Niccolo Rising

  And here was the entrance to the dyeworks Cornelis had been so proud of: well-swept, with no grass between the cobbles: good. The reek of warm dyes and the stench of urine. Smells which disturbed other people, but not her. And there in the yard (of course: why forego the chance of an hour off their labours?) stood her loyal employees to greet her.

  The dyers in their aprons, with their hands hanging like indigo pumpkins. The male house servants in neat coifs and caps and their summer cloth doublets, black at the cuffs with nose-wiping but with no unmended holes about them. And the women with decent gowns, and head-napkins carefully ironed and folded round under their chins. The grooms, without waiting, skipped to help with the horses.

  In the middle was her manager Henninc, in cuffed hat and sideless coat that reached to his calves at the back and his knees at the front because of his belly, which had not got any smaller. Because of her food or her wine, she was not sure which. But an honest man, Cornelis had always maintained. Plodding, with no head for figures, but honest.

  The need for a man with clerk’s training was what had led to the appointment of Julius. There he was. A sturdy stance, but one that avoided defiance. Or deference, if it came to that. Too handsome by half, Cornelis had grumbled at the hiring. Not from any distrust of herself: he knew better than that. But that blunt, heavy-boned face with its slanting eyes and nose so straight it might have been broken – that could cause trouble among burghers’ wives as well as the girls in the house and the market-place.

  But in fact, Meester Julius had given no trouble. Either his discretion was absolute, or the opposite sex had no part in his calculations. Nor, even more mercifully (it appeared), had the same sex. At the same time, he had been a fool with Felix.

  And there her son was, dashing out of the house with a stupid hat in his hand and his crimped curls bouncing. No less gaunt – was he wasting: what kept him so puny? No less boisterous. No less …

  Dismounted, she stopped him with her voice before he could reach her. “Felix de Charetty, return to the house. When I wish to speak to you, I will send for you.”

  Hurt eyes: the mutinous lip beginning to bulge. Then he lowered his gaze and said, “Yes, my lady mother,” and turning, walked with dignity back to the house. Good.

  Now her own daughters had dismounted and were standing behind her. Tilde and little Catherine, demure, obedient; shooting glances from under their hoods. Look at us. Grown women with husbands to find.

  “And Henninc,” said the widow. “You are well? Come to my office in five minutes.” She took her time. She ran her eye over all her workers, all her servants, and acknowledged their bobs and their curtseys before she brought her gaze round to her notary. “And the good master Julius. Can you spare me some time, a little later?”

  “Whenever you wish, lady,” he said. He inclined his head.

  “And your troublesome apprentice?” she said.

  Henninc said, “Claes is indoors, demoiselle. The magistrates wished him kept indoors until you arrived.”

  “No doubt,” said the widow de Charetty. “But there was no need to agree with them, surely? Unless of course the town intends to recompense me for the loss of his labours? Or was this your arrangement, Meester Julius?”

  He looked her straight in the eye. “I fear,” said the notary, “that the magistrates would accept no appeal. If I may, I shall explain when we speak.”

  “So you shall,” said Marian de Charetty. “And so shall the apprentice Claes.” And nodding, disengaged the clasp of her cloak and walked across to her door, her daughters following.

  Her steward, panting, reached it in time to set it open for her.

  Felix went up to the attic where Claes sat on his pallet, fiddling with a knife and a lot of wood shavings. Felix said, “Mother’s home. Henninc and Julius first.”

  “Warm or cold?” Claes said, tilting the box he was working on. Claes was always making toys, and other people broke them.

  “Freezing,” said Felix heartily. He was a little pale.

  “That’s a parade for the yard,” Claes said comfortably. He squinted along an angle and, taking his knife, niggled at something. “Tell the truth and don’t rely on Julius. He can’t cover up all the time, and Henninc will have to come out with it all anyway, to save his own skin.” He put his contraption on the floor and poked about till he found a small wooden ball.

  Felix said, “It’s all very well for you. You’re not her son and heir. The honour due to your father’s fair memory. Future of his beloved business. Goodwill of the clients and the respect of those who will one day work for you. (That’s you. Don’t laugh, damn it.) Lack of consideration for good notary Julius, doing his best in unhappy circumstances. Wasting Henninc’s time. Wasting the time of my tutors at Louvain. Besmirching the very reputation of Flanders in the eyes of the foreigner …”

  “Costing a lot of money,” said Claes. He dropped the ball gently into a socket, and inside the rough little box a number of trifling things started to happen, apparently of their own volition.

  Felix cast it a fraught glance. “It doesn’t play a tune,” he said disparagingly. “The last one had bells there, and a drumstick. She’d save money if she took me out of university.”

  “Well, you can’t have bells all the time. You’d have to work,” Claes observed.

  “I worked at university!” said Felix indignantly. When Claes didn’t look up or answer, Felix picked up the newly-made box and dropped it on the floor, glaring at him. Bits of wire and slivers of wood fell about everywhere.

  Claes looked up. Not with a hurt expression, or an angry one. Just obediently, thought Felix, furious. Claes was always making toys, and other people broke them.

  For the same reason that people beat him. He didn’t mind.

  Julius, downstairs, was having a worse time with his employer than he had anticipated. He had put himself into an untenable position, which made him resentful and angry. On the other hand, although young, he was intelligent, and he had had a lot of experience. One would not stay all one’s life with a pawnbroker and a dyeshop. But a dismissal would hardly advance him.

  He adopted therefore an attitude in which courtesy, firmness and regret were equally mingled. Standing (she had not asked him to sit) before the tall chair in which was seated Felix’s mother, Meester Julius explained the business of the Duke’s bath, and the injustice of the judgement. He went on to represent, a little vaguely, the commonplace nature of Claes’ peccadillo which, a little unfairly, had caused some rather merry gentlemen to chase him and take the joke too far. He thought it most unlikely that Claes had touched the gentleman’s dog, but of course, it could not be proved. And as for the manipulation of the waterhuus supply and its piping –”

  “He planned it with the rest, but my son was responsible for carrying it out. I had gathered as much,” said Marian de Charetty.

  He disliked working under women. When Cornelis suddenly died, he nearly left forthwith, and then thought better of it. She might well stay a widow. She was ten years at least older than he was. If he could put up with her, he would have more scope for his skills than ever Cornelis would have allowed him. And so, in a way, it had turned out. Except that it was only his notarial skills that she needed him for. In most other ways, her brain was quite as sharp as that of her late husband, and because she hadn’t had the same time to establish authority, she was both harder and tougher. This year she had pushed them all, at the Louvain end and the Bruges end, and she had gone too far with Felix.

  What was happening with Felix was a rebellion, caused by that, and the loss of his father, and fear of the approaching weight of the business. And come to that, it was probably true of himself. He was sorry for Felix and the other youngsters. He got tired himself, sometimes, of the long, solid hours of negotiation and ledger work and trying to drive Felix through alleyways of learning when all Felix was worried about was that he hadn’t yet managed a girl. Well, at least that was one problem that Claes didn’t have.

&nb
sp; Meester Julius gazed at his employer as, in the yard, she had gazed at him, and with thoughts that were, in the long run, not so different. Tall commanding women he could dislike in comfort. He disliked the widow of Charetty quite a lot too, but he could see that others might not. Marian de Charetty was small and round and active, with a stare that was none the less of the brightest blue, and vermilion dye in her veins, which made her lips naturally scarlet and her cheeks naturally rosy under short chestnut brows. He had never seen her hair, which was always rigidly covered, but he could imagine it.

  He thought it might not be good for her business, to be comely like that. No one in the workshop, naturally, would step out of place, but dealers and brokers might come to expect favours. His own manner he kept carefully formal. At the moment, his hands were clasped behind him, indeed, to help him subdue his fury and remain formal. He wished to God she were a man and they could simply bark at one another. Women either burst into tears or dismissed you.

  He answered her questions about the magistrates’ decision, the fines and the damages, and watched her write the sums down. At the end she looked up.

  “Well?” she said. “And how do you see your part in all this?”

  He looked at his feet, and then upwards frankly. “Insofar as Felix was in my care, I suppose mine is the ultimate blame,” said her notary. “You may think me unfit to guide him in future. You may also think that part of the responsibility for your losses should fall on me.”

  “All of them, surely?” said Marian de Charetty. “Or do you think my son should pay in some way as well? I leave out friend Claes, who has no money, and who must assuredly therefore find some other means to pay.”

  “He has paid,” said Julius quickly.

  “On the contrary,” said Marian de Charetty, “As I understand it, I paid to save him a second beating. I may even have to pay a second time, to satisfy this bloodthirsty Scotsman. Perhaps I should simply offer him Claes instead?”

  Claes was a boy apprentice. Claes had been with the Charetty family since he was ten, sleeping in the straw with the rest, and sitting round the apprentices’ table. Claes was her son’s shadow.

  Julius said, “I think the Scotsman would kill him.”

  The blue eyes opened. “Why?” said his employer.

  God in heaven. Carefully, Julius answered. “He is rumoured to be jealous, demoiselle.”

  “Of Claes?” she said.

  He thought she understood perfectly well. God damn it, she must: old Henninc would have told her all that, at least. Not the bits about Felix, but all the titbits about Claes, so that she would get rid of him. Julius supposed that she would. He said, “He’s a good worker, and trained. Other yards would pay to have him.”

  “I’m not concerned about Claes,” said the widow. “Nor am I greatly concerned about you. You have investments. If you wish to remain with me you will, I am afraid, have to liquidate some of them. If Felix goes back to Louvain, you will return with him, leaving in Felix’s hands and in mine an exact accounting of your personal finances. For any misdemeanour of Felix’s, your funds will suffer and I shall then force him – in time – to repay you. In other words, if you find yourself unable to build his character, then clearly I must. The only redeeming feature in this entire crass chronicle has been the regard you have shown to some degree for one another. Your regard for other people has, of course, been non-existent.” She viewed him critically. “And you find all this unfair? You wish to leave?”

  “It depends how much money you want,” he said bluntly. How did she know what he had?

  “Enough to teach you a lesson.”

  “I might teach Felix something you don’t want him to learn,” he said.

  She went on looking at him, brushing the side of her mouth slowly, back and forth, with the ruffled edge of her quill. Then she laid it down. She said, “You negotiate very patiently, on the whole. You can sustain an argument or an attitude. Then you lapse, like that. Why?”

  Because I don’t like working under a woman. He didn’t say it. He said, “I’m sorry, but it has all been rather a worry. I am not a rich man. As you know.”

  “And therefore,” she said, “if I am going to use you as a means of training my child, I am not likely to be so unreasonable that you can do nothing but leave. You must have thought of that.”

  He said, “I was surprised. I thought my private affairs private.”

  “In Flanders?” she said.

  He did not answer.

  She said, “We do not all finish our training at twenty, Meester Julius. None of us. What drives you to a childish escapade in a bath is what drives you to make an unwise remark in negotiation. That is the lesson you are paying for. You will thank me one day. I shall send you a note of my precise decisions by tomorrow. Meanwhile, you may send my son to me.”

  He hesitated, and bowed, and left, and after he had called Felix, he locked himself in his own room, and thought. He had still reached no conclusions when, some time later, he heard a door bang and realised he was listening to Felix emerging in turn from his interview.

  Julius unlocked his door and, dashing downstairs, was in time to catch his pupil, sullen, raging, red-eyed, and bear him off to a quiet spot to deal with. It came to him, in the middle of this, that he appeared to have reached a conclusion after all.

  One of the servants was sent for Claes, and they all watched as he thumped downstairs and knocked on his mistress’s door, and was admitted. They all lingered, but the door was thick and the mistress never raised her voice anyway. And old Henninc came along in any case and chased them away. One of the boys said the Widow had a whip with three thongs and wire on it, but they didn’t hear any whip sounds either.

  When Claes went in, Marian de Charetty was writing. She went on writing until he closed the door gently, and then looked up as he crossed the floor to her table. She said, “Turn round.”

  His open face smiled at her. He said, “There is no need, demoiselle. It’s healing well. Meester Julius cared for me. And the second time –”

  “He paid. I know. You’ll die, Claes. You’ll die before you are twenty unless you quieten down. The cannon, surely, was nothing to you?”

  “The cannon?” he said, astonished.

  “Or did someone pay you … No of course they didn’t.” She answered herself, staring at him, frowning. “You would arrange it to fall overboard simply for the pleasure of tricking somebody. Don’t you want to know how I guessed?”

  He stood, his hands hanging at his sides, perfectly composed. “I expect the Duke’s officers paid the fine for the demoiselle,” he said. “But of course, Meester Julius could not be told.”

  “Julius has already told me what a hard and valuable worker you are,” said his mistress. “Do you suppose the direction of your talents has escaped his attention?”

  He took her up wrongly. “Jonkheere Felix would still get into trouble, even if I weren’t with him. Young gentlemen do.”

  “Thank you for the news,” said his mistress. “I know, and Meester Julius knows, that when you are there, the mischief is usually harmless. What Felix does on his own is not so considerate. The waterhuus warden will be beaten and dismissed at the least. That I know you didn’t plan.”

  He was silent. Then he said, “Of course, the demoiselle is correct. Jonkheere Felix requires work, and away from the well-meaning elders who remember his father. The demoiselle is considering, then, that he might leave university?”

  She tented her fingers against her mouth. “I thought of that. But I felt Louvain was important.”

  There was a pause. Then he said, “The demoiselle would find, I think, that it has served its purpose.”

  Another pause. She said, “And if I were to send you to work with him?”

  She had learned, through the years, not to listen to what Claes said, but to watch his eyes. He said, “Jonkheere Felix is getting older. He might be better with the company of his own kind.”

  She went on studying him. “But he wou
ld not resent Meester Julius?” Then, reading his smile, “Or, I see, the reverse. Meester Julius might become restive under Felix. So I send my son away, and you and Julius stay and help me operate my business? Beginning with an achievement like yesterday’s?”

  “The brush with the Scotsmen?” he said.

  “The Scotsman,” she said sharply. “An act of deliberate malice. Of folly. Of madness. What have you to say?”

  “It was an accident,” he said. He was looking at his feet.

  “Like the cannon?” said Marian de Charetty. “Except that this time, it was personal. You saw this man at Damme. You took a dislike to him before you even knew who he was. You decided to hold him up to ridicule.”

  “Demoiselle,” said Claes. He had looked up. “I didn’t expect to be discovered. I was the one to be made ridiculous.” She said nothing, but simply stared at him until he spoke. He said, “People act according to their nature. I wondered then what he was made of.”

  “And now you know, of course, after one angry encounter. And as a result, there is damage to be redressed. My client is offended. Felix’s patrimony will suffer. All because of this accident.”

  Claes said, “My lord Simon is going home after the galleys. I’ll keep out of his way. I suppose he will now keep out of mine. Demoiselle, I have some news about alum.”

  She said, “You certainly will keep out of his way. I won’t have a feud while you’re under my roof. You don’t have the means to survive one. God knows you have the means to start one. Your trouble is the same as Felix’s. You need work.”

  He smiled. His palms, as he lifted them to her, were thickened with callouses.

  “What sort of a fool do you take me for?” she said. “I know that. In the eight years you have lived with this family your arms and legs at least have earned your keep. The pity is that none of the rest of you, it seems, is even born yet. What is to become of you?”

  He shook his head, smiling the brimming, affectionate smile he turned on all the world. “The Duke will hang me, perhaps?”