The Unicorn Hunt: The Fifth Book of the House of Niccolo

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘Apologise to him,’ she said. ‘He knows what it is to get battle-silly. Then agree to meet him in a fight. That will salvage his honour, for those people who suspect what happened.’

  De Fleury frowned, riding beside her. He said, ‘But he’s good.’

  ‘That’s the idea,’ she said.

  ‘It wouldn’t be enough to apologise? You would accept an apology.’

  ‘No, I shouldn’t. You’d have to do something else.’

  ‘Katelijne?’ said a gentle voice. Phemie Dunbar, come to spoil the game with tranquil good sense.

  De Fleury said, as she hoped, ‘Well, we have a day’s ride before us. We should be able to work something out.’ Then he turned and introduced Phemie to Master Gregorio, which was an excellent idea, since they should have much in common. And then, when he had presented himself to the lady Margaret, and renewed his acquaintance with the other attendants in her train, de Fleury was free to ride at her side, as the two parties blended. Dropping back, they devised between them his punishment.

  She had not meant, at the outset, that it should be quite so disruptive, nor that it should gradually involve the Princess’s whole party, not excluding Margaret herself. It restricted itself to the route, since the ride along the estuary was as long as anyone should wish to make in one day. But it made use of every sporting facility they could muster between them, from bow to lance to falcon, and even to one of those long-stemmed clubs which, used from horseback, could send a ball from man to man along the flats, earning points for each target.

  By dinner-time they were hot and exhausted with laughter as much as with exercise. But even during the meal, which they took in the fresh air, Out of baskets, de Fleury snatched up her viol and commanded her to perform, adding new rules and new contests, until she stopped eating, as he had, to compete, and the others clamoured to take part. Then the lawyer Gregorio, who had been sitting apart, came over and knelt beside de Fleury and spoke.

  She knew what he was saying. He had been talking to Phemie. She watched de Fleury’s profile, eyes downcast, as he listened. When he finally rose and came over, she knew what he was going to say, because they all said it: her parents, her brother, her uncle.

  De Fleury said, ‘They want us to stop. Have I apologised enough?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t think so. What might we do that would convince them we’ve stopped?’

  As it happened, she had already thought of something: a word-game. He had never heard of it before, but she taught it to him, and he invented a number of variants as they paced side by side at the end of the column. As they entered Edinburgh, he allowed her to win. It made her so angry that he reversed the last moves and beat her soundly. Shortly after, the two groups of travellers parted. Last of all, he applied to her and she absolved him.

  She wondered why he had wasted a day on such trivia. She concluded that there was no one in either party whom he regarded as interesting or useful, and that he had found some kind of repose in exertion. In the lawyer Gregorio’s face she thought she recognised a trace of the same look that Phemie wore sometimes. Towards de Fleury himself she felt curiosity, and a degree of affinity, and a sensible wariness mixed with something she would not call fear.

  Gregorio experienced fear. In spite of all that Julius had said, he had not been prepared for the reality: for the tall, secretive house in the Canongate which Nicholas had fitted into the enclave of ecclesiastics and merchants and from which his business was run.

  He was not prepared for the scale of the banquet given for Nicholas by his landlord, who happened to be Abbot of Holyrood, and who invited to it all the men of business Gregorio had ever heard of, including Berecrofts Older and Younger in whose country-house Lucia had lain dead.

  He was not prepared for an invitation to the other house the Bank owned in the High Street, nor to find that Nicholas had lent it to the convent of Haddington for the use of its Prioress and nuns. He was not even prepared (although he was content enough) to find there Mistress Phemie Dunbar, the sedate unmarried daughter of the late Earl of March, who had brought some order into the headlong, tumultuous ride from Stirling to Edinburgh instigated by Adorne’s crazy scrap of a niece.

  However, he had not been surprised, except initially, by the part Nicholas had played in that, or by the intensity of his activities since. It matched what he remembered of the more extraordinary undertakings of the past: the revitalising of the Charetty company through the cunning of the alum monopoly; the trading and fighting at Trebizond; the setting up of the Bank; the fitting-out and execution of the African expedition. Of Cyprus his knowledge was second-hand, but he had read the accounts, and knew when the payments had stopped for their land and their farms and the army. They said there had been a famine there recently. He had sent the reports to Nicholas, as he sent everything, but it was Nicholas who decided what to act on.

  Gregorio was not alarmed, therefore, at the scale of the activity, but he was critical of its content. The major investments were good: the Banco di Niccolò had property and land, and had expended money on loans in the right quarters. There was a foreign wedding afoot, and the King and his lords required all the jewels, clothes and furnishings that implied. Julius had been right in identifying a fine profit there, and insisting that the padrone should return in person to realise it.

  To a degree, the Bank had been right, too, in placing money where it would encourage business. The San Niccolò was already carrying timber: there was room for a cart-building workshop to supplement the familiar skills of the monasteries. Draining experts could bring fields and salt-pans and coal layers into better profit – that was why John le Grant had been sent for. There were other schemes, not yet in place. Alum, brought direct from their own special contacts, would profit the Bank and still sell cheaply to the dyers and curers. Dyeing itself could be properly taught, and good weaving. And as the country grew wealthier, the demand for luxuries would increase.

  At that point, drowned in calculations, Gregorio called a halt.

  ‘Nicholas? This is a small country, and remote. It can use some of your schemes – or could, when you first thought of them. But soap-making? Gunpowder? Paper? Cabinet-making? A workshop for embroidery looms? The demand for all those things is limited and will soon be satisfied. And almost none can be exported without meeting far greater competition in the south. You will be wasting the Bank’s money.’

  They were meeting in the Casa di Niccolò in the Canongate where the uses to which the Bank’s money had already been put were very obvious. Travelling through the last weeks, Gregorio had visited many merchant-lairds in their castles as well as the ecclesiastics who kept house in town. He had walked with Forrester of Corstorphine to hear the new choristers in his church, and climbed the hill to Haliburton’s fine keep at Dirleton where his wife Cornelia kept a painting-room for Hugo vander Goes her kinsman, already full of coloured shields for the wedding.

  He had visited the Earl of Orkney in Roslin and the Church’s mines at Tranent and the Hamiltons and the Berecrofts beside Linlithgow. He had seen the salt-pans beside the Lord’s house at Seton, and inspected the Bank’s own warehouses and lodging at Leith. He had been to Haddington, and met the Prioress Elizabeth, and heard, from behind a door, a well-played guitar which turned out to belong to Mistress Phemie Dunbar, whom he remembered he knew. He was rather thankful not to meet Adorne’s niece, who was away.

  Now it was the third week in May and he knew that the time had come to curb Nicholas de Fleury, for none of his other staff would. And particularly not Jannekin Bonkle, fast integrating into the traditional merchant network of Edinburgh. Jannekin thought he was commissioned by Midas, and however much gold Nicholas chose to throw into Scotland, there would always be more.

  Jannekin therefore was not present, but safely engaged in the clerks’ room, the miniature chancery upon which the Scottish lord Whitelaw, Secretary of a kingdom, had looked once, withholding his envy. Next to that was the secure room which he
ld the locked chests with their wealth, and spread through the house and its yards were the other chambers and workshops Nicholas had created for the artisans he had brought or was bringing. Close to the ovens was a chamber of stone for the furnace. But access to that was not easily granted.

  For the rest, the house was not unlike the two mansions the Bank used in Bruges, except for the grandeur of its great parlour, and of the bedchamber in which Gregorio now sat, preparing to argue with Nicholas.

  There were other differences. In Bruges, by the end of May, the worsted bed-hangings would have given place to fine say, and the great Irish bedcover removed – the bernia which Margot had bought when Nicholas first came back to Venice and which still lay here on his Edinburgh bed, with the brazier burning low at its foot.

  Gregorio said, ‘Why do you stay here if you find Scotland cold? Listen to my advice. Wait for the wedding, recover your loans from the dowry, and let all but the best of these other schemes go. One single good cargo from Alexandria will give you double the profit. Kings are dangerous. If Edward of York falls, he could bring down the Medici.’

  ‘You think James of Scotland, just turned seventeen, is going to bring down the House of Niccolò?’ the other man asked. He left the brazier and sat down, a model of patience.

  Gregorio said, ‘I think you’ve punished Simon quite adequately and made life sufficiently uncomfortable for Jordan. I think you should finish competing with them and get out, before you forget that you have a Bank and a number of partners.’

  ‘And a family,’ said Nicholas de Fleury. ‘Or no. You could put them down as self-supporting. Look. I understand. I agree, to a point. But banking means taking risks, and in my view this throne is secure.’

  ‘And what circator did you get that from?’ Gregorio said. ‘Lord Boyd, Tom Boyd’s father, has gone south on some errand and he hasn’t come back. He could be plotting with England.’

  ‘He is plotting with England,’ the other said. ‘He’s promised, among other things, to have Chancellor Avandale killed when the Scottish nobles sail in with his son and the child-bride from Denmark.’

  Gregorio stared at him. It sounded true. It probably was true, given the kind of network Nicholas had undoubtedly established south of the border. Gregorio said, ‘So that the Boyds can renew their grip of the King? If they do that …’

  ‘They won’t,’ said the other man.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because I’ve seen to it that they won’t. Have you ever met the Sheriff of Renfrew? Simon’s baronial superior and neighbour?’

  ‘No. Why?’ said Gregorio. He spoke sharply because he knew now, why Nicholas had appeared so unduly patient. He was waiting for somebody – and probably the somebody whom he could hear arriving outside. Gregorio went to the window.

  It was not a short view, such as you got from a window in Bruges. Behind the Canongate houses, the open land bumped its way past leekbeds and pastures and fruit trees to a narrow valley, and then rose beyond to a fine sunlit crag grazed by sheep. Immediately below, the paved back yards of this house and its neighbours were crammed with a jumble of stables and wells, bakehouses and byres, styes and henhouses and sheds.

  Into this space, admitted by the vaulted passage that led from the highway, a small cavalcade was at this moment reaching a halt. It consisted of four liveried servants and a spare, middle-aged man in a brimmed hat and thick velvet overgown, now nimbly dismounting. The badge was the chevron chequy of Semple, evidence of the family’s rise as seneschals and bailies to the High Stewards of Scotland. And this was Sir William Semple of Elliotstoun, acting for the ancient Sheriff, his father.

  William Semple knew Nicholas. Of course he did. One of the minor injuries Nicholas had inflicted on Simon – apart from half roasting him and occasioning, one way or another, the death of his sister Lucia – had been to persuade the Sheriff to deprive Simon of his outlying leased land and to reallocate it to M. de Fleury.

  Julius had described the achievement with glee. Gregorio could imagine how Simon felt. He wondered whether Simon de St Pol now regretted his willing part in the vicious scheme concocted by Gelis, however little he had understood it at the time. He thought probably not. Indeed, especially not if he guessed the resulting child to be his. His elation would counterbalance, very nearly, anything Nicholas could inflict. Which was why, perhaps, Nicholas was bent on further prosecuting his plans. Gregorio could not imagine what part the eminent Sir William Semple had been persuaded to play in them.

  The answer at first seemed to be none. Sir William, seated in the chair of state with an excellent cup of wine in his hand, enquired first about the King’s wedding, and the magnificent celebrations he understood M. de Fleury was advising upon. From that he moved cordially to enquire when M. de Fleury planned to view his new estate, for he hoped that he and Marian would be permitted the honour of entertaining him. And finally, he made it known that her grace the lady Mary, Countess of Arran, was presently at home at Dean Castle, and would welcome news of Gelis van Borselen and her babe.

  He was a thin man, with a lean ruddy face and sparse brown hair left to curl on his shoulders. His eyes were light and sharp. Nicholas said, ‘I have to see my new factor. You approve of him?’

  ‘I helped Master Bonkle choose him. An experienced man, Oliver Semple: a second cousin of mine. A good rent-collector, a man who will get you a fair price for your hides and your fells and your cheeses, and strike a bargain for a stretch of good fishing, besides knowing what’s what when you’re building. He and your builder – he and Cochrane get on. Well, then. You could ride to Beltrees from Kilmarnock. There is undeveloped land further south you might look at. I do not know, of course, how deep your interest lies. But you should not fail to call on the Countess at Dean. And, of course, you will find Mistress Bel at Kilmirren. Bel of Cuthilgurdy? She is attending to the affairs of the poor lady Lucia.’

  ‘I thought Mistress Bel was in France,’ Nicholas said. Gregorio looked at him.

  ‘She was, but she has returned. No doubt there is much to arrange. The late poor lady’s house now belongs, I suppose, to her son M. de Vasquez?’

  Nicholas hesitated. For a moment, Gregorio thought he wasn’t going to admit it. Then he said, ‘No, to me. Now his mother has gone, M. Diniz has no interest in Scotland. And it adjoins the land I already have.’

  ‘So it does,’ said Sir William Semple. ‘How pleased my old friend Jordan will be.’

  ‘So they are not the closest of friends,’ Gregorio said, when their visitor had gone.

  ‘Who?’ Nicholas had rung for his page and was writing.

  ‘William Semple and Jordan de Ribérac.’

  ‘No. Jordan doesn’t develop his land, and invests all his money abroad. Simon can’t keep good managers. If I put off the Abbot, which I’m doing, we could set off for Dean Castle tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow? Why?… Where is it?’ said Gregorio, as an afterthought.

  ‘By Kilmarnock. Sixty miles to the south-west. We could stop with the Flemings of Biggar.’

  ‘Why?’ said Gregorio. ‘Or why tomorrow?’

  ‘Because that’s why Semple came here,’ said Nicholas. ‘I don’t mind going. And I want to see to one or two things. And to look at Beltrees.’

  ‘What are Beltrees?’ asked Gregorio.

  ‘Singular. It’s the name of a towerhouse and an estate. Julius and I thought you’d be shocked, so we didn’t send you the accounts.’

  ‘This is the Kilmirren land that you filched?’

  ‘Some of it. I’ve added a few hundred acres. All undeveloped and waste. And the tower was too small: I’ve refurbished it. It’s on a hill. It’ll be cold.’

  Gregorio was silent. A project so large, and none of the accounts had been sent to him. He assumed he knew why. He said outright, ‘How long are you staying in Scotland?’

  ‘As long as it takes,’ Nicholas said, ‘to finish all I want to do. But you don’t need to watch me.’

  Chapter 19

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bsp; THEY SET OFF at dawn, an impressive cavalcade, and arranged to break their journey at Boghall Castle, as Nicholas had suggested. Govaerts, sent ahead to solicit hospitality, would certainly be successful.

  Robert, Lord Fleming, knew Nicholas. Gregorio, in turn, knew something of him. The lordship might be new, but there had been Flemings in Biggar for three hundred years, and half of them traded in Bruges. Gregorio wondered, in a resigned way, if there were pretty daughters or granddaughters.

  It was a thirty-mile ride which yielded, as it transpired, a particular balm of its own. For once, Nicholas initiated little, and those around him could retreat into their thoughts and savour the landscape they rode through. Rushing streams; undulating valleys between soft, sunlit green hills; grey stone towers and thatched cots hazed with peat smoke; the bleating of sheep and of goats; herds of cattle filing to milk; the cry of a hawk, circling above in the blue air – all of it delighted Gregorio; filled him with singing pleasure, and then with an echo of contrition, for his partner in pleasure was not there.

  The castle, when they reached it, was large and old, with a stone bridge crossing the moat. Riding over it, Gregorio carried with him the single piece of advice Nicholas had troubled to give him. ‘The old man is aged early and shaky, but son Malcolm knows the time of day, more or less. You talk to Lord Fleming and leave Malcolm to me.’

  Malcolm came out into the courtyard to meet them. His doublet, creased from the coffer, was a better one, Gregorio guessed, than he would normally wear in the country, and his hat had a feather. He was short-legged and dark and probably not quite as old as he looked: the cares of managing his father must have taken their toll. He said, ‘I had not time to warn you. Perhaps you do not object. But Anselm Sersanders has just arrived. Sir Anselm Adorne’s sister’s son.’

  Nicholas reined in and, after a moment, dismounted. He said, ‘I have no objection, unless you have. I was told he was in the north. The new Observatine Friary, and Maryculter.’