To Lie with Lions (78 page)

‘Speak for yourself,’ Astorre growled.

‘I always do,’ Nicholas said.

Shortly after, in Antwerp, direct communication with Nicholas ceased, and incoming dispatches were confined to the news from Astorre. The padrone had left, it was said, on a short trip, during which couriers would not be available to him. The sieur de Fleury had begun an entirely fresh poem, which he hoped Mistress Clémence would help to continue. He also sent a new tune for the whistle. The Lady was much on edge.

In Bruges, the doctor Tobias Beventini of Grado called to express his condolences at the home of Anselm Adorne, and found himself instead in the company of Kathi, Adorne’s niece, and the youthful person of Robin, the unexpected new merchant apprentice – now page, so the tale went, to Nicholas.

Adorne was out, and Robin was visiting, and Kathi was delighted to see the physician and friend of her travels.

Of this last, there was no doubt at all: her elvish face was
incandescent as she flew to embrace him. ‘Dr Tobie! I heard you had come! We need you so badly!’

She was too thin, she was a sprite. Nevertheless, there was no possibility that that statement referred to herself; any more than it could be relevant to the stalwart young Robin. Tobie said, ‘The lord of Cortachy? I was so sorry to hear of his lady. How is he taking it?’

Only when she coloured did he realise his mistake. He said, ‘Oh dear. Our other mutual friend?’

He saw the boy look at the young woman. Kathi said, ‘It must seem very strange. But Uncle Anselm has many friends, and has always led a well-ordered life. And Nicholas is alone.’

Nicholas. Tobie said, ‘He has friends. And a wife. And a son.’ He did not add,
And two sons
. He felt aggrieved.

Kathi said, ‘I haven’t even asked how you are. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. But we were talking of Iceland. My brother has gone, and I have to go back to Scotland next week. And Nicholas is so
stupid.’

‘That he is not,’ said the boy. He was smiling.

‘You are both right, of course,’ Tobie said. ‘He is a clever man with a defective grasp of reality. Such people sometimes cannot be helped, and do no harm except to themselves. You have your own lives to lead.’

He had forgotten her bright hazel eyes. She said, ‘We are leading them. It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t help someone else where we can. Would you come to Scotland? We shall all be there this winter. You would like Robin’s father. And there will be no fighting at all.’

‘You heard what happened,’ he said.

Surprisingly, it was the boy who answered him soberly. He said, ‘Yes. We heard of Volterra.’

Tobie stayed a long time. He gave them his news, then listened, in silence, to the true account of what had happened in Iceland, followed by something no one else had mentioned at all, to do with a Miracle Play. When he left, in the end, they asked for no promises and he gave none. He had not called to see Gelis or the child, and did not propose to go, without Nicholas.

He had barely returned to the Bank when the courier came, riding post-haste from Florence. He carried a letter from the Count of Urbino summoning Dr Tobias to the sickbed of his wife, mother of that ninth miraculous child and first son. Battista had been seized with illness in Gubbio, and the Count was leaving Florence to race to her side.

The message was several weeks old. It had been pursuing him since the last day in June. And before he had decided what to do, a second courier had come, exhausted, in the wake of the first, with
another message. The lady Battista was dead. The Count begged his friend to return.

Dr Tobias Beventini, standing alone in his room, considered two men, and his feelings and duty towards them. The choice, in the end, was not hard to make; and was based, not illogically, on something he had been told about a Miracle Play.

Chapter 36

T
HE CHÂTEAU OF
Saumur crowned the left bank of the Loire like a wheatsheaf in marble. In place of the mighty cylinders of Angers, its towers were slender and tall, with lacy battlements and crowded blue turrets. The golden spires with their fleurs-de-lys finials lay reflected in the sliding blue water, only disturbed by the ruffling of oars. Despite the safe conduct, the last part of the sieur de Fleury’s long journey from Beauvais had been completed under compulsory escort; the King of France wished no unsupervised Burgundians travelling his realm. The presence of Julius was tolerated.

Their horses sailed with them. Presently, disembarked in the flowery heat, they were led to the tall landward port which they entered over a drawbridge. They were expected by now. The captain of the castle was pleased to greet them, and have them shown to a chamber. It was understood that they wished to interview the lord Cardinal Bessarion, at present in delicate health after his arduous travels. This would be permitted. Thereafter, they would require to await the Most Christian King’s pleasure. Roi monseigneur was not at Saumur.

The castle was shady and cool, and at first even Julius succumbed to the need for repose. Afterwards, he was avid to explore his surroundings; price the furniture, the woodwork, the marble, the windows; walk through the gardens; inspect the stables; accept the captain’s offer to arrange a small hunting-trip or a little falconry, or a swim in the clear sandy water. Even the ladies swam, on a hot August evening.

It was a change from Beauvais.

Sometimes Nicholas went with him; sometimes not. Since he was nineteen, Nicholas had been handling Julius. The inquisition had occupied all the earlier days of their trip, and Nicholas had dilated obediently on all the subjects Julius had raised, except those to do
with personal relationships, when he became first obtuse and then mildly deaf.

The rest of the time was more enjoyable, filled with the kind of chatter and hilarity natural to a meeting of two men who had known each other in one case from childhood. It was well over twenty years since Julius had met the boy Nicholas in the bullying household in Geneva of his great-uncle Jaak de Fleury; and since then he had twice saved his life. They talked of Tasse, now dead, who had been kind to them both; and of Tilde and Catherine, whom Julius still couldn’t take seriously. He asked, as only Julius could, what Gelis made of her husband’s first marriage to Marian de Charetty, which was, after all, the start of his fortune and so not to be sneezed at.

‘I don’t know. We never speak of it. Are you going to marry your Anna?’ Nicholas asked.

Julius had blushed: a remarkable sight. He said, ‘If I do, it won’t be for her money.’

‘I’ve met her. I believe you,’ said Nicholas. ‘How did you find her? She’s beautiful.’

‘She found me,’ Julius said. ‘Through the Hanse merchants in Cologne. She had all this property from Wenzel, her husband, and wanted to realise it all and invest it. She applied to several others, but we offered the best proposition.’

‘How much did that lose us?’ said Nicholas amiably.

The flush had become even deeper. ‘Nothing. We made a profit. You can see the books if you like. Gelis was there at the time. She’d remember.’

‘Calm! Calm!’ Nicholas had said. ‘I’ve seen the books. I was joking. I shouldn’t blame you if she owned all the
Fleury
instead of half of it. So are you going to ask her to marry you?’

Julius, unusually for him, had been silent. Then Nicholas had said, ‘You want to, I’m sure. So why not? You’re afraid she’ll refuse you?’

Julius had said, ‘I have nothing. I don’t know who my parents were.’

‘That may be, but you are far from having nothing. And beautiful as she is, she hasn’t married anyone else, or even spent time with anyone else from what you tell me. Would you like me to plead for you? I can give you a fairly good character.’

He didn’t think Julius would take him seriously, and he didn’t. He said, ‘If anything would ruin it, that would. I have to wait. I must be sure. With someone like that, you only get one chance.’

‘Well, don’t wait too long or I’ll catch her for Jordan,’ Nicholas said. And after that, he let the talk lapse in favour of more interesting things, of the kind that had earned them a reputation in Bruges when
he was an apprentice and Julius was supposed to be governing him. Stupid pranks, on the knife-edge of criminality and dangerous in the extreme, which remained enjoyable even when muted, out of respect for their whereabouts and their age. Then their escort made its appearance, and they had to behave.

The summons to Cardinal Bessarion came on the third day. When Nicholas saw him, his face grey, his long beard spread over the sheets in the darkened chamber of state, it reduced him to silence.

Dying, the Greek who had laboured to bring together the Latin and Orthodox churches had been given an impossible task: to induce Louis of France to conduct the ecclesiastical affairs of his country according to the Pope’s wishes; to reconcile France and Brittany and Burgundy, and induce them to turn their minds and resources to stemming the Grand Sultan’s advance to the west.

Bessarion would not succeed. Whether presently frustrated or victorious in France, the Duke of Burgundy’s mind was not on the East, but on freeing himself from his overlords, and on increasing his power and his lands in France and in Germany. Charles wanted nothing less than to be a king, or an emperor.

In Venice last year, Nicholas had cast his support and that of his Bank behind this ambition of Charles, and had given nothing to the present Crusade beyond a few elderly ships and some armaments. Julius, once the Cardinal’s secretary in Bologna, had abetted him. Now they received, as might be expected, the Cardinal’s measured rebuke. Without wealth, without title, without ambition, Nicholas de Fleury had stood against the Muslim in Cyprus and Trebizond; he had listened to Godscalc, his saintly confessor, and aided his attempt to reach Christian Ethiopia. Why now, laden with honours, had he turned his back on his glorious destiny?

Julius mumbled. It was difficult, one perceived, to avoid mentioning that all these exploits had come about merely because Nicholas was in the way of making some money. Nicholas himself replied clearly, with deference. His duty at present was to Duke Charles and to the home he was making in Scotland. Nevertheless, he promised all the wealth of the Bank when the Duke was able at last to send his full might against Mehmet. ‘Do not despair,’ Nicholas said. Julius looked grave.

‘Then you must let me tell you all you need to know,’ Bessarion said.

Nicholas listened, although he expected little new. By now, the Christian fleet should be attacking the Ottoman coasts south of Smyrna, while inland, the Persian leader Uzum Hasan should have launched into action, prodded by Caterino Zeno, the Venetian envoy.

Nicholas wondered, while the Cardinal spoke, how the lady Violante, wife of Zeno, was sustaining her lord’s extended absence. That was something that Gregorio never happened to mention. They said that Zeno had bred the occasional bastard while on his travels for Venice. The connections would have been formed out of expediency, as Violante’s undoubtedly were. Former apprentices and Byzantine princesses did not usually find themselves between the same sheets. There was also her sister Fiorenza, where sheets had not been involved. His mind wandered, and he brought it back.

The Cardinal was speaking of the Patriarch Ludovico da Bologna, who had also been dispatched to Uzum Hasan’s court, this time by the Pope. Once there, he would take his persuasive tongue, for sure, to wherever it would do the most good. And from work such as his, would come the real attack, the decisive attack of the Christian forces next spring.

It was something that Nicholas, too, thought to be likely. He said so. Wishing to be honest, he added that the Bank, by then, would not be free of its commitments, but that he was certain that the Venetian Republic would do all she could.

‘It is my great hope,’ said the Cardinal, and his lips moved in a smile. ‘And I think you will find that, by the same token, their young Queen is sent this autumn to Cyprus. Whatever others may think, it is equally imperative that Venice makes sure of that island.’

Julius glanced at Nicholas, also smiling. ‘Zacco may not like it,’ he said.

‘Perhaps not,’ said the Cardinal. ‘But he would be wise not to show it. I hope he has a good friend at hand to advise him.’

He had. He had David de Salmeton, of the Vatachino. The charming David whose firm had so many connections with Genoa, which also coveted Cyprus. Adorne had been in Cyprus two years ago. Nicholas said, ‘I am sure he is well advised.’

His train of thought was evidently the same as the Cardinal’s. ‘And,’ said Bessarion, ‘that excellent knight Anselm Adorne? He has not returned to the East?’ He listened. ‘Bereaved? I am sorry to hear it. I was aware that the son had to return home. Perhaps the young man will abandon Rome, since his second choice of post may now fail him.’

‘Why should that be, my lord?’ Julius said. Anything to do with Jan Adorne fascinated Julius. ‘The Bishop of St Andrews is ill? Or about to go home in disgrace?’

‘He is not ill,’ said the Cardinal, ‘And he may go home, but not in disgrace, as you so uncharitably put it. Quite the reverse. As a papal bull will shortly announce, my lord of St Andrews is about to become
Scotland’s first Primate. St Andrews is being erected into a metropolitan see, and its bishop becomes an archbishop.’

Julius opened his mouth. He said, ‘Nicholas?’

‘I believe it is true,’ Nicholas said.

The slanting eyes raked him. Julius said, ‘Welcomed by whom? The Scottish bishops who are going to find themselves suffragans under him? Have they agreed? Did they know? Did the
King
know?’ He paused. ‘Did
you
know?’

Nicholas said, ‘Four noes and a yes. Now no one has to refer an abuse to the Chair of St Peter. The Archbishop will settle it locally.’

‘They’ll love that,’ Julius said. ‘Forgive me, my lord, but a Pope two months away is sometimes a better proposition than a crazy archbishop on your doorstep.’

‘I think you forget yourself,’ Bessarion said. ‘Will age, Julius, never cure your rash tongue? The eleven cathedral churches of Scotland now lie under the metropolitan jurisdiction of Patrick Graham, by recognising which the monarch of Scotland will obtain everlasting life and the gratitude of the Pope. Your friend Nicholas not only knew, but was wise enough to help bring it about. He will explain. I do not wish to discuss it. Jan Adorne may elect to accompany the Archbishop to Scotland; if he stays in Rome, he must seek a new master. Now may we leave the subject for others more pressing?’