The Spring of the Ram Page 5

  “Now there’s a scandal,” said a man sitting on one of the benches. Julius looked at him. He was wearing a good but stained cloak over the cap and gown of a priest, and his hair, too thick for his calling, wound all over his neck like black cotton. He got up, proving himself to be of powerful build and the same height as Nicholas, whom he addressed. He said, “The Charetty company offered me two and a half florins a month to save your souls no matter what thieving percentage lay on them; and pound for pound, that takes more effort than banking. I want improved terms. I want a lodging like this at the end of it.”

  Hearing, Master Tobie the doctor turned and exclaimed. Young Nicholas turned, and looked pleased. “Father Godscalc. But that’s already written into your contract. In your master’s house are many mansions, and one has your name on it, if you can make out the language it’s written in. How did you know to be here?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” said the chaplain called Godscalc. “I’ve just come from Pisa. I’ve news for you.”

  “The Tower has fallen?” said Tobie.

  “The Pope has fallen?” Nicholas said.

  “The army likes its winter quarters,” said Julius, “and wouldn’t want to sail to the East under Nicholas?”

  “Oh, you’ll get all the fighting men you’d have need of,” said the priest comfortably. “Have you heard tell of a Pagano Doria?”

  “Messer Niccolò!” said someone sharply.

  “Dorias, yes. Paganos, never. Why?” said Nicholas.

  “Messer Niccolò!” said the same voice, much nearer.

  “His colours are murrey and plunket,” said Godscalc. “Not one of the impotent poor. You don’t know the man?”

  He was thrust aside. A harsh voice said, “Messer Niccolò, you are awaited. His magnificence has almost lost patience.”

  The speaker, emerged from the nearest grand archway of the Palazzo Medici, was not a porter but a cleanshaven man dressed in a secretary’s gown and a cap with black lappets like Julius’s own. He was frowning at Nicholas. Nicholas said, “This is my chaplain, Father Godscalc. He has some news for me.”

  “Then he can impart it within,” said the secretary. “Have the goodness to follow me instantly.”

  Julius would not have cared to argue with him, and Nicholas didn’t. In single file, the four passsed through the archway and into the Medici courtyard. Julius faltered.

  “Judith displaying the dead head of Holofernes,” said Nicholas helpfully, gazing at the fountain before them and the streaming sculpture within it. “He was a friend of Donatello’s and she didn’t like it. The sarcophagus over there was used for Messer Cosimo’s great-great-great-great-grandfather’s cousin.”

  “Is he still in it?” said Julius.

  “They’re possibly all still in it,” said Nicholas. “Roman, Roman, Roman, Roman, Medici. Like a pie.”

  “If you will stop talking,” said Tobie, “you will notice that we are being invited to climb to the salon.”

  In the salon was a fine carpet, an assortment of carved and gilded coffers, several stools, cushioned boxes and his magnificence Cosimo de’ Medici, seated on a chair with carrying poles like the Pope’s. Hesitating with his three companions in the double doorway, Julius scrutinised the wealthiest man in Florence, while their conductor went forward and spoke to him.

  Seventy-two years of age and contorted with gout, Cosimo de’ Medici commanded the room like another Judith seeking another Holofernes. Sallow, long-nosed and shrunken, he nursed his balding head beneath a swathed velvet hat, and dark glossy fur lined the robe he wore over his doublet. He listened to his official, his head bent to hear better. Then he lifted one hand and rapped on the wood of his chair arm. “Approach, then!” he said.

  Julius looked to see if Nicholas had paled, or was trembling. Men in fear could shame themselves and their companions. Men puked in front of princes, and soiled themselves, and lost the bass of their voices.

  A child, hitherto unnoticed, rose from the ground by the chair and pointing a stabbing finger at the controlling member of the Charetty company, said, “That’s him! He did it!”

  The child was a boy, aged between four and five and attractive enough, with fair hair curling under his cap and a pinafore of some fine material over his dress. He was glaring at Nicholas.

  Nicholas said, “You got knots in it.” The words made no sense, nor did he say them with respect, deference or even cajolery. Julius had heard him use the same tone of affectionate exasperation to Monna Alessandra’s unfortunate water-boy.

  The child said, “I didn’t.”

  Julius stood very still, and so did Tobie beside him. The lord of Florence stirred in his pontifical chair. He said, “My grandchild lies, Messer Niccolò. He got knots in it. You are here to correct him.”

  “Well, that’s soon done,” said Nicholas cheerfully. “Show me.”

  Beside him, Julius could see Tobie’s feet, in their best boots, unmoving. He dared not look at his face. He stood still while Nicholas made his way towards the child and, reducing himself to a crouch, remained bouncing a little beside him. His hands hung inward over his knees and his round face, with its vast eyes, looked friendly. The child held out a hand. In it was a replica of the wooden toy Monna Alessandra had burned.

  Tobie grunted. Nicholas, without turning, said, “I made two. Where’s the cord?”

  The voice of Cosimo de’ Medici said from above him, “The child’s tutor, a man of small faith, excised it.”

  Nicholas, fishing in his purse, had already produced another. The cord, no doubt, of the lost plaything. Julius studied the toy, cut like the first from fine wood, and with the shape of two solid mushrooms placed stem to stem. Nicholas took it from the child’s hand, and then knotted and wound all the cord round the waist of the object, leaving free the last foot, and a loop. He hooked a finger into the loop, and let the object lie in his hand. “What did I say?” he said to the child. His eyes crinkled.

  Unexpectedly, the child smiled in return. He said. “Do it smoothly.”

  “You remembered,” said Nicholas. “Everyone gets it tangled up the first time. Shall I show you?”

  The voice from the chair spoke. “Never mind showing him,” said Cosimo de’ Medici, “I wish you to show me. I am told that Euclid would weep from jealousy.”

  “I could make Euclid one of his own,” Nicholas said.

  Julius closed his eyes.

  Nicholas said, “Meanwhile, there is no need for weeping, provided we all watch very carefully. For example…”

  Julius opened his eyes.

  The old man had lifted an eyebrow. Nicholas was getting up, his eyes on the child, and the child’s face, uplifted, was shining. Nicholas stood. With dramatic slowness he curled the object up to his shoulder. With dramatic suddenness he unbent his arm and cast the object flying away. The cord, unreeling, hissed. The object described a miraculous loop and returned to him. He caught it. Still smiling at the child, he opened his hand to the floor. The object unreeled, and then rose to his hand and then dropped again. He kept it rising and falling. Then he threw it outwards again and, instead of catching it, flicked his wrist so that it made first one loop, then a series. He caught it. The child cried, “Make it walk!”

  Julius risked a glance at Tobie. Tobie was wearing a look of contempt, which was reassuring. Cosimo de’ Medici said, “Yes. Make it walk, Messer Niccolò. It cannot also speak?”

  Nicholas, ending a sudden sharp movement, smiled without looking up. The object spun at the end of the cord. He lowered it bit by bit down to the floor where, of its own accord, it started to run off ahead of him. He followed it a little way, the child jumping around him, and arriving before the pole-chair allowed the thing to run up its cord to his hand. He said, “It is called a farmuk, my lord; and of course it speaks.”

  The child said, “It doesn’t!”

  The old man looked at him. “Ah, Cosimino, but it does. It speaks to grown men. One day it will tell you something. But first you must master i
t. Can you make it run smoothly?”

  “I can! I can!” said the child.

  “Then you must take it off and practise. Then, when this kind friend of yours has gone, you will bring it in and show me. Thank him for his trouble. That is good. And now go.”

  The child left, skipping, with the thing in his hands. His grandfather, turning, looked at Nicholas, and then at the two men standing still in the doorway. “Indeed, it speaks!” he said dryly. “And in Persian. I am right, I believe?”

  “It is a Persian toy, monsignore,” Nicholas said. “If I may present Messer Julius, notary to the Charetty company. And Messer Tobias Beventini da Grado, our physician. And Father Godscalc, our chaplain.”

  “I do not recall,” said Cosimo de’ Medici, “having invited them. But since they are here, there are stools for them. What do they want?” Lean, lined and cynical, the sallow face surveyed them all. When the gout was severe, as at present, he had himself carried through the house, screaming in pain as he approached every door. It was said that when rebuked by Contessina his wife, he explained that to cry warning after the hurt would be useless. The stories about Cosimo and his lady were endless. Julius had seen her once. She was fat and placid and content to be excluded from office and conference while she ran the great house as easily as Nicholas’s plaything.

  Deceptive, like Nicholas. Nicholas, looking happy, was answering that awkward question without a trace of embarrassment. He said, “My companions came to save time. You know our company. We are brokers, dyers, commission agents. We have a cavalry troop. We are already extending from Flanders. We have served your agents as couriers. We have a mind to set up a branch in the Black Sea, in the remaining Greek Empire of Trebizond. We are here to suggest that the Charetty company might represent the merchants of Florence in that country. The Emperor of Trebizond will agree. We can offer him better terms than the Medici could.”

  “Then you have my congratulations,” said Cosimo de’ Medici. “You have indeed. For a man of your years to have amassed the means to undercut the Medici makes you, my dear sir, one of the prodigies of the world.”

  “Oh, our financial arrangement might well be the same as your own,” said Nicholas easily. “Only, of course, we should supply them with soldiers.”

  There was a silence. Then the lord Cosimo de’ Medici said, “There, perhaps, we have the theme of a discussion. Stay. I propose to send for some wine, and my son and my secretary. Then we shall talk.”

  He paused. “Like your plaything. It came, I judge, from the delegation from Persia and Trebizond now lodging at the Franciscan convent in Fiesole? With whom, of course, you have opened this matter.”

  “Of course,” said Nicholas modestly.

  Julius caught Tobie’s eye, and peered circumspectly to see how the magnificent plan had struck Godscalc. Julius felt successful, and happy, and on the verge of becoming quite rich. The name of Pagano Doria did not even enter his mind.

  Chapter 4

  TO NICHOLAS HIMSELF, the early summons to a meeting with the lord Cosimo de’ Medici was an advantage he had not expected. Presenting himself, he felt precariously elated. He was not, by now, straight from the dye vats and felt no apprehension about the meeting itself. His plans were complex but could be adapted. He had changed them once already, since coming to Florence; since receiving the letters from Flanders. But he had told no one about that.

  He had begun to feel better ever since he found the little delegation sitting there at the Franciscans’ at Fiesole. They came, as Messer Cosimo had said, from Persia; Trebizond; Georgia—the lands Christian and Moslem which were under threat by the Turk. Their purpose, led by a practised missionary of the Franciscan Order, was to rouse the West to send an army to save them. They had just come from Venice. They were to pass Christmas at Rome. They were just about to see Cosimo de’ Medici. And among them was an envoy from the Empire of Trebizond who was far less concerned for the Faith than he was to fix up a trading deal between Florence and Trebizond.

  Nicholas had enjoyed talking to him, all the time he learned how to make his little toy. Since the envoy was Italian, it was simple. They had reached a very good understanding, he and the merchant Michael Alighieri from Trebizond.

  It had been unfair of him, after that, to tease Julius and Tobie over the toy, but sometimes he couldn’t prevent himself. They were ten years older than he was—one a pedagogue and a notary, the other a highly trained doctor. Until they left Bruges, he had never been quite sure whether they would come with him on a venture so personal. The money behind him was that of the Charetty company, but he had created it himself. If he lost it, the company would be no worse off than it had been when he was an apprentice. If he increased it, the profit he made would be his. If he ran into debt, his would be the responsibility. He had a fund of his own, stored in Venice. Except for utter disaster, he ought to be safe.

  It was the hunger for adventure in Julius that had brought him back to Italy, Nicholas thought. That and a spark of generosity and even pride, for Nicholas had been in some sort his acolyte. And also, of course, a dream of personal wealth. He could imagine how Julius saw it. Nicholas was taking the risk, but he had his elders to advise him. If he failed, Julius would argue, of course his wife would empty her long purse to save him. If matters fell out as they might, there could be gold and to spare there for everyone.

  And Tobie? What had brought that sardonic doctor from the comforts of the company office in Flanders? Curiosity, he supposed. Curiosity of the intellect, which had brought him to tour Europe binding the wounds of its armies instead of pursuing a safe academic life like that of the famous physician his uncle. And curiosity about himself. The doctor’s analytical eye that sometimes saw more than one wanted. Trebizond was his project; and he was Tobie’s.

  Sometimes, sitting designing something in his own room, Niccolò would let his mouth and cheeks and jaw fall into the semblance of Julius and Tobie and Captain Astorre or Godscalc and the lawyer Gregorio. Under his breath, he would recall, for his own entertainment, their favourite phrases and attitudes; the alarmed cadences of their voices. He liked them all: he meant no harm by it. As a boy he had done it all the time, openly. Now, since his marriage, he didn’t. Nor ever made fun of the people close to him, now he was a burgess. And especially never of Marian, who had brought him up. Whom he had married. Whom he had in every way married.

  He had heard from her since arriving in Florence. Her lawyer wrote every day, keeping him in touch with exchange rates and commodity demands and the letters arrived in two and threes, delivered by their own Milan couriers. Most he showed to the others; some he kept to himself. None of them, of course, was dated later than October. Marian inserted notes in her own hand: mostly practical adjustments to the lists he was carrying, or snippets of news likely to affect the market, such as the fighting in England to decide whether the Lancastrians or the Yorkists would end up with the throne. Until that was settled, it was unlikely that France or Flanders or England would send a soldier to fight for the Lord in the Levant. That left matters up to the Charetty company.

  She said things like that, which made him smile; and mentioned friends sometimes. He was to buy a good rosary for the wife of Anselm Adorne. Lorenzo wished to send greetings to his mother Monna Alessandra, and to say that he had hopes that his father’s cousin was failing at last. The lord Simon, who had caused all the trouble, had taken his wife back to Scotland. Tilde was well, and Catherine wrote that she didn’t want to come home from Brussels.

  All Marian’s letters were signed “your loving wife”. He didn’t need any more personal message. When he sent the couriers home with his answers he always included a note of his own. It would say something of business, but more often include some absurd happening, some ridiculous anecdote that she could tell to Tilde and Gregorio, and then be persuaded to repeat to her friends. Of love he did not speak either, but ended each letter “Thine, Nicholas”. He knew, none better, how seals were tampered with. What was private stayed priva
te because it was not committed to paper. Her restraint when they parted had been sufficient burden to bear.

  Waiting for the lord Cosimo to call in his son and his staff, Nicholas saw nothing now in the way of capturing the Florentine agency for Trebizond. He had at the tips of his fingers the privileges of toll, tax and warehouse, compound, church and lodgings, food and wine and oil and labour which the Emperor had been prepared to offer the Medici. He had from Messer Alighieri, as full plenipotentiary, the extra privileges the Charetty company could expect, in return for one hundred trained soldiers. And that, passed on in moderation, would make it cheaper by far for the Medici to employ him than compete with him. He had no fear that they would offer armed help themselves. Milan had already tried sending troops east. It had been a disaster.

  He was not disappointed. When the Medici son did appear—a zestful stout man of forty, followed by the men from the chancery with their pens and their ledgers—the ensuing discussion was challenging, but did nothing to weaken his case. On the question of troops, it was the old man himself who interrogated him. Old Cosimo, the urbane head of a tightly run empire of banking, who studied Plato and filled his house with artists; who had once stopped a meeting in order to show Cosimino, interrupting, how to fashion his whistle, “and had he asked me, I would have played on it too”. Hearing that, anyone would have known the farmuk couldn’t fail.

  Now Cosimo the grandfather said, “So the special terms depend on the supply of an army. And what does the Emperor think is an army? Ten? A thousand?”

  “He would be content with a hundred, if bowmen.”

  “And you could take a hundred soldiers round the heel of Italy, up the Aegean Sea, through the narrows at Constantinople and into the Black Sea beyond without the Turks stopping you?”