To Lie With Lions: The Sixth Book of the House of Niccolo Read online

  They proceeded to loans. He proposed changes; they were opposed; there were some expected concessions. He was reasonably satisfied.

  They mentioned Scotland. He agreed that he had interests there, and might expand them without interfering with the influence of Anselm Adorne, now Baron Cortachy. He might persuade the Scottish King to withdraw his pretensions to the duchy of Guelders, as he had encouraged Sigismond of the Tyrol to take Duke Charles’s part with the Emperor. Frederick, Emperor of the Germanies, was overlord of Charles’s eastern possessions and no longer so young; soon he would have to turn his mind to his own successor. Nicholas mentioned nothing of that. It was enough to refer to the Bank’s metallurgic successes in the Tyrol, and Duke Sigismond’s consequent gratitude. Sigismond was the Emperor’s cousin.

  They mentioned his own valued status as banker and adviser to Burgundy. He assured them he was ready personally to undertake any service, so long as it could be confined to the summer. He preferred to devote the winter to the Duke’s business abroad. In Scotland, for example.

  After the two meetings were over, he was called to the Duke.

  For this audience, Nicholas appeared in dull grey (less ostentatious than black), having spent more time than he wanted trying to flatten his hair. The Duke, austere amid the blinding glare of his wealth, did not favour curled hair or frivolity.

  The matters he had discussed with Hugonet were reviewed and, in the main, received ducal approval. The Duke said, ‘And Anjou? I understand you spoke with my lord René?’

  ‘Yes, monseigneur. He seems, although a vassal of France, afraid and ready to look to his friends. I had an impression, I do not know from where, that he was wistful for the goodwill of Burgundy.’

  ‘Yes?’ said Duke Charles. ‘Did he say so?’

  ‘He said,’ Nicholas answered, ‘that if his daughter failed, he would have little ambition beyond foiling France in its wish to usurp him.’

  ‘Do you say?’ said the Duke. ‘And France? You saw our uncle the King, we believe. But you nobly resisted his offers?’

  ‘I wish I could say so,’ Nicholas said. ‘But only children follow their impulses. My fees fall heavily enough on your coffers, I know. It seemed only right that, as in other lands, the enemy should contribute towards them. I offered to spy, for an annual pension. And I offered to incite James of Scotland to bring an army to help him.’

  The Duke sat very still. ‘M. de Fleury, why are you telling me this? I should make you answer for it if you did. And monseigneur my uncle will stop your pension, certainly, if you don’t.’

  ‘But I shall!’ Nicholas said. ‘That is, I shall urge the King to the best of my powers. Fortunately, there is no chance at all that his country will vote him the money to do it. And I shall make sure he has no surfeit of money, and recommend that the Baron Cortachy does so as well.’

  He waited. There was a small chance he would not be believed. The punishment in that event would very likely be perpetual prison or worse. The gamble gave the moment an edge. Then the Duke said, ‘Hugonet?’ and the Chancellor bent forward and spoke.

  ‘And, M. de Fleury, your undertaking to persuade the King of Scotland to withdraw his claim to Guelders? Is the basis for that equally derisory?’

  ‘Forgive me,’ Nicholas said. ‘But so far as I know, the King had no intention of sending an army to Guelders. He merely staked a claim, in the hope that some concessions would follow. I should hope to mitigate his expectations, without harming monseigneur’s reputation for generosity. He will play off France against Burgundy.’

  ‘As you are doing,’ the Duke said.

  ‘I am a Burgundian,’ Nicholas answered. ‘There are no friends of mine at the French Court.’ They knew his history. They knew about Jordan de Ribérac. The hostility of Jordan de Ribérac was the strongest card in his favour. He was sorry the fat man couldn’t appreciate it. He said, ‘If I break my trust, it will be evident. It is not in my own interest to do so. I hope to see my Bank rise with the fortunes of Burgundy, the one aiding the other. I hope to see my Bank become an Imperial Bank, financing the war which will throw the Turk out of Christendom.’

  He had not said that before. He still had not said – no one had – if and when Charles of Burgundy becomes the next King of the Romans. If and when he is anointed in Rome as the Holy Roman Emperor following Frederick. But of course, it had been in his mind ever since Venice.

  ‘Is that your intention?’ said the Duke.

  ‘As it was your illustrious father’s,’ said Nicholas. ‘I have been in the land of the Golden Fleece. I would return with an Emperor.’

  The Duke stared at him, his expression unchanging. ‘We shall hold you to those words,’ was all he said.

  It was all he needed to say. The danger was over. He had given his tacit agreement; the details would be worked out elsewhere. He had a vast contract; security; leave to take money from France; leave to appear an agent for both; leave to pursue the Duke’s business in Scotland (and his) at the same time as Anselm Adorne, Baron Cortachy, the Duke’s accredited envoy, who was currently housing Thomas Boyd, Earl of Arran and his wife.

  Humbly and in good order, Nicholas presently left the Duke’s presence, and entered that of the Duke’s lawyers, where the necessary papers were drawn up and signed. Humbly and in good order still, he rode with his servants from Hesdin. Behind him was turmoil: the household was preparing to move; soon the palace would be empty of all but its controller, and the long lines of wagons would be taking themselves somewhere else.

  They went without him. He was going to the Burgundian camp, the acres of ground upon which were marshalled the pavilions and worksheds and barracks of the Duke’s standing army, where the timber house stood that held his officers, and the other, set apart, built by Captain Astorre for himself and for any visiting official of the Bank. By now he would have got rid of the girls, and he and the rest would be waiting for him to tell them what had happened, and to give him their news.

  Thinking of it, Nicholas rode with a high heart, and talked now and then with his escort, who answered him cautiously until he thought to buy them some wine. He felt as he had felt before, filled with a pleasant excitement. He had a month with Astorre, in the company of men whom he knew, with the couriers of his Bank bringing back to his touch the great golden web of his business. A month at the end of which – yes, there lay the prospect of much that was unpredictable, as well as events he could control. In a month, John and Father Moriz would arrive from the Tyrol, bringing their news. In two weeks, his summons would reach Mistress Clémence in Dijon and, safe in the custody of his men, she and the old woman and the child would set out to come north and join him. The child Jordan de Fleury.

  And as the child came to Artois, so would Gelis his wife, hoping to see it; as once in despair he had called to see the baby he believed had been born, and had been denied. In July they would be here, all of them. All of those he had forced to come to him.

  Thinking about it, he realised that he had fallen into silence again, disappointing his men. He roused. There was a month. There was a month still before the prologue gave way to the play. He thought of Angers. Cruciffiez! they had cried. And René’s grandson had died.

  He rode, thinking that a month lasted for ever, and without calling to mind that one day he would wake to find the prologue was over, and the play had begun.

  Chapter 5

  SUMMER MADE A charming début in Artois that year. The hazy curtains of spring drew back to present greening fields where there had been trampled mud, and peaceful smoke rising from thatches where once stackyards had blazed. The palace of Hesdin lay empty but for its token caretakers. In Picardy, Ham kept its garrison but the French King had dashed back to the Loire, pulling on this rope and that; resetting his mines and his darts. Wisps of tinsel remained from the great victory over the Narrow Sea: a banquet here, an aubade there for some royal envoy; but the public stage remained empty, the actors in the wings awaiting the script still being written. The Burgun
dian army, its commanders gone, exercised and rehearsed under its captains, indulged in rough sport, drank and quarrelled, thieved and womanised, as men do awaiting a war.

  Riding up, saddle-sore from their long journey from Innsbruck, the priest Moriz and the red-headed engineer John le Grant heard the wind-snatched roar from the exercise park an hour before they reached the stockade, and had to wait longer than they wanted before Thomas, Astorre’s deputy, shoved his way out to meet them and bring their short train inside. It took half an hour after that to fight their way to their lodging, and almost as long before Thomas tracked down Astorre, red-faced in the shouting throng of soldiers and civilians at the edge of the sports field. He hardly spared them a glance.

  ‘Aye, ye got here. Jesus Christ, will ye look at that!’

  ‘By God’s leave, what?’ said Father Moriz, who was as weary as John but could see that John’s response was about to match the hair under his hat.

  ‘You’re the priest? Glad to meet you. We’re winning,’ said Astorre.

  ‘Good,’ said John le Grant. ‘You don’t mind if we turn and go back, then? We could sell the guns somewhere else.’

  Deaf to irony, Astorre smartly brought round his beard at the mention of guns. ‘Ye brought them. Good lad. Is the cannon coming?’ And as a shout throttled the air: ‘Damn it, I missed it.’

  ‘It’s Nicholas!’ said John, his enraged eye falling at last on the field. ‘What’s he doing there?’

  ‘I told you,’ said Astorre. ‘We challenged the countryside to a series of contests. For the Feast of the Magdalen. We’re winning.’

  ‘It isn’t the Feast of the Magdalen yet,’ said Father Moriz. On the field, now he looked, the considerable debris pointed to an assortment of lethal engagements involving mass football, mass wooden-sword play, shooting at the mark, shooting at the popinjay, spear-throwing, bowling and horse-racing. A good deal of the litter was bloodstained, and there were five men lying at one side of the field and a dozen more reclining in various attitudes of unease. At a table nearby, a man in a cap and apron was cracking a joke as he threaded a needle. He was surrounded by flies.

  ‘No, we’re practising,’ said Captain Astorre. ‘A wagon of ale for the winners. I couldn’t stop him. You try. Look at that.’

  On the field, in a glittering display of high chivalry, twenty Burgundians, each borne on the neck of another, were attempting to beat down with staves twenty similar pairs of Artésiens. One of the upper Burgundians was Nicholas, black and blue above his torn hose and shrieking insults, and opposing him was a naked man built like a tithe barn and brown to the crabs of his toes. Beneath each was a broad, sweating carrier.

  They were almost the last in the field: at that moment, one of the remaining pairs toppled and smacked to the ground and the tally was marked to deafening cheers. There were three couples left on each side.

  It would have seemed harmless enough, if one of the contestants hadn’t been the genius of the Banco di Niccolò with, resting in turn on his shoulders, the entire weight of the Bank’s future in the West. The naked giant, lifting his pole, caught Nicholas a cutting blow on the shoulder before inducing his bearer to lurch sideways to help out another pair. The third couple, momentarily freed, began a staggering run towards Nicholas.

  John said, ‘Has he been doing a lot of this?’

  ‘Not as much as he should,’ Astorre said. His good eye, seen in profile, was baleful.

  The priest said, ‘It must come as a relief.’ The Captain’s eye flickered. The charging pair reached Nicholas, the pole swung and Nicholas ducked, while his mount, side-stepping neatly, tripped up the other carrier with his foot. With a scream, the pair fell apart in different directions while the pole bounced to the ground. Nicholas patted his mount on the head and spoke to it approvingly. Grinning, it turned, just in time. The tithe barn had not only rescued its oppressed comrade, it had dispatched both the Burgundian couples, leaving Nicholas and his bearer alone in the field. And poles at the tilt, both Artésien pairs were now lumbering towards him.

  ‘Oh well,’ said John le Grant. ‘I can go back to the Tyrol. You can look after the Duke. Thomas can take on Alexandria. Astorre’s cook can help Diniz in Bruges and the parrot can manage in Scotland. Who’s worried?’

  No one was listening, and his own words, towards the end, were coming out pale and flat as the ghost of a die-stamp. The two poles, from converging angles, were aimed at Nicholas: one to his head, one to his chest. There was no possibility of evading them. The noise, reaching fortissimo, stayed there. People threw things into the field. The patient on the table sat up, the needle stuck like a quill in his ear. The man under Nicholas dropped to his knees.

  It took some effort. He had to balance, so that he neither pitched off his rider, nor allowed his feet to rest on the ground. Then he had to rise, taking his cavalier safely with him. The result, however, Was well worth the labour. Father Moriz, warmed despite himself, watched the two opposing couples converge; watched the poles thrust into space, cross, and clash as the two human mounts staggered past their destination and collided. The tithe barn, knocked sideways, grasped his pole with one hand and snatched at his mount with the other, clinging on while his bearer recovered. The other rider, less lucky, soared through the air with his stave and landing, knocked himself out and cracked his carrier on the head with the pole. His carrier lay flat on the ground. Astorre was crying. John said, in an ecstasy of horror, ‘Christ. He’ll kill him.’

  It was indeed clear that the tithe barn was angered. He kicked his mount on the ear, swung his pole, and then, two-handed, raised and lowered the bar like a weight-lifter. With an effort that brought him applause, the man supporting Nicholas put his weight on one foot, then two, and drew himself up while Nicholas, talking, shifted his balance like a Tzukanion-player. When they ended up at their full height again, it was seen that Nicholas was being steadied by one hand alone. In the other, his mount had snatched up the dropped stave.

  The rules said nothing against it. It was a joke, in that it gave Nicholas mixed advantages: it weakened his seat while giving his mount a heavy weapon easily knocked from one hand. The beauty of it was the spice of variety; the challenge to the other’s ingenuity, already affected by anger. The couples turned and faced one another, and began to advance. Nicholas was grinning, and so was his mount. The noise slackened. Then, with an audible grunt, the tithe barn’s mount drew breath and charged. ‘Moriz! Pray!’ said le Grant.

  ‘What do you think I’ve been doing?’ said Father Moriz.

  About what happened next there were as many versions as there were spectators, although the wagon of ale might have had something to do with the lack of consensus. The couples approached. Nicholas brandished his stave. His mount also brandished his stave, as well a man might with another large man on his shoulders. Then, just before the pairs met, he ceased to brandish it and instead braced it forward and up, as might a man playing a boar with his spear. And as a man would with a spear, he kept the point, as they closed, aimed at the one sensitive target where it would be most unwelcome, however softly it arrived, however promptly it fell.

  The tithe barn didn’t notice the threat, but his bearer did. The bearer, with a squeak, veered to the right just as his rider was preparing his blow. His rider yelled, clutched him and lowered his stave, upon which Nicholas knocked him off his perch. The tithe barn crashed to the ground followed by his mount, curled protectively against the sheer force of his imagination. Nicholas, shaken loose by the impact, was hanging round his mount’s neck, helplessly laughing. His mount, frothing with laughter and sweat, dropped his stave and put up his hand, but too late to save Nicholas who tumbled down to the ground, somersaulted twice and, jumping up, seized his mount to fling up their joint arms and face round to all sides of the park, tattered and strutting.

  The big man, limping, crossed to him and, after a moment, slapped him on the back and embraced him. The noise was annihilating. Above it all, the sound of trumpets announced the arrival o
f the cart with the prize. It was declared that, honours being so well divided, the ale would be shared among all the participants, and M. de Fleury had added a second wagon-load at his own expense. The noise was such that the ears of Father Moriz went dead.

  ‘Well?’ said John le Grant.

  ‘That’s a man!’ said Astorre.

  Father Moriz returned John le Grant’s glare. ‘It is the man we work with,’ he said. ‘We have not taken him in marriage, so far as I know.’ Le Grant flushed. Astorre’s attention had already gone back to the field, followed promptly by his person.

  Father Moriz said, ‘You can go and congratulate the victor, or come back to the lodging with me. I am hungry. And I prefer wine to ale.’

  They walked back to the barracks together.

  ‘That was deliberate,’ John le Grant said.

  ‘Of course it was,’ said the priest. ‘We last saw him with a child in his arms. He is telling us that he is not a father, but a soldier. Presently he will show us that he is not a soldier, but a banker. It is interesting to follow his mind. It is not our duty to admire it.’

  Later, he was ashamed to have paraded his perspicuity, when it came to be exactly justified by events. It was the banker who had them brought from their rest two hours later; who sat them down, thanked them briefly for coming, and obtained from them, with admirable economy, an accounting for all that had happened in the Tyrol and since. They were then given a matching report of the Bank’s progress elsewhere, and told to prepare to leave shortly for Scotland.

  Through it all, Nicholas was wholly impersonal, as was his custom when conducting negotiations in public; as he had been, no doubt, in those vital interviews in Ham and in Hesdin. To remain detached here, alone in a private room with two men as close to him, in their separate ways, as John and Father Moriz himself, was either an aberration or a notification which required thinking about. He sat before them with the childish bruises and cuts showing above the immaculate chemise and doublet, and ignored what they had just seen as easily as he was ignoring their common past. Father Moriz thought, John is perhaps right, and I am perhaps wrong. He did not even know we were about to arrive. He was cultivating Artois and the army as he was cultivating Anjou, Burgundy, France. I suppose we should thank someone that he is not troubling to cultivate us.