‘And do you think he’s going to refuse Roger’s stake when he learns it’s part of the dowry?’
‘If he does and Roger looks elsewhere he may also look for another husband for Philippa.’
‘My dear Ludovico, is it likely your capo will refuse Roger’s offer?’
Ludovico’s laugh was hollow. ‘Ser Vitelli’s no fool. He runs one of the largest banks in the known world—’ He broke off.
‘I had no idea you carried such a burden.’
Ludovico’s look was bleak. ‘Neither does my lady. She has no idea that our betrothal is in jeopardy. She guesses something’s afoot but doesn’t yet know the full risk her father is taking with her future. With our future,’ he corrected.
‘There must be a way to bring it to a happy conclusion.’
‘If I can persuade my capo to accept the terms of the dowry and if I can bring Lord Roger the good fortune he assumes is his by right, then yes, everything will end well. But if I cannot … ‘
Ludovico’s exotic, dark looks had attracted many a glance at Castle Hutton. It would be easy for him to catch the eye of another marriageable girl should the match with Philippa fail, especially with the sort of business connections he had with the house of Vitelli. What father wouldn’t relish the opportunity of allying his family with one of the major banks in Florence? Roger must be mad to gamble with Philippa’s prospects. He must have been swept along by a vision of the massive fortune he could make.
‘I know how much you mean to Philippa.’ She put a hand on his sleeve. ‘Thank you for telling me about this. We cannot let it rest.’
She would have a word with Ulf. She would make sure he knew what was in the marriage contract and advise him to ask Ludovico to prime him before he met the broker in Bruges. How could Roger dream of jeopardising the future of two young people who were so clearly meant for each other?
For a moment she imagined what Hubert de Courcy would have to say about the sin of usury – before thrusting aside any thought of him.
The night passed in fitful sleep under the awning spread out above the afterdeck. The rolling of the small ship increased, and now and then a wall of water would surge through the gunwales to come sluicing down the foredeck. Hildegard had bedded down among her few belongings. For comfort she released her hounds from their wicker cage and let them lie beside her. Bermonda, the little kennet, snuggled in the crook of her arms but the lymer, Duchess, spread herself full length, warming her from top to toe.
As the stars faded and the sun rose next morning, the heaving back of the sea was riddled with gold and scarlet flecks. The ship’s cook sent up beakers of wine from the galley followed by flat, hot cakes baked on a griddle and dripping with butter. It was a lull, calm and pleasant, as they ate and drank on deck, suspended between one country and the next.
Ludovico and his men were nowhere to be seen. They could be heard, though, as they had been heard most of the night, throwing up over the side. A couple of Ulf’s men-at-arms suffered the same sickness and there were ribald jokes about their manhood. Ulf kept apologising to her for their language.
Pierrekyn sat by himself staring at the horizon. She had seen him brushing his velvet doublet with fresh water from a pail. His garments had once been of the best, she noticed, but were now frayed and stained with wear. His livery, amounting to no more than a tunic in the de Hutton colours, was almost new and if you didn’t look too closely the boy seemed passably well turned out. Not good enough for his own standards, by the look on his face, however, as he again started to dab at the nap of his velvet doublet. He wore a silver ring, she noticed, with an emblem on it, but it was too far away to make out.
Just then he lifted his head and caught her watching him. He turned away. That he didn’t appear to like her was no puzzle. They inhabited different worlds.
As the day progressed a rumble of complaint rose from the ship’s crew. ‘These bales stink!’ exclaimed one of the sailors as he swung down onto the deck. He held his nose. ‘What in hell’s in them? Rotten cheese?’
It couldn’t be denied. They stank to high heaven and what little wind there was didn’t dispel the rank odour that came from them.
‘The skins were cured,’ Ulf remarked, poking at them with his stave. ‘But he’s right. Well,’ he amended, sniffing along the row, ‘this batch has a fair old smell.’ He looked at the mark. ‘From Meaux as well. I am surprised. I thought they looked after their exports better than that.’
Later, when the wind came up again, the cog began to fly more swiftly over the waves and any lingering odour was eventually dispersed. Soon the port of Bruges appeared as a smudge on the horizon.
Chapter Five
THE GOLDSMITH HAD a narrow pencil-line of finely trimmed brown hair that ran vertically up his chin to his bottom lip, matching similar pencil-thin stripes along the top of each cheekbone. His upper lip was clean shaven. Hildegard observed these three ink-strokes with a steady glance. His eyes were sharp though near-sighted. They narrowed when they fell on gold or jewels. About forty, expensively dressed in dark brown velvet, he was said to be the greatest master of his craft in Bruges.
Now he put to one side the drawing of the white hart enchained and nodded.
‘Very pretty. Good drawing.’
He touched the piece of paper Hildegard had handed him with the tip of one finger. She now knew the drawing to be an example of Reynard’s work. It confirmed what the minstrel had told her. The clerk had been an artist just as much as this wealthy member of the guild of goldsmiths, though less honoured and rewarded.
In a desire to impress Ludovico, knowing well whom he represented, the master had conducted them into a private chamber where he kept catalogues of the drawings of all the pieces commissioned by the chivalry of Europe. Most impressive was a coronet in the process of being made for a princess of Bohemia. The worked gold was outdone only by the stones being set into the design. Those jewels alone must be worth a king’s ransom, thought Hildegard, striving to maintain a look both interested and unimpressed.
She left to Ludovico the negotiations over her small order for the brooches. He spoke Flemish to the goldsmith, whose few words of English seemed already to be exhausted, and only now and then did they break into the sort of Norman French she could understand. When the deal was done and they had shaken hands and taken a cup of Burgundy together, they were ushered out and after more handshakes and flourishes found themselves once more in the square. Like five shadows, Ludovico’s henchmen rejoined them.
‘Lady Melisen is going to be delighted,’ she told Ludovico.
‘I hope her husband realises how much his wife is costing him,’ was his wry comment. ‘Now for her sleeves.’
Bruges was a most extraordinary place to anyone used only to the desolate marshland of Holderness and small, out-of-the-way towns like Beverley. It was true that York perhaps might measure up in some way because of its great minster and the palace of the archbishop, but set in the north of the country it couldn’t hope to win the variety of international trade that made Bruges one of the richest cities in Christendom.
Its wealth and power derived from its location at the crossroads of all the major routes of Europe: north to Germany and the Hanseatic ports in the Baltic, east to Bohemia, west to France with its traffic over the Pyrenees to Spain and Portugal, and south over the Alps to the rich markets of the Italian city states and the seat of the papal empire. From there communications stretched, almost unbroken, by land and sea to Byzantium and beyond.
The advantages were everywhere, the streets full of bankers and money changers, merchants and traders of every description, carriers and muleteers, a panoply of servants, attendants and hangers-on.
Business was mostly carried out in the portico of the square named after the banking family who had made themselves seigneurs of the city, the van der Beurse. There churchmen, bent on trade like everyone else, processed formally, and with immense grandeur at the head of their lavishly attired retinues, on their way from one
transaction to another. Smaller merchants, guildsmen in distinctive cloaks, artisans, scribes, scriveners, wandering friars, pardoners, white-robed pilgrims by the score, as well as anyone connected to the ordinary day-to-day business of a large town, market traders selling produce brought in from outlying farms, bakers, butchers, cheesemongers, wine-sellers, basket-makers, suppliers of ribbons and fabric – all were there, shouting their wares, and in among them itinerant vendors selling piping-hot food to eat in the street, and everybody busy turning a profit.
Yet, observed Hildegard, like any town it is not without its beggars. She could not get used to the violent contrast in personal fortune she saw everywhere. The beggar-children did not deserve to live like this. Barefoot and ragged, unwashed, uncared-for, they swarmed about the streets, squabbling over scraps fallen from the mouths of the rich, the smallest children trailing piteously behind the bigger ones, hungry and forlorn. Their plight made her heart bleed. The extravagance of the wealthy was flaunted without shame.
In addition to the poor, there were the wounded, just as Ulf had warned her, survivors, though scarcely that, from the recent battle against the French when the army of artisans captained by Van Artevelde had been thoroughly destroyed at Roosebeeke. They said that afterwards the nearby river ran with blood for ten days and nights, and the conditions of the rebels became worse than before.
Now, as she stood watching the square, one of these battle-ruined survivors came towards her, holding out two bloody, bandaged stumps where his hands had been. Another groped his way through the hurrying crowds as best he could, the sockets of his eyes red and raw and sightless.
She helped a man whose legs had been severed at the knees lever himself to a vantage point under the portico where he could beg alms from the customers at the money changers’ in order to support him for the short time he had left in the world, and she took water from the public fountain to another with a terrible, weeping wound across his chest. There was so little she could do in the midst of such extremity. Eventually, exhausted and close to despair, she set about finding her way back to the inn where she was to spend a second night.
Just as she reached the alley where the inn lay, a beggar appeared from nowhere, blocking her path and thrusting out two bandaged hands to detain her. He was a tall fellow with a rough, grey hood pulled well down as if to conceal a head wound. Otherwise he seemed hale enough.
‘Alms, Sister?’ he demanded in English. ‘For the love of Mary, mother of God!’
He looked well able to find work to feed himself. But she felt inside the purse at her belt and took out the last of her coins.
He snatched them without a word and made off towards a nearby alehouse. She sighed and moved on.
There was another row of money changers in booths along this side of the square and she paused to watch. They were making calculations by using a board divided into squares. When she looked closer she realised one of the changers was a woman, her arithmetical skill as dazzling as the swiftness of her fingers as she shuffled the coloured counters around the board. Unsurprisingly, she had a constant stream of customers changing money of every denomination. Currencies were slipped into secret pouches or concealed in bags, chained and locked to the wrists of the merchants making the transactions, or carried from one dealer to another by bands of armed servants.
Everywhere, profit and loss overran any other kind of transaction. Hildegard felt faint with it, both dazzled and repelled.
But it was no good being blind to what was going on. She would have to negotiate a good rate for the bill of exchange when she reached Rome. What sum the guardians of the cross of Constantine might demand was an open question. Her instructions were to pay whatever it cost.
The de Hutton contingent was lodged at an inn close to the main square with large stables where her hounds were kennelled. Ulf took it for granted she would stay under his protection until he had to leave. The half-dozen conversi, sent to keep an eye on the goods exported from Meaux, were staying with a cell of brothers on the other side of town. They were to return to England on the next passage. Ludovico was lodged at the Florentine Consular House off the Place de la Bourse. Soon she would be alone.
‘We leave tomorrow at first light,’ Ulf told her.
‘You look worried,’ she remarked.
‘I’ve just had a meeting with Ser Ubriacchi, Ludovico’s manager, to pass on Roger’s suggestions for Philippa’s dowry,’ he explained. ‘I don’t understand the half of it. It seems to depend on the trading contract he’s making. Ludovico told me the gist but it still doesn’t make sense. They can run rings me, these money-men. Anyway, I’m just the messenger.’ He looked ruffled. ‘She loves Ludovico and to the best of my belief he loves her, yet it seems to come down to the skill of the clerk who penned the contract.’
‘A pity he’s not here to put the case.’
‘Damn his eyes! Anyway, I’ve done what I can.’
‘I’m sure Ludovico will do the rest.’ She looked at him kindly. ‘I’m sorry you’re having to leave tomorrow. I’ll miss you. And I’ll miss your men’s rough language,’ she added. ‘Where are you going next?’
‘Down the Rhine.’ He gave her an apologetic glance and although he didn’t put a name to his destination, she guessed at once it was something to do with Roger’s need for armour so she held her tongue. It was not difficult to see that the steward was prepared to return with more than just one suit of armour for Roger. Why else would he be taking twenty men along? If Roger was re-equipping his men it could mean only one thing. He expected war.
‘We’ll be back as soon as possible,’ he told her. ‘We go straight to our contact, do the business, then return. Three weeks at most. We might even meet up here again. What do you think?’
‘I doubt it. I’ll have left long before then and I certainly won’t be back within three weeks. Rome is somewhat further than your destination, I imagine.’ It must be Cologne, she thought, they made armour there. These days it was said to equal that from Milan.
Before she turned to go to the cubbyhole of a chamber where she was to sleep, Ulf said, ‘I have something to tell you. A messenger from England came in while you were out to say your escort is on his way. He’s a knight called Sir Talbot, earned his spurs a couple of seasons ago and is just beginning to make a name for himself on the tournament circuit in France.’
‘You mean he’s a tourney knight?’ Hildegard threw him a derisory glance.
‘Don’t mock. He built up quite a following last summer. The new season doesn’t start until after Easter so he’s probably delighted to be given something useful to do.’
‘Do you know who hired him?’
He shook his head. ‘I’d tell you if I did. I know no more than I did before. My instructions come through Lord Roger and I know he’s not footing the bill. Not, of course,’ he added, loyally, ‘that he would object if it was a question of your safety. Sir Talbot has been instructed to find you here at the inn.’
She pulled a face. ‘I don’t need a knight with a sword. I’ve got my hounds for protection.’
‘You’ll be glad of his company, all that way.’
‘Not if he talks about tourneying all the time!’
Just as they were about to part, Ulf to join his men in the alehouse and Hildegard to her prayers, there was a commotion at the door and one of the conversi from Meaux burst in. He pushed his way through the crowd hanging round the door and hurried over to Ulf.
‘My lord. We have a problem. It’s urgent. Will you come with me?’
‘What is it?’ Ulf was reluctant to give up his recreation after the busyness of the last few days.
‘I’d rather not say, my lord.’
‘Is it something they want you to read?’ The conversi were not allowed to learn to read, their sphere being crops and animals, and obeying orders.
‘It’s not that, sire, no.’
Ulf turned to Hildegard. ‘Would you like to come along? Who better than you to solve any problems?’
She pulled on her cloak again at once. Any excursion into this strange town by night was more enticing than her solitary bed.
The servant, who complained that he had expected to be back on board ship by now and on the way home to the safety of Meaux, led them to the loading sheds where the staple was being held until it could be inspected and repacked for carriage onwards to Tuscany.
There were one or two anxious-looking port officials standing on the quay with a couple of conversi from Meaux. When Ulf strode up they all came to meet him.
‘There’s a problem with the consignment,’ explained one of the abbey men. ‘It has some defect and we want you as witness that it was in saleable condition when it was put on board ship.’
‘I’ll vouch for that,’ agreed Ulf.
One of the local officials stepped forward. He spoke English. ‘We need to open it and inspect the contents,’ he explained. ‘It’s probably nothing much. But there is something wrong with it.’
‘What the devil do you mean?’ With a sigh, Ulf followed the men into the shed.
Some light came in through the open doors but more was needed to dispel the crawl of shadows across the stacked bales.
Flares were lighted. The bales shone in their brilliant flood and at first glance everything seemed to be as it should be but then, somewhat overpowered by the rank smell that filled the shed, the foreman came to the fore to point out some dark mass that lay within one of the bales.
‘Unfasten it,’ Ulf ordered.
Two men worked knives through the cords that bound it. After a few moments the fibres snapped and the pack sprang open. The smell was stronger now. With one hand over his nose Ulf reached into the soft mass of uncarded wool. A strange, dark shadow could be seen within. He began to pull the wool to one side. Then he jerked his hand away with an oath. A servant gasped in horror.
The Red Velvet Turnshoe Page 5