Adorne could not, of course, hurry home without getting mixed up in politics. And Duke Charles would not now be much interested in his reports, although the merchants of Bruges certainly would. As for King James – the other King James – he would have to whistle, one supposed, for his Book.
Well, men whistled. Nicholas called his six executives together and informed them of his reading of what the Bank would be asked for and what they could provide as part of a strategic plan against the Grand Turk. He heard their comments. He asked Julius to give his interpretation of the Signoria’s thinking; and then added his own estimate of what the Turcoman and Karaman rulers, the Knights of Rhodes, the Mameluke Sultan and the King of Cyprus (bien plaintive de tous biens) could offer, and the degrees in which they could be helped. He then set all that against the Bank’s other business and resources and passed round some fresh calculations. He did not talk of the war in the West. Their minds on the East, no one queried it.
Gregorio said, ‘You anticipate difficulty with the Knights of Rhodes. With Genoese interests.’
‘Anselm Adorne is on his way,’ Nicholas said. ‘The Knights went so far as to exclude him from their discussions on Rhodes, but I suspect he guesses they are coming to Venice: even that this time he might catch Uzum’s envoys. I fancy he also realises that if we help Uzum Hasan overrun these particular Ottoman lands, Venice will end up with all the former Genoese alum and perhaps even the mastic. As well as all the usual trade in silk and jewels and scents and rhubarb roots and beautiful women.’
‘You mean that we shall,’ said Julius.
‘If we choose to favour Persia, yes,’ Nicholas said.
‘And the Genoese?’ Gregorio persisted.
‘They have a base on the Black Sea called Caffa,’ Nicholas said. ‘Ludovico da Bologna has just gone there. He may get back in time to explain, with diagrams, how Caffa deserves to be protected. It won’t help Adorne or the Vatachino, but it will placate the Genoese among the Knights and even in Genoa. So when are the Persian envoys due to arrive?’
‘We think in eight days,’ Julius said. ‘The Knights sent them in a squadron of galleys from Rhodes. The word is that they should come by next Thursday, take a day or so to recover, receive some attention, and then meet ourselves and the Senate on the Monday before Lent begins. So we have to know what we’re doing before then.’
‘It shouldn’t be impossible,’ Nicholas said. ‘I grant you we have a lot of ground to cover. And as we cover it, it might be as well to start some quiet talks with some of the Senators. Julius, Cefo? You know which ones, and when I should see them. It would be nice to meet the Knights and the Persians with something already understood. Gregorio?’
‘It would be sensible,’ Gregorio said.
‘I thought you were sleeping,’ said Nicholas. ‘Perhaps it has gone on rather long. There’s a lot to do. The same time tomorrow?’
‘And that’s what happens when you climb to the top of Mount Sinai,’ Julius said. ‘You come down with a lot of commandments.’
‘I know. He didn’t notice the balloons,’ Tobie said.
Julius made a grimace of good-humoured acknowledgement and flung himself down. ‘Well, it is Carnival-time.’
Tobie said, ‘Oh, come on. There are two weeks of it left. I’m sure you’ll manage some of your banquets and balls.’ He stooped and picked up Julius’s hand, with all the rings on it. Having examined it, he let it drop back.
‘Mind you, I don’t understand the Serenissima’s serenity. By all accounts they were cutting their throats after Negroponte – bringing the Captain-General home in chains hardly helped. All their credit and glory departed; nothing left in the East but Crete and a few bits of islands, and the Duke of Milan about to march over here, and deprive them of Crema and Brescia. What are they having a Carnival for?’
‘Because Moses de Reedy is going to take care of it all,’ Julius said. ‘Or he will, if all goes well at the conference. What do you mean, what are they having a Carnival for? It’s Carnival-time.’
‘Then I’d better go and put my funny face on,’ observed Tobie with acidity; and went to find his fellow conspirators.
John was with Gregorio, who appeared sunk in doubt. ‘I don’t think you should tell Nicholas what we’ve done. He hasn’t asked, anyway.’
‘Don’t you look at his face? He doesn’t need to ask, he divines,’ Tobie said. ‘He knows Gelis isn’t here. She doesn’t have to come until after the meeting. The morning after. That was the pact with the Patriarch.’
‘So she won’t do anything until after the conference is held,’ Gregorio said. ‘So don’t tell him.’
‘I don’t see why not,’ said John le Grant. ‘The way he is now, he’d hardly register a small thing like a family.’
‘The way he is now,’ Tobie said, ‘he’d fly apart like a spring-loaded shield. Wait for ten days. Wait till after we’ve seen Hadji Mehmet and the Knights and the Senate and it’s all resolved, one way or another.’
Five days after that, in a downpour, Anselm Adorne, Baron Cortachy, made a consciously impressive arrival by hired boat from Chioggia and put up with friends at the Ca’ Giustinian on the Grand Canal, since the rooms of the Knights of St John were already spoken for. With him was his promising son Jan, shortly to join the papal household, and his niece Katelijne Sersanders.
Two days after that, on a Wednesday, his niece took a hired maid and a page, and had herself poled across the Canal to the large, square building, fronted with mooring posts, which everyone referred to as the Ca’ Niccolò.
She wore a cloak and gown from Rome and a mask she had bought in Ferrara after she had begun to suspect what Venice was going to be like. She knew already that the buildings would be more refined and highly decorated than in Bruges, and that its network of waterways was infinitely more splendid and dense, and that the Carnival would be more aristocratic than the ones she was used to.
It had occurred to her that her uncle’s patron James, King of Scotland, would probably rather have an account of the Carnival than a blow-by-blow description of the Tomb of Lazarus, but she had been wise enough not to suggest it. She sat with her gaze fixed away from her gondolier, whose lissom body was unclothed from the waist downwards except by coloured hose, and whose eyes, beneath his feathered cap, kept sliding sideways in the manner depicted, for different reasons, in ikons.
Up till now, similarities to Egypt rather than Bruges had kept coming to mind: the pattern of moving light on the underside of bridges and the wind-patterns of sand; the ranges of structures inlaid and banded with white and gnarled with protuberances like the mountains of Sinai. Water, swollen and flooding, coursed through the canals like an animal; like the water released at the Abundance. Even the pillared magnificence of the Doge’s Palace, glimpsed from afar, had the look of a woven reed village, its cabins on stilts.
But she was in Venice, not Sinai. She stepped ashore with her suite and, treading over a mat of coiled streamers, entered the marble halls of the Banco di Niccolò.
She had to wait. A page brought her a posy of flowers, and another brought her a concoction of fruit juice and offered to look after her attendants. A third finally took her up a grand staircase from which she glimpsed rooms filled with tables and clerks. They all looked frayed. M. de Fleury, when she was shown into his room, displayed all the unforced composure of a spinning top which has picked its own speed. He seemed pleased: her visit had coincided, perhaps, with a statutory restorative break. ‘Salve virgo Kaiherina’ he said, offering her a seat.
The beard had gone, allowing him the use of one or both dimples. The incandescence of the journey to Cyprus had also gone. They had not met since the evening in the royal Palace at Nicosia: Je prens d’Amour noriture, followed by his departure. Whatever he had wanted other than gold, he had not got, or kept it. She said, ‘About Jan,’ since he had, as it were, introduced the subject.
He poured two goblets of wine and kept one. Nicosia had changed that, too, she had noticed. ‘No. Fi
rst, about you,’ he said. ‘I was sorry not to visit you at the Clares. Was it tedious?’
‘They were very garrulous,’ Kathi said. ‘They talked about other guests they had had, and showed me something of Cyprus. The Monastery of Cats. Kouklia. Famagusta. They are extremely well endowed by the King’s mother. About Jan. He’s fond of his father. He can be silly.’
He sat down, the cup in his hand. ‘Oh dear,’ he said. The remark might have applied to part or to all of her speech. He added, ‘I thought Jan had been offered a post in the Apostolic Threshold. Seriously silly?’
‘Not enough to kill anyone,’ Katelijne said. ‘But extremely eager to return any recent blows to the family pride. I suppose, too, that this is a time when the lords of the night watch are off duty.’
‘ “During Carnival, all jokes are acceptable,” ’ he quoted mildly, and drank, thinking. Then he smiled and looked up. ‘Thank you. The warning is noted. So what about the Relazione, the Great Book? Is it finished?’
She took a gulp of her wine. It was strong. She said, ‘I’ve seen the last words: Conclusio Peroptima et Salubris, Amen. I think that’s all he’s written, apart from the beginning. But he’s headed it up with his father’s name and all his titles and most of the four orders of chivalry.’
‘Four?’
‘He got another one in Jerusalem, and one in Cyprus. The Sword. The same as you have.’
‘That is serious,’ said M. de Fleury. ‘No wonder Jan thinks it a crime to interfere with such eminence. All the same, I don’t think you should be involved. You’d be safer in Bruges.’
‘I doubt it,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I’m fond of him, too.’
‘No one in the world could doubt that,’ said M. de Fleury.
He changed his tone. ‘It has hardly, all the same, constituted a health cure, this trip. Unless the Blessed Virgin St Catherine has managed to make up for the imbecilities of the rest of us? Have you brought something back from Alexandria? From Cyprus? From Sinai?’
She looked at him. ‘In health? They say I am better, but perhaps Dr Tobias could have cured me at home.’
He said, ‘Yes, in health. I am sorry. Spiritual wellbeing is not my affair.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘In any case, it’s all too recent to tell. I should put it aside. Put it green in the straw, and leave it to ripen. In six months we shall all know what we’ve brought back.’ She stood. ‘I must go. My uncle is presenting his letters to the Doge this morning.’
He rose as well. ‘We shall see one another in public, I am sure. We are not savages. And all your other friends here will want to meet you.’
At the door she said, ‘There is one other thing. Simon de St Pol is in Venice.’
For a moment he was absolutely still. Then he said, ‘You are sure?’
‘My uncle called at the Ca’ Frizier, the Scots lodging. He knows the family. He said M. de St Pol was there.’
M. de Fleury stirred and then smiled, opening the door and gazing peaceably beyond it. ‘Then let us hope he doesn’t meet Jan Adorne.’
She said nothing. He turned. Then the two dimples deepened and deepened. He said, ‘Col Dieu, he has.’
On Thursday the twenty-first of February, the squadron of galleys of the Knights Hospitaller of St John of Jerusalem dropped anchor in the basin at Venice and the embassy of noble Knights stepped ashore, among whom were Tobias Lomellini of Genoa and the chaplain, Father John Gosyn of Kinloch. With them was a Persian delegation of over one hundred gentlemen, led by the lord Hadji Mehmet.
The Signoria, warned of their coming, sent a suitable party to welcome them and to conduct them to their lodging. From there they brought back, after due expressions of gratitude, the Persian ruler’s gifts to the Doge, which included ten barrels of caviare, five bundles of carpets and twelve parcels of silk. On Friday, once rested, the lords of Persia and their conductors were received in ceremonial audience by the Doge, and a number of less formal meetings were arranged, to culminate in a presentation before the full Council on Monday.
Returned to their lodging, the Knights and the delegation expressed their readiness to receive the Duke of Burgundy’s Envoy that afternoon and, when the Baron Cortachy arrived, engaged him for three hours in unheated discussion.
The Genoese Knights of Rhodes, not averse to Western food and good wine, accepted the Baron’s invitation to dine at his palazzo. The remaining Knights and their turbanned charges found it more convenient to remain where they were and entertain the merchant Nicholas de Fleury in the manner already arranged between them on Rhodes.
The meeting lasted into the night. It was understood in the course of it that the deployment of certain resources of gold was still under discussion within M. de Fleury’s company, who were prepared to open informal talks between then and Monday’s meeting with the Signoria. It was difficult at times to follow the argument, such was the racket of trumpets, singing and uninhibited shouting outside. It was explained that at present Venice was in Carnival.
Jan Adorne, excluded from the deliberations of his father, took the advice of his new and urbane friend, the chevalier Simon of Scotland, and had himself fitted with an exquisite costume ready for Martedi Grasso, the crescendo of unimaginable excitement which on Tuesday would finish the Carnival. The hose and shoes were of silk, and the hood and mask made entirely of cock’s feathers. Between now and then, he wore his best taffeta doublets with a black mask and cloak, as Simon recommended. Simon said he was going as Dionysus.
As the son of the Baron Cortachy, Jan Adorne was not of course in want of a guide or companion, but he was impressed, despite himself, by St Pol’s familiarity with the city, and with certain houses in it.
Jan was an orthodox young man, and had behaved himself in Paris and Pavia as orthodox students did; but on this journey he had been forced to observe unnatural standards of conduct. The all-important post in his grasp, he had permitted himself at last to gaze at the wealth in the windows of Florentine goldsmiths; to smile at the pretty girls smiling at him from garlanded Ferrara balconies. And now here he was, masked, in a city tumbling into the unlicensed frenzy of Carnival, its roofs merry with flags, its exquisite buildings garlanded, its squares and lanes blowing with silken awnings and tassels, hung with cloth of gold, with damask, with carpets, and crowded with handsome people, and music, and laughter.
Whatever Simon did, Jan could do. He chose his own mistress, for example. That is, stumbling out of the heat and heavy scents of one of the houses Simon took him to, Jan became aware, as he swayed, of an exquisite masked girl on a bridge. The mist, rising like smoke, made it seem that she floated; a slender wreathed body suspended in air, one narrow, gloved hand holding back a fold of her cloak. Her face, cowled in black, was formed of white porcelain: a pure oval mask whose sleek, still eyes studied him above the rigid flare of the delicate nostrils, the parted, ceramic lips. Her headdress was a crown of silk roses.
He thought she was waiting for someone. But when she had his attention she moved, her white-gloved fingers pressed to her throat, her steps moving softly down the far side of the bridge and away. He heard a breath of laughter, and when he reached the crown of the bridge, found lingering there a scent he did not know. Far ahead, in the mist, a cloak floated. She had been waiting for him.
Behind, Simon called his name, and the girl with him giggled. She was a handsome whore, the best in the house, and Simon had not let him share her. That was his right: he was the teacher, and there were other things he and Jan were going to do together. But that night, Jan had something in prospect other than a harlot of the second rank, however exclusive the establishment. The cloak fluttered ahead, and he followed.
Julius said, ‘You know Jan Adorne? I thought I saw him last night coming out of the Coccina brothel. Masked, but the same bony shoulders. Wasn’t he supposed to be reserved for the Church?’
‘So were you,’ Nicholas said. ‘So what were you doing in the district?’
‘Attending the Martinengo banquet. Where you were sup
posed to be. Nicholas, it’s the Corner reception tonight for Hadji Mehmet and the Persians. Half the Great Council are going, and the wretched Corner girl will receive. I refer to Catherine, the nominal Queen of the très haut et très illustre grand roi de Jerusalem, de Chypre et d’Arménie, your particular friend Zacco. It’s ordinary dress, with a mask and a cloak. Or at least, the best dress you’ve got. We’re all going.’
‘You mean you don’t want to discuss any more numbers,’ said Nicholas.
‘No, I don’t,’ Julius said. ‘If we’re not ready for Monday, we never shall be. All we have to do is decide what we’re going to offer. One last meeting.’
‘All right,’ Nicholas said. ‘I’ll come to the palazzo tonight if you’ll all present yourselves in my room tomorrow morning. One last meeting. And if you want to complain, complain to Tobie. I was going to do all this myself until he showed me how selfish that was.’
The reception given by Marco Corner and his wife Fiorenza, princess of Naxos, was – other than that of the Doge – the finest of all the entertainments offered in Venice during the span of the Carnival. The central figure was, of course, Catherine, Queen of Cyprus, their fourth child, released from her Paduan convent and done up in satin and pearls with a train. She was opulent, fair, and embossed under the paint with heavy spots. Their son George and the girl’s seven sisters attended her.
The food and wine were both lavish, and a stage had been erected in the courtyard upon which a play was performed, followed by music. The dancing continued for most of the night.
Nicholas went, and remained. Julius threw himself into every extravagance, while minding his manners. Tobie and John tended to sit side by side, displaying identical sinuous smiles above slackened shoulders. Gregorio, whom the days were making increasingly haggard, muttered something suddenly and went off during the mime. Anselm Adorne came and sat beside Nicholas. He slid the mask from his face. ‘Our Ambassadors appear to be enjoying themselves. You and I are not in accord, but there is no reason why we should ignore each another. I have to thank you for caring for Katelijne.’
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