The Spring of the Ram

by Dorothy Dunnett

  There had been no secret about that. As soon as Nicholas had sent the news, Gregorio had announced it in Bruges. A group from the Charetty company was to trade for itself and for Florence in Trebizond. It pleased him to speak of it now to someone of Adorne’s experience. There was no need to be explicit about the terms, which had turned out to be all that they hoped. It only remained for the Emperor to ratify them. There was no need either to repeat precisely what Nicholas had said about Fra Ludovico and the delegation and Julius. It had included an instruction to find Michael Alighieri if possible and talk to him. Already, in Florence, Nicholas and Alighieri of Trebizond had reached a rapport over future trade dealings. Everything, it seemed, was happening to the advantage of the Charetty company which, if its persecutors gave it the chance, could only become bigger and richer. Adorne talked, and Gregorio wondered, as he wondered every day, how Nicholas was managing.

  The girl, apparently absorbed, had begun to unreel the farmuk, to the ecstasy of the children. Gregorio watched, as he listened. Did she, too, hear the gossip about the Charetty company, as distinct from its commercial transactions? Monna Alessandra, severest of hostesses, had kept her son in Bruges daily apprised of the shortcomings of her house-guests in Florence. Lorenzo Strozzi had read passages of her letters out aloud in all his favourite taverns: Tilde no doubt had heard extracts. Not that there had been anything crude reported of Nicholas, apart from his deplorable levity. Gregorio had a joke planned, however, for his first meeting with Tobie. It had something to do with bells and a whistle.

  He brought his mind back to his host, and the company he, Gregorio alone, was now leading here in Bruges, and the matters he would like to know more of. The King of France, for example. The ruling of France was closely linked with the ruling of Genoa. They said the old king was dying at last: his bread cut into mouthfuls; the short little doublets exchanged for long robes and laced stockings over festering legs. Dying at Mehun-sur-Yèvre of the morbus gallicus with his Scots Guards about him. The delegation from the East might find it hard even to sell the Hereafter, for the King of France had his mind on one thing: how to coax the Dauphin Louis his heir to his side. And the Dauphin, self-exiled for five years in Flanders, was taunting his father by daily changing his mind. Now he still clung to Duke Philip, and was sending troops to the Yorkists in England. Another time, he might favour his father’s first cousin, who was queen of the Yorkists’ opponents. The fate of Genoa could hang on Louis’ decision.

  Anselm Adorne’s eldest son was a student in Paris. Anselm Adorne’s kinsman Prosper Adorno had just become Doge of Genoa, in a revolt that had sent its French governor scuttling for the citadel. Gregorio said innocuously, “Will you bring your son home?”

  “Do you think I should?” Adorne said. Without haste, he rose to his feet. “Come. If Mathilde will excuse us, there are some tiresome papers in my office to talk over. No, I shall not call Jan from Paris yet. Listening ears can be useful. Why else is Tilde staying under my roof?”

  Closing the door of his office, he was smiling. Gregorio said, “I would take you seriously, if you had made any effort to prevent me from seeing her. Of course, I want to know no more of Genoese affairs than you care to tell me. But if you can, would you advise me of this? Who is Pagano Doria?”

  There were no papers on Adorne’s heavy table, but a tray held some cups and a fine pitcher of wine in painted Syrian pottery. From, no doubt, the family pilgrimages to the Holy Land. An inlaid silver inscription glinted as Adorne raised it to pour. He said, “The new Genoese consul to Trebizond? I thought you would ask, so I consulted Jacques Doria the other day. The man is of an obscure branch, and has spent some of his life in Constantinople and Chios, but seems to lack the ability, or the inclination, to apply himself for long to anything. I don’t think you or Nicholas have cause to worry, although it pains me to say so. It is a post which has been several times refused by better men. As you know, the Emperor dislikes Genoese.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Gregorio said. “Is he married?”

  “Not so far as Jacques is aware. He says he seems to have no immediate family. May I ask something in return?”

  “Of course,” said Gregorio, and sipped his wine. Why had he thought he might catch this man in an indiscretion?

  Anselm Adorne said, “Forgive me for asking, but I find myself more and more concerned about Catherine de Charetty and her mother. I find it hard to believe that a child as young in her ways as Catherine should have been allowed to travel to Florence. Knowing how much the business relies on her, I cannot understand, either, how your mistress could readily leave it. Your reticence does you credit, and I respect it. But I should like to help if I can.”

  He spoke calmly, and tried to avoid sounding glib. “Indeed,” said Gregorio, “it is a kind offer, but all is as it seems. Perhaps you will understand better if I refer to the demoiselle’s second marriage. It seemed wise to remove Catherine from the presence of Nicholas, and even from news of him.”

  “So she is not with Nicholas?” said Anselm Adorne.

  He had never thought of that. No wonder this conversation was taking place in the office. Gregorio said, “Is that the rumour?”

  “I am sorry: yes,” said Adorne. “He was a youth, as you know, who sought fleshly pleasures. The child was said to admire him. With a ship, a fortune, an heiress, he need never come home while his wife lives. The demoiselle would be desolate, but she would have you to run the Bruges company for her.”

  He had come prepared to launch a subtle attack, and found himself drinking wine in the mouth of a cannon. He said, “That is easily refuted, Messer Adorne. Ask Lorenzo Strozzi to show you his mother’s letters from Florence. There is no word of Catherine there. Also…she is a pretty child, but do you think that for her sake Nicholas would throw over his wife and all he has built up in Bruges for a precarious post in the East?”

  Adorne said, “I am telling you only what people are saying. Of course I don’t think he would betray his friends or his marriage. Even though, perhaps, I have more cause for worry than most. The rewards for the alum treaty with Venice will go largely, they tell me, to Nicholas. It will create a substantial reserve fund in Venice, which must increase year by year. Until, of course, someone finds this secret alum deposit of yours, and Venice ceases to pay for your silence.”

  Gregorio sipped his wine, his body relaxed and his feet still. Of course, this was all about alum. The white powdered rock without which cloth couldn’t be dyed. Until the Ottomans gave the franchise to Venice, the Genoese used to hold the world’s monopoly of first quality alum. Then the Charetty company had found alum on the Pope’s lands at Tolfa, and had sold the information to Venice in return for their silence. Venice, the sworn foe in the East of colonial Genoa.

  Gregorio looked into his wine, wondering what Adorne was really saying. Tell me where the alum mine is, and I will tell you who is behind Pagano Doria? Or perhaps, We want cheaper alum. Or we might go to the Pope and say, Send your mining experts to the Papal States with one or two of our old Genoese quarrymen. With what you find, you might win back Constantinople.

  He had not spoken. Adorne said, as if he had, “I must admit, I am a little jealous of Nicholas, whose genius will make the Charetty company and the Venetians and the Florentines rich. Bruges is my home, but Genoa is my mother city, beset by encroaching powers. She cannot be free without money.”

  “You have cheap alum,” Gregorio said. “Nicholas arranged it with Genoa. Their agent Prosper de Camulio accepted it. You would be worse off with a papal monopoly.”

  Adorne put down his wine. “We should have God on our side,” he said. He smiled suddenly. “But, of course, there is alum at Sebinkarahisar. It depends whether Pagano Doria or Nicholas remembers it first.”

  Leaving presently, Gregorio was surprised to find his legs weak. These days he was not often matched, far less outmatched. He wondered whether Adorne, once a friend of the Charetty, was now inclined to be less so. He would have to weigh what
he had heard, and try to come to conclusions. But at least the lord Simon had never been mentioned, far less linked to his trip to St Omer. That, he had told Adorne, was for business reasons. And, of course, to have speech with the envoy from Trebizond.

  “Has he not called on you already?” Adorne had said. “Of course you must see Alighieri. And, since we have mentioned him, you should also look out for Prosper de Camulio, who is here on a Milanese mission. He is an acute observer, close to the Dauphin; and can be of use to a man with a business.”

  Thanking him for the advice, Gregorio wondered why it had been offered. He had not planned to seek out de Camulio, expecting to learn little from him. As far as business news went, Gregorio was already well primed to conduct an enterprise based on money and credit, information and mercenary services. He had run the company well, since Nicholas left. Not perhaps adding much, but polishing and refining what had been begun. It must have struck more people than Adorne and Tilde de Charetty that he might become over-fond of his power. Perhaps, indeed, that was why poor Tilde’s romance was not being frowned on. Tilde was an heiress, like Catherine.

  Himself, it had never crossed his mind that the demoiselle and Nicholas would fail to return as his masters. It had nothing to do with lack of self-confidence, either. He sometimes thought that he was the only person apart from the demoiselle who saw what Nicholas might in time come to. Gregorio was not a modest man, but he had never had doubts about that.

  He and Adorne had emptied the Syrian wine-vessel between them. It was true what they said about the man’s capacity. Towards the end, his own tongue had begun to baulk at long words. To punish it, he had asked about the Arabic lettering. Lasting glory, increasing prosperity, and fortuitous destiny, it said on the jug. He had expressed, with lucidity, the hope that it would long apply to the line of Adorne.

  “As long, I suppose, as the ewer will last,” Adorne had answered him mildly.

  And yet it was in daily use. On his shaky legs, Gregorio made his way thoughtfully home.

  Chapter 23

  ST OMER LOOKED LIKE a battlefield. Gregorio arrived on Friday, the day of the Order’s first vespers, hoping the roads would be clearer. The knights ought to be already installed with their squires and pages and servants and all the horses and gear for Tuesday’s tournament. The ducal court, preceded by seventy wagons of furnishings each drawn by five or six horses, had moved in a fortnight before with its heralds and trumpets, its hounds and its birds, the ducal wine, books and spices, the Duke’s jewels (five carts), and his bath. The wine, the oats, the meat to serve a thousand men and their servants, would be already in store.

  But St Omer needed daily supplies to feed the other thousands pouring into its gates: the simple spectators; the petitioners; the merchants and women, the brokers and artists, the smiths and tailors and artisans who followed the court. Ancient town of the counts of Flanders and Artois, it had seen it all before in Duke Philip’s time: a royal wedding; an early meeting of the new-founded Fleece. It had made little difference to the problem. Stationary on a road jammed with carts and wheelbarrows, horses and basket-crowned peasants, Gregorio gazed at the unencumbered blue sky, and envied the windmills.

  Inside the walls, it was worse. They were preparing for a procession, and the road from the cathedral to St Bertin’s was closed off, so that the streets round about were all but impassable. Struggling through, he could see an unbroken line of scarlet cloth apparently lining the main street. Ribboned garlands and shields showed above it. At every intersection there was a platform of sorts, garnished with heraldic devices and crowded with people, most of them shouting and some of them practising fanfares. Above the immediate noise, he could hardly hear them. He could barely keep contact with the groom and boy he had brought with him.

  Had it not been for a man who owed him money and had an aunt in St Omer, he would have had no hope of finding a bed. As it was, he suspected that he would find himself sleeping in a communal room on a floor-mattress, and in due course was to find himself proved right. The boy and groom shared a stable and did rather better.

  It was then, on his way to his lodging, that he was hailed by Prosper de Camulio, the Milanese agent Adorne had spoken of. The cry came from a balcony. Looking up, Gregorio recognised the confident face, the clothing a fraction too stylish, of the man he had met, once, before Nicholas left. The encounter, of course, must be accidental. But the balcony, itself crowded, overlooked the one route that led to Gregorio’s destination. And a man who owed money in one quarter, he supposed, might just as easily owe it elsewhere. So here was Prosper Schiaffino de Camulio de’ Medici, secretary and accredited envoy of the Duke of Milan, calling, “Messer Gregorio! But my friend of the company Charetty! What do you here, and where do you lodge?”

  He made a point of answering readily, while trying to keep his horse still. He told the same story. The delegation from Eastern princes had arrived, and he sought the envoy from Trebizond. Messer de Camulio listened with interest, remarked, in a shout, that he hoped to give himself the pleasure of calling on Messer Gregorio shortly and, saluting, thinned and withdrew from the front of the balcony. Bowing would have been suicide.

  Gregorio smiled and waved in turn, cursing quietly. Installed at last in his quarters, he sent the boy to find out what he could and received news, but not what he wanted. The Orientals, austerely lodged at the Observatine friary, had understandable plans to be absent all day. Much more important, Louis de Gruuthuse and the Borselen family had rented a house as large as a palace by Nôtre Dame, but were also embroiled until nightfall and later in the ceremonies of the Order. There was no time today he could reach Simon in private.

  It was a pity, with de Camulio about; who must be counted a member of the Genoese faction. On the other hand, there was still plenty of time, with three days of ritual to come, and then the jousting and tournaments. He would prefer not to have to stand up in the cathedral and denounce the van Borselen son-in-law, but he would if he had to. He got his blankets out and, releasing his servants, settled to make up the sleep he had missed on the journey, and would miss tonight once his bedmates returned. He smiled, half-asleep, thinking of Margot. A typical lawyer, ignoring the flamboyance outside for the sake of clear wits in the morning. Well, sweetheart: I may need them.

  Next day Gregorio went to the Franciscans’ friary himself, but Alighieri was out. He left quickly. He was held up, coming back, by the procession returning from the cathedral and this time actually saw the knights riding in pairs between the lines of archers and crossbowmen in the Duke’s livery. They came in the middle, after the seventy trumpets and a long line of kings-of-arms, heralds and pursuivants, and at least two hundred noble riders, flashily dressed. After that came the bishops, abbots and clergy and then three officers of the Order in their furred scarlet robes, red cloaks and red chaperons. Pierre Bladelin, the Treasurer, was among them. He was the Duke’s controller in Bruges, and Gregorio had sold him some velvet last week. Scarlet was not a colour that suited him.

  And here now, followed by their pages of honour, were the Knights; not quite up to their complement of just over thirty, but a sight to gratify a dyer, a cloth merchant, a banker. Their calf-length tunics were grey-furred. The scarlet cloaks, also furred and bordered with gold, glittered with the jewelled devices of the Duke; the sparkling flints; the blazon aultre n’auray repeated over and over. Framed by the draped scarlet hats there passed by the familiar faces, the élite of the world’s chivalry. The Duke’s legitimate heir, Charles of Charolais, was today there among them. And Franck and Henry van Borselen, Knights of the Order for half its existence. Simon of Kilmirren had married into a significant family. He had called his child Henry to mark it.

  Behind, spider-legged, princely in carriage, the Duke of Burgundy rode alone with his glittering dress and his dyed hair and his long, pursed, sallow face with its ironical eyebrows. His council jogged after him. But Gregorio was already making his way back to his lodging. Dutifully, he tried again to find Aligh
ieri, and sent the boy in genuine eagerness to enquire at the Hôtel Gruuthuse, but the results were the same. Both the envoy and Simon were attending the Duke, and would not return until after the evening’s banquet.

  The next day was Sunday, and marked by the promised visit from Prosper de Camulio, who rapped on his door on his way back from mass. It had been a special service to commemorate the Order’s dead knights, and so the diplomat was dressed in black pourpoint and doublet, with a black feathered hat. The style was a shade too fine for his rank. His dark hair, a trifle too long, was still without grey and his voice and manner, full of energy, indicated a man in his prime—the mid-thirties, perhaps—who had undertaken a task whose dimensions he was only now beginning to suspect. A terrier appointed to gundog, and overworking, one suspected, to prove it.

  He had not come alone. Did Messer Gregorio not see whom he had brought with him? Met at a banquet, Messer Michael Alighieri, the merchant envoy of the illustrious Emperor of Trebizond, whom Messer Gregorio had come to St Omer to see. Were they not both welcome?

  Uttering a lie, Gregorio had them both enter. Welcome individually, perhaps. But with Alighieri there, he could hardly draw information about alum or Pagano Doria or Genoa or anything else out of de Camulio (was that why de Camulio had found a companion?). And with de Camulio there, he was debarred from asking the questions he wanted to ask about Nicholas and the Medici in Florence. On the other hand, Alighieri was entitled to a full exposition on the Charetty company’s business in Flanders which was, perhaps, exactly what de Camulio wanted to hear. The only empty room being the dormitory, Gregorio pushed aside mattresses and, commanding stools and a trestle, offered a modest meal of cooked bream, served by his own men, with a piece of salt beef and some capons and cabbages for those less than strict in observance. He had brought with him much of what he would need, including a small keg of wine from Alsace, and the woman of the house provided good bread and platters.