The Spring of the Ram: The Second Book of the House of Niccolo

by Dorothy Dunnett

  “No,” said Nicholas. “I expect it will be all right.” He got up.

  Julius said, “Of course it will be all right. Your friend Alexios will be there. I remember him. He’s the Emperor’s nephew.”

  Nicholas glanced at him. Under his eyes, the skin had thinned and darkened since morning. “Pagano’s boy was well born as well. Caesar’s boys, Caesar’s bidding.”

  Julius said, “The Emperor offered the young men of his family to you and Doria?”

  Praise God, he spoke in Flemish, as Nicholas had done. Whatever language he spoke, it was blasphemy. Tobie drew in his breath, but Nicholas answered with hardly a pause. “Doria would like you to think so. He went off with the lad, but was given a substitute.”

  Godscalc spoke. “And you?”

  “Not the Emperor’s nephew,” Nicholas said. “No.” From the pitch of his gaze, he was calculating how far he had to walk. The Imperial messenger waited, resenting the barbarian tongue.

  “Who?” said Julius.

  “Who did Alexios take me to? To the Emperor,” Nicholas said. “You might have guessed. I had all the right qualifications. He was most distressed over my fever, and he won’t be in the least harsh. I don’t need Godscalc. I told you.”

  Tobie watched him climb the steps. He did so quite successfully. In a while they saw him appear on the balcony beside Amiroutzes, who paced with him to the Emperor’s couch and withdrew. The Emperor’s face, turned to Nicholas, contained more animation than was his habit: but whether from anger or the opposite was impossible, at that distance, to say. Courtesy demanded that they pay some attention to the next event, which made much use of braziers and firebrands. At the end of it, Nicholas rejoined them, walking alone. He looked slightly drunk. Instead of sitting down, he said, “That’s all right. Astorre will come to no harm. I have leave to go. Will someone…”

  The bench rattled under his hand. Tobie, rising, made a doctor’s automatic assessment. “I’ll take you. Godscalc?”

  Godscalc said, “Wait. The letter. Let me get it.” He moved away. Nicholas stood looking after him. Tobie said, “You got immunity for Astorre? Was it difficult?”

  Nicholas said, “Doria is coming himself. Difficult? No. They’d just had news. The Turkish army is massing at Bursa, and the Sultan himself is in Ankara. The Emperor needs Astorre.”

  Tobie said, “The Turks are making for Trebizond?”

  “I don’t suppose so,” said Nicholas. “But the Emperor would still feel happier with Astorre. I gather I’m now to be favoured with my wife’s letter?”

  Pagano Doria stood before him, with an usher on either side. Godscalc came close. The perfect Doria teeth smiled between the cupid’s bow of his lips. Doria said, “What can I say? A friend, murdered in daylight! As you see, the Emperor has sent his own escort in case I should lift my hand to you. Of course, I should never dream of it. I have your letter somewhere. A dull fellow, your Gregorio.”

  There was a pause. Nicholas said, “Gregorio? The letter you spoke of was from Marian de Charetty. My wife.”

  Doria tapped his nose with one finger. The letter, dirty and stringless, was screwed in the hand that uplifted his elbow. He said, “And you believed me? How naïve of you, Niccolino. No, I fear that the loving words of dear Marian, if you were expecting them, have fallen into other hands, or perhaps were never written. The letter I spoke of is from your lawyer Gregorio, with a modicum of old news from Bruges, and a quantity of poorly coded detail about market prices. Of minimal use, since he wrote you in January.”

  Someone moved. It was Loppe, Tobie saw. Nicholas himself stood perfectly still, although one hand grasped the bench. He said, “I will have it, then.”

  “Of course,” said Doria. “But first, there is one item of news…Wait.” Unfolding his arms, he straightened and shuffled the shabby pages. “Yes. A piece of good news to please all of you. My lord Simon of Kilmirren has got a child of his body at last. His new wife was delivered in January.”

  He looked up quickly but was given, Tobie saw, only a view of Nicholas in profile, referring something to Loppe. Tobie said, “I’ve heard more interesting pieces of news. Do we want the letter?”

  “I suppose we do,” Godscalc said, “since it cost a man’s life. Delivered of what, if it matters?”

  “A son. They have named the child Henry. Heir to all that land in Scotland and France; the line established; the brilliant young father with a boy to carry his sword. Poor Nicholas! Childless at twenty, and condemned so to remain as long as the handsome Marian should manage to live. I would be sorry for you, were it not so convenient.”

  Nicholas had turned and was listening with what appeared to be patience. He said, “Thank you. Any time you wish another friend killed, be certain to let one of us know. We might not be sure, otherwise, which to pick.”

  He took the letter, and glanced once at the handwriting and signature before pushing it into his purse and turning again to the steps, ignoring Doria. Tobie followed, with Godscalc. Loppe had gone ahead, and would have a horse waiting. At walking pace, it would take ten minutes, no more, to reach the fondaco. Nicholas, seen from one side, gave no immediate impression of distress, but that was certainly as deceptive as everything else about him. Without Loppe, for example, he could not have mounted the horse, when he reached it. Then he rode with the slow care, again, of a man numbed by liquor. Loppe kept pace on one side at his horse’s head, and Godscalc walked on the other. Tobie, catching the priest’s eye, walked behind.

  So Simon of Kilmirren had a child. There was no need to speak of it. Godscalc knew, as he did, that Nicholas had been taught to consider himself the unacknowledged son of this Scotsman called Simon. Now Simon, it seemed, had a son—welcome, legal, accepted—by his second wife Katelina. A boy who would inherit all that Nicholas once thought was his, including his father’s affection. A rival whom Nicholas could never supplant.

  Doria, it was plain, knew none of the bitterer implications of the news he had so playfully imparted. The relationship between Simon and Nicholas was still, thank God, locked within the smallest circle of the Charetty family. Doria knew only what Catherine knew: that the Scottish lord Simon had made it his pleasure to hound and persecute Nicholas. So he had planned to taunt him with Simon’s good fortune. He had succeeded.

  He had succeeded particularly well. Halfway back, Godscalc said suddenly, “Tobie?”

  Tobie said, “I know. Look. Hold him between you. I’ll go ahead and start things moving. It looks worse than it is.”

  He saw Loppe’s face. He said, “He’s as strong as you are. There’s nothing here he won’t get over.”

  Loppe’s gaze, in a white man, would have been considering. He said, “It distressed you. What he said of the Emperor?”

  Poised to run, Tobie delayed. He said, “Was it true?”

  Loppe said, “He and Messer Pagano were led to the bath house. Yes. That is true.”

  “And the Emperor?” Tobie said.

  Loppe said, “The Basileus was there, and desirous of him.”

  Godscalc’s eyes, like those of Tobie, dwelled on him, waiting.

  “But he did not get him,” said Loppe. “I think you should go, Master Tobias.”

  A curious dialogue, until you thought about it. It was, Tobie understood, a douceur for the doctor; without which it might be presumed that the doctor would give less than his best. He admired the impulse, resented the implication and neither believed nor disbelieved what Loppe had told him. To honour the intent, he picked up his black skirts and ran.

  The events of the next few days were lost to Nicholas, who spent them in a busy, if disjointed world of his own. He had a great deal of running to do. Also, there took place a series of unnerving conversations between himself and other people over matters he preferred not to think about. He heard his own voice quite often, explaining this. Sometimes the response was reassuring: a sensible voice would point out that there was no reason to give such things a thought, and his best course was to think about
sleeping. Sometimes this voice took on the likeness of Godscalc’s, and sometimes sounded like Loppe, or Tobie, his doctor. He never saw their faces.

  The faces he did see were not conducive to sleep. They were not concerned at all with the shudders that rattled his teeth, or the sweats that drenched him, or the vomiting, or the purging or the cramps. But then, he was used to indifference; and indeed, preferred it. It was their claims on him that he found endlessly trying.

  The woman especially. He attempted, retching and shivering, to turn her away; to explain he had nothing to offer, but she never listened. Sometimes, her brown hair wound about her naked white skin, she would invade his bed of nausea, of weakness, of lethargy and lie there, wretchedly weeping, as if he had spurned her. Sometimes he would turn on the pillow and see her beside him, lying full length in the gown of a matron, with her brown hair hidden with velvet and wire, but the same demand in her clutch, in her eyes. Always, she asked difficult questions. If you were a lawyer, would you marry me? No, he would say. No, of course not. How could I, with marsh fever, in Trebizond? But she never listened, although she talked. You can become a burgess by marriage, she said. Several times.

  Once he seemed to be on his feet and she lay on the mattress, her chestnut hair spread on the pillow, so that he saw how desirable she was, and understood how his lack of ardour must offend her. Often, there was steam, which ran stinging into his eyes unless someone came with a towel, and dried him. Drifting white round his nakedness it would make distant her brown hair and small breasts and even her voice—Can you recommend me to a friend? And then he would say aloud, “Katelina!” but could think of nothing to add. Later, when the white scented steam cleared away, it was not a woman he saw, and he did not speak.

  The last dream came to him when the fever had almost abated and his senses were in part returning. This time it was certainly Katelina van Borselen, pregnant as he had last seen her in Bruges; hating him as he had last seen her in Bruges. He looked for her son, and she said, “I am calling him Henry.”

  Relief washed over him, because there was so much to say, if she would let him. He said, “Katelina? You won’t tell Simon. But one day, tell the boy who his father is. Don’t let him think it was Simon. Jaak will beat him; and Jordan. Katelina? Don’t punish the boy for what I did to you.”

  Her face, full of anger, hung above him. Full of contempt, full of horror. She put out her finger and traced the scar on his cheek, and it stung as if opened all over again. He said, “Don’t let Jordan mark him. Don’t make the boy bear the burden.”

  The face above him changed: not in expression but in contour. Instead of long brown hair, there was a tanned, shining cranium. Instead of the fierce dislike of a woman it was the disgust of a man with pale eyes and a short nose and brief, tightened lips. The hand that withdrew from his scar was that of Tobie.

  Nicholas, returned to the world, lay under the echoes of his own voice and looked up at the uncurtained bedposts of his chamber in the Florentine fondaco in Trebizond. By his side, straightening now, was the bald-headed man who had tended him already twice, but had never greeted his recovery with such an expression. By the window stood the priest, Godscalc. His face, also, told that something had happened.

  And of course it had. He had been speaking, out of some dream. He remembered the urgency of it; the need to persuade her…

  He remembered what the dream was about, and saw what he had done. He was too tired to move, but he kept his eyes open, and on Tobie’s. Only a fool, only a weakling, claims pity.

  Tobie spoke. “Your grandfather scarred you?”

  So it was to begin. “Yes,” said Nicholas. His voice was quite adequate.

  “And he was ruined. All your foes were ruined or killed except Simon. You spared him. We commended you for it. Spared him!”

  Tobie’s eyes, when he stared, became round and pale with the pupil shrunk like a hawk’s in the middle. Nicholas held them, saying nothing. Tobie said, “Unknown to Simon, his heir Henry is his wife’s child by you?”

  “No,” said Nicholas. It was useless, but he said it.

  “Despising you, he will unwittingly cherish your son. Your son will have all you wanted, and his wife is your mistress.”

  “No,” said Nicholas. He waited. He said, “Katelina has kept to her marriage vows. And so have I.”

  Godscalc’s voice spoke from the window. “The dates, Tobie. The child was conceived before either marriage.”

  “So you forced the girl?” Tobie said. “How did you even meet, you an apprentice and she one of the van Borselen family? You waylaid and raped her?”

  “No. Yes,” Nicholas said. His eyes, stretched open, stung with steam. No, of course, sweat. No one came with a towel. He said, “I didn’t know she and Simon would marry. If you tell him…this story…he will probably kill her. And the child.”

  “Perhaps she has told him now,” Tobie said.

  Godscalc said, “Clearly Nicholas thinks not.”

  Tobie said, “Then I shall. My God, you claim this man is your father? Simon fought you in the open. And you did this. No one knew, but it didn’t matter. No one but you, I suppose, and the child’s mother. What does she think of your revenge? Now you’ve used her. Now you’ve repaid him, obscenely, by smearing his bloodline with incest?”

  The word was spoken. It passed through him, swirling the mud of his body. He kept his eyes open, and his lips shut. Tobie said, “Unless your wife knows as well?”

  “Come,” said Godscalc. His voice sounded abrupt. “Let’s keep our senses. I am quite sure the demoiselle knows nothing and will never hear anything. Tobie, nothing can be said about this. It would harm only the innocent. The child and its mother. Marian de Charetty. The Borselen family. Think what Catherine and her sister will feel. And how Pagano Doria will…gloat.”

  Between one word and the next, he had changed his mind about something. Nicholas returned the priest’s gaze, which was harsh, and sought for the reason. Tobie said, “And this is the voice of the Church?”

  “It’s the voice of sense,” Godscalc said. “Nicholas will pay for what he has done. I can assure you of that. Meantime, he has made Simon a happy man. Indeed, what would punish Nicholas publicly would punish Simon as much. It is, as you note, a very private revenge. I believe it should stay so.”

  Tobie sat down. From the pallor of extreme anger, he had become flushed. He folded his arms. He said, “He’ll pay? Ten Paternosters?”

  Nicholas lay, watching Godscalc. He had appointed Godscalc himself, because he thought him an astute man as well as a prudent one. Whether that had been foolish or not he had yet to find out. Tobie, of course, had been made company physician by the demoiselle. When Simon stabbed him at Sluys, Julius had saved him from drowning. But it was Tobie the demoiselle had rewarded, for he had brought him to convalescence. Julius…

  Godscalc said, “Shall I tend his body and you his soul?”

  “How?” said Tobie doggedly.

  “Look at him!” Godscalc said. “That, for a start. And what else will make him suffer sufficiently? We could force him to do what he dislikes most. We could force him to tell us the rest of the truth.”

  It had been a mistake. Damn him. Damn him. Nicholas, who thought he had been unable to move, dug his fist in the sheet. Godscalc looked at him. The black eyebrows rose to the black untidy hair. “Such as,” he said, “telling Tobie who is behind Pagano Doria?”

  Too astute by far, but not, after all, wholly destructive. It was a trouble, now, to make his voice serve him. Nicholas said, at the second attempt, “I would have told you. Gregorio wrote me in Florence. Simon owns the Doria. Simon sent Pagano Doria to Trebizond to compete with us.”

  The priest, saving him, took up the story. “And, one supposes, to destroy us. And further, perhaps, to abduct the child Catherine and even to see that Nicholas never comes back. I was not sure,” said Father Godscalc, “but I made some enquiries in Porto Pisano, and the answers pointed that way. It does not begin to excuse, of co
urse, what Nicholas had already done.”

  “Simon was behind Doria?” said Tobie. He looked shocked. It would not, however, mitigate what he felt. He had always been in two minds about him, Nicholas knew. Now he had put aside doubt. Perhaps with reluctance. And still obliged in conscience, of course, to perform his physician’s duty. He spoke to Godscalc. “We know now that Nicholas lies, and will always lie. But you? You didn’t warn us?”

  Godscalc said, “I was waiting for Nicholas to do that. Since we knew Doria already as an enemy, his silence put us in no extra danger. But it was another instance of his penchant for secrecy. I was not aware, then, that he had already abused it.”

  So they had told Godscalc everything. Or everything that they knew. He lay and thought about that. In Bruges, they had accused him of destroying by guile every person who crossed him, including his kinsmen. It had stood in his favour, of course, that despite all Simon had done he, Nicholas, had never injured or hurt him. Or so they had thought, until now. And now, of course, they knew that he had given Simon in secret a bastard: a spurious, an incestuous son.

  Tobie and the priest continued to talk, but without referring to him. His sins of omission as well as those of commission were no doubt being thoroughly aired. He had, of course, promised to keep nothing from them, and had not kept the promise. He would be required to pay for that as well. They moved to the window, their voices rising and falling, and he found his eyes had closed. The walls and ceiling swayed vertiginously under his lids, and he struggled with an inclination to gasp. Then Tobie’s voice, close at hand, said, “No. He’s awake,” and fingers closed on his wrist. He pulled his hand away.

  It was still Tobie and Godscalc, looking down at him, but they seemed different. Then he saw that the light had changed. Perhaps he had slept without knowing it. Godscalc said, “Your master of medicine agrees with me that there has been enough talking. But you will want to know this. We concede that the parentage of Katelina van Borselen’s child should remain a secret, so long as she wishes. Tobie and I will tell no one else. If she dies, however, we reserve the right to protect those involved in whatever way we think best. Before we act, we shall tell you. That is all we will promise.”