop was one of the Empire’s Electors, and Imperial Diets were held in the halls which, very soon, would be occupied by the Emperor Frederick and his train. Over the years, the throne room of Constantine, roofless now, had been transformed into a spacious central courtyard, its apse forming a tower, and its mighty walls of red brick provided with wall-walks and defences. Around the courtyard and beyond it were ranked the lodgings, the service rooms and the guest-quarters of the Archbishop’s Palace. To these, Nicholas came with his men.
His reception by the Archbishop was muted: Jean de Baden knew all about Trojan horses, and so did his brother the Margrave. Please the Electors, Hugonet had reiterated, and Nicholas did his best, in between acquainting himself with the town, and the Archbishop’s household, and those officials of the Emperor who had arrived ahead of their prince. He was not going to run about painting anything. He was merely going to supervise certain small helpful devices, decorations, performances and martial and musical diversions carried out by his own expert staff and agreed beforehand with his Archiepiscopal and Imperial colleagues.
The last person of the advance party to join them was the most decorative, and also the most unexpected: the former Gräfin von Hanseyck. Julius, his arm proudly about her, brought her into the room that they shared. ‘Look! She hired a bodyguard and came straight from Augsburg. You remember Anna?’
Dark hair, violet eyes, a spine like the curl of a fern. ‘Who could forget?’ Nicholas said. ‘She owns half the Fleury. No, of course I remember her for many much better reasons, not least that she has had the valour to marry you. I am going to toast your good luck all over again. Is my wife here as well?’
‘Well, kiss her!’ said Julius.
‘I think,’ said the demoiselle Anna, ‘that you will find her in the abbey of St Maximin very soon, with your son and Dr Tobias. I was able to leave Augsburg a little more quickly.’ Smiling, she stepped forward and offered her cheek, and as he kissed it, touched his arm and spoke softly. ‘I wished to say how sorry I am about James de Lusignan. It is a long friendship severed. You must have been glad you were there.’
‘Except that he might have been accused of poisoning him, if he hadn’t been knocked on the head,’ Julius said. ‘The Vatachino! Do you know whom we saw outside Luxembourg? Martin! Martin, who …’
She moved back, and Nicholas went off to find wine and collect the others. Julius was happy, at least.
On Wednesday, the twenty-ninth of September, the Holy Roman Emperor arrived at the gates of Trèves, a day ahead of his guest. With him came two thousand five hundred nobles, four Electors, and Maximilian, his son of fourteen: blond and long-faced and sullen. Also the refugee half-brother, aged twenty-five, of the Ottoman Sultan. Like Tom Boyd, like the princess Zoe, like Sandy of Albany in his time, Calixtus Ottomanus was being fostered as a potential puppet. Everyone did it.
Two thousand five hundred German noblemen settled into the city of Trèves, and Nicholas was sent for to the Archbishop’s Palace. At fifty-eight, the Emperor had a lined, bearded face with drooping eyes, and a bush of reddish hair to his shoulders. Pene stupidum, the late Pope Pius had called him. Almost stupid, but not absolutely so. This was a man who, apparently indolent, had controlled an empire of millions for thirty-three years, and kept all predators at bay, l
argely by limping sideways at the right moment. If his son married Marie of Burgundy, Maximilian would be the richest young man in the world.
The Emperor, it transpired, considered himself fortunate to have the services of the distinguished Nicholas de Fleury, Baron Beltrees, and congratulated him and his colleagues on the appearance of the streets. He examined, with faded curiosity, the renovated table fountain that John had produced for him, and uttered a question or two about the Bank which Nicholas answered with care. The Emperor knew all about the Banco di Niccolò. The Cardinal Bessarion had stayed at the Imperial court in his time, as had the Patriarch of Antioch and the Emperor’s impecunious cousin, Duke Sigismond of the Tyrol. Sigismond, who had been so unsurprisingly unavailable recently, since behind everyone’s back he was promoting a lunatic war with the Swiss.
Frederick knew precisely what force the Bank could or could not exert; and what it was worth in Imperial politics. That was what Nicholas counted on.
He returned to his work, and the master plan for the Duke of Burgundy’s Entry tomorrow. Gelis had not yet arrived, but there was no cause to be anxious as yet. The journey from Augsburg could take well over a week, and she would have a heavy armed escort. The place where she was to stay, the town-like Abbey of St Maximin outside the city, was in a continuous uproar, as the officers of the Duke and the Abbot strove to prepare for the coming descent. Very early, Nicholas had used all his authority to secure rooms for his wife and her party. He would be sent for, he hoped, when they came.
There was no cause for anxiety, except that he had made a proposal. (Were you expecting one? I hear the lady Violante was in Nicosia.) Looking into the future, he had concluded that he dared not wait until December for their dénouement. The game should end before the board changed.
He believed she would be ready. The Duke’s stay would last, surely, for most of October. He credited her with good planning; and he thought that, whatever her schemes, she should be able to advance them so far. And so the day of the Duke’s victory would also be his. With all that entailed.
On bad days, he faced the reality. She might turn it down. She might insist on the original agreement. She might even now be on her way to Bruges, and he would have to wait suspended like this, until the end of the year. Suspended; bound as in Kouklia; while all the harvest, the sweetness might wither and die.
He should have stopped sooner. He could have stopped early this summer, but it would not have given her a fair chance. And there had been other things he must do.
The Duke came before she did, and the Emperor rode out from the city to meet him. His procession, rank upon rank, proceeded between cheering crowds along the main street of Trèves, sumptuously draped and beflagged by courtesy of Nicholas de Fleury and Tommaso Portinari and the Duke. The chevaliers pranced in the van in their glittering armour; after them marched the crossbowmen, followed by the trumpets, the heralds, the drums. The princes. The yellow-haired Archduke Maximilian side by side with the sallow young Ottoman princeling. The Prince Electors of Mayence and Trèves and behind them, his naked sword raised, the Marshal of the Empire, preceding the Emperor himself, astride a magnificent white stallion, and followed by the bishops and the rest of the nobles.
The Emperor was dressed like a Turk, in a golden robe embroidered with pearls, and bore what appeared to be a nesting swan on his head. Seeing him emerge from the Palace, Nicholas and Julius, ready to mount, had simply turned and silently shaken each other by the hand.
‘That’s my boy,’ Julius said, quoting Astorre. Then they fitted themselves into the procession.
They were therefore among the first to emerge from the city and see, coming towards them, the procession of the Emperor’s humble subject Charles, Duke of Burgundy. It was quite hard to discern detail at first, because the sunlight shone blindingly upon what appeared to be a river of mercury: fifteen thousand solidly helmeted men to the Emperor’s lightly clad twenty-five hundred. Before them trotted an angel throng of a hundred handsome blond pages in blue and cream doublets, followed by a phalanx of silken-clad trumpeters and a body of the archers of the Duke’s guard in their livery. After that came the fourteen sapphire-crowned heralds, a cavalcade of prelates, ambassadors and Knights of the Golden Fleece in cloth-of-gold robes, and finally, an escort of six thousand horse, followed by interminable lines of baggage and guns. The horse-cloths were gold, and fringes of bells on the harness were shocked into a fury of tinkling every time the trumpets gave tongue.
The Grand Duke rode in the middle, glistening in a golden cuirass and a black velvet cloak starred with jewels whose worth, at a quick calculation, amounted to a hundred thousand florins at today’s rates.
The cavalcades stopped; the principals dismounted; the Duke knelt and was raised by His Imperial Majesty, who embraced him. They entered the city together, and spent half an hour in the marketplace, hats doffed, disputing gallantly over who was to escort whom to where. Eventually, the Duke left for St Maximin’s.
Nicholas and Astorre, Julius and John repaired at last to their lodgings and were able to give voice to their feelings. John was the first to frame actual words.
‘Man! Man! It was like two cooks selling meat on the causeway! All as sweet as you like, until the one fetches the other a blow on the haffet! His hat! His curly-toed slippers! Oh!’
‘And the Duke’s diamonds,’ said Julius. ‘Christ, Nicholas. Did no one know how to stop him?’
‘With Tommaso there selling?’ Nicholas said. ‘And it’s worse than you think. He’s brought the Crown of Light, and the Golden Lily with the True Cross, and the twelve statues of the Apostles in gold, and the four angels and the ten jewelled crosses, and all the tapestries. It’s got a hint of a message, of course: “Look how rich you might be when your Maximilian has married my Marie.” At the same time, I do agree, it makes poor Turkish Frederick look like a Gibichung counting his toes. Vero stupidum.’
‘That’s all right,’ Julius said. ‘That’s why you’re here. All you have to do is sweet-talk Frederick and the Electors into crowning the Duke. Ha, ha.’
‘I don’t mind him being rich,’ Astorre said, mopping up gravy. ‘He’s paying us.’
So began the Great Encounter, which was to dazzle the world with its jousts, its banquets, its pageantry for week after week through the whole of that strange, heated autumn.
The real events were less visible. The circumspect private meetings between the Holy Roman Emperor and the Grand Duke of the West remained private. The frequent hard-working meetings between the highest ministers of both parties were too passionate to escape notice entirely: rumour described the raised voices and the thumping of fists and the sudden departures, and occasionally reported that, listening to Hugonet, the Duke was inclined to pack his baggage and leave. But always, he relented.
Rumour also spoke of a third set of meetings, initiated by the Emperor on the command of the Pope. Nicholas knew about these, after coming face to face in an anteroom with Ludovico de Severi da Bologna, Patriarch of Antioch.
It was then the end of the first week of the conference, and Gelis had still not arrived. He had looked for her at the opening ceremony in the Abbey of St Maximin, at which the Archbishop of Mayence had exhorted the Duke to save Christendom from the maw of the pagan, while Calixtus Ottomanus sat picking his nose. The Chancellor Hugonet had replied with two hours of Latin oratory deploring the turpitude of Louis of France, who alone chained the Duke to his duchy. The Emperor, placed under a tapestry of Alexander the Great, had been clad in crimson and gold, and his son’s long yellow hair rippled over a grand robe of red and green damask. The general impression was rich, but not smart.
Leaving afterwards, Nicholas had crossed the Abbey courtyard with Julius and his lady wife Anna. It was full of friends and spectators from the guest-lodgings.
Anna said, ‘She isn’t here yet, Lord Beltrees. I had someone ask. But I believe another friend has arrived. Anselm Adorne is a well-disposed man who, I think, would be glad if you made peace with h
is son.’
He had been transparent, it seemed. There was no reason, however, why he shouldn’t see Jan Adorne, despite their disagreement at the White Bear Society. Since then, Nicholas had met the young man’s father when passing through Bruges, and noted the changes that a year as a widower had brought. Anselm Adorne still carried the weight of that death, but his eyes were clear again, and he looked, if anything, younger. Now, coming to the door of his lodging, he smiled at Nicholas as he ushered in Julius and his wife. Jan hung back, his cheeks flushed against the severe black of his cap and his-gown. Anna greeted his father, and then walked at once to the young man and spoke frankly.
‘I’ve brought Julius to apologise about Rome. Will you forgive us? That silly boy Nerio bewitches everyone, and truly, Julius was looking for me, and not Zoe. You probably still think he deserves someone like Zoe, but I am not proposing to agree with you there. He is a very kind husband, when he stops to exercise his wits.’
Her smile, tentative, appealing, sought for a response, and received it. ‘It was a long time ago,’ the Cardinal’s secretary said, with uncertain echoes of his father’s style in his voice. ‘I have forgotten it. And I cannot grudge him the charming lady wife he now has.’ And when Nicholas, smiling a little, offered his hand, Jan flushed deeper, and took it.
Later, when the day and their talk had advanced, Anselm Adorne spoke, his eyes on the couple, to Nicholas. ‘I cannot grudge Julius, either, this beautiful paragon, but it poses a mystery. How he find such a lady, and persuade her to marry him?’
‘I don’t know. She wanted half a ship,’ Nicholas said. They had talked of nothing of consequence, because his mind was empty of everything of consequence. Nothing had touched him since he had sent that message to Augsburg: not the poetry; not the small, exquisite tableaux; not the music. He worked without thinking. Others drew up contingency plans; and prayed that the conference would come to its end while the weather remained mild and sunny, and the sewers were manageable, and the provision barges and wagons could travel, and the mills and the brewers had water. He could plan only from day to day.
To Lie With Lions: The Sixth Book of the House of Niccolo Page 76