“Why not?” said Nicholas.
After the first shock (she was washing her hair) the encounter went off amazingly well, and she cooked and served them both an excellent meal. Her name was Margot. She was distinguished. She was not unintelligent. She followed all the bantering conversation except for the three occasions when Nicholas mentioned a place, or a person, or an object concerning the Charetty business. On those three occasions, he was satisfied she was at a loss, but expected to be.
Leaving afterwards, he said, “I like her very much. As the business grows, you’ll be able to house her better.”
Gregorio was walking slowly. He said, “I’m not sure if I like what you did.”
There was nothing much one could say. Nicholas continued to walk beside him.
Gregorio said, “I suppose there was no other way to prove it in time. Does it mean she would be under surveillance?”
“My God, who by?” said Nicholas. He grinned. “By Tommaso, perhaps: she’s a prize. But no. I told you I might make you an offer, and I’m making it. It’s concerned with a business of mine, not the Charetty one. That is, I take the risk but the Charetty company will share in the profits. The problem is, it has to operate in absolute secrecy. I have one associate, now in Italy, and I need a lawyer whose silence I can depend upon. If my enterprise fails, you’d still have your work with the demoiselle – unless, of course, it fails because of you. I don’t think it would. But people have been known to break trust.”
Gregorio didn’t answer at once. Then he said, “No one can say they won’t fall out with one master and take up with another. It happens. You may not like my ways when you get to know me better. I may not like your plans when I hear about them. But I will tell you this. I happen to find law more interesting than money. And a lawyer can’t stay long in practice if he passes on secrets. I might leave you, but I won’t betray what you are doing.”
“Well, that’s good,” said Nicholas. “Come to my room when you get back tonight, and I’ll tell you what you don’t know, and you’ll pack your boxes, most likely, and leave. Meanwhile I have to call in here and see Lorenzo Strozzi. It was a very good meal.”
“You must come again,” said the lawyer. He seemed to mean it.
Lorenzo Strozzi, who hadn’t spoken to any member of the Charetty household since the painful episode outside the Poorterslogie, tried to get the Ridder Straete gateman to say he was out, and then, angrily resigned, glared at Nicholas when he entered the office and took a seat without being asked. Equally without being asked, Nicholas told him why he had come.
By the third word, Lorenzo had ceased to interrupt. By the tenth, only horror remained in his expression. At the end he simply gazed at Nicholas and repeated, “Shipwrecked!”
“Off the coast of Brittany. So I am told by an informant. But rescued, and in good health. The only ostrich to be brought safely ashore. But the trouble is that it has been impounded until the claim for insurance has been settled, because of the counter-claims, you know, for wreckage and flotsam. A real difficulty. Very few people in Brittany know how to feed an ostrich.”
“Its keeper?” said Lorenzo. “It must have a keeper. In any case, surely someone has appealed? It’s for the Duke of Milan. An envoy. We should send an envoy.”
Nicholas said, “But do we want the Duke to know of our difficulty? Remember, it was the House of Medici who undertook to get the Duke an ostrich, and it was you who said …” He broke off. “They paid you for the ostrich and you’ve spent it?”
Lorenzo Strozzi stared at him. “What could I spend it on here?” he said bitterly. “I sent it to Florence for my mother to put aside for the business. The business Filippo and I are waiting to start up in Italy. With our own money. Not by marrying an old woman.”
“I don’t know anyone who has,” said Nicholas. “And if the lady were sensible, she certainly wouldn’t hand over any money belonging to herself or her family to a new husband. Don’t be an idiot. Do you want me to find out what’s happening in Brittany, or will you do it? If you can’t get another ship it may have to walk. Unless it’s granted to someone local. He might sell it to you.”
Lorenzo gazed at him. He said, “Do ostriches walk?”
“I don’t think they fly,” said Nicholas. “Although I suppose it might learn, given a week or two. It’ll stop the English war if it flies over Calais. Ship will collide with ship.”
Lorenzo said, “It may not be serious to you –”
“All right,” said Nicholas. “Message to Brittany. Where is it, who has it, is it being fed and can it walk. They’ll think we’re discussing the Duke’s latest bastard … Lorenzo, it’s all right, don’t take it so seriously. I’ll find out for you, and I’ll arrange it so the Medici don’t worry you. What about Caterina and your mother? I’m leaving on Monday, if you want me to take letters. No charge. Pay me in ostrich eggs.”
He wasn’t sure if, in the end, he left Lorenzo looking less worried than when he found him, but he thought that he did.
Chapter 30
THERE WERE THEN four days left to Sunday. Nicholas told Gregorio about the alum mine, and the lawyer went very sallow and stayed that way for half an hour. At the end of that time the blood began coming back into his face and he started writing things down. After that, Nicholas noticed, Gregorio frowned every time he looked at him. Marian de Charetty, informed that he was now a fully-fledged member of both companies, asked him to spend some time in her office talking about it, and he emerged from that looking slightly calmer. He still frowned, however, whenever he came across Nicholas.
On the Thursday, Felix’s mother searched out the final list of White Bear contestants and found Kilmirren’s name on it. The further discovery that her household already knew this made her angry. Pointedly, she made no renewed or anguished appeal to Nicholas, on the few occasions he was there to appeal to. And after Sunday (whatever happened on Sunday), she was going to lose Nicholas anyway. When she wasn’t thinking about Felix, she thought about that.
Nicholas had to go, she knew that. The remarkable fees he had received, the even greater fees he was promised, depended on the information, of all kinds, he was taking with him to Milan. He had to see the Medici about the money they had advanced for Tobias to buy handguns and for Thomas to recruit his fifty extra gunners. He had to collect the revised condotta, and arrange how the money for it was to be re-invested.
He had to discover, from messages Tobias and Thomas and Julius and Astorre should have left, where the company was positioned and what its needs were, and its prospects.
He had to glean, officially and unofficially, from all his new acquaintances, the information he would bring back with him along with new dispatches. Some of it in difficult codes, and of greatest importance. Some of it merely market prices, of use to their own business as well as others. And some of it, from the Acciajuoli and the others, to do with the scheme she was frightened of.
He would take a good, strong bodyguard, although not the compact fighting-force which had gone with Astorre. And this time it was summer. He would travel quickly. But however quickly he travelled, he would be away for two months at least: perhaps longer. Leaving her alone to face the unfriendly Simon. And perhaps even Jordan de Ribérac. The prospect disturbed her. It struck her after a little thought that there was an alternative.
Had she not been so troubled, she might have gone about her plan differently. As it was, she waylaid Nicholas at dawn on Friday morning as he was running, fresh and cheerful, down the stairs, and said, “Sit down there.”
They were alone. The rooms all about them were empty. He sat with promptitude on the step that she pointed to and looked attentive. She seated herself well below him and folded her hands in her lap. She said, “You trust Gregorio?”
He said, “Yes, I do.”
“To run the business alone for two weeks? Could Gregorio do that?”
“No,” he said.
“I thought –”
“No, you’re not coming with
me,” said Nicholas. “Demoiselle.”
She released a hiss of exasperation. Always the short cut. She said, in the tone she used to Henninc, “Not to Milan. I propose to come with you as far as my sister’s husband at Dijon, and then to my brother-in-law Jaak and his dear wife in Geneva. Don’t you think I ought to tell them whom I have married?”
“No, I don’t,” he said.
“My only relatives?” said Marian de Charetty. She watched him making up his mind how to handle this.
He said, “Your sister’s dead, and Thibault must be nearly seventy and hasn’t been in his senses for years. It would only distress you, and probably him. He’s shown no interest in me since my unfortunate mother died.”
She said, “He had a daughter by his second marriage. By my sister.”
His face was quite composed. “Adelina. She was five when they sent me to Jaak’s. She’ll be married now.”
Marian de Charetty said, “And you don’t want to see her? Or your mother’s father, before he dies? Do you blame him so much for sending you to Jaak? He did something for you later, at least, when he found how they were treating you. He had you sent to Cornelis and me.”
His face changed then, and he said, “Yes. I have to thank him for that. But not to see him. Would you forgive me, would you allow me that? If you feel very strongly that you must visit him, I could leave you there, with an escort to bring you safely home again.”
“And Jaak in Geneva?” she said.
He suddenly smiled. “I don’t know what you have in mind there. Not a sickbed visitation at least. Are you by any chance trying to dazzle them on my behalf?”
She smiled too. “Partly,” she said. “Why not let me have my amusement? What could Jaak do to me or to you now?”
He said, “Insult you. And I couldn’t stand by and let it happen.”
“Then you’re still afraid of him?” she said.
There was a pause. Then he said, “I can understand him now.”
“But physically?”
“Oh, physically I’m afraid of him. Yes. Still.”
“You would like to be able to fight him? To beat him? To overpower him?”
The large gaze was empty of everything but surprise. He said, “Jaak de Fleury is thirty years older than I am. At least. If I’m afraid of him, I’m afraid for all time. What can I do about it, physically, that would make any sense?”
She swallowed. She began to speak, and swallowed again. She said, “I asked you how you felt about him, but that doesn’t mean I expected the pair of you to lock jaws over my marriage. I have a strong wish to visit him. I don’t think it would harm you either. And if he insults me, you can protect me verbally. You know you can.”
He was silent.
She said, “And Thibault is older, and sick. To see him is just an act of clemency, surely. He kept you and your mother. You were only turned out when he couldn’t look after you.”
She paused. She said, “I know you can probably argue me out of it. But I do want to go. To both places. I wouldn’t suggest it if I thought it was wrong for you.”
His elbows on his knees, he had sealed his lips with both hands and was staring past her, into the shadowy hall. She relied on him to perceive all the arguments she hadn’t used, and to form his own impression of her motives. If it was a wrong one, so much the better. She saw him decide, eventually, as if he had spoken. Yes. I can carry it. But he didn’t agree immediately. He said, “What will Felix think?”
“Nothing that will flatter you or me,” said Marian de Charetty. “You have demanded a circuit of triumph and I have weakly agreed. Petty revenge on Jaak de Fleury. And, of course, a warning. Now Jaak can’t touch little Claes, who has the Widow de Charetty behind him.”
He had long since identified that as her real reason. He said, “I wish Felix knew us as well as we seem to know him. Yes. Of course. If you want it so much, let us do it.” After that, he spent an hour in the yard and then left unexpectedly to follow Gregorio to Spangnaerts Street. Midmorning, she knew, he had an appointment to confer with Jehan Metteneye.
Gossip had indicated to her the means Nicholas had probably used to draw Gregorio into their interests. How he had overcome Jehan Metteneye’s natural prejudice she had no idea. His wife had not spoken to Nicholas or herself since the marriage. Nicholas and a pretty girl, caught in a cellar. She tried not to think of it. Men were men. Sometimes she had wished that Cornelis had been less staid. She supposed Jehan Metteneye had his secrets as well and, properly seasoned at the baths or the butts, had exchanged them for Nicholas’ confidences. To get Jehan Metteneye’s vital interest, a young man would have to use what means he could. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.
And meantime, there was Felix and the White Bear meeting to think of. Her son was asleep. She wouldn’t help him by worrying. She must plan as if he were about to emerge unhurt, happy, successful, from Sunday’s joust. As if she were really likely to be free to set out on Monday, to travel through Burgundy and Savoy for two weeks.
In which case, there were fearsome lists to be made, arrangements to be thought of. The business she usually handled would have to be supervised by Gregorio. Which was why, of course, Nicholas had gone to Spangnaerts Street so early. She must remember that he was human, and there must be limits to the burdens she laid on him. But so far, she could see none to his capacity.
When, later that morning, three riders rode into her courtyard, she was busy in her office with Henninc and paid no attention to the small commotion outside. It was five minutes later that Felix burst into the room, his cheekbones flushed. “Mother!”
Behind was someone very grandly dressed indeed, in velvet riding dress with a draped hat and scarf pinned with jewels. She knew him. Roland Pipe, of the household of Charles, Count of Charolais, the Duke of Burgundy’s difficult son.
She rose, curtseying. Henninc melted back to the panelling. The Receiver-General bowed. Felix said, “Mother! The Count has asked … Der Roland brings an invitation to me from Monseigneur de Charolais. A personal invitation. To a grand hunt. A special hunt at Genappe on Sunday. I have to leave now. Right away.”
“Such an honour!” said Marian de Charetty. She seated her guest, signed to Henninc for wine, and sat herself, flushed and smiling and breathless. The picture of a bourgeois mother overwhelmed by the favour shown to her bourgeois son.
The picture of a mother thanking God that her son need find no excuse, now, to face enemy lances at the White Bear jousting on Sunday. For when the heir to your liege lord commanded, no excuse was acceptable. Thanking God, she thought, and someone else.
When Nicholas came back much later, Felix had already gone. The yard was full of the news. Nicholas sat and let the dye workers tell him. They were disappointed, mostly. It was fine, of course, that the great lords should see, at last, the worth of the good Charetty family. But where now was the special pleasure and pride of standing there in the crowd at the jousting and saying, There! There’s the young master!
Someone who used to share his cabbage with him said, “Why not take his place, Claes? There’s the armour.”
“Now, there’s an idea,” Nicholas said. “I’d win every bout. I’d be Forestier. I’ll show you. Come on, why don’t we all go in for it?”
When his mistress looked out of her window to find the reason for all the shrieking and laughter, they had rigged up a rope line for the barrier and were charging one another in pickaback pairs, with kettles for helms and stirring-sticks for their lances. They broke a rod, and Henninc’s voice roared over the yard, berating them. Then one of the charging figures took off his helmet, and Henninc, faced with his mistress’s husband, fell silent.
Nicholas jumped to the ground. “I’ll pay for the stick. No. I was wrong to take them off their work. We were just glad about the honour to jonkheere Felix.”
Grinning, they were clearing up quickly and scattering. They would work late, if need be, to make up for it. She saw their spirits were high and that Henninc, wh
o knew his people, had the sense to recognise it. He smiled too, if stiffly, and said, “It’s a pity about the jousting but an honour too, as you say, friend Nicholas.”
Then Nicholas came quickly up the stairs and tapped on her door and opened it. “Reward?” he said. She wrinkled her nose. “I know,” he said. “It’s the smell of relief, this time. I thought my deep-laid plot had gone wrong.”
“But you had contingency plans,” she said.
“Oh, yes. Three dog handlers and Gregorio’s mistress. That is, I hadn’t asked Gregorio yet.” He smiled lavishly at her. “Do I deserve some special, strong wine? Felix has gone, then?”
Her chin trembled while she was smiling at him. She stiffened it. She said, “Will they treat him well?”
He said, “Of course they will. It’s the Dauphin he’ll see, really. Probably for the last time. But they’re well bred. They won’t stint.” He paused. “The drawback is that you’ll be gone when he gets back. Did you tell him?”
“About the tour of triumph? Yes.” Her back to him, she poured wine in generous measure.
“When he thinks about it, he’ll be pleased. He’ll be master until you come back. And he won’t have to see me leave, either.”
She gave him his wine and stood for a moment, holding her own. “I don’t know. He’s not very complicated. I think he feels a little like Tilde. They both like to see you here slaving for them.”
He was relieved. The ridiculous dimples, missing for a day or two, had returned. He said, “If I don’t know when to keep my place, then I might as well pay for it here, rather than tread primrose paths in the distance? He ought to see the primrose paths. Especially this time. He should have lent me his armour for Geneva. I’ve had an idea.”
She went and sat down. “Now I can bear it. Yes?”
He said, “Why don’t we leave on Sunday, during the joust? The roads would be clear. Unless you still want to be present?”
She shuddered. “No.”
“Well?”
She said, “There would be no one to help. Everyone will be watching. You won’t even get a bodyguard to come away, I shouldn’t wonder.”