Niccolo Rising

“They were all there,” Marian said. “He isn’t a layman. Better than anyone else, he could make them out instantly.”

  Gregorio said, “If he’s seen the entries, he knows that you’re thriving, whatever opposite story he means to tell. He wants the company. He’s sketched how he hopes to acquire it. He had another means he may not yet fully realise. If, that is, he’s seen the size of the payments from the Bembi.”

  Marian de Charetty was silent. There in that entry was the only hint of the long, precarious negotiation which had brought them the alum money. To protect that, she would have to agree to anything, or lose all she had.

  Gregorio had known that. “Put him out,” he had said; but only to test, as was reasonable, her belief in the youth she had married.

  She said, “Then he stays until Nicholas comes. But what can be done about the Bembo entry?”

  Gregorio said, “Leave it to me. A temporary disguise of some sort, I’m sure, can be come by.”

  She said, “He’s a very unpleasant man.”

  “But it will be for a short time,” said Gregorio. “Don’t do anything. There’s a lot of goodwill in the yard, and they understand hints. Henninc and I will see that everyone is encouraged to be patient. Perhaps you’ll want to send your daughters away for a little. The burden will fall mainly on you.”

  “Yes,” she said. Now it was decided, she felt a small return of courage, and of resolve.

  She had to wait, in any case. She might as well fight as she waited.

  Chapter 38

  BY THE TIME THEY and their servants had reached the Ghent portals of Bruges, Julius had stopped trying to converse with Nicholas.

  On the way from Milan, Julius had heard about the alum mine. If the news about the de Fleury credits had amazed him, this revelation of cunning and opportunism had virtually stunned him. He assimilated the fact that Tobie had been concerned with the idea from its beginning, and that the new lawyer Gregorio was aware of it, and the demoiselle, who had apparently given the venture her blessing. And again, that Felix had known, and had kept it to himself. It confirmed what he had told himself before they left Milan. If he could put up with Nicholas there was, clearly, no end to the possibilities.

  Putting up with Nicholas was already proving a mild irritation. There was no excuse now that the boy was ailing. A week ago, he had thrown off the last effects of the fever and, although taxed as they all were (except Loppe) by the journey, he was otherwise in normal health. Physically, at any rate. But, having thrashed out the alum business and run briefly through the other matters now occupying the house of Charetty, Nicholas had fallen silent.

  Felix, of course. Julius, who was himself tired from some extremely hard riding, recognised that he and Nicholas were bound to see the death of Felix from different viewpoints. He mourned Felix, of course, as a schoolmaster mourned any lively youngster he had taught, and helped out of scrapes. Nicholas mourned him as a fellow-schoolboy. On top of that, Nicholas had to break the news to the mother in the ludicrous rôle of the boy’s stepfather. But he had put on that cap when he married the Widow, and Julius saw no reason to squander sympathy on him.

  Then they got to the gates of Bruges and the porter, an old enemy, said, “Ho! You’ll see a difference in the Charetty, you two.”

  Nicholas was sorting out permits. Julius said, “Well, I should hope so. They tell me the doormen held a party and burned it to the ground in the spring. They wouldn’t have had the chance, I can tell you, if I’d been about.”

  “There’s worse than fire,” the porter said. He grinned evilly.

  “Such as?” Nicholas said. The permits were sitting on top of a canister of good German beer. The porter grinned to the point where all his teeth stopped and removed the canister, leaving the papers in Nicholas’ hands.

  “Such as the Widow giving you all up for dead and about to marry again,” he said. “Or that’s the story. Otherwise it’s not right, is it? That fellow staying there day and night, and going to all her meetings, and doing the deals? Where’s the youngster?”

  “When we’ve seen the demoiselle, she’ll tell you,” Nicholas said. “What fellow?”

  He sounded calmer than Julius felt. Julius was running names through his head. That pawnbroker Oudenin. One of the dyers. The other lawyer, Gregorio.

  The porter said, “They say he’s related. So you was related, wasn’t you, Claes? Likes her own kinsmen around her. Jaak, he’s called. From Geneva. Jaak de Fleury.”

  Nicholas said nothing. Then he said, “Staying with her?”

  “And running the business,” said the porter. “Got the experience, you would say. A real merchant. The kind a woman could lean on.”

  Julius said, “Look. Steady. Not straight to the house.”

  “Yes, straight to the house,” Nicholas said. His face, already different, had drained from sepia to buff under a patchwork of dirt. He said, “If she’s taken him in, it’s because he’s compelled her.” He’d already left the porter behind, moving forward over the bridge.

  “Told her you were dead? Felix? Or what?”

  “Told her I knocked Felix unconscious in Geneva and forced him to come to Milan with me. Did Felix tell you?”

  “No,” said Julius. He was immensely weary, and annoyed at having to bring his mind to bear on what was surely a simple legal problem. Jaak de Fleury was bankrupt. He had no claims on the Charetty, and could be got rid of. If he’d felt fresher, he would have looked forward to the prospect of getting rid of him personally. It was a pity the woman had taken him in, but that might be from misguided philanthropy. Perhaps she had no real idea what Monsieur Jaak was really like. He remembered him, very distinctly, threatening to cut Claes’ hands off.

  Julius said, “Did you knock Felix unconscious? I’m sure, if you did, it was for the best of reasons; and even if it wasn’t, you would persuade her it was. Or do you mean that he’s threatened to blacken your character?”

  “He could shake public faith in the company,” Nicholas said. “Or …” He broke off.

  Julius said with annoyance, “All right, what? At this rate, we’ll be there in a minute.”

  “There’s only one secret you and I and the demoiselle would prefer Jaak de Fleury not to know,” Nicholas said. “Or no, there are actually two; but the second one is no business of yours.”

  The alum mine. Julius, realising what he meant, felt his face, too, losing colour. He said, “How can we stop him if he’s found out about that?”

  “There are several ways,” Nicholas said. “Just as there are several ways of telling someone her only son has been killed. What about thinking for a bit, instead of talking?”

  Never in his life had Claes spoken to him like that. A little discipline was required here, and Julius turned to apply it. But then he saw the look on Nicholas’ face, and had the good sense to say nothing.

  The streets in Bruges, like the roads outside, were crowded because the Flemish galleys were in. However hard they and their small retinue pushed, it was difficult to make headway with horses. Also, they kept glimpsing people they knew. Nicholas kept his head down, responding to no one and urging his horse yard by yard through the press. Julius, who had been away longer, found himself smiling blearily back at the friendly, familiar faces, and mouthing greetings and promises.

  That was how, he supposed, Nicholas became separated from himself and Loppe and the few men they had hired for the journey.

  It hardly mattered. They were going, according to Nicholas, to a newly-bought house in Spangnaerts Street which the demoiselle now used as headquarters. Julius arrived at Spangnaerts Street and discovered the house, and was impressed by it.

  In the yard there was no sign of Nicholas or his horse. With some misgivings, Julius wondered if the first encounter with Jaak de Fleury and, worse, with Felix’s mother, was about to fall to himself. He had begun to question the gate-keeper when a slight man emerged and crossed the courtyard. He seemed to be about the same age as himself, with hollow temples and a lean face
and a lath-like nose of great length, its austerity somewhat relieved by a prodigious scoop at the end. He asked, with sonority, if he could be of assistance.

  The black clothes proclaimed him. This was no doubt Gregorio of Asti, the lawyer, who had been occupying his desk for five months. Introducing himself, Julius plunged through the formalities and discovered that Nicholas had not appeared, and that both the demoiselle and M. de Fleury were out: the demoiselle to the Flanders galleys and Monsieur to make a call in the city.

  The lawyer, supplying these details, was civilly guarded. Julius said, “We know about Jaak de Fleury. We think we can guess what’s behind it. It’s time it was dealt with. Meester Gregorio, how is the demoiselle?”

  The astute black eyes assessed him, and the question. Meester Gregorio said, “She has thought of little else, of course, but the boy’s return. Bad news would be better than nothing.”

  Julius said, “She should hear it from Nicholas. He’ll be here soon. It isn’t something to tell in the streets.”

  “Her son is dead then,” said Gregorio. “Poor lad. Poor lady. But she may hear it in the streets. In fact, I was just setting off to try and find her. Tell me. Was he killed at San Fabiano?”

  Astrologers might have divined the name of that battle. There was no other way for the news to have reached Bruges already. Julius opened his mouth.

  Gregorio said, “The report of the battle arrived just an hour ago. Another captain from Count Federigo’s army apparently called at the house here with news of it. The door-keeper told me. The man said nothing of Felix. He asked for M. de Fleury and left to find him.”

  “Another captain? Who? Not Astorre?” said Julius. He felt cold.

  “No. Not the demoiselle’s captain. Indeed, his rival I believe,” said Meester Gregorio. “A mercenary called Lionetto.”

  His own safety was not, that day, in Nicholas’ mind. If it had been, he would have dismissed it. No one knew he was coming to Bruges. He didn’t give thought to the Ghent gate, and the fleet-footed friends of its porter.

  From the moment Nicholas passed over the drawbridge, the problem of Jaak de Fleury occupied all his thoughts. When he let it go, it was to prepare for the other, more important thing he had to deal with. He rode with his head down because he didn’t want to be accosted, and to answer questions about the war, and about Felix. He didn’t even notice at first that his horse was not being pushed entirely by chance, but by two others, one at each flank.

  The riders wore city livery, and were offering, smiling, their escort to the demoiselle’s house. He refused, but tried to be polite when they insisted. It was the degree of insistence which made him glance behind for the first time for Julius, and find that there was no one behind him.

  The nightmare of the canal and the barrel oddly returned to his preoccupied mind and he dismissed it. It arose, he thought, from the two cleanshaven faces at his side which bore some likeness to the two bearded, drunken faces he remembered from the mists of that night.

  They were the same faces.

  He realised it only as he hurtled past them, for his horse had slipped and fallen, inexplicably, throwing him heavily to the ground. He rolled over and found himself in a dark archway, beyond which lay a piece of waste ground and the canal bank. Behind, a strange voice in good Flemish was speaking. Not to him: it was assuring passers-by that the rider had come to no harm, and was being cared for. He rolled over again and two solicitous figures appeared above him, one of them with a knife.

  He had not been the dullest pupil of the Duke’s master-at-arms at Milan. By that time his own sword was in his hand, and when the dagger came down he parried it, and twisting, got to his feet. He couldn’t burst past the two men to the street, but he could and did run on through the passage to the unpaved ground beyond it.

  By that time he knew perfectly where he was. The tunnel through which he had come belonged to the half-ruined house which had been neighbour to the Charetty dyeshop. He stood in what had been its orchard. Before him was the canal. To one side was a wall with no footholds. He would be dead before he had scaled it. To the other was the broken wall which had once divided this garden from the dyeyard. The wreckage beyond was the range of sheds in which all his fellow-workers had once gathered to hear the news of the demoiselle’s wedding.

  The two men in city livery had rather more experience than he had in fighting, but not quite his reach of arm. They didn’t like the sweep of his sword. On the other hand, there were two of them.

  His cap had already come off in the fall. He shed his jacket as he ran, which stripped him to shirt and hose and left nothing to hamper his movements. He did it spinning, with his sword cutting the air, so that they had to fall back. He had time to think that what he felt was not fear, but relief. Instead of the burden of responsibility, he was being invited to show his prowess in physical play.

  So he did. As he got to the broken wall he feinted. The man nearest him ran into his sword. The other rushed with his knife. Nicholas ducked, found the lowest part of the wall and tumbled over, pursued by one angry assailant. He swiped at him as he went, and sliced his shoulder. He would have made a perfect landing as well, had he not been tripped by the toe of Jaak de Fleury. He sprawled, twisted, and found the sword of the merchant at his throat, and his own weapon gone. The remaining assailant, bleeding, jerked him to his feet.

  In front of him was the uneven field that had once held the trestles and tenting-frames. It was patched with seeded plants, red and blue and yellow and violet. Beyond stood the blackened bricks, bushy with grass, of the house where he had worked and slept intermittently since he was ten. Facing him was the man who had been his master in the years before that.

  A calm, smiling, cruel master. A merchant who had tried to ruin the Charetty business and who, in his own extremity, was now intent on acquiring it. An unpleasant merchant with a sword in his hand, who wasted no words on him at all, but simply walked forward, with purpose, to kill him.

  There was a hand gripping his arm, and a knife at his back. Both belonged to the man whose shoulder he’d stabbed. The grip on his arm was numbing in its strength. But the knife was in the grasp of the weakened hand.

  Nicholas flung all his weight backwards, not forwards. His elbow ground into the man’s wounded shoulder. He felt the blade slide into his body, but there was no force behind it. The man holding him yelled, and let go. And as he yelled, Nicholas dragged the knife from his enemy’s hand and used it on him.

  The man fell. Jaak de Fleury had a sword. His own weapon lay on the ground just beyond. Nicholas dived and got it, and swerved as Jaak de Fleury’s blade hissed over his head. He stood, sword in hand, as he had learned to hold it, and parried, and heard the orderly clash, as you heard it on the practice ground, over and over.

  In this, as in everything else, he had no experience to set against the long lives of his betters. He had only his brain, which absorbed instruction and held it, for ever.

  On the broken field where once he had struggled, his nails blue, to push virgin cloth in a vat, to nurture blithely the glories of the maligned urine tub, to share meat and ale and obscene and shattering jokes with his gossips, he was stepping, shifting, sliding, sword in hand, protecting himself as best he could from the great-uncle who was trying to kill him.

  Who was thirty years older than he was.

  “You would like to be able to fight him? To beat him? To overpower him?” Marian de Charetty had said.

  And he had answered, “If I’m afraid of him, I’m afraid for all time.”

  It was true. The fear beaten into him at seven would never go.

  Despite the fever, despite the strain of that miserable journey, despite Jaak de Charetty’s powerful frame and trained, tutored grasp of his weapon, he, Nicholas was thirty years younger, and had been recently placed in possession of some very select tricks of swordsmanship. But what had that to do with it? If he killed Jaak de Fleury, he killed his own blood, his kinsman. And left untouched his fear.

&n
bsp; He parried and parried again. He didn’t know what to do.

  Jaak de Fleury, his face a shining confection of sweat, pink as sugar, saw it and, panting, smiled. He shifted position, agile, muscular. He fought without his robe, broad-shouldered in his splendid doublet. The puffed silken sleeves of his shirt swung against the great muscles of his upper arms, and the jewels on his high collar sparkled. The point of his sword arrived again and again. And again, Nicholas parried.

  From the ruined house, far behind him, a man’s voice screamed at full pitch, and went on screaming, louder and nearer. Jaak de Fleury glanced round. In a moment Nicholas, too, looked over his shoulder.

  The figure springing from the tumbled stones, red hair beating, was Lionetto. Lionetto! And the two figures running behind, drawing their swords, were Julius, blessed Julius, and Gregorio.

  How had they found him?

  The horse.

  What in God’s name was Lionetto doing here? That was easy. Looking for Nicholas. Lionetto had good reason, too, to want to kill Nicholas. Only Nicholas hadn’t known that he knew it …

  He couldn’t fight two men. He hadn’t the skill to defeat Lionetto by himself, never mind with Jaak at his side. And however fast they ran, Julius and Gregorio couldn’t get to him in time. So he was going to die. Not from a beating. From the adult equivalent of a beating, which you got when you meddled with adults’ affairs.

  “Traitor!” Lionetto was shouting. “Whoreson! Rascally scum! Steal a soldier’s money, then! Break your trust! Empty his purse and betray him! Oh, yes. Do all of that. But not to Lionetto. Not to Lionetto, my friend.”

  Captain Lionetto had arrived. He stood, sword in hand, the third point of a triangle formed by himself and by Nicholas and by the glittering form of Jaak de Fleury. The merchant, one eye on Nicholas, stepped back a little, his sword disengaged. Nicholas watched Lionetto.

  But Lionetto’s eyes were on Jaak de Fleury. He said, “I didn’t believe it. Rumours, I said. But I thought I’d make sure, with all that new money I’d sent. The Pope’s money. The cash from all the booty. And there was your Milan agency closed. Your man Maffino absconded. No money. No money for Lionetto.” He smiled. His nose spread, glittering among the wholemeal crumbs of his skin. “So I asked about my money in Geneva. All my money. All the savings I’d lodged there. And what am I told? Gone as well. All gone. And why?”