‘Be quiet,’ said the fat man softly. ‘Madame, you may have attempted no murders, but you have been singularly blind, it seems to me, as to the characters of your associates. Do you still regard yourself as worthy of your husband’s steel?’
Nicholas answered for her. ‘I have told you. I have asked her to leave the Vatachino for the sake of myself and the Bank, which she was disrupting.’
‘Which she was disrupting? Or which you let her disrupt?’ de Ribérac said.
The shutters were closed, sealing off the lower part of the one handsome window. From behind them, and from the glazed upper half came the constant confused sound of wheels, and trampling feet, and raised voices. The vicomte said, ‘If you shout, Nicholas, my men have orders whom to kill first. Concentrate instead on the discrepancy here. This lady says she has won. You agree. You have even named her a murderess to support it. But do we really believe that, all this time, she has deceived you? You!’
‘You heard Master Martin,’ said Nicholas.
‘I heard you,’ said the vicomte. ‘It was most instructive, for it was not, of course, true. I refer to my friend Wodman, who has some interesting tales to tell of your two Scottish households, and how the one spied on the other. There were some ledgers which were left out to be seen, and others which were not. The same at Antwerp, he learned (it was expensive: your servants are loyal), and, later, at Bruges.’
‘I am glad it was expensive,’ said Nicholas, amused. ‘You are describing what every merchant does, to confuse competitors and even the tax collector.’
‘To confuse the Vatachino: my point,’ the fat man said. ‘And specifically to mislead the lady your wife. Certainly, there were some transactions which could not be hidden, where you had to limit the damage; and others, I am sure, which you allowed her as a sop. But it was your wife you were keeping your business from, not only Martin and Simon. Nothing ever leaked out, for example, about your real plans for Iceland. You must have given orders to someone not to tell her. Dr Tobias, for example?’
Tobie said, ‘I learned about this for the first time tonight. We were all warned, naturally, not to tattle.’
‘But especially, and repeatedly, not to tattle to the lady Gelis, I suspect. Come, Dr Tobias: admit it. She has betrayed her husband’s plans to his rivals. Does it not please you to think that she received nothing from it? That he knew all along?’
Tobie said, ‘I will not be drawn into this.’ But his face, staring at Nicholas, was enough.
Nicholas swung the wine in his cup, round and round. Gelis said to him, ‘You did know.’ You could hear the pain of the wound. You could see it.
And so Fat Father Jordan had triumphed over them both. Gelis’s shortcomings had been dragged into the open, and so had the superiority Nicholas had tried to conceal. And this time, the lie couldn’t be covered. She would find out. Anyone, going over the transactions, would see how Nicholas had misled her, had taken measures to offset his losses. Nevertheless, of course, there had been serious losses. She was good.
He said, ‘It doesn’t matter. What you did, you did well. I couldn’t have let it go on. I should have had to buy you off, or ask you to join me. That is where we shall take it up, next time.’ He turned. ‘M. le vicomte, what remains to be said is between you and me. Lock the others away.’
‘You may be right,’ said the fat man. ‘Certainly, Master Martin should go. And the noble lady and her doctor may follow, as soon as we have established one thing. If there has been a contest, then certainly the Banco di Niccolò has won the chaplet, and the lady has forfeited. So soon as she admits it, she may go.’
‘No,’ said Nicholas. It chimed with the same word, spoken by Gelis.
‘Then,’ said Jordan de Ribérac, ‘she must stay, and I shall convince her. There is no hurry.’
‘Isn’t there?’ Nicholas said. ‘You say that you are no longer in the French King’s employment. If I called, would the Duke’s men believe it?’
‘It is academic,’ de Ribérac said. ‘You cannot leave this room unless I permit it. Your nurse stands outside that door with your son at her side, and the knife of my man at his throat.’
Gelis rose with a cry. Nicholas glanced at her. He said, ‘I don’t believe you.’
Martin, protesting, had been pummelled out of the room. The door shut. The boy Henry said, ‘Grandfather? Will you make him come in? Let me show you?’
‘Very well. Send the child in. But he is not to run to, or be touched by his parents. Is it understood?’
‘Tell his nurse,’ Nicholas said. He had had to know if it was true. And he had to have Jodi here, however terrifying it might be.
When the door opened again, it was to admit Clémence de Coulanges, pale as the napkin round her head except for two spots of red in her cheeks. Jodi trotted beside her. And behind strolled a man in a plate helm and cuirass whom Nicholas recognised at once.
It was mutual. ‘Aye, my lord,’ said the man. ‘And how are your shin bones these days?’ He was tossing a knife in one hand, and gripping the child with the other. Jodi, seeing his parents, reddened and struggled to run. Then he saw Henry, and gasped.
Henry broke into laughter. Henry hurled himself in front of the child, howling and waving his fists. ‘Kill Jodi,’ shrieked Jodi’s brother. ‘Kill Jodi! Kill Jodi!’ And turned to his grandfather in triumph as the child broke into terrified screams.
‘See?’ said Henry. ‘A coward!’
‘What a boor you are, St Pol,’ said de Ribérac languidly. ‘Mistress, kindly bid the child stop, or we will stop him for you. The old woman was nearly as bad. Now, my lady. Shall we proceed?’
The child sobbed, the nurse kneeling beside him. Nicholas said, ‘I could have killed your grandson; had him imprisoned and hanged.’
‘I dare say,’ the vicomte said. ‘On the other hand, you needed Henry, did you not, to make others think he was Jordan? I believe the whole story is worth telling. For there is no doubt – there is no doubt at all, my dear lady, that your husband is a genius in his own way. You could never have matched him.’
‘What has he done?’ Gelis said. Bel’s words, long ago.
‘Let me tell you,’ de Ribérac said. ‘And you will agree he has won. And then I will kill him for you.’
Chapter 48
GELIS HAD NOT intended, she had never intended this meeting to end in extinction. On the contrary. Its purpose had been to shape her future: her future with Nicholas.
Born Egidia van Borselen in Bruges, unattractive young sister of a beauty, Gelis had been twenty-two when she had planned her life around the merry, mischievous man whom her sister, she well knew, had seduced. Katelina had always been able to take what she wanted. Even her marriage was false. She had tricked Simon de St Pol into her bed to give a name to her child, that was all. She had made a fool of St Pol. One could always do that, if one planned well enough. Gelis had been able to prove it. And if it so happened that one wanted that other, that merry, mischievous man, but wished to keep him, admiring, compliant for life, that was possible, too.
She had begun by attacking Nicholas, since she could no longer punish her sister. Aggression had become a defence, as she discovered the order of the attraction between them. Only fools, fools like Katelina, became enslaved. He would recognise her as his partner outside his bed before she became his pleasure within it. So she would keep him, as Katelina would never have done.
In all these five years, the only time she had truly imagined defeat was when he had kidnapped Jodi and vanished. Otherwise, outside death, she had been certain of winning. She had made him dance to her tune over Jodi, and in business she had wholly deceived him. The achievements of his greatest rivals were partly hers, as today she had come to declare. This day had brought, in the beginning, what seemed to be a different Nicholas, so that she had almost regretted the presence of Martin. But she meant to win, and had made her case therefore, and Nicholas, in this temperate guise, had accepted it.
But for Jordan de Ribérac, sh
e would never have known he was mocking her. But for Jordan de Ribérac she would have taken the final step in good faith. And some day in the future, Nicholas would have turned to her and said, ‘This time you were the fool, and I deceived you.’
Now that, at least, was not going to happen. She looked at him, and met his eyes, resting on hers. He said, ‘I would have told you all this. I am sorry.’ She did not believe him.
Nicholas stood, with the armed men behind. But now the rest of them had regrouped, as if attending an assize. The doctor sat, his mouth pursed, in a chair. Mistress Clémence had taken a sewing-stool, with Jodi beside her. Behind them, a man played with a knife, while the youth Henry stared without cease at the cousin who was also his brother. The fat man was speaking.
He had come, of course, to exact retribution for what his son and his grandson had suffered from Nicholas and also herself. She knew, she thought, the scale of his anger. This cynical championing of Nicholas had already slighted them both, and was only the beginning. She had not known, until now, that the old man had a new and greater reason to hate them. Because of Nicholas, he had been thrown out of France.
It had happened before. Then, he had been saved by a change of monarch. Now, she learned, that same sympathetic King Louis had turned against the vicomte de Ribérac, former Captain of Archers, former merchant prince, former fiscal adviser, and deprived him of his estate and his title, his property and his investments on the recommendation of Nicholas, the former apprentice.
Contracted to Burgundy, Nicholas had been working in secret for France. He had been assured of money, positions of honour. He had asked for, and had been promised Jordan de Ribérac’s post, provided that he could prove that the vicomte was guilty of fraud.
‘It was easy,’ Nicholas said. His face was relaxed. His eyes, holding those of the fat man, were not.
‘It was easy for a master of deception,’ de Ribérac said. ‘Thread by thread, rope by rope, the trap was spun, not over weeks, but over years. Cargoes selected and stolen, gold smuggled out. A well-found ship in the harbour at Ayr proves to be insured in my name, although it once belonged to a royal French squadron. And most damning of all, the louis d’or which over the years have trickled into the coffers of my stupid son who, never doubting their origin, has used them all on his wardrobe, his castle, his stables, his comfortable life at Kilmirren. Where did they come from?’
‘I made them,’ Nicholas said. ‘Not personally, of course. It was expensive, but worth it.’
The doctor said, ‘I find this hard to believe. But even if it’s true, M. le vicomte, your son has been made a rich man. You may have lost your position in France, but you’ve gained a comfortable roost in Kilmirren.’
‘Have I?’ the vicomte said. ‘Ask your young friend.’ His gaze was locked, Gelis saw, in that of Nicholas. She could not read her husband’s expression. Only, in the fading light, the mark on his face caught her attention: the filament of white which ran from the eye down to the natural dimple that was no longer there.
Tobie said, ‘You are implying that there is some further trick?’
The vicomte turned aside. ‘Trick? A trick is something performed by a marmoset, to make village louts laugh. This is no trick. It is a tragedy.’ His eyes were resting on Gelis. He addressed her heavily.
‘Madame, from pride, from vanity, from pique, you provoked a dangerous man, and issued a challenge. He has replied. He has replied, not by destroying you, or your pretensions. He has replied by destroying a nation.’
The doctor said, ‘What?’
The fat man said, ‘A man, a base-born ingenious man is asked to prove his ability. Business success is too easy. Even the slow destruction of his rivals seems to lack dash. But here is something he can achieve: something that no single person has ever aspired to before. Something that, when it is finished, will allow him to turn to his wife and say, “What can you do, what could you ever do that will equal that? I am your master.” ’
Her heart beat. She said nothing. Tobie said, ‘The Tyrol. Or Cyprus.’ He was looking at Nicholas, with something like appeal in his face.
‘I said a nation,’ de Ribérac said. ‘The home of my son and myself; of the prudish race which cast out that trollop his mother. The country which, like Cyprus, has a young, silly Court, open to influence. Can you not guess?’
Against the wall, the men shifted. Jodi snuffled. Gelis lifted a hand to the pain in her throat. She said, ‘Nicholas?’
Nicholas looked across. Outside, lamps had been lit in the yard and shone yellow through the shutterless panes, barring the nurse’s white coif. It was nearly five hours since noon. Tomorrow the Emperor would open his doors for the Duke’s ceremonial leave-taking.
None of it mattered now. Gelis said, ‘Why did Godscalc forbid you to go back to Scotland?’
‘For two years,’ Nicholas said. ‘It was inconvenient, but I managed to pass the time somehow.’
‘Then you went back.’
‘He went back,’ said the doctor sharply, ‘surely because the King was no longer a child, and Nicholas could expect a reasoned endorsement for all his new projects. Am I supposed to remind you about the experimental crops, the hydraulic machinery? The search for coal and silver and gold; the salt-pans, the boatbuilding? The fostering of all the civilised arts, from architecture to music and goldsmithwork? Is that a recipe for destruction?’
The fat man had never ceased to look at Nicholas. The vicomte said, ‘The new crops? Useful, yes, had they not succumbed to the cold of the north, despite those acres of fine fertile ground they had occupied. The drainage? Once the experts had gone, was it not sad how many pits filled, how many of these costly pumps broke down and failed? The mining, ah yes. The art of divining, which so often underpinned a fine sale of land which later proved to be barren. Or led to exchanges of land which favoured Beltrees.’
‘Can you prove that?’ said the doctor. ‘Nicholas bought his land from other men, or the crown.’
‘From the crown,’ de Ribérac said. ‘From the King, who had to find a means of settling his debts. From other landowners such as Lord Hamilton, who was so generous with his land and his mining concessions that he seems to have asked our friend Claes for nothing at all in return. But when poor Thomas Boyd is sent to die on the Continent, what bridegroom do you think will be found for the Princess Mary, his sorrowing widow?’
‘Hamilton?’ Gelis said. Her mouth was dry. She had met James Hamilton often enough. He had married his first wife before she was born. They had tried to foist an old man on Katelina, and she had refused. But Mary, primed by Nicholas, would not refuse.
The fat man said, ‘Do you think she is the only woman in Scotland who will suffer for this? The country is swimming in debt. Stirred to dreams of grandeur, the King has spent all he has on his dress, on his jewels, on the style of his Court; on his arms and artillery, his horses, his kennels for hunting. He is buying ships and building boats he can’t pay for. When bullion comes into the country it doesn’t go to the coiners: it is converted by a splendid German goldsmith into chains and adornments for James.’
‘It made him happy,’ said Nicholas. He remained standing quite still, wearing his tolerant face. He added, ‘Go on about the civilised arts.’
She didn’t need to listen, now, for she had begun to understand. How much had been spent on the Nativity Play – this spiritual salvation, encouraged by all his friends, to which end the artists, the experts, the materials had been gathered in Edinburgh for the performance of one single day? What of the music, the instruments bought, the players brought in from Brussels and Italy, the furnishing of a new Royal Chapel? Coldingham had been closed for that reason – or perhaps because Coldingham itself was becoming too rich, too successful, too much of an asset to its country. The vicomte was saying so.
‘Also, of course, because the issue of Coldingham encouraged dissent between the King and the Pope,’ the vicomte was continuing calmly. ‘As did the rise of Patrick Graham, the amazing new Arch
bishop of St Andrews.’
‘And the alum from the Tyrol,’ said Tobie slowly.
‘But that’s all right now,’ Nicholas said. ‘Duke Charles is allowing the free sale of all Christian alum, and I think the Tyrol is Christian. At any rate, I owed the Duchess a favour.’
‘Why?’ said Gelis.
Nicholas said, kindly, ‘Because she helped me get Jodi from Venice. She was the woman in the boat. Did you not guess even that?’
There was a scrape and a flare. Someone had begun lighting candles. The bald head and pasty face of the doctor emerged from the dusk, and the rippling jowls of the vicomte, and the strong features of Mistress Clémence holding Jodi, her eyes moving, back and forth, from the boy Henry to the man who employed her. The man who had done this.
Tobie said, ‘You want us to believe that you have deliberately undermined and brought down a country. But even if you attempted it, you couldn’t prove that you had succeeded.’
‘Couldn’t I?’ Nicholas said. ‘Ask the Treasurer. The Exchequer audit was held in June, after I left. And, of course, things will get even worse once the debased money has started to circulate.’
‘Then the Bank has lost, too,’ Tobie said. ‘If you have bankrupted the country, what will happen to Govaerts and the Canongate bureau?’
‘But the Bank is no longer in Scotland,’ Nicholas said. ‘Govaerts has gone. The Casa di Niccolò is shut, and so is the house in the High Street. I have nothing in Scotland but a tract of land and a somewhat overfurnished castle in Beltrees, which I shall probably strip.’
‘So let me rephrase your good doctor’s question,’ said Jordan de Ribérac. ‘What has this little exercise cost you?’
‘Something, of course,’ Nicholas said. ‘But happily, I work under several names, like Egidia. I have been able to farm out the King’s loans here and there, mainly among the various agents of the Vatachino and the Medici. Poor Tommaso, naked again.’
To Lie With Lions: The Sixth Book of the House of Niccolo Page 80
