Caprice and Rondo (41 page)

‘He deposited it afterwards. There was a time,’ said Mistress Clémence, bursting open a chestnut, ‘when M. de Fleury hoped to send for his son, but then changed his mind. He knew, no doubt, his own failings too well. Now the money is being spent wholly to guard the child and his mother.’

‘Against what?’ Tobie had said. A pang shot through his jaw and he stopped chewing. She put out a palm and, astonished, he emptied his mouth obediently into it. She disposed of the sludge.

‘You eat too many sweet foods. You will end your days sucking up
gruel. M. de Fleury’s disaffected family, I understand, are still exiled in Portugal. It is probable, I suppose, that his present fears concern the rival firm, the Vatachino. The Lady worked for them, and has now transferred her allegiance to your Bank.’

It was possible. Since Nicholas’s disappearance, the Vatachino had been singularly quiet, even that member of it who had already tried and failed to kill him in Cyprus. Since he had had him expelled from that island, Nicholas might well consider David de Salmeton a serious source of danger to Gelis and Jodi as well as to himself. But when Tobie asked Mistress Clémence, she shook her head.

‘A gentleman of excessive good looks, charming although not very tall, and last heard of in royal favour in Cyprus? I have been given no instructions, nor have I seen such a person. But, of course, now I shall watch.’

She sounded remarkably placid. Gazing at her, Tobie was struck by enlightenment. He said, ‘Wait a moment. Does this mean you are in
communication
with Nicholas? Have you known all along where he was?’ He felt himself becoming indignant.

She had smiled. ‘He is too astute for that, don’t you think? No. I send my accounting through a third person, and any reply, if it is needed, returns in the same way. He knows at least they are safe.’

It reminded him of something Gelis had said, in reply to an incautious comment of his. ‘No. He is not divining. He has not tried to divine since he left.’ And had added curtly, when Tobie was silent, ‘When he does, I can feel it.’

If you believed that, then now it made sense. Tobie said to the nurse, ‘So he doesn’t need to divine. You tell him everything.’

And Mistress Clémence, like Gelis, had treated him with impatience. ‘And you are a doctor? I assure him, in not more than a sentence, of the health of his wife and his child. I say nothing more, nor does he ask. You do not heal a wound by tearing it open.’

Later, back at the Bank, Tobie had drunk soup for his supper and closeted himself, for a brief spell, with Gregorio. He had not given Clémence away, but satisfied himself that, whatever Nicholas had feared, the Vatachino were in abeyance, and David de Salmeton was no longer their man and had quite disappeared. He mentioned to Clémence that Nicholas was wasting his money, in case she wished to pass on the advice.

That had been in the middle of winter. From what he could gather, the position today was the same. The muscular groom was still here, and the nimbly watchful manservant, but their special skills had not been required. He had refrained from mentioning it to Clémence again. Only, discussing foreign trends with Gregorio quite recently, Tobie had asked the source of his news from the Germanies, which seemed suddenly to
have become much more explicit. And Gregorio had explained that much of this sprang from the friendly offices of Julius, although the best reports might arrive unsolicited, from nameless merchants hoping one day to change masters. Gelis was an expert with these.

Well, thought Tobie, sitting now in Mistress Clémence’s parlour, there would be no more reports for a while from Julius. And perhaps, unless his guess was quite wrong, none from any other guiltily anonymous source, surprisingly au fait with Prussian matters. He remarked, ‘It is true, apparently, that Nicholas was paid to go to Tabriz. It can hardly have influenced him, with the wealth he already has. He has gone because of the woman.’

‘Perhaps,’ the nurse said. She was sewing. Since her under-maid Pasque had returned to their homeland in France, Clémence had performed most of the small tasks herself. She said, ‘Have you ever spoken to M. Govaerts about the realisation of the investments in Scotland?’

Sometimes, Mistress Clémence seemed to know a great deal too much. Tobie said, ‘No. Why?’

‘It is probably not worth your while. But it involved, I am told, a number of tedious and convoluted transactions. I would not have mentioned it, except that the indications are that M. de Fleury has no money at all, apart from the sum set aside for his family’s protection.’

‘The letter said nothing of that,’ Tobie said. He paused. ‘I would need to speak to Kathi herself.’ He paused again. The nurse knotted her thread and bit off the end. She had a fine set of teeth. Tobie said, ‘There was something else in the letter.’

Mistress Clémence sat up. She said, ‘If you wish to know where I stand, I am unwilling, as yet, to form a judgement. The lady of Berecrofts may be correct, and your friend must be left to repair his own character. In such cases, it is wise to appoint a sympathetic observer, and the Gräfin may prove to be such. Monseigneur’s own intentions, of course, may be less responsible. What does the young lady suggest?’

Tobie was silent. Every line of Kathi’s letter had been an implicit appeal to Gelis to take back her husband. What else she had written he was not as yet free to quote. Tobie said, ‘She understands that Gelis must decide for herself. I understand that whatever remorse Nicholas may feel, it need not prevent him from going out and committing the same crimes again. I don’t want to know whether he tried to kill Julius deliberately.’

‘Yes. I comprehend. I think,’ said Mistress Clémence, folding up her sewing and rising, ‘that neither of us can know what to do until you have consulted with the Lady. I shall wait, and follow your direction.’

‘You will?’ Tobie said, with marked incredulity.

‘Within limits,’ Mistress Clémence agreed.

Chapter 14

T
HAT
WAS
IN
the third week in July. Before the next week had ended, couriers recently tumbled over the Alps were racing to Rome, to Florence, to Venice, relaying their news from the Burgundian frontier at Luxembourg. The war simmering ever since the fiasco at Trèves was about to break out between Duke Charles and the Emperor Frederick. And the precise trigger was a dispute between the two princes over Cologne. A Burgundian herald, arriving in Venice, petitioned the Doge and the Senate to permit the Duke to hire the services of the great condottiere Colleoni, a request which was refused. In the Ca’ Niccolò, Gregorio and his partners called an internal meeting which lasted all day.

In Cologne, heart of the quarrel, lay the tenantless business of Julius. In Flanders, working the last of their official contract, lay the mercenary army of the Banco di Niccolò, as yet without new direction. They talked all day, and in the end, were reduced to silence by the unanswerable arguments of Gelis.

‘I have practised with Julius in Cologne. I have worked with Diniz in Bruges, and seen how the army is managed. I have heard my husband’s schemes and hopes for the company. Let me go to the Flemish Bank, and help them devise what to do for the soldiers and Julius. We may be separate concerns, but we all need to support each other now.’

They agreed, in the end. The orders were given that would transfer her household, her staff and her child north-west to Flanders, and turn her face from her husband, not towards him. When the meeting was over, she asked Tobie to come to her room.

‘Will you come to Bruges? Or will you stay?’

She knew what she was asking. This time, he had not been idle in Venice: his uncle’s printing-presses were almost ready, and so were the experiments, so long delayed, that he intended to publish. He thought that, on the whole, he would not mind leaving them for a while, to see
Moriz again, and Diniz and John. He had another reason as well, which he thought he shared with the lady of Beltrees, although he approached the subject with caution.

‘The letter from Katelijne.’

‘Yes?’ He was the only one, apart from herself, who had read it through. Her tone indicated that he was not to presume on it.

Tobie said, ‘Are you going to the Bosco del Montello before you leave Venice? She said the vicomte de Fleury was there. Adorne’s son had seen him, and told Julius.’

‘I haven’t forgotten,’ she said. ‘But he is Nicholas’s grandfather, not mine.’

He persevered, as carefully as he knew how. ‘Jodi has no one else.’

‘I hardly think,’ Gelis said, ‘that a speechless, paralysed old man could do anything other than terrify Jodi, or be terrified himself, for that matter, if someone saw fit to badger him about his dead daughter, poor man. It has occurred to you that the truth about Nicholas’s birth may be very nasty indeed?’ She looked at him, with an exasperation that was not wholly unkind. ‘Unless you’ve decided, with Kathi and Anna, that we should all forgive him, and take steps to fabricate his birthright? Have
you
found it possible to overlook what Nicholas did?’

‘No one could,’ Tobie said. ‘The theory is that a good woman might redeem him.’

‘I am afraid,’ Gelis said, ‘that I don’t know any such.’ She waited. ‘But Clémence thinks otherwise?’

‘I haven’t discussed it with her,’ said Tobie. ‘I speak as a doctor. I dislike the idea of an old man dying neglected because his grandson has gone. According to Kathi, Nicholas supported him.’

‘So why should he have stopped? Arrangements are easy to make, and Nicholas is hardly in want.’

‘I hear otherwise,’ Tobie said. ‘I think someone should make sure the money is there.’

‘You hear otherwise? From whom?’ Gelis said. When he didn’t reply, her tone softened. ‘Tobie, he may have lost his income, but somewhere, Nicholas must have salted away all his past profits. By now it will be ten times as much as I’ve given the Bank. Wherever he is, Nicholas is rich.’

‘You may be right,’ Tobie said. ‘It doesn’t matter. But you wouldn’t mind if I went to see the old man and made sure? I would pay his dues myself. You have done more than enough.’

‘I should mind very much,’ Gelis said. ‘If anyone goes, then I do. If anyone pays, then it is someone of Jodi’s blood. If anyone hears the truth, then —’

She broke off, perhaps before the look on his face. Tobie said, ‘I know the truth about his other son, and I don’t remember anyone doubting
my discretion. But if you don’t want me to go, then I shan’t.’ He hadn’t meant to insult her. He felt as she did about Nicholas: thinking about him revived all the nausea. Neither he nor Gelis, as yet, had attained even the limited tolerance of Kathi and Anna. Tobie felt responsible for the old man, that was all. He had even considered telling Gelis what he knew about the vicomte and his brother and Nicholas, but had decided against it. If Thibault de Fleury proved to be dying, or dead, there was no reason for her ever to know.

Something of his humane purpose must have come to her. He saw her swallow. Gelis said, ‘I’m sorry. Go to Montello, of course, if you want. Write to Nicholas, if you wish, when you have been. Or go and join Nicholas.’ Her eyes were bright, and her fists folded tight in her lap.

Tobie said, ‘I thought I was part of your household. If you want me, I’m with you.’ He considered her, sharing her trouble, as he had shared the long, dreary pilgrimage which had begun with the disaster at Trèves and had ended here in Venice. On that journey, he had not mentioned her husband to Gelis, for he knew he could not fully comprehend what she felt. For himself, all he would allow was that the focus of a consuming interest had gone; a source of fascination and study that had begun fifteen years ago, at an unsavoury turning point in his own life. Gelis had been a child then.

Her partnership with Nicholas, when it came, had been a physical one so intense that its reverberations were evident still, underscoring, undermining all they both did. Perhaps Nicholas would succeed in securing something to match it, but Tobie suspected that Gelis would not. With the loss of Nicholas, Gelis was left with an intellectual life, nothing else. And unlike Kathi, she was not made to support it … Kathi, to whom Tobie had been and was doctor, consultant, but also devoted companion and friend.

He had no similar bond with Gelis. He felt pity for her, and admiration and even occasionally lust. But he did not understand her, or she would not allow him the means. And he knew she had never tried to understand him. He simply applied, therefore, his general experience of humankind, and acted accordingly.

Tobie said, ‘I still think someone should go to the monastery. It would only be a day’s journey there, and another day back. Would you come with me?’

She frowned, but her hands had loosened a little. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Tell me later,’ he said. ‘I expect Jodi is waiting for you just now.’

G
ELIS
REACHED
HER
DECISION
that night. Two days later, in the cool of the dawn, she and Tobias Beventini left Venice together, with two servants
and four men-at-arms, and took the road that led north, towards the looming range of the Venetian Alps with, behind them, the peaks of the Dolomites. By the time the sun was high, its heat beating down on their straw hats and dust-covered cloaks, they had reached the ancient provincial capital of Treviso, with its frescoed houses, and its cathedral, and its brick church dedicated to San Niccolò. Here, as in every trading town, the Bank had clients and correspondents but today, by mutual consent, the Lady and the doctor avoided them. Instead, they passed the midday hours resting in the shady garden of a small tavern, with the waters of the little Sile running at its foot, and the scent of flowers mixed with the dung of the stables. They were given pork in jelly, and curds, and sipped wine, and let the time pass in silence. The heat dwindled. Tobie said, ‘They tell me the road gets steeper from now on. The place is on a hill?’

‘On one of a little group of low hills, covered with trees. Oak. The Bosco del Montello, owned of course by Venice: we are still in the Veneto. The Carthusians are supposed to pursue lives of silence and simplicity in the wilderness, and this was presumably the nearest that this lot could get. It’s about as wild, I suppose, as the Cartusia outside Perth.’