The Spring of the Ram

by Dorothy Dunnett

  “Threats!” said Simon. “My dear small demoiselle, I am trembling. But yours is not the field I am cultivating. Since my agent has gone, I propose in future to act on my own. Genoa, Venice: I have not yet decided. But Nicholas will find out which in due course.”

  Astorre, at a nod from Gregorio, was moving briskly to the door, his eyes on the sisters. Gregorio himself turned halfway there. Nicholas said absently, “No. Wherever you are, I shall be somewhere else.” He pulled a sudden, wry face, from the store of faces that once he used to employ. He said, “The superiority of the word over the sword. You learn quickly, don’t you, from your inferiors?”

  “Nicholas,” Gregorio said. “The Collegio. If, of course, you are staying.”

  He waited for Nicholas to pass him and go down the stairs. It was not yet time for his interview at the Collegio, but he saw him escorted there none the less, cleansed and changed into fresh clothes and insulated from everybody but himself and Loppe. Dressing, or allowing himself to be dressed, Nicholas had had time to ask all the questions he needed to ask. In fact, he said almost nothing. It was Gregorio who told him, patiently and without drama, what he knew he ought to know. A lawyer, like a notary, was by his profession a witness to tragedy, and was familiar with the suspension of feeling that comes after shock. Having to face the Collegio was the best relief he could offer Nicholas now. Later, it would be different. He had always thought he knew how it was between Nicholas and his wife. Now he saw there was something else.

  Astorre provided the guard that delivered him to the Collegio, and then dispersed. Gregorio went with him so far and then made his way back, through the alleys and over the bridges that were now as familiar to him as the alleys and bridges of Bruges, after the weeks he had spent, with a sullen Tilde, waiting to break the news with care, with compassion to Nicholas. Marian de Charetty is dead.

  All the company knew it now, and would be waiting for him when he returned to the Martelli Palazzo. They would have questioned Astorre, and Astorre would have told what he had seen and heard in Simon’s lodgings. They would not have had to face the two girls, for he had given Tilde to the care of Tasse and, after hanging back, Catherine had come slowly forward and allowed herself to be taken, too, to the chamber her sister was using. By courtesy of the Medici. He had not bought the lodgings and offices for which he had the authority because, from the moment he had found Marian de Charetty in death, he had been waiting for Nicholas. To learn if he had survived. And then to commit him. Forcing him to attend the Collegio had been the first step towards that. Giving him the letter his wife had written in her last days had been the opposite: the act that might wreck all his hopes; but he wouldn’t have denied Nicholas what she had written.

  He didn’t know what it was. What he had told Nicholas had been true. She was already dead when they found her, he and Tilde; searching the region by chance in an effort to find Thibault de Fleury, Marian’s brother-in-law, the grandfather of Nicholas. If he had not seen her, and buried her, he might not have believed in her death, or suspected her murdered. But her looks belied that, even without the words of the priest who attended her. Later, although he failed to trace the old man, he found that Doria had never been near him, nor made any attempt to legalise a marriage to Catherine de Charetty. And at Florence, the papers had proved equally false.

  He told it all again at the palazzo, when Martelli had left them considerately alone, and while Nicholas was absent still with the Venetians. To Julius, to Godscalc, to Tobie he said, “How do I know what he’ll do? All I can tell you is how he managed Tilde and her sister. I only did what he steered me towards. From hate and fear and pride they will hold together and build that firm into a monument to their mother and a rampart against him. He made it happen. He was sure enough of himself to do that.”

  Julius said, “Then he was crazy. The girls are no threat. Two scheming husbands would be.”

  “Time enough,” Gregorio said. “Once, Tilde was interested in a man, but since she learned of Catherine’s flight, she has changed. And Catherine has had enough of men meantime.” He looked round them all. “There is another provision the demoiselle made. If Tilde dies unmarried, the Bruges business goes to Nicholas. I have told him.”

  “And Tilde isn’t interested in men,” Julius said. “If Nicholas wants to set up his own company, he should have no shortage of people to join him. His future seems rosy. I only wonder he didn’t take the chance to get rid of Simon. I should have done. Simon attacked first, after all. And there’s an heir coming along to make trouble one day.” He looked round. “Here’s an idea. Simon marries his son Henry to Tilde and takes over the company?”

  There was a silence. It usually meant that he had overstepped the bounds of good taste. He remembered that Marian de Charetty, a reasonable employer for a woman, had recently died. All right, he was sorry. But it meant that Nicholas had no bonds, no restraints, no one he had to account to. Claes was free. He said, again, “How did he really take it? What did he say?”

  Gregorio said again, “Simon told him. I wasn’t there.”

  Godscalc said, “Without much thought of sparing him, I should suppose.”

  “I don’t think he realised that it mattered,” Gregorio said. “And Nicholas received it in that light. Almost as a point that had levelled a game.” He dealt again with the cough which was troubling him today. He said, “There is something else I want to put before you, while we have privacy. In advance of instructions, I have drawn up papers for the creation here in Venice of a new banco grosso. A company for dealing with international merchandise and exchange: that is, trade in bills of exchange, and trade in commodities. If my recommendations are accepted, the financial control, the risk and the policy-making will be in the hands of the owner and major shareholder, Nicholas; and the rest of the capital would be contributed and the profits drawn accordingly by a group of partners, in number not exceeding six. In addition there would be senior employees with no investment. I would suggest drawing these partners and these employees primarily from those members of the former Charetty company now in this room. In principle, would you be interested?”

  Julius jumped to his feet. His face was scarlet with pleasure. He said, “No!” and gave Gregorio a buffet that spilled his ink. “A company of our own! And Nicholas has agreed?”

  “He doesn’t know,” said Gregorio. “I want it decided beforehand. Who, then?”

  Astorre said, “You’d want money?” He was scowling.

  Gregorio said, “Would you want to leave the girls? If you want the new company, your stake could come from a loan, and you’d get it back with a profit. But of us all, you could have both worlds if you want. Look after Bruges, and draw your salary, and come to us when we need you on contract.”

  “That’s what I meant,” Astorre said. He looked pleased.

  “Us?” Julius said. “Gregorio, leading shareholder?”

  “Equal with everyone else, apart from Nicholas. But yes. The Charetty sisters don’t want me. Not yet, at any rate. I take it you’ll come?”

  “Stop me if you can. And John. You need an engineer.”

  Le Grant said, “Too recent. It wouldn’t be fair. I don’t know if I’d get on with you.”

  Godscalc smiled. Gregorio saw it and said, “I’m going to count you in just the same. Or come, and take a partnership later. Unless they all make you too nervous.”

  “It’s the other way round,” Godscalc said. “Will you employ me? I won’t be a partner.”

  “I thought not. Yes. Tobie?”

  “He won’t agree,” Tobie said. “What are you thinking of, all of you? He isn’t interested in trade. It’s a game. It’s a way of beating fools at their own sport. If there was any other motive at all, it was a debt he owed to the demoiselle. That’s gone. Now he’ll either decide he’s had enough, or he’ll go the way Pagano Doria was going.”

  Godscalc said, “Why do you think Gregorio is doing this?”

  “Because he doesn’t know Nicholas,” Tob
ie said. “Oh, he’s trying to help. You thought you were going to help, when you tried to stop Nicholas playing God over Catherine’s future. Have you ever thought what happened instead? He had to play God with God.”

  “Don’t exaggerate,” Godscalc said.

  “For a few weeks he had the power to choose. The future of the last Roman emperor of the East. He was forced to put a value on one of the world’s great civilisations. The blend of Rome and the Orient and the Hellenes that will never happen again. The Byzantine world that preserved Roman government and classical culture all through the ages when the Latin empire lay in ruins and was reduced, now, to one small, silly court with its beauties and its bath boys and its philosophers. And against that, the Turcoman horde. And stronger than both, the Ottoman Empire, enemy of all the Christian Church ever believed in.”

  “Tobie,” Godscalc said.

  “You have an answer?” Tobie said. He turned on Gregorio. “You don’t know the ultimate irony? Nicholas does. They told us in Modon. The alum mine at Tolfa has been found, and all the alum it yields will buy a crusade to free the East from the Turks. It makes you think, doesn’t it? Nicholas and I found that mine months ago. If we’d gone to the Pope with the news, instead of taking money from Venice to keep quiet about it, would Trebizond have fallen? Or would the worthy Ludovico da Bologna and his Eastern delegates have gone joyfully back with alum gold and a fleet at their backs, and Christendom been saved?”

  Julius said, “We discussed all that. The mine couldn’t have been opened in time. And even if it had, there was no one in Europe to call on. They were too busy fighting each other. Still are. Nicholas knows that. My God, you talk as if he was a woolly evangelist instead of a dyer’s apprentice. All he’s done is what traders do every day. Examine the options, and choose the one that is best for the shareholders. And then take all the steps he can to promote it.”

  “Catherine, too,” Tobie said.

  “Well!” said Julius angrily.

  “No,” Godscalc said. “Tobie is right. In this, at least, Nicholas didn’t act as a trader. He knew what had fallen to him, and he carried the burden as long as he could; and then he had the good sense and courage to bring it to me. If he bears any blame for what happened, then so do I. It’s why I say he won’t go the way of Pagano Doria, nor will he take the easy way out. And Tobie is right in his warning. If Nicholas accepts this company you have evolved for him, you must expect trouble. He won’t take it seriously. It will not be the centre of his life as it should be, to please his investors. He has too many other things to do.”

  Gregorio said, “Which now he can do.”

  No one spoke. Julius said, “Well, I don’t mind. He knows how to enjoy life. I don’t want to grow fat in a counting-house. I say we duck him in the canal until he agrees. What’s the time? He’ll be coming back soon.”

  “No, he won’t,” Godscalc said.

  The interview at the Collegio lasted an hour, and took the course Nicholas had expected. He knew he would be offered some positive inducement to stay in Venice, but it was more than he had anticipated: the gift of a disused Corner house on the Grand Canal just down from the Rialto and near the Bembo palazzo. The families of Bembo and Corner were, of course, connected. As was the family of Violante of Naxos.

  When he left, the Signory supplied him with a courtesy escort. It was small, since the Serenissima had few criminals, and these were suitably in awe of the Serenissima’s justice. They took him on foot through alleys he didn’t recognise, and he was thankful to walk in silence, in the privacy of the dark, while, for the first time since he heard what had happened, the reality came to him. She had died without him, and without what he had brought her and would have brought her, all the years of her life. And so, of little consequence after that, the world was empty; and he was alone in it.

  Venice at night dispelled the illusion that he might be in Bruges, or any homely place of his boyhood. Tonight, he was glad of it. Seeing nothing, he still saw with his mind pictures that would always be linked with tonight, and with Marian, and with the last thoughts he shared with her. He had left her letter behind, to read again when he could bring himself to do it. At least, in some things he hadn’t failed. Over his head as he walked, lamplight shone from strange rooms, with carved, painted beams for their ceilings, and on their walls glimpses of paintings, tapestries, sculptures. Lit windows patterned the night: windows pillared; windows gothic; windows fretted by grilles or by balconies. Lamplight drew shadows on steps and on mooring posts and the ceiling vaults of a passage. Lamplight glowed on a sheet of speckled mosaic, with a sacred painting indecipherable, a blemish in darkness. Lamplight followed a gull as it beat like a moth down to the rippling water, where it tossed as if on a bough, watching boat passing boat.

  The canal. Leaving Simon’s house with the girls, he had suddenly remembered his purse, and the casket he had brought. It was still there. He had thought of Tilde, the eldest; but after all, he had gone a long way to find the right colour. And so he had touched Catherine’s arm, and put the little box into her hand, with the worked gold and fine lapis in it, the blue of her eyes. She had opened it, standing at a bridge just like this, and turned to him a face suddenly convulsed, and then snatching the necklace, had made to fling it into the canal. And then she had thought better of it, and lowered her hand and walked on, the box and the jewel clenched out of sight.

  She was probably right. But if she was right, he wished she had thrown it.

  The door his present escort took him to, in the end, was not his own, but he didn’t point it out, for he had already seen the coat of arms over the archway. When they turned to leave, he gave them the necessary silver, and they thanked him. Then he was alone, in a doorway belonging to the house of Zeno. The door opened. He said, “Which of them told you?”

  “The priest,” she said. “He said, tonight you need someone you despise. My husband is not here. But I shall tell him tomorrow that you have been. Pietro might cry, but his nurse will see to him.”

  “Pietro?” he said. She had closed the door behind him.

  “My son,” said Violante of Naxos. “He is three years old. Come this way. Undress, if you like, as we walk. What I am wearing is only a bedgown.”

  “How fortunate,” Nicholas said, “that you opened the door to the right person.” The long passage stretched ahead of them both. He tossed his hat deliberately on the floor as he walked, and began to unbuckle his belt.

  She looked round, smiled, and led on. She said, “My servants told me.”

  “Camilla the Volscian,” Nicholas said. He took off one shoe and then the other and, walking on, nearly bumped into her.

  She said, “What made you say that?”

  “Amazons,” Nicholas said. “You are an Amazon? You should have seen what John le Grant devised for the island at Kerasous where the evil birds used to live. You know. The ones who killed with their feathers. Feathers and emeralds. The Turks wouldn’t go near it.” She could hear, presumably, the way he was breathing. If this was what she wanted, then she had achieved it. He spoke in the bitter, clear Tuscan he used when he wanted to be heard.

  “I know,” she said.

  “I’m sure you do,” Nicholas said. He pulled his doublet over his head, dropping it in the first antechamber she took him to, and set hands to the buttons of his pourpoint on the threshold of the bedchamber. His fingers stopped obeying him, and so did everything else.

  She said, “Let me do that,” and turned; but got no further.

  The priest had warned her. Even so, all her formidable strength barely sufficed. The pleasure, which was of its own kind, she committed to memory.

  Towards morning, he had trouble avoiding what was normal to him and against her own kindling curiosity, she had to remind him of what he was about. Just before dawn, he slept at last, as far away from her as the great bed allowed him, his face to the windows. She lay, her hands spread over her body to comfort it, and watched him; and thought.

  The bells w
akened him. She never knew whether he remembered where he was, or who he was with. He stepped from the bed to the window as if the sound had summoned him, stooping once to pick up the bedgown she had discarded and throwing it over one shoulder where it lay, its fleecy lining exposed. She knew all the bells of Venice and supposed that one day, so would he. In the silence of morning, iron struck on iron as if the deeds of the night had been cast into sound for eternity. Strokes steady and irregular, harsh and stammering, spaced and crowded. Throbbing voices close by the roof-tops, and faint bells and flat in the distance, like dwarves in a heavenly foundry. A breath of incense moved through the bars. He said, “Let all stand still, for the master of the house has come.”

  She heard him speak. But whether in irony or in agony, in defiance or in submission she couldn’t hear, for the din of the bells.

  Reader’s Guide

  1. For Discussion: The Spring of the Ram

  The “design” that Nicholas vander Poele is making of his trading journey to Trebizond has many threads: one of them is the assembling of a company of brilliant but quarrelsome “experts” who will run a new global commercial enterprise. How are the comic “recruiting” of John le Grant, the subtle binding of Father God-scale, the careful promoting of Loppe, examples of this thread in the design? What in Nicholas himself sometimes hinders this part of the design? As a business, but also as a work of art, who is this design really for?

  2. One of the achievements of The Spring of the Ram is the extraordinarily convincing depiction, from the inside, of the mind of an intelligent but spoiled twelve year old girl bent on challenging and possessing her world, whatever the consequences. What are some of the highlights of this portrayal, and what, finally, do you think of Catherine de Charetty?

  3. On the same side, for once, as it seems, Nicholas vander Poele and Pagano Doria play the ancient Greek form of polo, tzukanion, before the court of the Emperor in chapter 34, and Father Godscale, noting the similar working of the two agile minds and bodies, recognizes that despite everything “Nicholas was in his element, partly because of the game Doria was giving him.” What, more broadly, is the game Pagano Doria is giving Nicholas? How are they alike and different? What understandings do you think are being conveyed as one dies, holding the eyes of the other for long moments, in chapter 38?