Dorothy Dunnett - [House of Niccolo 01]

by Niccolo Rising

  “Afraid?” said his uncle. “He’s not afraid, your young Niccolò.”

  “He’s nothing to lose,” Tobie said.

  “You have a point,” said his uncle. “But it hardly matters. You’re involved. You can’t get out anyway.”

  “Allow me to differ,” said Tobie.

  Tobie tried to leave twice after that, and was restrained twice by his uncle. Nobody asked him anything or offered him anything except food and drink and innocuous conversation, which maddened him further. Denied a chance to explain, rebut or refuse, he contented himself with ignoring Claes wherever possible. It was an outrage that, when he finally managed to get away, his uncle should foist Claes upon him. They were returning to the same inn, Giammatteo pointed out. It was safer, after dark, for his nephew and the young man to walk there together. Messer Agnolo would lend them both a lantern.

  Claes carried the lantern. Fuming, Tobie walked down the stairs ahead of him and crossed the courtyard. Claes jiggled the lantern. Tobie’s shadow leapfrogged from pillar to pillar and stalked grotesquely over walls, its chin in the air. When they got out into the street, Tobie swore aloud and, turning, stopped the youth by gripping his wrist. Then he pulled the lantern towards him and extinguished it.

  The dim light of the Acciajuoli porch showed the reproach on Claes’ features. Claes said, “Now I can’t read the list.”

  The doctor snapped. “What list?” Then of course, he remembered.

  Claes was already undoing his purse. Silver glinted inside. Tobie said, still snapping, “You were playing for money?”

  “It makes it more interesting,” Claes said. “They would have let me win, anyway.” He had a list in his hand. “Second column …”

  “Second column from the left, third name down,” said Tobie. “Or that was last night, wasn’t it? In any case, don’t let me keep you. I’m going back to the inn.”

  “Well, so am I,” said Claes. “But not yet. You can’t talk there. Third name down. It’s an apothecary’s shop near St Maria della Scala. Round the corner.”

  “I don’t need to talk,” said Tobie. “I can tell you without moving a step that I’m having nothing to do with it.”

  Relief spread over Claes’ face. “That’s what I hoped,” he said. “I’ve nothing against your uncle, but I’ve explained that I don’t need a partner. All we have to do now is think how to get you out.”

  “I’m not in,” said Tobie, for the second time.

  “Of course you’re not,” said Claes. “We just have to decide how to convince people. It won’t take five minutes, and then you needn’t think about the alum again.”

  The alum. Well, it was worth five minutes to get this nonsense out of the way.

  The apothecary’s was, of course, shuttered and dark. Tobie stood stiffly back while Claes delivered a few gentle tappings and finally, after a great rattling and scraping of bolts, the door opened a trifle. The man who let them in carried a candle. He seemed to be alone. At the back of the room was a truckle bed with a sag in it where he had been sitting, and a trestle table with a hunk of bread and some olives. At night, a lot of shops used an apprentice as guard-dog.

  This was a bigger place than it seemed. Near the door was the apothecary’s selling-table, with the scales on it and a counting board and bags of counters and bowls. The drugs and spices most often used were on the shelves behind that, in jars of glass and pewter and earthenware. A dirty mortar stood on a stool.

  The smell was a choking mixture of medicated syrups and brimstone and salammoniac and ointment and turpentine mixed with pepper and ginger, cinnamon, anise and nutmegs, cloves and cummin and saffron. Tobie could smell comfits and paint, wax and perfume, vinegar and raisins. There was mustard somewhere, and oil of wormwood, and soap. Tobie sneezed.

  “May God bless you,” said Claes. The man with the candle was leading them towards the back of the shop. They passed more shelves, and a cabinet, and some bales. Tobie sneezed again.

  “May God bless you,” said Claes. “Is it asthma? Your uncle was treating the Duchess for asthma, he was telling me. And the Pope for his gout. He says the Pope is sitting this minute with a pipe of warm water trained on top of his head. Maybe that’s what you should have. He says the Pope has never been the same since he had that bad time in Scotland, and his feet froze and his teeth began to fall out. May God bless you. But not his hair. Long, golden curly hair. The Pope kept his hair a long time. May God bless you. You haven’t paid a visit to Scotland, Meester Tobie?”

  They were entering a low door at the back of the shop. The strong scent got stronger. The ceiling was hanging with objects. Tobie brushed a bundle of herbs with his scalp, dodged, and was fetched a light blow by a pestle. Through the door he caught sight of a bed, a hanging curtain, and another bed. He turned on his heel.

  Claes’ hand slipped inside his arm and wheeled him round again. Claes said, “There’s no one here. We have half an hour before anyone comes. They don’t understand Flemish.”

  He drew Tobie into the room and shut the door behind the apothecary’s man. The bed and a low cushioned chest with a candle beside it were the only articles on this side of the curtain. Claes sat on the chest with his knees together. Tobie remained on his feet.

  Tobie said, “Before we talk about how I get out, I want to talk about how I got in. Who brought my uncle into it?”

  The youth’s large gaze was pacific. He said, “I expect it was the Greek with the wooden leg. When I didn’t take the post with the Venetian commander. He would write to his cousins the Acciajuoli and tell them all about you.”

  “Why?” said Tobie. He sneezed, with passion.

  “Because you were questioning Quilico. You remember. The galley doctor who’d worked in the Levant. He thought Quilico would make me interested in the colonies. He didn’t realise that he’d brought together a dyer and a doctor and an alum company man, and that we might make deductions. I expect he was quite worried,” said Claes. “I expect I should have had a little accident if he hadn’t found out who you were. Your uncle is a great man, isn’t he?”

  “Never mind my uncle,” said Tobie. Without thinking, he sat on the bed. He said, “The Greek with the wooden leg. Did you know his brother had the Phocoea alum concession?”

  “Not then,” said Claes. “I think Anselm Adorne did.”

  “Adorne?” said Tobie. He retrieved Adorne from his memory. The fine-looking burgher in Bruges with the Jerusalem church and the kinsmen who were Doges of Genoa.

  “Well, yes,” said Claes. “The Genoese have been running their Levantine trading posts for two hundred years. The Zaccharia, the Doria, the da Castro, the Camulio. Adorno has been one of the great names on Chios for nearly as long. If you’d been interested, you should have got to meet Prosper de Camulio, here in Milan. He knows as much about alum as anybody.”

  Tobie said, “Da Castro. Now there’s a point. Why was Giovanni da Castro there tonight? There’s a world shortage of alum. The deposit at Phocoea is best, and Venice and the Greek’s brother Bartolomeo have the Turkish franchise of it. It can’t be in their interests to have a rival mine opened. So why entertain the Pope’s godson, who’s hoping to raise money to find one? Why entertain you and me, knowing that you knew from Quilico of another mine and thinking that I did?”

  The large eyes shone. Claes waited expectantly, as if for the end of a nursery story.

  Tobie opened his mouth and produced a sneeze. He pulled out a kerchief. He said through it, as bitingly as he could, “My guess is that the Acciajuoli are backing both you and Giovanni da Castro. In exchange for the profits of the new mine, they’re going to pay you to help da Castro exploit it.”

  He blew his nose. Claes said, “May God bless you,” and went on looking at him intelligently. Tobie said, “Isn’t that right?”

  Claes said, “Oh, no. I’m sorry. No. Giovanni da Castro hasn’t begun to look for alum yet. He isn’t in any special hurry. I think he was there because the Acciajuoli would be glad if I killed him. Of
course, the Phocoea alum interests don’t want another alum mine found.”

  Tobie said, “They’re buying your silence?” He felt a spasm of awe, and wiped it off with his kerchief.

  Claes said, “And yours, of course. They think you know what I know.”

  Tobie gazed at the former apprentice. “I should be hard put to it,” he said, “to sustain that impression.”

  “About the information they’re buying as well,” said Claes cheerfully. “It’s a new contract. I’ve sold them a courier service. That’s why M. Gaston was there, and Marco Parenti and the Strozzi sister. That’s nothing to do with alum. That’s ordinary business. The Charetty company provide the couriers and I provide the special information. They hoped, they said, that you would stay in Milan maybe and supervise it. You don’t provide anything. You just collect money and look as if you did. And keep quiet about alum.”

  He paused, and his brow wrinkled earnestly. Claes said, “The trouble is, if you don’t collect the money, they’ll think you aren’t going to be silent.”

  Tobie said, “Thank you very much. You’ve embroiled me in a plot to safeguard an alum monopoly. Now you’ve linked me with spying.”

  “Spying?” said Claes. “I wouldn’t know about that, Master Tobie. Ambassadors spy, and envoys and special agents. I don’t move in those circles. I just overhear things brokers’ clerks talk about, and dealers’ stewards, and smiths and carters who know where horses are going, and food is being collected, and money paid. Gossip. Nobody notices someone like me.”

  “Claes,” said Tobie. “Tell me about the cannon that had an accident on its way to the King of Scotland. And the avalanche that fell on the Lancastrian English. And this famous knack you have with puzzles and numbers. And then try to make me believe that you’re sitting with straws in your ears, picking up stable gossip.”

  Sitting cross-legged, Claes gazed back at him. He looked exactly like someone with straws in his ears. He looked like a large, clean-shaven hermit about to make out a case for a new hut. Bitterness filled Tobie. He saw no reason not to tell Claes exactly what he thought of him.

  Tobie said, “You want to be rich, of course. You want to force the people of Bruges to bow to you instead of beating you. You want clothes and jewels and a mistress who isn’t a servant, and you want to parade them in front of Jaak de Fleury and his wife, and Katelina van Borselen, and captain Lionetto and the Scotsman Simon. You’ve picked Julius’ brains, and got him and Astorre safely off to battle, and you’ve got an excuse to go straight back to Bruges with secrets to trade, and no one to answer to but a vapid youth and a widow who needs an intelligent, lively young person to help her. Will you marry her, Claes?” said Tobie. “I’m sure she’d have you. You have such a way with the girls.”

  Claes said, “I told you I don’t want a partner. You became involved by mistake. You’ll hear nothing more about any of it.”

  He spoke in a different voice. Nor did he look like someone with straws in his ears.

  Tobie said jibingly, “In spite of someone knowing that I know all that you know?”

  Claes said, “All they’re concerned about is preventing the appearance of a new alum mine. If you withdraw, they have nothing to worry about. You’re the only person who could have found it.”

  Tobie’s eyes opened, watering. He sneezed, and was not blessed. He thought, quickly and intensively into his kerchief. He took his nose out. He said, “I see. So much for hair dye and love potions and all the talk about plant patterns? Quilico didn’t tell you where he thought the alum might be?”

  Claes said, “Only that it was in Lazio, which is a very large area around Rome, and inside the Papal States. That’s why there’s no point in backing da Castro. As soon as it’s found, the Pope and no one else will exploit it.”

  Tobie said, “How wise of you not to have told me. I might have embarked on the whole scheme myself, with my uncle’s protection. I still could, couldn’t I? Find the mine, if it exists, and produce proof of it. Because the Phocoea company won’t otherwise pay to suppress it, will they?”

  The friendly look had returned to Claes’ face. He said, “I don’t see why you shouldn’t do just that, Master Tobie. Someone might as well have the use of the information.”

  Tobie said, “Why not you? You said you didn’t need a partner.”

  “Oh,” said Claes. “That was for the courier service. No. People would talk, wouldn’t they, if I spent weeks tramping hillsides and interviewing Levantine merchants and alum miners. Sooner or later, other people will find the deposit anyway. It offered a quick profit, that’s all, for someone who could give time to it now.”

  “I see,” said Tobie. “And what have you told the Phocoea operators?”

  Claes unfolded his legs to the floor and put his hands between them. “That they’ll have proof by the spring that an alternative mine does exist. If you want, I’ll tell them the proof will come from you. If you don’t want that, I’ll tell them that there’s no mine.”

  Tobie said, “They won’t believe you.”

  Claes smiled. He said, “You’ll be safe.”

  And, of course, he would. Because of Giammatteo.

  The candle wavered. Half an hour. It must almost have gone. Tobie said, “You know you deserve what’s happened. You set it all in motion. If they don’t believe you, they’ll do to you what they hoped you’d do to Giovanni da Castro.”

  “Then I’ll have to hurry, won’t I, and dig up some secrets to defend myself with?” said Claes. His gaze was profoundly amiable. He said, “If you don’t want to make the decision at once, I needn’t say whether you are withdrawing or not. The friends of Phocoea don’t expect my report till the spring.”

  Which was shrewd. It was an offer Tobie liked. And there was no need, either, to make a specific reply. Ignoring the alum question as if it had never existed, Tobie said, “I want them told now that I have nothing to do with your courier service.”

  Claes said, “I understand. That’s easily done.”

  “So now you can keep all the profits,” said Tobie. “What will you do with the money?”

  “Force the people of Bruges to bow to me instead of beating me,” said Claes. “Invest some of it.”

  “Oh?” said Tobie. He rose from the bed and smoothed his crumpled gown. “A little property somewhere? A share in a wine tavern?”

  “Both those things. What do you think of handguns?” said Claes.

  Tobie stopped picking feathers from his skirts. He said, “You’re going into business?”

  “Well, I’m in it already,” said Claes. “The money belongs to the Charetty company. Captain Astorre ought to have handguns. And there are a few other things a credit would be useful for, apart from buying property. Louvain needs more capital.”

  “The Widow?” said Tobie. “You’re doing all this for … She’s willing to take money from this sort of source?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with a contract for a courier service,” Claes said blandly.

  “And she doesn’t know about the alum scheme either? Only the Greek and Anselm Adorne,” Tobie said. “You know, I’m surprised about Adorne. A man with a family church protecting a Turkish monopoly. You won’t deny that’s what it is, even if the Venetians are working it?”

  A further thought struck him. “Christ. And if what you’re saying is true, protecting it at the expense of the Pope?”

  He hoped he looked horrified. He was afraid he looked the way Claes was looking. Claes said, “I didn’t say Adorne knew any details. Anyway, trade and high thinking usually manage to put up with each other somehow. That was a knock on the door.”

  Tobie had heard it. He said, “You didn’t arrange …”

  Claes got up. Large, smooth-skinned, sunny, he looked capable of every athletic feat Tobie had ever heard of. He could imagine Claes exerting himself happily for hours and hours, with one girl or several. There were two beds. Vistas of endless embarrassment opened before him.

  Claes said, “Don’t be
worried. No one will ever mention alum to you again, unless you open the subject first. And as far as you know, I am running a perfectly respectable courier service. I’m going back to the inn. Stay if you want to.”

  Status had to be maintained in some fashion. “That depends,” said Tobie unhurriedly. He strolled to the door, and opened it on a small, charming person with a coral necklace and one exposed breast. He said, “Cateruzza!”

  “Second column from the left, third down,” said Claes. “They said you used to come from Pavia to see her. I thought you’d like to know she was still mixing trade and high thinking. I’ll leave you the lantern.”

  Tobie stood at the door to the shop, and watched Claes find his way past the herbs and the pestle, and leave.

  Tobie sneezed.

  “May God bless you,” said Cateruzza musically from beside him. The sneeze, he saw, seemed to have unveiled her other breast.

  He shut the door. He felt surprised. He felt tricked. He felt like investing all his recent blessings at once – quicker than at once – in the revealed and trim lap of Cateruzza.

  That was when Tobie began to enjoy Milan. He saw Claes a few times after that, discussing practical things. Girls, alum and spying were never mentioned.

  Julius was annoyed about the courier service. Even when it was explained to him how much money it would put into the company’s coffers, he was resentful. He had expected Claes to go with them to Naples. He didn’t see how Claes, having been appointed to Astorre’s army, could suddenly elect to do something quite different. It annoyed him even more that Astorre didn’t seem to mind.

  The only one who seemed to mind was Thomas, who would have Claes’ society when he set out north to collect the rest of the company. And, perhaps, some of the men at arms, who had got used to Claes’ serial representation of Astorre fighting his way through the duchies of Europe, collecting screaming cooks who had to make veal jelly, and smoked ham and pounded pork fried in the way that he liked it, until there was no tent big enough for his cooks, his latrines or his belly. Claes also did a superb imitation of Lionetto, which Tobie did not wholly appreciate.