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

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Nicholas knew him. The history of the past decade had been punctuated by thundering collisions between himself and the Patriarch in various parts of the world. Father Ludovico had been last heard of in Sweden, trying to bring the Pope’s peace to the Scandinavian wars. John knew him from Cyprus. John had known, Nicholas realised, that da Bologna was here. He had just kept quiet because he was sulking.

  Nicholas said, ‘The wine wasn’t as wonderful as all that, and I only got to try six of the women. Father Ludovico, go away.’

  ‘I’ve just come. I see Satan has got you again. You are helping him in Christ’s work?’ said the Patriarch, casting an eye on his fellow priest.

  ‘He managed the drink himself,’ said Father Moriz. Nicholas was entertained.

  ‘And so tell me about the cannon,’ said the Patriarch, sitting down.

  There was the kind of silence that often occurred in his presence. Then Nicholas said, ‘You’re not getting it. It’s for the King of Scotland. Anyway, we’ve done you a much greater service. We’ve shown Duke Sigismond how to get rich. If you want money, come back in six months.’

  ‘The Turks may be in Vienna in six months,’ the Patriarch said. His voice rolled.

  ‘Well, they may go away again. Bessarion had a low opinion of Vienna.’

  ‘Money, how?’ the Patriarch asked with apparent interest. ‘Ah! The silver mines! And, perhaps, the alum? You are exploiting the Tyrol alum in defiance of the papal monopoly?’

  ‘No,’ said Nicholas eventually. ‘That is, papal markets won’t really suffer. We’re sending ours north, beyond Flanders. Scotland takes alum from anywhere.’

  ‘I see. And the silver?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Nicholas airily. ‘The silver has nothing to do with us. We stumbled across it. But the French are sending to mine it. They’ve a lot of experience. Lyons.’

  There was the kind of silence that happened sometimes when he spoke, as well.

  The Patriarch was smiling. His eyebrows, unlike those of the younger priest, arched like shredded black wool. He said, ‘And the cannon?’

  ‘I told you. For the King of Scotland,’ Nicholas said. ‘It took a lot of trouble to arrange all of that. I shouldn’t like anything to disturb it, or there wouldn’t be any money for anything. You are here for money?’

  ‘The Pontiff,’ said Father Ludovico, ‘is much concerned for the soul of Duke Sigismond, since his return to Mother Church. The spiritual health of all the Germanies concerns him. Partly. Chiefly, I came to see you.’

  He had been afraid of it. All the happy wine in his system disappeared. He said, ‘In this weather? Why?’

  The Patriarch of the Latins in Antioch sat down and stretched his feet to the stove. His boots were patched and his hose were heavily felted. He said, ‘The Lord visited me with an inspiration. We like to keep an eye on you. I wondered if you’d heard the latest from Scotland. Is there anything to eat here? I had a hen from that woman Gertrude, but that was this morning.’

  He had been here since morning. Nicholas could see Moriz and John exchange looks: eventually Moriz got up. ‘I’ll see to it,’ he said, and went out.

  ‘An expert on metals, so I’m told,’ said Father Ludovico. ‘No doubt he prays over them. It must teach him a lot. You were better off with Godscalc. Pity, that.’

  ‘What about Scotland?’ said John, which was helpful of him.

  ‘Oh, gossip. You may have heard it already. Couriers getting through?’ the Patriarch said.

  ‘They’re not as persistent as you are,’ Nicholas said. ‘What news?’

  ‘Well, the King’s married – but you knew that: you helped him celebrate. Then his sister went off with her husband – but you knew that too. I’m sure you knew that. Then Anselm Adorne went, and was created a knight – Were you created a knight? Will God never cease to surprise us? Then Sir Anselm went back –’

  ‘Back?’ said Nicholas.

  ‘To Scotland. That would be after you left. The death of poor Godscalc. You gave up material things in order to be at his side. The Lord will honour you for it. And it will please you to know that your friend Anselm Adorne reaped the benefit.’

  John had stopped looking at him. ‘In what way?’ Nicholas said. But he guessed.

  ‘The land,’ the Patriarch said. ‘The land the poor silly girl forfeited when she absconded. All the estates belonging to Arran her husband. The King partitioned it out. This servant, that friend – even some musician, I hear, received plenty. But Sir Anselm – now there’s royal generosity – was given a barony. He is Heere van Cortachy now. A good bit of well-paying land in the north-east, so they tell me. And since Adorne is to lodge the Princess Mary in Bruges – did you know that? – the King has been properly lavish with bits of Boyd land to help the new Baron there with his expenses. That is,’ the Patriarch said, ‘although the King wouldn’t mind Thomas Boyd’s head on a hat-stand, he wouldn’t let sister Mary come to want.’

  ‘So the Princess and her husband are staying in Bruges?’ Nicholas said. The door had opened and Father Moriz came in, a servant following. A hearty smell of meat joined the thick air from the stove.

  ‘By now. At the Hôtel Jerusalem, with the good Vrouwe Margriet as his hostess. The new Baron himself, of course, is not there, and so will escape any ignominy. Is that ale? Take it away.’

  This time, Nicholas refused to respond. The Patriarch, intent on the board, had already unfastened his knife-case.

  Father Moriz took a seat not far off. ‘The new baron? You speak of Anselm Adorne?’

  ‘Now my lord of Cortachy,’ elucidated the Patriarch, filling his mouth. ‘Back from Scotland with more on his mind than trade meetings. He’s planning to travel this spring. Quite a programme. Rome, of course. Genoa. Egypt. He should be in Alexandria by the summer, and Cyprus and Rhodes, they say, just after that. A holy pilgrimage, naturally. A visit to friends. The Levant is stuffed full of Adornos. A son’s going too, and a niece. They say he’s leaving next month, with the Duke of Burgundy’s blessing.’

  It was like one of his own traps. So neat, so comprehensive, so final. Anselm Adorne, waiting only for his departure, had scooped the honours in Scotland and was now proceeding to forestall him in the Levant. And so the snare could be closed.

  ‘No,’ said Nicholas.

  Father Ludovico concentrated on his food: his mouth was as full as a nesting-box. Behind the mess was a smile.

  John said, ‘Nicholas –’

  ‘No,’ said Nicholas for a second time.

  Father Moriz said, ‘I think, Nicholas, that you will have to listen. And, very likely, have to go.’

  He did not need to listen. He knew why the Franciscan was here. Ever since the first missions of the Observatine monks to the East, Ludovico da Bologna had travelled the world, from Persia to Tartary, from Rome to Egypt, from Poland to Germany at the bidding of Popes. At the bidding of Bessarion, Cardinal-Protector of his Order. He had lived in Jerusalem for years, and had failed, as Nicholas had, to reach Ethiopia.

  Because Nicholas travelled too, they frequently met. And wherever they met, it seemed to Nicholas, his private and business activities were immediately commandeered for the Patriarch’s purpose, which was to cajole and threaten Christians and Muslims alike to halt the advance of the Ottoman Turk.

  For that, he preferred Nicholas to be in the Levant, not submerged in a vast operation for Duke Sigismond. The threat to spoil this winter’s work was real enough. The other threat, it was clear, was that posed by the discerning, the increasingly competitive Anselm Adorne.

  Shrewdly, the Patriarch was proposing a scheme which was not in itself unattractive. Nicholas had always meant, at some point, to visit Egypt. David de Salmeton was there. The gold was worth looking for. The agency needed attention. He had eighteen months still to run of his penitential exile from Scotland. And on the most private level he did not think, at the moment, that he could contemplate another meeting with Gelis.

  Nevertheless, the fact remained that he did not w
ant to go to Alexandria soon, or stay long; and he resented being manipulated. So his first impulse had been to refuse. He had refused.

  But he knew all the time that he would go, because he could not stomach what else he had heard. He didn’t like what had happened in Scotland. He objected to the fact that, having been pleased enough to see the Bank in the Tyrol, the Duke of Burgundy had now apparently given Adorne the key to the Levant. He could not allow all his plans to be endangered by an adversary as smooth, as adroit, he now knew, as Anselm Adorne.

  The Duchess Eleanor gave a farewell feast for her three visitors in the early spring, when the ways had cleared and all the preliminary work for the mining was done. She held it at her preferred castle of Meran, for the tumultuous double courts had again separated, with their horses and dogs, their hordes of servants and permanent and semi-permanent guests; the chaplains, the entourage of honour, the Court Master, the stewards, the Marshal, the chamberlains (lacking one). The men she and Sigismond liked to keep about them: the lawyers who were also humanists; the highly qualified churchmen who collected books and advised, and wrote poetry in their spare time. They had an astronomer. They had had the Patriarch of Antioch for a short time and had been thankful, as always, when he left.

  Her father had been a great poet, writing in English and Scots before and after he was freed to rule his country. Her sister the Queen of France had composed verse. She and Sigismond collected books and commissioned translations: there was always a room full of scribes somewhere, some of them men of renown. Sigismond had good Latin but little French: she had had a French romance put into German for him, and had helped with it herself. German was very like Scots.

  Books kept her company when he went off to his castle on the lake to put the romances into practice. There was a fiction that she didn’t know what went on in Sigmundsburg, even while she was sending doctors to women in childbirth, and bringing their young to fill places at court. But she had friends: Albrecht of Bavaria, who sent her books, and Mechtilde of the Palatinate. And books and manuscripts were always coming from Augsburg. She had got one from Rome to give to the Abbot at Neustift. She had used books, long ago, to placate the Archbishop. Their advisers borrowed them. Their advisers stayed with them, she sometimes thought, because of them. And they were a pleasure, sometimes, in themselves, if not always. She was not as intellectual as Mechtilde, who had founded a university.

  She had found that the young merchant Nicholas had an interest in medical and mechanical treatises and was reasonably familiar with the classics, but had read few romances. He was comfortable to chat to and play cards with, and he could sing. She called him Nicol, which indicated a measure of guest-friendship but not more. He and the priest and the engineer had been accepted by their equals well enough once it was plain they spoke German, and were not the Welsch, the French-speaking Burgundians no one could tolerate. None of them presumed.

  She thought, and so did Cavalli and Lindsay, that Sigismond had dealt with the mining contracts extremely well, and he was happy, in any case, to leave the detail to others. He would want to know, however, exactly how and when the loan money would come.

  She knew how he would spend it. On buildings. On roads, if he listened to what everyone said and was wise. On war, if he didn’t and wasn’t. If the loan hadn’t come in this fashion, he would have raised it from some other source, with far more potential for harm. This way, they might be able to afford all that Sigismond was going to spend anyway.

  Now the planning was done, the equipment here, the lodgings for the workmen arranged. A mine was a temporary village, needing cabins, water, ovens, a church. It had interested her to visit the three men in the office they used in the castle. The last time, she had found de Fleury alone at the table, his fingers slowly smoothing a map. The placid occupation was contradicted by an air of extraordinary tension. Then she saw the jewel strung from his hand. He was divining.

  She had once seen the other man do it: the man who had died. She knew it was possible. In the Tyrol, their maps were too poor. The other man had been poring over a drawing of Florence. He wanted to see, he had said, in what street his mistress was sleeping that night. She remembered how worn he had looked. Now, she hesitated.

  De Fleury must have heard her, and turned. His face against the light was not at first distinct, and she smiled, stepping towards him.

  She said, ‘Weel, Nicol! What sinistrous trick have we here? You’ve become crafty now at your trade?’

  His hand moved, half palming the stone. She waited for him to stand. When he did, he had uncovered the bob and laid it on the map. His back was still to the light. He said, ‘Duchess.’

  She looked at him, and then made up her mind and walked forward to study the map. It was large, but not professionally done. She thought, from the ink on his fingers, that he had probably drawn it himself. It showed the streets of a large town and some of their houses. On another sheet, laid aside, she saw the plans of three dwellings. She recognised two. One, unmistakable because of its church, was the Hôtel Jerusalem, Bruges. The other was her own late sister’s house, that of Wolfaert van Borselen in Veere. She realised that the town on the map must be Bruges.

  She said, her voice kindly, ‘I interrupted. Ye were seeking your wife. Did you find her?’

  He spoke, his voice slower than usual. ‘No, your grace. I didn’t expect to find her. She stays outside Bruges.’

  ‘Then who? My family, would it be?’ She let him hear the reserve.

  ‘No! No, your grace,’ he said immediately. ‘Another lady. I found her. I had been … concerned for her safety.’

  ‘And is she safe?’ the Duchess asked. She moved, inducing him to turn round. She saw it was as she suspected. She said, ‘Am I allowed to know her name?’

  ‘Of course,’ said de Fleury. ‘Her name is Margot. She is the close friend of Gregorio, my manager. She went missing.’

  ‘But now she is back?’ the Duchess said. ‘You can tell that?’

  ‘It seems so,’ he said. ‘They are both there, in the house that we use.’

  ‘Then they are at ease, and you too. But don’t fall sick for their sake,’ said the Duchess. ‘Spare your gift. Or you’ll find me ill pleased that I taught you.’

  ‘Never that,’ de Fleury said. ‘You showed me a way. If it does me harm, then most likely I deserve it.’

  Their eyes joined. ‘Aye,’ she said. ‘I jaloused that already.’ When she turned at the door, he had already crushed the maps from his desk and discarded them.

  It was their last meeting in private. Soon he was gone, with his entourage and companions. They would cross the ridge and descend the sunny slopes of the mountains where the apple blossom sparkled in ice and the southern warmth beckoned.

  She did not envy Nicholas de Fleury, although she would not forget him. Indeed, in her way, she incorporated him in her planning much as he, in his turn, had used her. She did not know that she had been the fourth stage of a plan which – because of a death – had undergone a masterly reconstitution.

  Nicholas de Fleury had been debarred from the chase of his choice. No one had said he couldn’t fire from the coverts. Or return, once this diversion was over, to see what he had killed.

  Chapter 31

  ALEXANDRIA, THE JEWEL on the northernmost sea-strand of Egypt, was one of the romantic places of the world to which Nicholas, on his wedding day, had promised himself to bring Gelis, his wife. It suited him to enter it, without her, three months after leaving the Tyrol. He had John le Grant at his side and a few writings attributable to a parrot.

  He did not leave his main arena without thought. He had listened to Moriz. He made sure, before going too far, that Anselm Adorne was genuinely committed to the same journey. (Priests were not immune to slips of the tongue.) But the warning proved to be true. The Baron Cortachy was not only armed with safe conducts and ducal letters of credence, he had made a will preparatory to leaving. It confirmed, as nothing else could, his rising importance in Scotland and Flan
ders.

  The Baron had bequeathed his best sapphire to the Bishop of St Andrews, for love of Maarten his son. A stained glass window with the Adorne coat of arms was promised to the Charterhouse monks outside Perth. To mark his funeral, that of a prince among merchants, ells of linen in grey, black and white were stipulated for the church and his lying-in-state; and a file of twenty-four men, robed in black, from the weigh-houses. The bells of three spires were to toll, and a thousand poor men to receive alms. Bruges would remember its eminent citizen, Anselm Adorne.

  Shriven, ducally sponsored, Adorne had planned to set out in February, and hoped to celebrate Easter in Rome. Seven companions had been invited to ride with him: a chamberlain in holy orders, two merchant kinsfolk, a niece, a monk, a ducal chaplain and an eminent burgess of Bruges. A son was to join at Pavia.

  So Nicholas de Fleury was told. He did not know, because the message did not reach him till later, that when Anselm Adorne finally left, the number of his company had increased by two.

  Proceeding in turn, Nicholas de Fleury travelled south from the Tyrol with his metallurgical padre and John. They called, on the way, at some of the mines. They stopped at Bozen, which had a market favoured by Venetian traders. They arrived in Venice in March. Julius sent the Bank’s grand oared boat to Mestre to meet them, and Nicholas saw Father Moriz assessing the silken canopy and the gilding and the carving and the preposterous liveries. Nicholas spoke to the oarsmen, who looked frightened, and then took his place and was silent.

  He felt odd. It should have been terrible, this first return to the city he had left two years ago, rich and comforted and full of childish desires. But as the islands beyond Mestre slipped past – Murano, San Michele – and the familiar skyline appeared, with its golden domes and towers and palaces; as the boat skimmed through the winding canal and into the great thoroughfare of water that led to the Rialto and the Bank, he was touched by something like the warmth of the old days, returning to Bruges.