Dorothy Dunnett - [House of Niccolo 01]

by Niccolo Rising

  Curiously, when Tobie referred to the pawnbroker, he thought the bruised face responded with a glimmer. But when he looked again there were, as before, only the effects of shock, and pain and a primitive kind of endurance. Finally, after taking some food, his patient slept. Tobie wondered if the youth would ever know how lucky he was, how nearly those blades had pierced his heart. There was, of course, no guarantee of recovery yet. There would be fever to come. The journey to Bruges would be troublesome. Lionetto, as well, was quite capable of finding some task for his surgeon that would give him little time to fuss over the sick of an antagonist. Yes. He would have to decide what to do about Lionetto.

  Now, his patient at rest, Tobie slipped out quietly to rejoin the pawnbroker and his daughter at their table, since they had invited him. The daughter kept talking about the boy called Felix, and he wondered if there was an affair going on there, but was too bored to pursue it.

  He had left a light by the youth’s pallet, and the door a little ajar so that he could enter the room without sound. So it was that on returning he saw, without being seen, that his patient was awake, and had somehow moved on the pillow, so that the light came from behind him. But it was a wax candle, especially clear and brilliant, that Tobie had left. It shone into Oudenin’s brass pots and copper kettles and they returned the light, mellowed, to the helpless man’s face.

  Tobie studied it. The broad low brow and discoloured cheekbones and swollen, extravagant lips. The darkened eye-sockets, big as candle-cups, and the repressive loop of the nostrils. The hair which had dried like dragged wool. The face of a buffoon, pressed to the pillow, where something glistened, ceased, and then glistened again.

  Till he was sure, Tobie stood watching. Then he retreated with care. The voice the boy needed was not that of a doctor. The voice he needed didn’t exist. There was nothing Tobie could do. And in any case, the poor, silly fool wanted no help. Or this would not be happening, as it was, in painful and absolute silence.

  Chapter 9

  THE DANGEROUS business of the Charetty apprentice and the Scotsman was reported to the city that night, and was briefly debated. It was decided to wait and see if Nature might dispose of the difficulty. It was recognised, on the other hand, that Master Tobias Beventini of Grado was an excellent surgeon.

  Considering that he was wrestling most of the time with his own problems, the surgeon Tobie lived up to their fears, or expectations. He gave his patient the required amount of expert attention. And when the time came to dispatch him to Bruges, he found something to render the boy insensible, both to the rigours of the trip and to any attempts to interrogate him. It had already struck the shrewd surgeon Tobie that there might be trouble ahead, depending on who was supposed to have tried to kill whom. Tobie had, before now, patched up a man and seen him go to the gallows. That was, however, no business of his.

  In Bruges he deposited the boy in the house of his employer, saw him settled, and went off with the announced intention of (at last) getting drunk. He had earned, Tobie saw, the contempt of the Charetty heir Felix. That for Felix. If anyone needed help, there was Quilico. Tobie wondered, from his experience of the inside of Quilico’s box, what Quilico had actually been treating, all those years in the colonies. He promised himself a long talk with the Levantine physician.

  His interpretation of Felix’s glare had been correct. Surprisingly, it was Felix whom the whole affair had cast into a frenzy. His passionate intervention on the quayside had come of course from wounded dignity: a compulsion to defend his mother, her business, and Claes, the property of that business. In themselves, these emotions were new to him. Whether any of these protective feelings applied to Claes as a person Felix did not consider, and would have been offended if asked.

  Felix overslept on the essential morning. Otherwise at first light he would have set out with Julius and his mother to collect Claes at Sluys. When they came back he hovered about getting in everyone’s way as the unusually inert figure wrapped in blankets was hauled from the barge at the foot of the yard and wheeled in a barrow to the demoiselle’s household quarters, and not to the common sleeping-room, which was certainly noisy. When Tilde his sister burst into tears, Felix was rude to her.

  It annoyed Felix that Claes was not prepared, or able, to speak to him, and that, when he apparently went off his head and started a fever, it was to Julius that one doctor or the other gave his instructions, and Julius and his mother who sat by Claes and dosed him when they had time.

  For three days, Felix had the door shut in his face. It was unfair. He needed some facts from Claes. When, on the fourth, he began to repeat his complaint, his mother cut in with unusual acidity. If he wanted to pick Claes’ brains through the hole in his chest, he was welcome to try, she informed him.

  Felix was thrilled. Quite unchastened, he bounded to the sickroom, displaced a blushing girl on her lingering way out with a dinner-tray and sat down on a stool by Claes’ mattress.

  “Well. Who did it?” he said. He bent forward. “You should see your face!” said Felix. “I’ll get a mirror. Remember that vat that went wrong, and came out sort of grey streaked with yellow?”

  Claes was quite normal after all, because the dimples appeared and disappeared. Claes said, in nearly his usual voice, “You should have seen me yesterday. What happened to Astorre?”

  “He proposed marriage to Mother,” said Felix. “All right. I can’t help it if it hurts you to laugh. He said Lionetto had impugned her honour and it was up to him to set it right.”

  “Did she accept?” said Claes.

  “She said she’d give him his answer at the same time as Oudenin,” said Felix. “And you’ve no idea how keen Oudenin is to marry her. You know what? He bought that black boy. You know. The one that dived for the glass you broke, you silly idiot. He bought the black boy, and he’s handed him as a present to Mother. To Mother!… Listen, I can’t help it. You asked,” said Felix impatiently. “Will I get somebody?”

  He watched, intrigued, as Claes’ face turned yellow, and then white again. He then helped Claes to be sick, which everyone who ever went to a tavern was used to doing, and said morosely, as he dumped his head back on the pillow, “I can’t hold much of a conversation if all you do is splutter.”

  His eyes shut, Claes grinned. “Tell me something sad,” he said.

  “Anselm Adorne came this morning,” said Felix, which was the most boring item of news he could think of. “Oh, and Mabelie’s been twice, so now everybody knows you’re still seeing her. And Lorenzo. And John. And Colard, saying something about pigments. If you’ve been promising shearing-lakes to those painters, Mother will have your ears.”

  “She can have them,” said Claes drowsily. “It’d spare me your recital.”

  “Well, I came specially to see you,” said Felix, getting up crossly. He realised, suddenly, that he had been led away from the vital purpose of his visit. He said, “You didn’t say, anyway. That bastard Simon. Did he do this?”

  Claes’ lips, reduced to normal, produced a reposeful snuffle. Felix, used to this also, opened his follower’s eyes by the simple expedient of grasping a handful of hair and pulling it tightly. “Simon?” said Felix.

  “Pontius Pilate,” said Claes rather sourly, and would not be wakened again.

  Normally, Felix would have persevered but, as he found to his astonishment, Julius put the entire blame upon him, Felix, for some imagined relapse in Claes’ condition, and barred the door to him for a day. In the end, even Tilde and Catherine got in before their older brother.

  As someone had remarked, Claes was of a class that generally mended well, and he was strong. He also had, freakishly, the attentions of two doctors. When Quilico wasn’t there, Tobie frequently strolled in, mostly sober. Once they both came at the same time and went out together and got drunk. The day after that, Tobie sat on the sill in Claes’ room and said, “Why the interest in plants?”

  Claes, swathed and propped up with cushions, looked like a plaster cast of a Roman
with eyes round as coin-dies. He was getting back his lung power and had just finished giving a very good imitation of what Quilico had said on his last visit, with a lot of Greek swear words. Claes was, Tobie was aware, also memorizing every habit of speech and action that he, Tobie, possessed. It was sometimes quite difficult, talking to Claes, to keep your speech normal.

  Now Claes said, “I was trying to get his attention. I didn’t want him to give me an enema. Doctors and dyers are always able to talk about plants. For instance, I might want a hair dye and you might want a love potion. Or the other way round.”

  Talking to Claes was like walking in sinking sands. Tobie said, “I hear you were discussing alum. Naturally, of course. Surgeons use it for blood-stopping and dyers for fixing their colour. Do you know, I made a little enquiry. Before the Turks took it over, alum was coming into Florence alone at the rate of three hundred thousand pounds weight a year. For the Arte della Lana. The weavers.”

  “Fancy, Master Tobias!” said Claes. He shook his head in an amazed way. He looked happy.

  “So?” said Tobias. “Holly, for one. I’ve got a note of the rest. So have you, I am sure. All the plants that grow on the Phocoean alum mines.”

  Claes still looked happy. He said, “But that’s a long way away, Master Tobias. On the east of the Middle Sea. Beyond Chios. Beside Smyrna. And the Turks have taken it over. You couldn’t get hair dye from there. Or a love potion.”

  Tobias Beneventi was an impatient man, but he could disregard provocation if he had to. He said, “Did he tell you where else these plants grew?”

  He waited. He tried to look calm. A few times, Quilico had come to the point. And then had had another drink. And then had slid under the banquette.

  “Yes,” said the Charetty apprentice. His eyes had grown a little too bright, but he was smiling still. He said, “But you don’t need a hair dye. And in any case, I’ve already forgotten the name of the place and Master Quilico’s no longer in Bruges. I don’t know whether they told you? He got very drunk, and the commandant was vexed and shipped him out in a carrack for Djerba.”

  Tobie said, “Do you know what you’re doing?”

  He knew he should stop. He was a doctor. The boy knew enough, too, not to risk losing his grip on himself. He said, “Well, you should know how people rave on their sick beds. You could try me again when I’m well and see if I say the same things.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Tobias. “You haven’t said anything. All right. Lie down. I don’t know why I talk to you.”

  “Don’t you?” said Claes. His eyes were shut, but he looked quite serene. Even mischievous.

  Tobias didn’t go back: there was no need. And in any case, he couldn’t make up his mind what to do about it

  In a week Claes was up, and in another he was able to sit downstairs clothed, his lap littered with books and documents, while Julius completed the laborious paperwork resulting from the widow’s purchases. It was during one of those sessions that Felix, scarlet with anger, burst into the room, shouting, “What is this?”

  Julius laid down his pen. Claes looked up.

  Julius said, “Not now, Felix.”

  “You didn’t tell me,” said Felix. “I’ve just heard. You didn’t tell me.” His naked, shallow-set eyes switched from Claes to his mother’s notary and back again. “If you’re going, I’m going,” said Felix in what, if you didn’t know Felix, sounded like a blind affirmation of staunchness and loyalty, but in fact, as Julius well knew, was mostly pique.

  Julius said, “Your mother wished to speak to Claes first. Felix, go upstairs. Your mother will talk to you about all this later.”

  Claes, who was not of the class to know anything about tact, was looking enquiringly from Julius to his employer’s son instead of continuing quietly with his task. Julius opened his mouth.

  “They’re sending you off,” said Felix flatly. “To –”

  “Felix!” said his tutor with the finality that Felix did, sometimes obey. Then Julius got up and, with a restraining gesture to the apprentice, led his employer’s son forcefully out of the room and closed the door. When he opened it again, ten minutes later, it was to usher his employer into his own tall-backed chair behind the table.

  Claes rose from his stool and waited, his lustrous eyes resting on Marian de Charetty as she seated herself. Julius left. Claes, obeying a gesture, sat down. There was a short silence, during which his mistress studied him. Then: “Well, Claikine,” she said.

  It was a name he was used to: the name he had had as a child when, hard-used and filthy, he had come to the Charetty. She had taken him in for her sister’s sake. Her sister who had no connection with the unwanted child, but had married into the family that had produced it. The de Fleury family, of Dijon and Geneva.

  Sitting by his bedside during the past weeks she had employed the boyish name now and then: to recall his attention when it was wandering, or to turn his thoughts when, in his confusion, they strayed in directions which offered small healing. But for the last two weeks, she had left his nursing to others.

  He smiled. He said, “There’s no news to break to me, demoiselle. Of course not. I am only grateful you kept me and were so kind in these last weeks when I couldn’t serve you.”

  She wondered what he remembered of the early days of his fever: of the late-night alarums when a frightened maid would come for her, and when she was not dressed in her daily uniform: this thick, moulded dress with the narrow sleeves and smothering neck; the velvet cap cuffed by stiff lappets with its wired widow’s peak which covered all of her hair. It was a blessing, really. When she grew grey, no one would know of it. When she became thick in the trunk, the folds of her train could be tucked up to disguise it.

  Or did that matter, in any case? Neither Astorre nor Oudenin nor any of the several others who had offered for her knew what she was actually like, any more than Cornelis had, those last years of his illness. She was the widow de Charetty, a bit sharp of tongue, a bit hard of manner, who owned a thorough-going medium business capable of expansion.

  To this young man whom she had known since he was ten, in the days when she was serenely married to a vigorous, cheerful Cornelis, she said irritably, “You guess you are to be sent off, and you make no complaint, you have no anxious questions to ask. Don’t you even want to know where?”

  “You remember my great fault,” said Claes. “I’m easily contented.” And then, his smile widening, he said, “I don’t mean to annoy you. But I feel sure it must be somewhere of exceptional amenity if Felix wants to go with me.”

  “You stood between him and Lionetto,” said the widow. “Or so I heard.”

  He said nothing, but rested on her unaltered the same kindly gaze. He would not delude her about Felix, and she must not delude herself. She heard herself saying, “It is not Felix’s attitude which concerns me, but yours. You protected Felix, and from that stemmed the trouble that followed. To be turned off now must seem the height of ingratitude.”

  Again, he cut through all she intended to say. He said, “Of course not. I had meddled long before that. I put myself in the market-place.”

  He had been reared on French, and his Flemish still held an undercurrent of it. His own voice, when he was not play-acting, or mimicking, was soft and even and practical, even when uttering such a remark, which silenced her for a moment with the very complexity of its implications. Round a guild table; in the midst of some subtle, three-sided negotiation in a Hanse office, she sometimes thought of Claes, and of the dawning, in increasing numbers, of moments such as these.

  She said, “Then you may be able to guess who has already approached me to ask for your services.”

  The smile she received now was like none she had ever received round a guild table. “So I may,” he said. “But I don’t think you would expect me to tell you.”

  She rearranged the papers before her. “I have had a request from Ser Alvise Duodo the Venetian,” said the Widow. “If I wish to release you, he will give you
work on board the Flanders galleys till spring, and then give you some training on the homeward voyage which will obtain you a paid post in Venice. He would interview you.”

  “And the other?” said Claes gravely.

  “The other comes from the Dauphin. The Dauphin Louis of France, who is staying at present with Meester Bladelin. He remembers clearly, it seems, meeting yourself and Felix on one of his visits to Louvain. Felix engaged him in conversation about hunting. He proposes for you a post with his huntsman, combined with that of – he said – a resourceful errand lad. The post, he said, was too menial for a son of mine.”

  “But Felix wants it,” said Claes.

  This time she chose not to answer, watching him; waiting for him to return the stroke in this delicate game … the fourth, the fifth, the sixth such conversation she had held with him, perhaps, since she had found him grown, suddenly, out of childhood. Six such conversations, sensibly spaced.

  Mabelie had called twice, not being able to dispense with … conversations.

  Claes said, “Or no, I see. Felix longs to be the Dauphin’s huntsman, but he doesn’t know yet that there is a third offer. Then I give you best. I don’t know what it is.”

  “It is mine,” said Marian de Charetty steadily. “That you join captain Astorre and his mercenaries on their trip to Italy, and if he finds you suitable, stay with him to fulfil any contract he may make on my behalf. When the contract ends you may choose to stay, or return here.”

  He changed colour. An involuntary response was the last thing she had expected: in her turn, she was shaken. Even then, she could not tell whether he felt pleasure or fear.