Niccolo Rising

  She knew him as well as anyone did. She knew that a natural comedian is a natural actor. She would never know, because he wouldn’t allow her to see, whether he had thought of that possibility, or had expected her to suggest it, or feared that she would suggest it. She didn’t flatter herself that he had ever wanted her to suggest it. So his eyes on her face told her only one thing: that he was searching to understand, in his turn, what she really wanted. She said, “Don’t be afraid. Real marriage would be something like incest, wouldn’t it? I’m speaking only of formalities.”

  He drew a quick breath then, as if she had accused him of being incivil, and said, “I’m sorry. A matter like that … one doesn’t take lightly.”

  She wondered what his eyes saw in hers. She kept her face, as far as she could, impersonal and friendly. She said, “I’ve only invited you to think about something. Perhaps you should come slightly nearer. It isn’t a subject for eavesdroppers.”

  He smiled, understanding, she knew. She wanted to see him more clearly. She wanted to show her confidence in his interpretation of her. He knew she meant him to bring his stool and seat himself just so near, and no nearer. He did so, and settled himself, crossing his arms on his knees. In the firelight, the scar on his face wavered like the lash of a whip. He said, “I can give you an impersonal view of it, so far as I’m able. It would appal everyone who works for you. The best of your free employees would be inclined to leave. The worst would stay on, hoping to take advantage of the situation. Those who are in no position to leave would work with the utmost unwillingness for you as well as for me. Your daughters would be upset and frightened, at the least. And Felix would walk out of the house and either look for the sympathy of his friends or take himself abroad.”

  “You draw a harsh picture,” she said. “Go on. What else would happen?”

  He said, “You know, of course. The business people of the city would accept me, because they would have to, but their families would be a different matter. You would find your friends rather less hospitable than once they had been, and amazingly unable to visit you here. It would be obvious that your business would profit from the information I collect on my travels: I should be less in demand as a courier by the general merchants at least. As the business improved, rivalry would become much more cutting than normal. Competitors and suppliers who so far have treated you leniently would vie with one another to try and best us both. And as you would lose your friends, so I should lose mine.”

  “Yes, of course,” she said; and rose, rather stiffly, from where she had been sitting for so long. “You have answered me completely. No one would gain. I shall sell, then.” He stood up so quickly that she suddenly realised what he must think. She said, “I mean, of course, once everything has been provided for and your future, too, has been secured.”

  “Great God,” he said. “Did you think I suspected you of forcing me into something? You have provided for me since I was a child. I can make my own way now, if I have to. But what would please me most would be to serve you and the company at the same time.”

  She looked at him. She said, “I’m sorry. But I can’t go on. I would rather sell while I still have some pride in it, and in myself.”

  He said, “Will you sit again?” Then, when she stood, a little uncertain, he moved forward and led her back to her chair, and placed her in it, and this time sank to the floor not far away, his head on the same level as her knee, like Felix when he was younger, playing games on the tiles. He said, “If you sell, what will you do with the money? Buy a grander house? Entertain dyers’ wives? Collect books? Give Felix all the horses and armour he asks for? Take up embroidery? All those people out there would be workless, unless their new master employed them. You would have no work, no interest, no place in the community but that of a wealthy widow. Is that what you want? You would die of it in a year.”

  “What, then?” she said.

  Claes said, “In six months I’ll have made you a team you can trust. I can always help you replace them. I shall spend all the time I can here. Name me your clerk, your assistant factor, your footservant, anything. You can do it.”

  “Yes, of course I can,” she said. “I can tell Cristoffels what to do. Sell Louvain. Bring the broking business – did you say? – back to Bruges and expand it. Train Gregorio. Open the cellars in the new property. Watch out for Felix – if he survives the joust – and see that he doesn’t ruin the tavern. And play a part in the world trade in alum. All by myself. Of course I can do it.” She could hear her own voice grow hoarse with the pain in her throat. She stopped speaking.

  Claes turned his back on her. She didn’t need to use her kerchief. Her cheeks were not wet, although her eyes dazzled a little, because of the light. Claes’ hair, rimmed by the fire, was dry now. When it was brushed, it would lie straight and flat, with strange bumps and kinks at the edges, as if it had been singed. When he was young, in the apprentice-loft, he had had to make himself neat for Mass like all the boys, and she had always liked to see him, marked out from the rest by his size, and the clown’s face with its dimples and the observant, good-humoured glance. She had brushed his hair for him when he lay, fevered after the wound. Tobias had treated him. It was one of the reasons she had asked the surgeon to work for her.

  Claes had always been free with girls. She knew that. Of the many unspoken factors in his great disclaimer, she assumed that had been one. She couldn’t pretend that it had not been an issue. As her youthful husband, he couldn’t have shamed her by intriguing in Bruges. Circumspectly elsewhere, she supposed. She couldn’t impose celibacy on him. She might live another twenty years yet. She would be forty this year.

  She hadn’t said so, but all the repercussions he had described had, of course, occurred to her. To be despised by dyers’ wives didn’t worry her. She had no close friends. Of course, Tilde would have been distressed and Felix would have been a handful. Of course they might lose people like Julius and the new managers, who would feel their status impaired. But Claes himself, with his gifts, could reduce the impact, could talk people round, could deal with Tilde and probably even with Felix. And if people left, he would be here to find others. He had said that the merchant world would set itself to compete against him. She had no doubt, if that happened, who would win. She wondered, as she had wondered over and over, how clever men had not seen what she had seen.

  And remembered that some of them had. And that it was Claes himself who had, in the end, given them the opening. Which meant that he, too, was tiring of simple tasks and simple company and perhaps even of simple friends. If he had taken thought, he might have discovered that he would not really miss them. But then, of course, he had taken thought. Behind the impersonal objections were all the personal ones.

  He was giving her time to recover, and she had recovered. She said, “I should have told you that I’m proud of you. You realise that the only failure in this has been mine. You brought me a service I didn’t deserve, and don’t have the ability to take advantage of. But you thought I did, and I’m flattered.”

  He had been sitting watching the fire, his hands tight around his updrawn knees. The rip in his jacket, neatly mended, had begun to open again across his flat back. When he heard her voice, he eased round a little without changing his attitude. She thought that his face, queerly, looked older. He spoke as if he hadn’t heard her. He said, “You’ve had suitors.”

  It was baldly put, she knew; for the answer to it had to be an admission. She wouldn’t think of his reasons. She said, “I want none of them.”

  He said, rather slowly, “Of the two, marriage would be less troublesome in the end than selling the company.”

  She found she was experiencing a shaky amusement. He saw it and said, with a glimmering smile. “For you, I mean. To begin with, it would be like asking the burgomaster and échevins to lie down with Felix’s porcupine. It would need care and forethought and attention and teamwork for a long time, through a lot of rebuffs and some unpleasantness. And I’d hav
e to leave almost immediately, leaving you to deal with whatever developed. But if Gregorio is what I think he is, I could confide in him a bit of the alum scheme. That would commit him. And he would help you.’

  Her expression must have been very disturbed, because he stopped there and said, “That is, if I may reopen the subject? I wasn’t sure if you had finally closed it. For instance, you didn’t give me a chance to produce my impersonal list of the advantages of managerial partnerships. I’ve always admired and respected and honoured you. That’s the main one on my side. Indeed, I don’t know if I need any others. What’s more, I have an excuse to see Bishop Coppini who, I am sure, could manage the essential dispensation, since there’s a relationship. That is, I am the illegitimate grandson of the first wife of your late sister’s husband. If I have it right?”

  He was prepared to reverse his decision. Placing the relationship before her was his way, however, of reminding her that this, too, was a factor to be considered, on top of the difference in age, and in status. Yet such uneven marriages did take place in great houses, where property must pass and heirs be got, regardless.

  With a marriage contract, she would be buying not that, but his skills for her company. She had her heir, Felix, and her daughters. He had, perhaps, as many bastards, carelessly sown. That again, she did not expect ever to know. She realised that she was thinking of the situation as if it were real, as if he had firmly accepted what she had proposed to him, whereas he had not.

  She rose from her chair. The moment she moved, he rolled and stood also, not so near, and not smiling. She said, “Can we have it plainly? This company needs a man at its head, and I have asked you to take that place by marrying me. This you think you can do?” She wondered if she looked as exhausted as she felt. He didn’t look tired; only quieter than usual. He didn’t come any nearer. He smelt of horse, and leather and sweat, but she didn’t wrinkle her nose.

  He said, “I did think it through. It is the best solution. Best for me, too. Or I think so just now. There are things which may be escaping us both because it’s late, and we’ve been talking so long. Do you think we should say no more tonight? And then tomorrow, as early as you wish, perhaps you would send for me?” His eyes, again, were scanning her face. He added, “This is not ingratitude. I realise what you are offering. I want you to think about it again.”

  She said, “I understand. I agree. Take as much time as you want. Leave it, if you like, until you are ready to go.”

  He answered at once. “No. Tomorrow, early.”

  She said, “I’ll send for you tomorrow.”

  His face, which had been tense, relaxed suddenly. He smiled straight at her, reassuringly. He hesitated just a little, and then said, “Then I wish you a good night, my mistress. Not a sad or a difficult one. Whatever comes of it, nothing shall harm you if I can prevent it.”

  My mistress, he had elected to call her, avoiding both the informal and formal. He always knew the right thing to do. Or nearly always.

  “Good night,” she said. And he smiled and, turning, left the room. She wondered, looking at the shut door, what else he could have said, what other gesture he could possibly have made; and realised that there was none.

  A night on both sides, to consider it. And tomorrow, an insistently early decision, to save them both prolonged embarrassment. Or – who could blame him? – for entirely practical reasons. If he were now to proceed with this frightening bargain with Venice, he had sensitive information to gather and many calculations to make before he left for Italy. Together with everything else that needed handling. Including Felix.

  Marian de Charetty sank back in her chair. She rested her swathed and wired head on its cushion and her sleeves on its arms and found, forlornly, that her heart was beating like a bass drum. She had forced it on him. But he would never regret it. Never. Never.

  Chapter 26

  THE FIRST OF THE shock waves was sustained by Meester Gregorio of Asti, who had known his new employer the widow de Charetty for only a week. He didn’t know the workman Nicholas at all, except for a passing encounter at the yard pump which had shown the youth to be unreliable. He had also understood that the young man was called Claes.

  Summoned very early the following morning, almost as soon as he had tied the strings of his black cap and slipped on his robe, Meester Gregorio opened the office door to find his employer seated, a little flushed, behind her desk. The scales were still on the table, and the ledgers, and the inkstand and pens. Also the rate card, displaying its columns of bright tufted wool. At the end of the desk sat the youth of the pump, wearing the ordinary blue Charetty livery. His head was bent, and, surprisingly, he was running a pen down columns of figures, or names, on the topmost of a large sheaf of papers resting on one of his knees.

  He looked up and smiled, conveying the smile also to the demoiselle de Charetty, who was wearing, for a small, round, not unattractive woman, an expression quite formidable. The demoiselle de Charetty, clearing her throat, said, “Meester Gregorio. Thank you for coming. This is not in fact a matter of business, although I should like to say, for the company, that I’m glad you have joined us, and hope you will enjoy working with us. Nicholas and I need your help in a personal matter.”

  Us. We. During his interview, she had spoken of the business as wholly her own. Her son was not present. The boy was. Formerly Claes, and now Nicholas. His help in a personal matter? Meester Gregorio of Asti, who had notarised in his time a great many contracts, a great many bequests, a great many affirmations of one sort or another, waited calmly; his gaze moving from the youth to a spot just below his employer’s girdle. Age made it unlikely, but one never knew. Unless the boy was a bastard son, newly recognised?

  “I shall be glad to do all I can,” he said formally. He noticed that the youth smiled at the woman again, and her nervousness unexpectedly changed into something like unwilling humour.

  She said, “It is not, I must tell you, a question of pregnancy or of adoption. Claes, who will now use his full name of Nicholas, is the illegitimate son of a distant relative. This is perfectly authenticated. He has been trained on these premises since he was young in, of course, a menial capacity. He knows the business through and through. He is also, and you must accept this, a young man of quite unusual ability.”

  Meester Gregorio smiled agreeably. He was certainly a young man of unusual appearance. One saw eyes like that, and inflated, aimless lips like that, among the mentally afflicted. Even the broad, low, seamless brow. He had scored his cheek. Still smiling, the youth had referred back to his papers. Meester Gregorio said approvingly, “I see he can certainly read and write.”

  The widow of Charetty said, “Yes. You have been over the ledgers, of course. You have seen the transactions undertaken by this company since mid-February, and the notes of meetings attended by me, with Nicholas as my escort. You should know that all these meetings were planned and arranged by Nicholas, that he suggested all these acquisitions, costed them and carried them through in all but the official preparation of the documents and the formal agreements, which were concluded by myself. He is more able, Meester Gregorio, than I am. Than indeed anyone I have employed until now. He wishes to stay with the company. He hopes, with the advice of us all, to make it large and successful. But he is not, as you see, of the degree to wield any power. I have therefore discussed with him how I may give it to him.” She paused.

  Gregorio of Asti, who was fond of church litany and had a taste for after-supper dramatic readings, felt that he had become part of a dramatic reading, and should take his share. He said, “You wish to marry? But how excellent! I should be delighted, of course, to help notarise it.”

  She looked at him as if over the rims of non-existent spectacles. Her sleeves, this morning, were much more elaborate than the ones she normally wore and her hair, although still invisible, was covered with a sort of brocade pumpkin instead of her usual voile, wired and bent like a siege engine. She said, “You are now planning, of course, to appro
ach me after the wedding and present your resignation from this company. I hope you won’t. We need you. And we are about to make a great deal of money.”

  He was sure they were. He wondered what the boy meant to sell off. If he had indeed been behind these transactions he was certainly able. He could marry the woman, milk the company and desert with the gold in a month.

  “Some of this money,” said his employer the bride, “will come from the normal expansion of the various interests of this, the existing company. Although Nicholas has been the cause of much of this expansion and will continue to help and advise with it, he will take no profit from it. All the businesses and all the property at the moment possessed by me, including the Louvain business, which was my father’s, must be fully protected so that the proceeds can go only to me, and after me, to my son. Everything that Nicholas earns as my agent will also be paid into this company, from which he will draw an agreed salary.”

  This was interesting – she was protecting herself. The youth, from his face, did not seem to be at all abashed. No. Of course, he wouldn’t be. Meester Gregorio said, “Forgive me. But you have a son and two daughters? They depend on you for their eventual inheritance and their dowries?”

  The boy scribbled something and then looked up at the woman. “That’s it,” he said. “I knew we’d forgotten something. I could lie on cloth-of-gold cushions all day and you could sell Henninc and hang me with diamonds, so that Felix has to beg in his tavern and Tilde and Catherine have to marry street-sweepers. Your spending and my wages have to be controlled. That means trustees. That means good accounting and an independent check on the ledgers.” He turned to the notary. “We’d already reached the conclusion,” he said, “that it isn’t so much a wedding as a re-write of contractual law. That’s why we need you. We want it to take place this morning.”

  Laymen always said this sort of thing. Gregorio of Asti said, “It’s unlikely, I’m afraid, that that could be done.”