To Lie With Lions: The Sixth Book of the House of Niccolo Page 14

  The commerce and torments of marriage were not a servant’s concern. Clémence lay as if sleeping, and thought of the child, and of where she was going. She smiled.

  On the twenty-eighth day of July, 1471, on a ship leased for the purpose and handled by his own sailing-master Mick Crackbene, the padrone of the Banco di Niccolò sailed out of Calais on his long-deferred voyage to Scotland. With him he carried his wife and his son, Jordan de Fleury. The two years of absence he had promised his dying chaplain, Father Godscalc, were done.

  Just two days before, on a warm Roman evening, the Holy Father (Pietro Barbo, Paul II), dined in his garden bareheaded and sadly expired of a stroke, directly after enjoying a dish of three melons. He was aged fifty-four. The news reached the Hôtel Jerusalem, Bruges three weeks later.

  Anselm Adorne, Baron Cortachy, received it first from the hands of a courier, whom he sent off with gold. Afterwards, he sat alone at his table, his gaze on his fine painted windows. All their plans gone for nothing. All the credit he had acquired from this Pope for himself, and for his Genoese kin, and his Burgundian master. And a loss greater than that, the post his son Jan was to have found in the Curia.

  All gone; and a new Pope to be elected, who might be of any nationality, any persuasion. Weeks would go by, perhaps months, while Jan would exacerbate with his ill temper the appalling, abnormal life in this house.

  Mary of Scotland, Countess of Arran had been here with her husband, her husband’s father and their household for sixteen months. Last year, their first child had arrived. Within a week, the second was due. Once the child was born and the Princess could travel, they could leave Flanders. Now that Edward of York was on the throne, they could ask for shelter in England. They could only go back to Scotland if Tom Boyd, the Earl her husband were to be pardoned.

  Adorne had tried, through the Duke, to persuade King James to take back his sister and her family. The King was fond of his sister, and might be petulant over her misplaced loyalty, but would do her no harm. But the effort had failed: the courier (Alex Bonkle) had come back from Scotland wincing from a violent refusal. And so the royal pair were still here, and would very likely remain here for weeks.

  Everything now was in disarray. As legate of the young King, Adorne had concocted with Jan this marvellous manuscript of their travels which was to be gifted to James when it was finished. With the Boyds off his hands, Adorne could have carried it to Scotland this month, reinforcing his special position. But the coming of the second Boyd child had made that impossible. And now there was Margriet.

  Anselm Adorne rose. Knight of the lists, financier, diplomat, he was only just past middle years, and kept the considerable beauty of face and form that he had always had. He had married Margriet when she was fourteen and he nineteen; and in the twenty-eight years that followed had been loving and faithful in all that mattered. If, here and there in the world, he had lapsed, the interludes had been brief, and tempered with passions other than physical: with friendship and laughter; with a love of music, of poetry, whose absence he never complained of at home, for he had given Margriet too little cause to learn either, with her great house and her children. And now …

  And now, when she should have been safe and coming to harbour, he had given her another child. He had not intended it: they had grown long accustomed to caution. But she was his dear wife, and on his return after great dangers and absence, he had met in her a dizzying welcome such as he did not remember since the early days of their marriage. That she meant to make of it more than that, he now knew. He had not thought; he had not realised what resolve she had made until April advanced into May and she came to him illumined with triumph. There was to be a last child.

  He would cherish it. He had made her happy, as he was happy with the news. But she had never had such trouble when pregnant as she had faced in those first early weeks, and was still facing, although the child was four months on its way. Without Katelijne his niece, they would never have managed. But Katelijne had returned to her duties in Scotland and was not here to pacify Jan, comfort his wife, reassure the little Scots Countess, so near to her time.

  The lady Mary was young: she was twenty. She was grateful to Nicholas de Fleury, who had helped her Tom escape his execution in Scotland with the King her brother’s reluctant approval. The lady Mary’s friend, young de Fleury, who had so cleverly planned that Adorne’s house would bear the brunt of the exile.

  Thomas Boyd, Earl of Arran, was hardly less devoted to Nicholas. The two men had recently met, Adorne heard, in the Burgundian camp. De Fleury had spent some time, it would appear, advising Arran to take his wife and settle in England. Adorne had not yet fathomed why.

  As for de Fleury’s reunion with his wife and his child, Adorne was glad, as he knew Kathi would be. During their long pilgrimage to the East, Adorne and his young niece had encountered Nicholas many times, sometimes as rival, sometimes as companion, sometimes, he feared, as an enemy. At the end of it, Katelijne, with misgivings, had helped remove the man’s child from its mother. It had been a wretched affair, and Adorne was pained still to think of Jan’s part in it. But it was over; the estrangement apparently finished, and child and parents together once more.

  Good news, except that the prospect of young Nicholas in Burgundian employment was not one which gave Adorne any pleasure. He bore a wound in his thigh from the last time. And now, it seemed, the man was making for Scotland. Nicholas would have time to refresh all his friendships before Adorne staged his own impressive return, with his winning account of his travels. And meanwhile, the Holy Father was dead, and no one could tell what would happen.

  Adorne stood still at the window, unseeing. He must go. He must take on the burden of transmitting the news to his friends. Bishop Patrick Graham was in Bruges, on his way to beg from a man who was dead. A Pope succumbs, and graveyards fill with lost hopes.

  The very morbidity of the thought brought back his sense of proportion, and his will to act with his usual resolve. He would go at once to his wife, and to Jan. And presently he would write a letter to Katelijne Sersanders his niece, who was waiting in Scotland.

  By a delightful disposition of fate, the death of the stricken Pontiff, Paul II, occurred just when the Bank’s notary Julius had abandoned Cologne to do business in Venice. Clearly, with all Christendom roused and all Italy held in suspense, the Banco di Niccolò should be seen where it mattered. A message was sent to its agent in Rome to inform him that Gregorio and Julius were coming.

  The journey to Rome in the thick heat of August occupied nine busy days on thronged roads and through excited towns hoarse with speculation and gossip. Despite Gregorio’s inconvenient interest in ruins, the two men travelling together got on extremely well: Julius because he was about to attend a number of public events of unimaginable grandeur; and Gregorio because he was happy.

  He was unselfishly pleased because Nicholas was communicating once more, and in the interval had kept his son safe. And he was selfishly possessed with the joy that had come with his marriage. Margot and he were to have their first child. They were to have a child in December.

  Julius knew. It had been the first thing he had learned, arriving in Venice. He had arrived with a pang, because when Gregorio was absent, Venice was managed by Julius. When Diniz was made director in Bruges, Gregorio and Julius worked in Venice together, except when Nicholas decreed otherwise. It concerned Julius, now and then, to know where the priest Moriz was going to end up. Gossip now declared that Moriz had insisted on going to Scotland. And good luck to him, Julius thought. He remembered the banquets in Scotland. In any case, as he had recently realised, the senior managers of a Bank of this standing really required to be married. Nicholas of course had seen to that. So had Diniz and Gregorio. A man needed a hostess.

  He and Gregorio arrived in Rome to find it full as a beehive and buzzing. As they had already been told twenty times, the new Pope was now chosen: a blameless della Rovere from the coast west of Genoa who was going to call himself
Sixtus. Milan and Bologna were happy. Venice, which would have preferred its good friend Bessarion of Trebizond, was reserving its judgement. There were sixteen Cardinals and their trains in the city, and all but three of the Electors. The crowning would take place in three days, and Julius was glad he wasn’t arranging it.

  They stayed with Lazzarino their agent in a rather large house which had just been renamed the Casa Niccolò. It had a garden, a fountain, a chapel and a Franciscan priest awaiting them under a fig tree. He was eating. ‘Ha!’ said Father Ludovico da Bologna, Patriarch of Antioch. ‘The funds improve when the patron disappears for four months. So where is that son of Babylon, Nicholas?’

  The solid frame and black tangled hair were the same, and the stained gown of nondescript colour under his robe, but the Patriarch’s tonsure was practically visible and he had recently shaved. The Curia clearly had him in hand.

  Julius, who had a long memory, looked at him with disfavour. It was forty years since this unpleasant man, when merely an Observatine monk, had first heard the call to unite the Christian churches of the East and the West, and persuade them to raise money and arms against the Ottoman Turk. To that worthy end, Ludovico da Bologna had since travelled across half the known world, collecting his instructions and expenses from four Popes. Now he was here to urge another Crusade, and the death of the Pope had detained him.

  Ten years ago, the Patriarch had embarrassed Julius in Florence by exposing his youthful errors when clerk to the Cardinal Bessarion. Time and again, Nicholas, too, had been forced to wrest the course of his life from those black-pelted fists, most recently early this year, when he had declined to commit his army and funds to the East. Hence, now, the man’s evil enquiry.

  Julius was happy to offer enlightenment. ‘Nicholas? On the high seas for Scotland, if not actually there, with his wife and his son. I thought you knew. That was the plan he propounded in Venice.’

  ‘I wasn’t in Venice,’ said Ludovico da Bologna. ‘I saw him in Cyprus, walking quadrilles in the street like the sodomitical partridge and vowing to venture his stock in Heaven for a concerted attack on the Turk. Then he denied it. But thus in all countries is the artisan class. And to this he has now added, I gather, the diabolical practice of necromancy.’ He presented his teeth to a chicken leg.

  Julius, wincing, drew breath to retort, but Gregorio, in his calm lawyer’s way, forestalled him. ‘Nicholas is the custodian of a Bank which must have regard to great events affecting its coffers. Moreover, his commitment was made, as I remember, on certain conditions. You offered him a meeting with his son. This he achieved by himself.’

  ‘Through the aforesaid skills, forbidden by Mother Church. The offspring will be damned, or the parents be driven to responses of abominable violence. I saw your Dr Tobias in Urbino.’

  ‘You stayed in Urbino?’ said Julius. The Count, a well-known leader of mercenaries, kept a lavish table.

  ‘With my Persian delegate, yes. There was a Flemish painter at work on a masterpiece, and nothing would do but Hadji Mehmet should have his portrait included. It flatters him. Your Dr Tobias thinks, as I do, that Burgundy will cost the Bank more than it offers, and that Scotland should be left to Adorne. Is Adorne’s niece in a nunnery yet?’ A jelly was set on the table, with a spoon. Julius averted his eyes.

  ‘Katelijne Sersanders?’ said Gregorio. ‘She lives in one, when in Scotland. That is, she serves the young Scottish Princess in a priory. But she is not, so far as I know, taking the veil.’

  ‘I shall remind her,’ said the Patriarch. ‘Her barbs would rust, sunk in a husband.’

  He swallowed. Julius was surprised. Then he recalled that the Patriarch and Katelijne Sersanders had both been in Egypt and Cyprus last year, and Adorne had spent time with the Pope. The last Pope. Julius said, his voice dulcet, ‘Are you worried, Patriarch, about the new Pontiff? You’ll have to use all your charm: I hear he doesn’t like Observatine Franciscans. You must have hoped they would vote for Bessarion.’

  ‘The Cardinal Bessarion is still with us,’ the Patriarch said. ‘And a house full of erudite Greeks, and those less so. Zoe, the Cardinal’s ward, has also been painted. It is the salve of rich men: as a scalded head calls for lard, so they apply coats of paint to their vanity. The Duke of Muscovy has requested a portrait of Zoe.’

  Julius sat up. ‘He wants to make her his Duchess?’

  ‘Perhaps. Moscow and Rome have discussed it. Then the business hung fire when Paul migrated to the Lord with his melons. Tell Nicholas. The King of Cyprus will be sad to lose Zoe.’

  ‘Zacco would never have married her,’ Gregorio said.

  ‘He bid for her. Zacco will do anything, will he not, to avoid consummating his marriage with Catherine of Venice? Tell Nicholas. Zacco needs him. So how is the Banco di Niccolò?’

  ‘Like all banks,’ Julius said. ‘Calling in its debts rather than lending money.’ He knew the Patriarch. If he couldn’t get Nicholas, he would be looking for gold. And they had lost enough gold already.

  ‘And what debts do you have in Cologne?’ said the priest. The pudding was finished, and the splashes had caked in the sun except where they still rimmed his lips, like salt round a goblet. ‘Or is it pledges you have been collecting?’

  Gregorio grinned. Julius said stiffly, ‘Every merchant who sells to the Baltic has to have an eye on Cologne at the moment. Caxton’s there, writing books for the Duchess Margaret.’

  He waited for the Patriarch to grunt. Caxton was English. He might be writing books, or even learning to print them, but he was in Cologne, everyone knew, because the town distributed cloth, and England’s exports had been blocked by the Baltic trading alliance called the Hanse. Cologne had broken away from the Hanse. In retribution, the Hanse had intensified its feud against England. Ships were being robbed, wrecked and sunk, to the extent that no one could even send an army anywhere safely. There might come a point – hence Caxton’s presence and his own – when Cologne’s privileges were costing too much.

  He said something of all that to da Bologna. The Patriarch listened.

  ‘So you are working for the Lord’s peace. I commend you. Anna von Hanseyck, isn’t she called?’

  ‘The Gräfin Anna von Hanseyck,’ said Julius haughtily, ‘is a widowed lady of my acquaintance who lives in Cologne with her daughter, yes. She has been gracious enough to consult me about financial matters.’

  ‘She’s rich?’ the Patriarch said.

  ‘Not rich enough to finance a Crusade,’ Julius said. ‘And too much of a lady to merit having her name bandied about. May I offer you something to drink?’

  ‘Water. Water will do,’ said the Patriarch. ‘So tell me: what else you were doing in Cologne?’

  He had heard rumours, obviously. Julius told him something, not entirely made up, about the Bank’s long-term plans. The Patriarch listened. He had paid for it with news of his own, and Julius didn’t mind gossiping.

  Later, when the Patriarch had gone, Gregorio lay back in his chair, his scoop-nose red with the sun, and said, ‘You told him too much. Never mind. I don’t want to know about Denmark, it’s time I heard about Anna von Hanseyck. Tell me everything.’

  Julius ran out of patience. He said, ‘You know everything. Christ God, you’ve read the documents; we’ve talked about it often enough. She’s the widow of Graf Wenzel von Hanseyck. When he died, she exchanged his land in the Rhine valley for gold, and I’ve helped her invest it. Half the Bank’s new ship is hers, and she’ll have a share in the profit.’

  ‘If there is a profit,’ said Gregorio mildly.

  ‘There’ll be a profit. My God, with Nicholas going to do what he’s doing? Anyway, she’s grateful. She needs help with her money and wants the Bank to advise her. I’ve said I’ll introduce her to Nicholas next summer. You’ll see her before that, if you’re keen. She’s coming to Rome with her daughter for Christmas.’

  ‘Her daughter?’ said Gregorio. Behind the question, Julius saw his wife Margot’s prompting.

&nb
sp; ‘Name of Bonne,’ Julius said. ‘Wenzel adopted her.’

  ‘But she’s the Countess’s daughter?’

  ‘I expect so,’ said Julius. ‘They have the same eyes and the same hair. I assume the child was the result of an earlier marriage, but of course she might be a daughter of sin. You must ask the Countess to tell you.’

  Gregorio was grinning. ‘Touchy, aren’t you? I’m delighted. Really. We all thought you were going to die without ever coming across anyone worthy.’

  ‘She is just a client,’ Julius said. ‘Mary Mother, if I went to bed with everyone I did a deal with, I’d die of exhaustion. You’ve got marriage fever, that’s all. Go and find Tobie or John and drag them to the altar.’

  ‘There aren’t enough rich German widows to go round,’ Gregorio said, and ducked as Julius threw a plate at him. But as a matter of fact, Julius wasn’t angry at all, any more than he was disappointed that Nicholas was going to Scotland without him. Julius was quite content, ensconced in the splendours of Rome, and waiting for Christmas.

  Chapter 8

  LONG BEFORE HE left Calais, it was known in Scotland that Nicholas de Fleury was returning to take up his business, accompanied by two mining experts and a pedigree cannon from Innsbruck.

  As seed quickens to rain, so from east coast to west, the Bank’s dormant fleurets awoke to the touch of their master. Indolent on the high seas, Nicholas lived, as once before, from wave to wave, for the moment. With him in a locked chest were the letters which still had to be delivered, this time by himself. The documents for King James, from the Duke and the Chancellor of Burgundy. And the personal note for King James from His Most Christian Majesty Louis of France, to be handed over at a time of discretion, for it, like the other, requested the sender’s dear kinsman of Scotland to receive the sieur de Fleury with favour, and to give credence to what he would ask. Thus Nicholas de Fleury, serving two masters.