The Gräfin Anna came to see Julius leave, and he bent and saluted her hand from the saddle. His face was flushed. She touched his knee, and then walked over to Nicholas. ‘You are well?’
‘Yes,’ he said. He smiled as he usually did.
‘Good. I didn’t wish to trouble you this time with business, but that is why I am here,’ said the Gräfin. ‘I do not like to see the brilliant guardian of my investments risking his life for no reason, so I shall express the hope, if Gelis allows, that you return safe, and return often. I admire what you are trying to do for the boy.’
‘Don’t,’ said Nicholas. ‘He won’t thank me.’ Moving off, he didn’t look round, but felt, he thought, the remarkable eyes following Julius, or himself, or both, all the way up the street to the White Bear. At the junction he turned, but the only eyes following him were those of his wife.
Chapter 34
ON THURSDAY THE fourth of June, the day of the fracas at Veere, the Duke of Burgundy launched his army into the field under the black and purple legend VENGEANCE! VENGEANCE! By the time Nicholas de Fleury reached Arras on the ninth day of June, the Duke had advanced thirty miles to the castle he still possessed at Péronne, situated on the river Somme between the French-manned towns of Amiens and St Quentin. From that highly provocative spot he crossed the swampy frontier of the river into enemy land and marched south, burning hamlets and crops as he went. On Thursday the eleventh, when Nicholas reached him, the Duke had taken up quarters on his way to the well-garrisoned French town of Roye, and was awaiting news of a foray by his van.
His main army was still camped around him. Before reporting, Nicholas went and found Captain Astorre, who was playing dice outside his tent. Astorre said, ‘Merde, you took your time. Master Julius!’
‘I wanted to know what you were spending all that money on,’ Julius said. ‘Now I see. Can you put up with me for a week or two?’
‘If you say so. I’m short of a notary. Well, boy! But I have to tell you that you won’t find many banquets or princesses here. Nor much fighting maybe, not in this war. And who’s this? That’s not the son of the merchant?’
‘No,’ Nicholas said. ‘That’s the pig-sticker in the poke. This is a somewhat saddle-sore Henry, come with reluctance to serve under you and me and anyone, really, who wants something tedious done for them. He may be apt to wander off, so I want him looked after by two willing men who, for a consideration, will not let themselves be bribed, stabbed, shot, seduced or led to believe that on any excuse whatever, this boy may leave camp.’
‘Annoyed you, has he? Can he ride? You couldn’t ride,’ Astorre said. ‘You couldn’t shoot, either.’ The faces round the dice-board were grinning. Astorre could get his own back sometimes.
‘I was only pretending,’ said Nicholas agreeably. ‘You’re lucky this time, he can do both. But that’s all he can do. He thinks rough work beneath him.’
‘Oho!’ said Astorre.
‘It is beneath me,’ said Henry.
There was a chorus of good-humoured groans; the boy’s eyes flashed. They were sapphire-blue, and his hair was like corn. The face beneath it was rather less swollen than heretofore. Nicholas said, ‘And that had better be the only thing that’s beneath him, or on top. Do you hear me?’
‘He’s yours?’ said Astorre with perfect understanding.
Nicholas laughed. It took an effort to avoid the boy’s eye, but he caught the edge of Julius’s amusement. He said, ‘Yes, he’s mine.’
Later, coming back from the Duke’s room, he walked round the camp greeting everyone, and then held a company council of war in Astorre’s tent, with John le Grant and Julius and Astorre’s deputy Thomas. He deferred, as always, to Astorre and noted that, in his turn, Astorre deferred to the master gunner. He had already confirmed that his hundred lances were trimly provided for, and in excellent heart. As for the rest, Astorre was the leader, the executive. Nicholas was not here to captain a company, but to join the band of policy-makers, the councillors of the Duke.
Astorre’s view of what was happening was accurate. The Duke had put into the field about five thousand men: enough, if all went well, to frighten Louis into surrendering the Somme towns; enough to fight with if necessary. With the help of Brittany and a vast English army, it might even have been enough to topple Louis from the French throne; but Edward of England was not sufficiently sure of his good-brother of Burgundy to send his soldiers to help him just yet. A little injection of archers to Brittany was about the right response. Aunty’s wool.
So far, the Duke’s strategy appeared reasonable. The leaders were keeping the main body of troops well together, to guard their heels against harrying parties from St Quentin and Amiens. They had sent a small squadron nine miles to the east, to invite the little town of Nesle to surrender. It held no mighty force, only a company of five hundred franc-archers from the Isle de France, come to do their tour, tax deductible. There had been no need for John’s guns and, so far, no proper fighting.
‘I told you,’ said Astorre. ‘And they won’t find much resistance in Nesle. Le Petit Picard will go by the book. We’ll have more fun at Roye. Fifteen hundred middling archers but some men-at-arms who might know their business.’
‘Listen to him,’ John said. ‘He still wishes he were fighting the Germans or the Swiss or the Lorrainers.’
‘The French aren’t bad,’ Astorre said. ‘But their crack troops are all going to the Brittany border. We might never get near them.’
John staged a yawn. A captain’s reputation grew with the quality of his enemies. It was one reason why Nicholas had never tried to tempt him to Scotland. To suit Astorre, a place had to be a notorious cockpit as well as a wealthy state or duchy or kingdom. Astorre had been happy in Cyprus.
Nicholas allowed Astorre the five minutes he deserved for his prejudices, and then proceeded to do what he had come for, which was to receive the reports of his officers and confirm that the company continued to be well run, well provisioned and in a fit state to perform, when called upon, the duties for which Burgundy was lavishly paying them. He also heard such complaints as there were – far fewer, now that the fighting season had opened. He also noticed, as always, the sharpening caused by John’s presence. The company was proud of its artillery, but wanted no one to forget the soldier’s traditional skills with the sword and the bow.
He thought, walking round afterwards, that Astorre’s men were pleased to welcome their owner, and to show others that, by coming with them, he valued their campaign. Most of them he could put names to at once: some from their weeks together outside Hesdin, some from long acquaintance dating back to the Italian wars, and Rhodes and Cyprus and Trebizond; even to when he had just been an apprentice called Claes. He showed that he remembered, without singling them out in particular, and they treated him with the mixture of camaraderie and respect which had long been the norm. Then he left them and went with Astorre to visit the other commanders. He was there when they were all summoned, without explanation, to the Duke.
When he returned to Astorre, the rumours were already spreading, and Julius and John and Thomas were all there awaiting him, while the soldiers sat round their cooking-pots in the dusk, watching their faces. Nicholas said, ‘Come into the tent. Then you can go out and tell them.’
It was news, you might say, of a victory. There were other overtones, as reported back from the vanguard at Nesle, but the gist of it was that Nesle would give no further trouble, and the squadron would shortly rejoin the main body, prepared to march forward.
It became clear, in an indistinct sort of way, that the garrison at Nesle would give no further trouble because they had all been murdered or hanged or had been permitted to leave provided their hands were chopped off. The fault, it finally emerged, was that of the townspeople, who had killed the herald sent to bid them surrender, and then had unchivalrously dispatched two more of the besiegers during an equally sacrosanct truce. The Duke of Burgundy’s vanguard, retrieving their dead, had announced that M
adame de Nesle might leave if she pleased, with her servants and moveables, after which the garrison would be put to the sword. She had left, and it was.
‘No need for that,’ Astorre said. ‘My God, were they bloody Albanians?’
‘They broke the truce twice,’ Julius said. ‘War is war.’
‘Astorre means,’ Nicholas said, ‘that you should make friends as well as make war, so that when you eventually take over the land, the natives are nice to you. They are not going to be nice to us.’
‘Or Duke Charles,’ said Astorre gloomily. ‘So wait till the news gets to Roye. They’ll fight to the death, mark my words.’
‘Or surrender,’ Nicholas said, ‘to keep their hand in, as it were. Towns may fall flat from now on.’
‘Will you wager?’ said Astorre.
‘No. Well, small towns, perhaps. The Duke is in a state of entrancement, and planning to curvet into Nesle over the bodies tomorrow. But I don’t think the Duke will encourage anyone to do it again. Not if he can stop them, that is.’
Three days later, they set off for Roye. Before they left, Astorre took his employer into a corner. ‘That young fellow Henry.’
‘Yes?’
‘Oh yes. Don’t take that tone with me. That limb of Satan is the son of your friend Simon de St Pol of Kilmirren. You didn’t tell me.’
‘You didn’t ask.’
The single eye glittered, manfully keeping its temper. ‘Julius tells me that boy tried to kill your young Jordan. Julius tells me he stabbed you in Scotland. Julius suggests this is a boy who would benefit from first-class battle experience in the forefront of all our best actions. I thought I’d mention it.’
‘Julius is mistaken,’ Nicholas said. ‘And when I want you to do something, I shall tell you myself. I brought Henry here to be taught, but not in battle. You trained me. I still have the marks of it, damn you. Train him.’
Astorre grinned. ‘Doesn’t do to play favourites. I let you take what was coming, and you managed. But you were one of the lads, and when they finished kicking you about, they accepted you. This one thinks he’s a lord.’
‘So it may not work. But it’s worth trying,’ Nicholas said.
‘Is it?’ Astorre said. ‘If he can’t change, he’ll go back the same murderous brat. Worse than before, to blot out the failure. I’ve seen his face, looking at you and the rest of us. You want to watch your back with that one.’
‘That’s why he’s got his two handlers. Let them provide themselves with a good barkable dog, and lie at night with their sheep. They do the watching.’
‘I’ve told them. I’ve told them, too, to look out for the father. Sure as death, Simon will come when he hears.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Nicholas diplomatically. In his view, Simon would not be allowed to come when he heard. Nicholas knew who would come.
Determined as an irascible wasp, Louis of France completed the ordering of his dead brother’s fief and, riding north, proceeded to conduct two wars at once single-handed. Before he had even left for the Loire, he had ordered guns and men to be sent off to Angers. From Selles, he castigated the Clerk of the Treasury of War for failing to supply pay for the army in Picardy; from Montreuil-Bellay he sent the missives that dispatched the Grand Master of the Household to join the Constable against the Burgundians. When the news reached him of the massacre at Nesle, he was roused to a state of high fury, only surpassed the following day, when he heard that Roye had surrendered, and the Burgundians were advancing on Montdidier. In the King’s opinion, the Constable should be making no effort to hold minor forts such as these, but instead should be allowing the Burgundians to take and wastefully man them.
By the sixteenth of June, Roye had surrendered; by the twenty-fifth, the Duke of Burgundy was entrenched outside Montdidier which, far from resisting, very properly flung its gates open and was duly garrisoned by the Duke’s soldiers. Louis, learning of it, was highly gratified.
The next news was far more important. The Duke, apparently about to turn north into Normandy, had allowed one of his rasher captains to make an attempt on Beauvais which, half succeeding, had caused the Duke to bring his whole force across to support him. As from Saturday the twenty-seventh of June, the town had been invested by the Burgundians.
‘Well?’ had said Louis, pacing back and forth on his horseman’s legs. Beauvais was not Nesle or Montdidier. Beauvais, only forty-eight miles from Paris, meeting-point between Paris, Flanders and Normandy, was important. ‘Is this our bad luck, or the chance that we have been waiting for? Can it hold out? Can we increase the garrison sufficiently to persuade the Burgundian army to entertain us to a long siege?’
‘Sire,’ said the messenger. ‘Provided the walls withstand the initial attack, there are reinforcements on the way such as will cause the Duke more damage than he ever thought possible.’
His commanders, when summoned, agreed. The Noyon garrison was already detailed to strengthen the city until the Grand Master should arrive with his army; this force would be followed immediately by M. Gaston du Lyon and two other lords with their troops, and another body of two hundred lances. The Provost of Paris had undertaken to send his commanders, and wagon-trains of food and munitions would be readied in Paris and Rouen. Beauvais would resist its besiegers.
‘If the walls stand,’ the King said. ‘You say that the Duke has brought up his full battery of artillery.’
‘Sire,’ said his adviser. ‘The walls are thick, and the spirit of the people is high.’
‘I am sure it is,’ said the King. ‘But the Duke’s cannon are famous, and he has a master of ordnance better even than d’Orson, I hear. So should one not take such steps as one can?’
‘Undoubtedly, monseigneur,’ said the adviser.
‘Undoubtedly. You will send therefore,’ said Louis, ‘and bring me the vicomte de Ribérac’
In Italy that same June, the Count of Urbino’s siege of the town of Volterra came to an end with a reasonable capitulation. By its terms, the Medici protected their local interest in alum, and the Volterrans (or most of them) gave up to Florence their semi-autonomy, on the promise that their possessions and property would be safeguarded.
There was a little delay, during which those Volterrans who still had misgivings gave voice to them. During this space the mercenaries within Volterra’s own walls, growing impatient, threw over their contracts and set out on a methodical if drunken looting of the city which paid them. Not to be outdone, the unpaid mercenaries of the Milanese army outside entered the town and made sure of their share. Very soon after, the rest of the Florentine army, defying its leaders, rushed into the town and completed its sacking.
On the eighteenth of June, the third day after the surrender, Federigo da Montefeltro, Count of Urbino, one of the great commanders of his age, finally reduced his unruly army to order. But for Volterra, it was too late.
Tobias Beventini, the doctor who had accompanied the Count through so many of his campaigns, did not take part, with the Count, in the three days of festivities in Florence, during which lands, houses and vases of bullion were presented to the conqueror, together with a silver helmet studded with jewels and bearing the crest of Hercules trampling on a griffin, the device of Volterra. He waited until it was over and then went to the Count and, with sorrow, resigned his commission. Then he packed, and took horse for Venice, and those friends who would welcome him.
Arriving at the Banco di Niccolò, he found – as he had expected to find – a thriving business, a group of old friends, and a new one – the child, now seven months old, born to Gregorio and Margot his wife. Tobias Beventini was just over forty, unmarried (although not necessarily celibate), pink, bald, and short-tempered, but he liked children. The boy, whom he took at once on his knee, had inherited the scythe nose of his father but also much of his mother’s good looks, and for a long time they spoke of nothing else. Gregorio knew about Volterra and, decent man that he was, had made sure that it need not be talked of, until Tobie was ready.
He was not ready yet. There were plenty of other questions to discuss. In the sixteen months since he left – since Nicholas vanished from Venice, that dark Carnival night – an astonishing amount seemed to have happened. Supping at the crowded company table he received a barrage of information and gossip of the spicy kind he had missed more than he knew. He heard about Julius.
‘A gräfin?’ Tobie exclaimed. ‘What does she see in him?’
‘A handsome man,’ had said Margot, laughing.
‘And someone who, without charge, will help her increase and manage her money.’ Gregorio’s view was more prosaic.
‘But they are not considering marriage?’ Tobie enquired.
Margot looked at her husband and smiled. ‘Julius would marry tomorrow. But the Gräfin, after all, could choose whom she pleases, with her fortune and her rank and her looks. Nevertheless, perhaps love will prevail.’
Then it was late at night, and Tobie and Gregorio and Margot were sitting alone, and Tobie gazed into his cup and said, ‘Tell me about him.’ He didn’t have to say whom he meant.
Gregorio looked at his wife. He said, ‘Nicholas writes; but everything we know is second-hand. We were wrong in our fears. He lives with his wife and his child, and has gone out of his way to have her accepted. His work in Scotland has been prodigious, and she has partnered him. The torrential energy is the same: he knows all that the Bank is doing, and since he came back has never stopped organising, except during the few weeks he was in Iceland and for a little while after. They all needed time to recover.’
To diagnose, one listens and watches. Tobie repeated, ‘All? Who?’
Margot didn’t look up. Gregorio said, ‘John was with him, and Moriz. And Robin, the son of a Scots merchant, who went as his page. And Katelijne Sersanders.’
‘Kathi!’ he said. His nose tickled. He sneezed.