Dorothy Dunnett - [House of Niccolo 01]

by Niccolo Rising

  “What sort of a fool do you take me for?” she said. “I know that. In the eight years you have lived with this family your arms and legs at least have earned your keep. The pity is that none of the rest of you, it seems, is even born yet. What is to become of you?”

  He shook his head, smiling the brimming, affectionate smile he turned on all the world. “The Duke will hang me, perhaps?”

  “No,” said Marian de Charetty coldly. “The King of Scotland perhaps. The King of France almost certainly. If Meester Julius leaves, you might do worse than go with him.”

  “Will he leave?” said Claes. He looked surprised.

  “He might,” said Marian de Charetty. “When he finds I will not take him into partnership. But with what he now owes, it will take him a little time to save what will make him independent. By that time, Felix will be grown.”

  “And I, perhaps, will be hanged by the King of Scots,” said Claes. “So where will you go for an honest notary to help you guide jonkheere Felix?”

  He spoke as if thinking aloud. She allowed Claes to speak freely quite often. Now, before she could think of an answer, he had suggested one. “There is Meester Oudenin. His daughter is the right age.”

  She felt her colour rise, and she inhaled abruptly. It left in her throat the faint smells of ink and parchment and leather, and sweat, and sawdust. Sawdust?

  She said, “I think that will do. The beating you certainly deserve would do nothing but lose me even more of your labour. I shall tell you in time what other punishment I have devised. Meanwhile you will return to work, no matter what the town says. I shall take care of the Scots gentleman.”

  The footsteps she had heard became clearer, and Astorre’s familiar fist banged on the door.

  Claes smiled, and she fought not to smile in return. Another bang came to the door, and Astorre’s voice saying, “Demoiselle!”

  Claes said, “I wrote it down. About the alum. It’s Phocoean, and the Venetians were hoping to keep it all quiet. The Guild would be interested.” He withdrew a creased scrap of paper from his pouch and laid it on her table; then glancing up with another smile, slid one of her other papers across it. Then, receiving wordless permission, he crossed and opened the door for Astorre, before himself bowing out.

  The door shut. She did not look down at the paper. The soldier, as she expected, was carrying a heavy box under either arm. He crossed the room with his bow-legged tramp and set them heavily down beside her money chest. It was why she had to bring a strong bodyguard every year, carrying extra groats to pay for what she bought from the Flanders galleys.

  Astorre straightened, his breathing hardly disturbed. Twenty years of hard fighting showed in the puckered scar over one eye and the scarlet frill which was all the surgeons had left of an ear, but he was as fit as a twenty-year-old, with not a thread of grey yet in his beard. He said, “So you’ve told him?”

  “No, I haven’t,” said Marian de Charetty.

  “He’d make off? I wouldn’t have thought it,” said the captain.

  “No. He’s grown a lot in a year,” said the widow his employer.

  “Too much?” said Astorre, and laughed, hawking. He spat in the rushes. There were captains with courtly ambitions and those who aimed lower. It was his small size, she always thought, which kept Astorre’s manner brutish as well as belligerent. He was an astute and experienced man. But even before Cornelis died, she could manage him.

  She said, “He’s grown in some ways. I don’t want trouble with Claes until the galleys are in. Then I’ll tell him.”

  “As you like.” Astorre was unworried. He went out to get the rest of the boxes and she watched him. She thought it very likely that Claes had already guessed what she was going to do with him. And if he hadn’t, he would soon sniff it out, among all those other yards and kitchens and offices where he ran his messages, and was always made welcome.

  He would sniff it out, but he would do nothing until she told him publicly. She could rely on that as she could rely on nothing else in her life. She thought of Claes defending Julius, and Julius defending Claes, and was aware of a shadow of jealousy.

  Chapter 7

  “I’LL KEEP OUT of my lord Simon’s way,” Claes had promised.

  Marian de Charetty saw that he did. She placed him under house arrest, and did the same for her breezy son Felix. She did not think, unfortunately, of restraining her mercenary captain Astorre, whom she considered an adult. When, a few days later, the merchant galleys sailed in from Venice, it seemed to the head of the Charetty company that her household was under control, and she had nothing now to distract her from her business. At first, she was right.

  Without Claes or Felix, the fifty thousand people of Bruges, more or less, covered by foot or by rowboat the few miles to the harbour at Sluys, there to see the two slender ships from Venice move in and drop anchor.

  It was never less than marvellous, every year. To see the sun-glow slide through the silk of the banners, and the blaze as the oars unscrolled every one from the water and stood erect on each side like two combs. To hear the flagship begin to make music: first the drums and pipes with a rattle and chirrup, and then the burping of trumps from the poop. Above the flash of the brass, the fringe would blow and wink on the canopy where you would see, each year different, the thick sprawling embroidery of the commander’s device.

  And across the water, you would swear you could sniff it all; the cinnamon and the cloves, the frankincense and the honey and the liquorice, the nutmeg and citrons, the myrrh and the rosewater from Persia in keg upon keg. You would think you could glimpse, heaped and glimmering, the sapphires and the emeralds and the gauzes woven with gold, the ostrich feathers and the elephant tusks, the gums and the ginger and the coral buttons mynheer Goswin the clerk of the Hanse might be wearing on his jacket next week.

  It was a trick, that was for sure, like the Duke’s performers at Carnival time. It was no accident that the galleys always downed sails and entered harbour in daylight, with the decks sluiced and the rowers and sailing-masters in livery and the noblemen commanding each ship in a stiffened gown in the crazy Venetian mode, their beards newly trimmed, with perhaps a chained marmoset on one shoulder.

  It wasn’t a difficult trick. The Flanders galleys never spent nights at sea like the round ships, getting dirty with no time to put things to rights before landing. The Flanders galleys put into harbour every night in their highly-paid voyage from Venice, fanned down the Adriatic by the thick summer airs, drifting into Corfu and Otranto, nosing into and out of Sicily and round the heel of Italy as far as Naples; blowing handsomely across the western gulf to Majorca, and then to the north African coast, and up and round Spain and Portugal, dropping off the small, lucrative loads which were not needed for Bruges; taking on board a little olive oil, some candied orange peel, some scented leather, a trifle of plate and a parrot, some sugar loaves.

  But never anything crude, or bulky, or coarse. The Republic’s Flanders galleys were the princes of Venice’s fleet, expensively manned and expensively built to outrun any thief in the seaways, and designed for luxuries only.

  They came every year, and every year reached the Narrow Seas and separated: two for Bruges and one for London – or Southampton, if Londoners happened to be campaigning against foreign merchants that year. The total freight of three Flanders galleys, they said, was worth a quarter of a million golden ducats. Yes, there was that much money in the world. So they said. And look, to prove it: the Doge and that lot in Venice voted twenty pounds a year to bribe the customs clerks at Bruges to undervalue the cargo. That’s true. I tell you. I had it from one of their widows. And ten times that much to spend on a sweetener for Duke Philip himself.

  So the crowd would say, watching the customs men being rowed aboard, two to a galley, and the Sluys reception committee, and later the fellows done up in their gold chains from Damme, and much later – for some folk would sire their sons after the christening, if they thought it would add to their dignity �
�� the big bell on the Bruges tower would start tolling and someone – Jan Blaviet, that’s who – would come riding a mule with a hat on him like five ells of bandaging caught on a thorn bush, followed by Anselm Adorne and Jan van den Walle and a clutch of grooms and servants and soldiers with the Bruges blazon and flag. And with them, the Venetian agents – big Bembo and thin Contarini and that great bloated miser, Marco Corner.

  And later than that – for the Venetians got first whack at the scriveners’ lists and the unloading, just as they got the first chance to get their goods on before sailing – the rest of the partnerships who were expecting consignments.

  Such as Tommaso Portinari, with all his rings on, if he could persuade Tani to let him handle it, which he probably couldn’t. And Jacopo Strozzi, who might bring young Lorenzo with him, if his gout was bad. And Jacques Doria and Lommelin and the rest of the Genoese. And Pierre Bladelin, the Duke’s household controller, to check on the goods the Duke had especially asked for, and João Vasquez, to do the same for the Duchess, with Figuieres and the other Portuguese with him. Someone from the Corps of Hosteliers, to see who needed putting up. The Germans from the Hanse, anxious to hear about rates. And the Lucchese, with Giovanni Arnolfini and his long, pallid face, who knew the Duke’s taste in silks and had a few private commissions worth a groat or two.

  Oh, a lot went on behind the scenes when the Flanders galleys came in. The big men never came out in the early days to the harbour, just waited until it all arrived by barge at the Staple in Bruges and the Waterhalle. The real haggling went on, they said, at the meetings afterwards. After all, there was all winter for wheeling and dealing. Six months while the galleys sat in the harbour and every tavern and brothel in Bruges and the waterside entertained four hundred seamen.

  The Flanders galleys had come, and the bells and the trumpets were merely the prelude to the deafening jingle of money.

  Unwisely, on the third day after the galleys’ arrival, Marian de Charetty released her son Felix from his duties, on condition that he did not set foot outside Bruges. That put Sluys out of bounds.

  She assumed, with some reason, that he would go straight to a tavern, from which Julius would later be sent to extract him. Julius himself was at Sluys, with Henninc her manager, taking a close interest in some bales of weld and woad and kermes and some sacks of brazil blocks, and a wistful interest in a valuable item called alum. The demoiselle de Charetty herself was due at a meeting of the dyers’ guild, to which she hoped that Julius would come with his bulletin. She sent for Henninc’s deputy, placed him in charge, and went off on foot, with a maid, to her meeting.

  Henninc’s deputy, a hardworking fuller called Lippin, remembered that there were shears to be brought from the grinder’s and, finding Claes handy, dispatched him forthwith on that errand. That Claes had not been allowed to leave the premises for a week had not entered his mind, and Claes left in a trice, in his clogs and piss-spattered apron, in case it should. He found Felix in a deserted office of the Medici, in the tall consular house near the market. Felix was not pleased to see him. “Who told you I was here?”

  “Winrik the money-changer,” said Claes appeasingly. Winrik, patrolling the streets with his money-booth, was the best source of gossip in Flanders.

  Felix sneered. “And in return you gave Winrik a long, helpful check, and found a mistake in his day-book and three miscalculations at least in his ledger. This stinking artisan,” said Felix to his sole audience, an infant trainee newly sent out from Florence, “– this Flemish moron tells numbers for pleasure, as you and I drink, or fart, or plan how to spend money.”

  “Well, if you’re going to spend it, someone’s got to save it,” said Claes with reason. His large gaze drifted over the packets and letter-books of the Medici. “Save you money too,” he volunteered to the office boy, who looked him up and down, so far as he was able, and stepped back beside Felix, and then further back still, as the smells from Claes’ apron pursued him.

  “There,” said Claes, running a set of large indigo fingers over an order book. “What’s that and that?”

  The boy hesitated.

  “Oh, never mind,” said Felix wearily. “Don’t humour him. It’s a disease.” He looked at Claes again. “What have you got Mother’s shears for?”

  “They’ve been sharpened,” said Claes.

  “Then isn’t she expecting you back?” said Felix, a touch of his father creeping into his manner.

  “No,” said Claes without blinking. “What are you waiting for?”

  “Tommaso’s boat. He’s going to Sluys. It’s the day of the private deck sale on the Flanders galleys. I want a monkey.”

  “You want to be sent back to Louvain,” said Claes. “She’ll find out you’ve been outside the city.”

  “I’ll tell her that you bought it for me,” said Felix.

  Claes considered. “You mean I have to come to Sluys with you?”

  “Well, yes,” said Felix, reviewing for the first time the practical problems of the immediate future. “That is, if Tommaso can get rid of his priests and his monks. He’s choosing a tenor for the Medici chapel in Italy.” His face brightened. “Terrible, isn’t it?”

  Through several doors, sounds emerged which might have been singing. It was indeed terrible. Claes grinned at the boy. “How many has he heard?”

  The boy turned his back on the apron and replied, pointedly, to the youth with the good clothes and the hat. “This is the third. Brother Gilles is from the choir of the Augustines. He is a friend of the soldier Astorre of your company. The man Astorre waits, too, to travel to Sluys.”

  “Oh,” said Felix. A ringlet, out of habit, fitted round his finger, and he twisted it.

  “He is severe, Astorre?” said the boy. “You do not wish to see him?”

  Felix said, “He’s only my mother’s captain. I’m going to Sluys.”

  “He’d do your shopping for you,” said Claes. “Monkeys. Leopard-skin mantles. A new sort of feather?”

  “I’m going to Sluys,” repeated Felix. The singing had stopped.

  The door opened. “I heard that,” said captain Astorre. “Jonkheere Felix –”

  “I’m going to Sluys,” said Jonkheere Felix for the third time.

  Claes never sighed. He just said, “And so am I,” and grinned cheekily up at the soldier, who cuffed him absently across the face and said, “Well, what are we waiting for?”

  That was Astorre in a good mood, because his friend Brother Gilles had been picked for the Medici chapel. The clouds cleared from Felix’s face. He grinned at Astorre, at Tommaso Portinari, entering briskly to lead them all to the company barge, and even at Claes, following obediently in his stocking soles with his clogs round his neck to save the boat-planks, and his shears under his arm, wrapped in his apron.

  They embarked without a qualm, and even Tommaso looked cheerful. They were all off to Sluys, and the Venetian galleys.

  Afterwards (but he was lying) the notary Julius used to say that it was the worst moment of his life, that sunny day in September when he squinted down from the deck of the Venetian flagship and saw the Medici skiff being punch-rowed along the canal towards him.

  In it were his employer’s son Felix, who had promised not to leave Bruges, and his employer’s apprentice Claes, who had been under house-imprisonment in her dyeshop, and Tommaso Portinari, to whom his employer did not wish to owe favours and who, by the cramped look of his nose, was going to exact from someone the price of suffering the smell from Claes’ apron all the way from Bruges to Sluys.

  And last and worst, there in the prow was the pullet body and cockerel face of his employer’s captain Astorre, his beard pecking the air as he vaulted out. Then he stood on the quayside, the button eyes attacking the palaces of crates, the terraces of bulging bales, the landscapes of sacks and baskets and barrels through which chains and clusters and units of men were moving about, transferring their environment piecemeal to cart and barge and warehouse under the swinging stalks of the
cranes.

  Then the beard pointed shipwards and Julius drew carefully back. There were, after all, two galleys lining the wharf, and you could only pray that Felix and Claes and Astorre would choose not to come on board the flagship.

  Two galleys with a hundred and seventy oarsmen on each, and thirty bowmen, and the navigating officer, and the scrivener and his assistant, and the caulkers and the carpenter and the cook and two doctors and the notary, all with their boxes open on deck displaying their little items for sale, and their price lists.

  It was one of the perquisites of the Flanders voyage, the right of the crew to take small goods for private sale at the ports they touched at. He shouldn’t wonder if the priest hadn’t a bag below deck there, with a morsel of incense and some quite expensive church vestments inside it. And the commander’s cabin, you could be sure, was stacked to the arras with sweet wine and some items smaller and heavier, like gold dust from Guinea, where that wool-headed slave came from.

  But all that, of course, was a matter for the friends of Ser Alvise Duodo, and not for vulgar public huckstering. The Greek with the wooden leg, Monsignore Nicholai de’ Acciajuoli, was in there with Duodo now, no doubt seeking news of his captive brother in Constantinople.

  It was a pity that the Greek had not come alone. It was a pity that he had brought with him the noble merchant who had sailed with him from Scotland, the ungentle Simon. For the present, the curtain of the poop cabin was drawn, but at any moment, one of them might emerge before Julius finished his business. It was a pity, as well, that Julius was not entirely sober.

  Julius did not, after the incident of the cannon, the girl and the dog, wish to draw the attention of Simon to himself or any member of the Charetty household. Already he had successfully dodged his gaze once: something not hard to do on a deck one hundred and eighteen Venetian feet long, and packed with people and boxes. As well as disliking Simon, he was inclined to be deeply envious of him. He wished he could watch Simon, but without being seen. He was aware that he had delivered an extremely capable seven days of work to the demoiselle de Charetty after his berating, and that he had celebrated the fact just a little too early this morning. He particularly, therefore, did not wish Felix and Claes to come aboard. As for Astorre, it would be a disaster. Julius cautiously raised his head, shaking it slightly, and looked over the rail.