Dorothy Dunnett - [House of Niccolo 01]

by Niccolo Rising

  Gregorio of Asti did as he was asked, and soon Henninc, his face flushed, his lips pursed, came to join him. Like himself, Henninc, he noticed, answered no questions from his underlings. Soon, noisy as starlings, there streamed from house and yard into the dyeshop the whole sum of the Charetty employees, from the journeymen dyers to the boys who cared for the tack; from the regal authority of the cook to the maids who swabbed floors and cut vegetables.

  Then the demoiselle, in her good clothes, came out. Not escorted by her new husband. The youth who followed her into the yard and, catching up, gave her his arm was, Gregorio saw with fascination, her own son, Felix de Charetty, with a rather pale face and a jacket that didn’t assort with his doublet. They had reached the dyeshop when a door banged and the architect of the whole affair came purposefully over the yard. Heads turned. The smiles, Gregorio saw, were without rancour. Claes hurtling, late, into the yard. Now a courier and very grand, but still Claes. From a distance, tall and well-built, he had a presence. Close at hand, of course, it was different.

  Now he came into the dyeshed, looking about him. On his face Gregorio could detect no shadow of triumph, or shame or embarrassment. He had been looking, evidently, to see where he, Gregorio, was standing with Henninc. They were near to the lady and her son, but not beside them. Pushing through, Nicholas got to the same place and stood, turning his face to the Widow. She mounted her box, and everything got very quiet.

  She was not unused to this. She had run the business, after all, since her husband died. She began by thanking them for the help they had been to her, and for their loyalty. She went on to talk about the difficult times after her husband died, and about the changes in the sort of work people wanted, and the sort of business that made and didn’t make money. She said that it had been shown, over the last year, that the Charetty business was a very good one, and provided it changed with the times, could be even better. Perhaps one that could be very rich indeed. She was glad to tell them this, because she hoped they were all going to be able to stay with her and share in what was to come.

  In all this she had had great help. From her manager Henninc, most of all. From Meester Julius, who was away but who would return and help her still more. But also, from one of themselves. From Claes who, now that he was a courier, they had learned to call Nicholas. For the past six months many of the good ideas about running the business had come from Claes. He had a gift for this. He could take the gift to any company and help to make it a great success. But to persuade him to stay with the Charetty company, she, the owner, had decided on an important step.

  Nicholas was a young man, with a fine future. She was therefore making him managing partner of the business. As before, Henninc would manage the yard, and would give Nicholas his very good advice, as he had given it to her. Messer Gregorio would act, meantime, for Meester Julius and help him when he returned. And her son, Felix, would be at Nicholas’ side to keep him right and, in due course, take her place as supreme owner.

  She paused there, for the murmurs, the head-turning, the ejaculations. With discretion, Gregorio scanned his companions. Henninc, still flushed, stared directly ahead, looking at nobody. The boy Felix, standing very straight below his mother, glared at the crowd as if he hated them. Beside him Nicholas stood quite still, wholly concentrated on watching. Watching everyone, Gregorio saw, from his wife to those people who must have been his friends round the dye vats.

  The Widow said, “You will have to be understanding with Nicholas, and help him as much as you can, because he has taken on a very large task for all of us. But I think you may thank me for not bringing in some stranger. You know each other. He has been here for a long time. Of course, his appointment has brought another problem. As you know, I am a widow, and vulnerable as a woman is. I have not wished to take a husband who would be pleasing to me but perhaps not to you, who are, in a way, also my family. Now I am faced with sharing my house and most of the affairs of my day with my new manager.”

  Felix dropped his gaze. Nicholas, instead, lifted his to the platform. Marian de Charetty looked at him, and smiled. She said, her voice steady, “There seemed to be only one sensible solution. I asked him if, without prejudice to the business, in which he will have no share, he would combine this appointment with marriage. He agreed. A marriage contract between us was sealed this morning.”

  Silence. Then a sound like a whine, with a murmuring undercurrent. Then a rumble of words. The high notes were from women. The smiling faces, Gregorio saw, were all women’s. And the thought, plain as if gleefully shouted. A lusty boy in her bed! Good for the Widow!

  The Widow herself stood smiling. A stiff smile, but a real one. If she was trembling, it didn’t show. She had courage. But of course she had courage, to agree to the whole thing in the first place.

  It was a woman who shrieked, “Three cheers for the demoiselle!” and it was women who began cheering, although the men had mostly joined in by the third. Their faces were diverse as the faces of men about to fight a battle. They didn’t know what they felt yet. They wouldn’t know until this was over, and they were huddled in some corner together.

  Marian de Charetty was saying, “Thank you. It seemed right to mark the occasion. I see the sun is still shining. If you will move into the yard, Henninc will take some of you to help him bring out a wine cask, so that you can drink our health. And your own. And that of the company.”

  It was over. The demoiselle, helped by her son, was stepping down from her box. Hesitantly, some of her people were already moving forward to speak to her. She began to take their hands, one by one, smiling and speaking briefly. Henninc had gone, busy with his commission, and silent. You could see Nicholas follow him with his eyes, and then one or two of the brasher men stepped up to him, and soon a small group surrounded him, and more and more.

  He made no attempt, Gregorio saw, to join the demoiselle and create of the occasion a bridal reception. The experimental jokes he appeared not to hear. The questions about his work and theirs he answered readily, with excitement even, so that some of it infected the professional men among them, who began to press closer and ask more. He finally moved out, in a wide knot of people, and found an old barrel to sit on while they crowded round him. In a while, laughter rose. Others crossed the yard to join him.

  There were still sufficient paying court to the demoiselle to make it a fair division. Messer Gregorio walked to where she stood with her son and said, “Demoiselle, my congratulations. The Duke’s controller could not have spoken better, or more wisely.”

  “I had Felix to advise me,” she said. “Is the wine coming?”

  It had come. Without haste, the crowd around Nicholas dissolved, or rather reshaped so that it came with its nucleus to the trestle where the cups were being laid. The wine was poured. The Widow, raising her cup, gave a toast to the company, and they to her. Then, with her son, she left for the house. Gregorio, interested, waited.

  Nicholas said, “Well, of course I should like to stay and get drunk with all my friends, but I suppose you and I ought to go in. I’ve told Henninc they can drink themselves silly for half an hour, and then he’s to come in and join us.”

  Gregorio kept his face solemn. He subdued, with a great effort, a desire to ask directly how Felix de Charetty had been won over. Or if not, by his looks, exactly converted, at least persuaded to co-operate. Instead, he said, “What made you late?” They began walking indoors side by side.

  “A letter from … a letter,” said his new master. “I’ll tell the demoiselle later. I have to leave for Italy as soon as I can. The day after the joust.”

  “Trouble?” said Meester Gregorio.

  “Well, trouble in the sense that I’d hoped to have longer than that to arrange things. It isn’t fair to you, or to the demoiselle. I’ll get everything done that I can before I go. In one way, it’s not bad to leave early. The sensation will have time to die. People will pick a public quarrel with me, but not with the demoiselle.”

  “Who wo
uld pick a public quarrel with you?” asked Gregorio.

  “The person you’re thinking of,” said Nicholas without animosity. “We’re to go to the parlour. It’s the special wine.”

  “And Italy?” said Gregorio, hurrying. “What’s the trouble in Italy?”

  “The trouble in Italy,” said his new master, “is that Jacopo Piccinini has changed sides.”

  It was so remote from dyevats and weddings and wine in the parlour that Gregorio frowned. He said, “The condottiere? He was, surely in the pay of King Ferrante of Naples. Yes, I see. The Charetty company and captain Astorre are now supporting a weakened army. Piccinini has crossed to the Angevins?”

  “Piccinini is now supporting the Duke of Calabria. Yes.”

  They were in the doorway. “But what can you do?” said Messer Gregorio, staring at Nicholas.

  “Turn back the tide of war, single-handed,” said Nicholas. “No. There’s a fellow with Piccinini called Lionetto. I’d hate to have him on the wrong side.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Gregorio.

  “No. It’s just as well you don’t,” said the extraordinary youth, cheerfully. “Or you’d turn and walk straight out. I warn you. Don’t stay with this company if you like things to be peaceful.”

  With darkness came exhaustion for Marian de Charetty. The talk, the arrangements had gone on all evening. Tilde, who had not come to the parlour for wine, had appeared there at suppertime, joining Felix and Catherine and Nicholas and her mother at the table. Her face set and swollen, Tilde had at least answered when spoken to and, sitting next to her mother, had held her hand tightly. Nicholas left her alone, and talked about jousting.

  You could see the idea enter Felix’s head, and take shape there. You could see him, instead of speaking in monosyllables, begin to guide the conversation. It was no surprise when he said, rather loudly, “You did say, didn’t you, that Mother and I would find the business doing remarkably well? I presume in that case it would support an extra horse or two, and a shield, say?”

  Nicholas’s reply, agreeing placidly, clashed with her own sharp refusal. She looked at Nicholas. He said, “I don’t see why not. He’s the head of the business. He ought to make a show at the White Bear.”

  She stared at him. She said, “I thought –” and stopped abruptly.

  “You thought the business couldn’t afford it. So did I. But they didn’t drink half as much wine as I thought they would this afternoon, and the wedding came cheap.” He grinned at her. Tilde was looking from one side to the other, puzzled. Marian realised that, of course, they would expect him to economise, to reduce their spending. He had tricked her into allowing him an act of generosity.

  It was later, when the meal was over, and Tilde and Felix had gone and Catherine was already asleep in her big bed, that Marian found herself alone before the parlour fire for the first time with her husband. He had been with her all day and yet, in a sense, it might have been Henninc. Except that never in a thousand years would Henninc have contrived to achieve all Nicholas had achieved from last night. Or Cornelis.

  Although, of course, Cornelis had given her a bridal night. And she herself had made it plain to Nicholas that there was to be none. He had acquiesced: had even arranged for Catherine to stay with her. And had engineered, too, all those joint anouncements which made it clear to the world the basis on which his marriage stood. For her sake, she knew.

  For the same reason, he would have to leave her room soon, to find the chamber he had arranged for himself in another wing. Returning from seeing to Catherine, she had given him a last cup of wine and saw, by the firelight, that his eyes were heavy. She wondered if his night, too, had been sleepless, or if he had passed it in dreamless, confident rest. He said suddenly, “I’m sorry. You must be tired as well.”

  He spoke as if they had never been in company except when vigorously and formally entertaining one another. As if she had never tended him, lying in feverish dreams on the pillows upstairs during his sickness. She said, “I don’t think there is anything in the world I want to talk about. Yes, there is. The joust?”

  “He won’t take part,” said Nicholas. “Take my word for it.”

  “After all that expense?” she said, her smile wider. “Two horses? A shield?”

  He said, “Notice how generous I was being with your money. It gives him … it will help him with his friends.”

  “You mean,” she said, “he can boast about how he is taking advantage of you?”

  “Something like that. He deserves it, anyway.” His eyes closed. He said, “Dear Christ, I must go,” and opened them and got up.

  He hesitated. Sitting, aching with weariness, she tried to will him to say nothing more. Not to offer some skilled, manufactured coda to the whole business, to which she would be expected to respond equally skilfully.

  He said, “I think you will probably sleep. I’ll stay in the yard or the office all morning. Send for me if you want me.”

  He gave her one of his lavish, sudden smiles. His eyes were still drowsy. She returned the smile and said, “Good-night, Nicholas,” and watched him make his way to the door. He turned, his hand on the latch, and drew breath to say something, and then smiled instead.

  She should have left it alone. Instead, she said, “What remark was that going to be?”

  He stood, still smiling a little. “A favour I decided not to ask for.”

  She was pleasantly curious. The tone of his voice declared quite clearly that there was no need for her to be disturbed. She said, “Well, now you have changed your mind. What is it?”

  He said, “I don’t know what colour your hair is.”

  She felt her chin coming up. Her skin burned with the heat of the fire. The large gaze, dwelling sleepily on her, held every disarming quality: of affection, of mischief, of appeal. The scrubbed face at Mass, with the hair flattened down, and the glance full of merriment over some innocent conspiracy.

  Marian de Charetty rose from her place by the fireside and, smiling, held the eyes of the child Claes with her own as she unpinned the round padded hat she had worn all that day.

  There had been no time that morning to pin it underneath as she usually did. She lifted off the solid frame and shook the folded hair under it so that it unrolled and fell over her breast and her back and her shoulders. It was the colour of her sleeves: the deep brown of lampblack mixed with yellow earths, with the vermilion echoes of cinnabar. It was the first thing she had learned: how to dye cloth to flatter her hair. When she let it down at night, Cornelis had compared it to Cathay silk.

  Now her second husband looked at it with his large, restful gaze, and said, “Yes. I thought I was right” with simplicity.

  Remotely she realised that, of course, he had known the shade of her hair. It might be covered, but one day or another a hairline would show under the wiring. And hence he had been sure that there was no grey there, to shame her. It had been, wordlessly, the coda she had dreaded. But even though she might discern his reasoning, she couldn’t fault him for the thought that had prompted it. She smiled and said, “Next time, it will be black. I change it every five days. Why else own a dye business?”

  He grinned. “I think,” he said, “that would be cause for annulment. Until tomorrow.”

  He closed the door and she sat down, her hair glowing about her.

  Chapter 29

  HAD IT NOT been for Easter falling midway between her astonishing alteration in status and the joust of the White Bear Society, matters might have been harder for Marian de Charetty. As it was, from the morning after her marriage, the owner of the Charetty company doggedly went about her usual affairs in warehouses and markets and offices where the streets rattled with the furious clacking of looms, the wheeze of pumps, the rumble of barrows and carts as the city pressed its business to a close in readiness for the demands of the Church, and the pleasures of the festival to follow.

  From sheer curiosity, of course, people welcomed her; and those who were genuine friends
did their best to make her feel she had chosen rightly, whatever they privately thought. Businessmen were apt, beginning a transaction, to make a cheerful if cursory remark about having to watch their step now she had that young man to advise her. Those who were friends of the Adorne family, or who respected them, were both polite and careful.

  Only the children were neither. There were not many, but she knew, when she heard the giggling from behind a bridge wall, or under a flight of steps, or from a doorway, that it echoed an adult response: the conversation of a shocked mother or an astounded housemaid. Only once was she truly hurt; when three childish trebles set up a chant of Mankebele! Mankebele!… Limping Isabelle, the legendary usurer and procuress. She didn’t look to see what family they came from, and she told no one about them.

  As he had promised, Nicholas had spent the first morning after the marriage on the premises, and part of every day since. It was of the greatest importance, of course, that he should do so. Feeling in the yard had to settle: upset dignity be nursed back into health; a new regime created that would be acceptable, and that would continue when he was not there.

  For that they both needed Gregorio, and it was on Gregorio that he lavished most of his time and tact. Of the lawyer’s ability there was no doubt. But he had to show, too, that he could come to terms with her work-people and understand them. Nicholas had aroused his curiosity, but it was a cynical interest, she could tell. Before taking him deeper into the operation of the business, his loyalty would have to be engaged. In two weeks, not counting Easter. With Gregorio, Nicholas proceeded with the restructuring of the business that he had already begun. Tenants were found for some of the new property. Workmen were set to repairing and altering some of the rest. He wanted still larger storerooms, more centrally accessible. Hence the dyeshop, under Henninc and Bellobras and Lippin, and with Marian de Charetty in control, stayed in its present sprawling premises on the canal bank, where the discharge and the odours offended less.