The Spring of the Ram

by Dorothy Dunnett

  He was addressing Nicholas, who courteously took his head off. The eyes of the man on the float followed the sweep of wet fur and whiskers, and the eyes of the lion peered back from the arm of its owner. The speaker, it could now be seen, was as elderly as his hat, with a dry yellow face rusticated like the stones of the Palazzo, and a set of grey whiskers singed brown at one edge. Nicholas said, “Monsignore?”

  “Who made your head?” said the man. “You have no right to it.”

  “Why?” said Nicholas.

  “It is mine,” said the elderly man.

  Nicholas hefted the lion’s head in two capable hands and held it up to the man on the float. “Allow me to return it,” he said. The elderly man made no move to take it. The man on the lap of St Anne abruptly gave up the battle to shroud her and leaping nimbly down began to come over. The other two bundled the sheets off the float and left with an air of efficiency. There was a pause.

  On the other side of the square, the first chariots had been harnessed and horses were being pulled through towards them. A negro boy leading a leopard hesitated beside Godscalc’s cart and the leopard lowered and fluttered its hindquarters. A pool of liquid formed by the wheel and ran out across the brick paving. The boy, tugging, drew the leopard forward. The leading float of the four was packed with persons of consequence, among whom was an Oriental whose back seemed familiar. The leopard jumped in amongst them and they all leaned over backwards.

  By the float of St Anne, Nicholas was gazing, neck twisted, at Godscalc’s glistening wheel. He said, “That’s a pity. It’ll simply attract other leopards.” Above one ear, with the patience of Salome displaying the platter to the Tetrarch of Galilee, he was still sustaining his head. No one took it; but the younger artisan, who had joined the first, leaned over and looked at the lion, and Nicholas. The newcomer’s face, which was dirty, was encircled by a wool vizored helmet, and his arms, wet with rain, were corded and hard as the legs of a whippet. He said, “No, no, no. Keep the head. It’s copied from his Marzocco, that’s what he’s saying. The Marzocco; the lion: the civic symbol of Florence in the Santa Maria Novella. His. That’s his sculpture.”

  The old man said, “I have told him. It is my design. Mine. I require to be paid.”

  Nicholas lowered his arms. “Monsignore is a sculptor!” he said.

  The younger man said, “Maestro, the procession must move. We can’t keep her dry any longer.” He and the older man both turned and looked at the St Anne, down whose gilded bosom the rain was now flowing.

  Nicholas said, “Maestro! The Marzocco lion! I should have known!”

  “No matter,” said the sculptor over his shoulder. He frowned at the St Anne.

  “Your doors,” said Nicholas wistfully. “The gates to Paradise, someone said.”

  “That was Ghiberti,” said the younger man, frowning at Nicholas.

  “Your dome!” said Nicholas quickly. “An unsupported miracle of miraculous structure!”

  “You speak of Brunelleschi,” said the younger man. He glanced, with apology, at the sculptor’s back.

  Nicholas looked at the statue. He lowered his voice. “Not that?” he said.

  “That is the master’s,” said the man in the helmet. “But,” said Nicholas.

  The bearded man turned. “But what, born of a pig?”

  “The head,” said Nicholas. His voice was humble. “The head? The torso? And the length from the knee to the ankle…”

  “What of it?” said the sculptor. “Damianus. Vitruvius. You have never heard of them.”

  “But look at the geometry,” Nicholas said. “If you went by Damianus and the Optics alone, you needed a base one foot ten inches shorter.”

  Godscalc lifted his head from his hands and looked across at the profile—agreeable, innocent, friendly—of his unassuming friend Nicholas. No one spoke. Then the younger man in the grey helmet said softly, “Given the dimensions of the Via Larga perhaps. But not in the Piazza San Marco.”

  “Forgive me,” said Nicholas. “But the Medici are your patrons. They will be riding alongside.”

  “On tall horses,” said the sculptor. He was looking at Nicholas.

  “No. On palfreys, because of the gout. An angle of twenty to twenty-five degrees, I should say, whereas you’ve compensated for sixty. When you make a fountain—”

  “Judith and Holofernes,” said the old man. He was still looking at Nicholas.

  “—when you made that, you allowed for no distortion at all because the spray keeps spectators at the distance you want. But what if they narrowed the bore of the waterpipes? You can’t think of everything. You can’t allow for optical corrections in terms of alternative angles. At least—” He stopped, his eyes unfocused.

  “What?” said the helmeted man. He put up a hand and slowly pulled off his cap. Underneath was a shock of carroty hair.

  “Alternative angles. Of course, you can allow for alternative angles. And you could do it with colour,” said Nicholas. He shoved his head under his arm and picked up his tail, which was trailing. His hair had frizzed in the wet and his face was fresh as an apple with a split down the side. He said, “I think you could do it with colour. Nice to have met you.”

  “God damn it,” said the red-headed man. Nicholas smiled. The square had started to empty, and so had the horse lines. A little ahead, the chariot bearing the host of noblemen and the leopard had already drawn off, followed by the float from which peered Tobie’s dissatisfied face. A nun came pushing towards them, shepherding a group of sober young ladies with wings. The red-headed man said, “The singers. We’ll have to get off the float. Maestro?”

  The black hat turned. The sculptor looked down his aged nose at Nicholas, the rain soaking his smock. The artist’s experienced gaze examined the large-eyed face, the athletic shoulders, the narrow flanks, the long legs. “Oh, bring him,” he said. “He knows what he’s talking about.”

  The red-headed man spoke to Nicholas. “You would miss the procession. We’re leaving the float and going back to the Maestro’s workshop.”

  “I’m not here for the procession,” said Nicholas. “I thought you were German.”

  The nun had arrived and was standing exclaiming at the foot of the steps. She expressed rapture at the St Anne, and at the sculptor of the St Anne, who carefully descended from the cart, bowed, and began to make his way, with difficulty, through a large number of admiring citizens. Nicholas laid down his head and handed a number of flushed young women up the steps into the cart, where they disposed of themselves prettily. The red-headed man vaulted down and a man came up leading horses. “No, I’m not German,” said the red-headed man. “I worked in Germany for a while. John le Grant is my name. And young King James is my lord, if I have one.” He stopped, finding himself alone, and turned round. “You don’t like Scotsmen?”

  “Lions aren’t particular,” Nicholas said. “I like them, as you might say, but they don’t like me. My name is Nicholas. I have with me a most discreet hermit. Did you hatch this between you?”

  Godscalc rose and left his float, with some dignity. “No, we didn’t,” he said. “I assumed one mathematician would smell out another. And the Maestro, of course, has been working on the Martelli chapel in San Lorenzo. Nicholas, that was Doria’s page who came with the leopard.”

  “Doria?” said John le Grant.

  “Pagano Doria,” said Nicholas. “He sent a man last night to tamper with the lynchpin of Godscalc’s float. The page came to check that it was still tampered with, which it wasn’t. It’s quite safe, Father Godscalc, if you want to go back to your cave.”

  The red-headed man said, “What’s the point of that? I invited you. I’m inviting him. The workshop’s not much, but we can rise to mulled wine.”

  “I need a sailing-master,” said Nicholas.

  “Don’t rush it,” said John le Grant. “You’ve got your foot in the door for mulled wine. From an Aberdeen man, that’s enough to be going on with.”

  Chapter 7


  THE COMPLEX OF dwellings, garden and workshop to which Nicholas and Godscalc were taken belonged to the Cathedral, and stood on a corner behind it. Even on foot, they reached it in minutes. Disregarding the house, which had the appearance of a classical quarry, the Maestro led the way along a well-trodden path to his bottega, holding Nicholas firmly by the arm. John le Grant and Godscalc followed, talking English. Once within, the master sat himself on a box covered with a burst satin cushion, heavily stained. Godscalc disposed his damp cloak about him and found a place on a bench, while John le Grant went and poked in an oven and began to busy himself with heating some wine. Nicholas climbed out of his skin and hung it beside two nightcaps, a hat and a towel, on a stand whose arms ended in fingers. He began wandering about rather silently, looking.

  The mulled wine, when it came, was exceedingly strong. Afterwards, Godscalc remembered a number of things about the bottega: the smell of oil and earth and mineral and insect colours familiar to him from his cell; the glisten of marble dust that covered the stools, the bench he was sitting on, and whitened the cloth full of rasps, files and chisels that lay near the yard door. He remembered the covered work-tubs, breathing chill odours of coarse wax and glue. He remembered Nicholas, pausing beside the open crate full of exotic cloth; staring at the laced bundle of drawings; the jar of pens; the crock of brushes; the wall hung with shears and ball-peen hammers and saws and the one stacked with ladders, easels, scaffolding, and upright sheaves of primed panels. There were shelves of marble busts and clay models, bronze figurines and partly made limbs, and in the depths of the room a mirror doubled the light. The place was empty because of the holiday, but someone had left exposed on a table a pad of parchment glued on a board, with a straight edge and some lead lying on it. Someone else had overturned a basket of charcoal sticks, and the black and tender willow turned to powder under le Grant’s feet until Nicholas knelt in his shirtsleeves and slowly began to gather them up. The sculptor said, “Stay there.” Nicholas paused and looked up.

  “The Maestro’s fee for use of his head,” said John le Grant. “He wants to draw you. While he does, we can talk. Can he drink?”

  “No!” said the sculptor. “On one knee, with the hand raised. Just so. John, the chalk. Ghiberti! Brunelleschi! No. He will not move, nor will he drink until I have done. And take his shirt off. Have I said something amusing?”

  “Yes,” said Father Godscalc. “We had a disagreement, the other day, over costume.”

  He pulled off the new model’s shirt and hung it over the lionskin. Nicholas looked resigned, but not especially embarrassed. His premarital prowess in Bruges meant, one assumed, that he was well aware of his own physical presence.

  Godscalc sat down, and accepted the steaming cup that le Grant handed him. Le Grant said, “Pay no attention to the Maestro. He and Brunelleschi and Ghiberti all worked on the siege plans for Lucca together. They understand one another. Michelozzo as well. They were planning to divert a river and flood the place. From, of course, quite the wrong angle.”

  “What!” said the sculptor. He stopped drawing. “Herring! Farting underground animal!”

  “Don’t stop. Tell me where the plan is, and I’ll put it on the floor and see if Nicholas can sort out the error.”

  In what followed, Godscalc took no part. The argument moved from siege fortifications to gunnery, and from there to ships. John le Grant refilled the cups. The master drew. They discussed the weaknesses of the lateen rudder system and the rigging of triremes. Outside, the rain stopped, and began again. The sculptor held his pad at arm’s length and said, “That’s all right.”

  “You can move,” said John le Grant.

  “No, I can’t,” Nicholas said. “If you have a hook on the wall, you could hang me on it. When did you leave Aberdeen?”

  “A long time ago,” said the engineer. He found a beaker and filled it, while Nicholas was rubbing his back. “I used to import salt, and sail fish to Sluys, and one thing led to another. You’re going to Trebizond? Why?”

  Nicholas took the beaker and, sitting, drained it rhythmically. He said, “It seems a good idea. To set up a branch—”

  “I know about that,” said John le Grant. “Personally, why?”

  “Personally to set up a branch,” Nicholas said.

  The sculptor snorted. “With John, you’ll have to do better than that. Scotsmen like to know where they are. Sheep excrement. Players on bladders.”

  Godscalc saw Nicholas pause, and tried to guess what he would do. Ever since John le Grant had been mentioned, he supposed that Nicholas had been watching out for the engineer. At the float, he must have recognised the sculptor at once and, remembering the Martelli connection, had thought le Grant might be there. And, with diabolical art, had coaxed him out of cover and set himself to attract him.

  He had succeeded. He would get his sailing-master—there was little doubt about that. Unless, of course, he gave the wrong answer now. John le Grant had fixed Nicholas with a stare. He had pale eyes and red brows and freckles, and dry, youngish skin bitten in lines. He said, “If I’m to work with a bairn, I want to know the strength of his will to succeed. And I want to know what he’ll do if he botches it. You got too big for Bruges?”

  Nicholas said, “No. I expect to go back.”

  “So,” said the engineer, “what’s the carrot leading you on? You want to make a name for yourself? You want to fight for Christ against the Turk? You want wealth? You want power? You want freedom and licence? You want risk and adventure? You don’t want anything, but are obeying other folks’ orders? Which?”

  “All the venal reasons,” said Nicholas. “And another one. Like you, I enjoy solving puzzles. Someone is trying to get in.”

  The hammering on the workshop door had begun as he was speaking. The sculptor, muttering, rose and flung it open. A Roman soldier stood there. He caught sight of Godscalc and Nicholas and said, “Oh, there you are.”

  It was Julius. Nicholas said, “Maestro, forgive me. It’s one of our company. Has something happened?”

  “You missed it!” said Julius. He bowed to the sculptor, looked at le Grant and returned his gaze to Nicholas. He said, “In the middle of the Via Larga, in front of the Palazzo Medici! This great float with the leopard on it, and the Negro, and Pagano Doria—Doria!—and his friends, all done up in yellow velvet. And then the cart suddenly jams, and the one behind collides with it, and the horses break from the harness and get through into the courtyard of the Palazzo and start to kick all the Medici’s best carving, with Doria yelling and the people screaming, and the leopard…”

  “It attacked?” said Godscalc, rising.

  “No. It just piddled,” said Julius. “Gallons. People ran, just the same.”

  “That cart was made by the company’s own excellent carpenters. How could it have broken down?” the sculptor said. “It might have been ours!”

  “It might have been ours,” Nicholas said. “Who knows? Maybe someone tampered last night with the lynchpin.”

  Godscalc said, “Nicholas.”

  “And speaking of Trebizond,” Nicholas said, “that’s another reason, while I remember. I’d quite like to get there to spite Pagano Doria.”

  “You persuade me,” said John le Grant. “I’ll call on you. Take your skin and get your friend out of the door, or the Maestro will keep him. Thank God you’ve a chaplain. You need one.”

  Godscalc said nothing. He had brought them together. It was too late now to wonder if he had been wise.

  Four weeks before sailing time, John le Grant and his servant moved into Monna Alessandra’s, and the pace of activity, already considerable, climbed smoothly into top speed. So did expenditure. When Astorre, the bearded commander of the Charetty troop of hired soldiers, arrived discreetly in Livorno just after with a hundred picked men, he stared round their dry, well-furnished quarters, the excellent stables and his own set of decent rooms, and spat his annoyance. “The brat’s found out how to mint his own money, and I’ve just signed his
contract for the usual terms. What’s he paying you lot?”

  With equal discretion, they had all found their way down to welcome him.

  “He’s paying you?” Julius said. “Father Godscalc here, of course, is serving for love, and I’m to get first shot of the Byzantine ladies. You’ll be all right. He’s got the best cook in Florence.” He considered Astorre with something almost approaching affection. Julius had served with the army in Italy. He had spent a good deal of time and trouble finding these quarters, well away from the eyes of the curious.

  Astorre’s gaze had lightened, then narrowed. He said, “You look as slack as a sackload of horse feed. Is he working you, then?”

  “He is,” said Father Godscalc. “And I won’t say I feel at my freshest, either, so I hope there is no heavy burden of sin lying over that crew that they want me to deal with this evening. There is one mercy ahead. Once we find ourselves on the ship, even Nicholas will have to slow down.”

  “We’ll all slow down, thank God,” said Astorre, eyeing his soldiers.

  “Well, not them,” said Julius. “They’re going to row us.”

  The ruffled Astorre was restored later by Nicholas, who introduced John le Grant to him, and then sat literally at their feet while the two men exchanged fighting men’s gossip. Astorre, with his half-ear and his furious eyes and his scimitar of a beard, had fought in Albania with Skanderbeg. Le Grant had seen Constantinople fall. The discussion lasted till suppertime, attended by growing numbers of Astorre’s company who joined in with gusto. Nicholas listened with servile interest while the new cook sent in spiced veal and pork jelly and generous pitchers of wine. Then the three men went off companionably to check over the armour and weapons. The guns for the ship—one large bombard and four smaller cannon—were already waiting to be mounted at Pisa.

  They spent a day with Astorre. Before returning to Florence, Nicholas took the chance to make some thorough enquiries about Doria’s cog and its cargo.