Scales of Gold: The Fourth Book of the House of Niccolo Read online

  It occurred to Julius that it might have been wiser to take Tilde straight back to the Martelli-Medici palazzo. On the other hand, he liked being active. It had been dull in some ways, in Bruges. It had been dull, to be candid, without Nicholas. He liked pitting his wits against Nicholas. He felt pleased, among all these Italian manipulators, to have a good Flemish card up his sleeve.

  Chapter 3

  COOL AND PLACID, home to waterfowl and the drifting vessels of fishermen, the lagoon of Venice filled the shallow, sandy miles between the city and the head of the gulf on which it lay. Of all the green islands on its milky surface, only one was nearer to Venice than the five slips of land that made up Murano. Which was a pity, because even an hour away over the water, the air was still filled with the din of a city going to war and, in the morning, the sea was as busy as the Grand Canal with boats going to market, bearing their fish and their produce to feed the overstuffed, overwrought Serenissima.

  Now the traffic was thin, although the soldiers stayed alert, and Loppe’s vigilance, Gregorio noted, never flagged. Tilde, remembered as a girl of some fortitude, had nevertheless moved close to Julius. Nicholas, his gaze on the sea, paid no attention to anyone.

  It had been foolish of Julius to let the girl come, and wrong of Nicholas to encourage it. Julius, in Gregorio’s view, was a competent Bologna-trained notary with a cast of mind which led him too often into pointless adventure. He had been, no doubt, an excellent and comradely mentor to the Charetty young, including Nicholas in his subservient youth. He still entertained, Gregorio thought, a delusion of ascendancy over Nicholas which Nicholas had either failed or chosen not to dispel, although, Gregorio supposed, he had some means, in crisis, of making sure that Julius respected his wishes.

  Compared with Julius, Gregorio had little shared background with Nicholas: had seen none of his boyhood; had never fought with him; had never taken part in his bizarre escapades overseas. But he had looked after the Charetty business in Bruges when Nicholas was abroad, and his wife still alive, with young daughters. For over two years, he had run his Bank in Venice, and had been forced to receive for that period a torrential correspondence he would not have foregone.

  Gregorio, not a vain man, recognised that it was a common experience to imagine one understood Nicholas vander Poele; and to harbour an impulse to help and protect him. He reminded himself that the subject of such a humane interest did not always remain innocent, or worthy of it. One must not be beguiled.

  Gregorio sat, his face remote; and his fingers of their own volition caressed the place on his shoulder where once, for upholding Nicholas, he had received a sword-thrust from the lord Simon of St Pol who had written that chilling letter. The letter with the accusation which Nicholas had not repeated in full. Killer of women and gentlefolk, it had said. And despoiler of boys, it had added. Gregorio felt cold, and then amazingly hot.

  ‘It’s getting hotter,’ Tilde de Charetty said. She sat up. The holy island, the one nearest to Venice, had fallen behind. Ahead in the distance lay the sunlit snows of the blue mainland mountains. By contrast, the land which now seemed so close to their bows was green and populous, scattered with red and cream buildings and the towers of churches. By some trick of the sun, the composition appeared to be sparkling, like the effect of dew on a garden. ‘Why is it getting warmer?’ she said.

  ‘Because this is Murano,’ said Gregorio, emerging from his thoughts and wiping his brow. ‘It’s hot because of the glasshouses. This is where all the glass of Venice is made.’

  The island’s sultriness eddied about them, carrying odours of baked clay and charred wood and metal. ‘Glass!’ said Tilde. ‘You didn’t tell me!’

  She was looking at Julius who was far too interested in gazing elsewhere. Nicholas, in laconic Italian, was directing the oarsmen towards the entrance to the nearest and narrowest of the canals that wound through the island. As it began to open to view, you could see the mooring posts with their boats on either side, and the piles of boxes and barrels and sacks on the working-space between the water and the irregular line of crooked brick buildings. It was the Rio di Santo Stefano, where all the workshops were. Gregorio hoped to God Nicholas knew what he was doing.

  Julius said to the girl, ‘I thought you’d enjoy the surprise.’ He chopped Nicholas on the arm. ‘I knew it. You’ve bought your way into glass, haven’t you?’

  ‘It would be hard to deny it,’ said Nicholas. For Tilde’s sake, he had switched back to Flemish. ‘It’s a pretty place, Murano, I’m told, away from the furnaces. Gardens, vineyards, hospices where you would be welcome. You and Tilde may want to walk, or the boat will take you wherever you fancy. We shall meet you back here in two hours.’

  Tilde said, ‘I should like to see inside a glass workshop.’

  ‘I thought you might,’ Nicholas said. ‘Gregorio says this is one of the best, and they will make you welcome. You will excuse us?’

  Gregorio had made no such pronouncement, but Nicholas, it was clear, had received advice from someone: the berth to which he directed the boat belonged to a luminary of the Glassmakers’ Guild who was already emerging to greet them. Tilde disembarked, aided by Julius and Lopez. Nicholas and Gregorio landed, made the necessary introductions, and stood aside as Julius and the girl entered the building.

  Nicholas called after them, ‘In two hours’ time, then, at this place!’ and, taking Gregorio’s elbow, began to walk smartly along the canal path. Lopez followed, and behind him the two soldiers came running. Turning, Gregorio saw Julius step out of the glassworker’s house and look after them with a displeased expression. Then the Magistrate emerged and led him in again. ‘Good,’ said Nicholas. ‘So where is the Barovier workshop?’

  ‘He’ll try to find you,’ Gregorio said. ‘Julius. As soon as he’s free.’

  ‘No, he won’t,’ Nicholas said. ‘He had a good look at the barge. It’s full of glassmaking stuff: alum and cullet and cobalt. He’s found out I’ve been acquiring an island. He’ll pay the boatmen to take him there. It’ll take him two hours and a half to get back.’

  ‘It shouldn’t,’ said Gregorio. It was a silly remark, and he wasn’t surprised when Nicholas didn’t trouble to answer. At the same time, he wondered if Nicholas realised that they, too, would have time on their hands. Their business wouldn’t take long, and they wouldn’t be encouraged to linger. He couldn’t imagine Nicholas strolling among the parks and gardens and vineyards. He caught himself wondering if he should ask about brothels. Nicholas, to his Bank, was an enigma as well as a responsibility.

  They left their escort by the canal, outside the arcaded ground floor of the handsome brick house they were to visit. Only the wall that stretched on either side indicated the amount of ground which, sprawling behind, contained the wide yards, the warehouses, the wells, the furnace areas, the painting-sheds, the tool-making offices, the towers of broken glass and the towers of sand and the sacks and sacks of soda ash that comprised the multiple operations of the finest glasshouse in the world.

  Then its owner came to the entrance to meet them, and took a dislike to Nicholas on the spot.

  Marietta Barovier was late-born but not all that young: her father had died four years previously after forty years at the top of his profession. Yet her hair under its grimy cloth was thick and black, and her olive skin slick as chamois with perpetual sweat. Her eyes, large and heavy-lidded, were piercingly dark, and her body sturdy and short in a stained canvas smock that hung calf-length. Below that, she wore thonged leather shoes grey with scorching. She said, ‘This is not the head of your Bank?’

  Nicholas considered her. ‘Signor Gregorio tells me what to do,’ he said. He waited, and gave a brief smile. ‘In fact, madonna, he and I are partners. But he has had the privilege, which I have not, of seeing your glasshouse.’

  ‘You would like to see it?’ she said. ‘Then come this way.’ She frowned at Gregorio, and he recognised, with a start, that she was displeased to a degree that might lose them the contract. Sh
e said, ‘You may leave your servant here.’

  Nicholas produced his lethal dimples again. ‘He is not my servant,’ he said, ‘he is my factor. His name is Lopez. I should like him to come.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Marietta Barovier, and striding through the house, led the way into open air, and towards the shimmering heat within which lay the ribbed beehive shapes of the kilns.

  Gregorio had seen it before: the scarred, glistening bodies, clothed from the waist in stained drawers; the frieze of spidery tools; the long metal rods with their glowing tips; the bloody glare of the kiln-vents, within which the mounded shapes of the glass stood insubstantial in the extreme light. And, like dancers, musicians, the maestri with their tongs, tweaking, shaping and rolling the yard-long rods with their drooping vermilion phalli; or seated on stools, the slender tube caressed between palms. They made soundless music, playing the rod like a pipe while the glimmering end-jewel inflated, paused, and inflated to become, cooling, a weightless circle of nothing.

  A man, hastening from the furnace, brought a molten lump that, swung, became a rope of sugar, a handle. A rod whirled in a glistening arc until the globe at its end lengthened into a neck. The men worked in near-silence, their arms powerful as those of a bowman, or a man used to a sword, or a stave. But they were handling glass.

  Gregorio turned to look at the founder of the Banco di Niccolò and then remained looking, surprised, for Nicholas stood as if mesmerised. He moved slowly, when called. He followed mutely as Marietta Barovier led them impatiently through the rest of the process and back through the storerooms to the house. There, among the finished pieces, he wakened, and peered at the shelves.

  Gregorio watched. The woman stood by the door, her hands on her hips, her lips pursed. Rambling round the brilliant display, Nicholas examined the bottles and tumblers, the jugs and the cups and the beakers, the hanging lamps and the phials, stopping sometimes to lift one and study it. Gregorio’s mind was actually worrying over the terms of the contract when Nicholas tilted a gorgeous glass to the light, and then, opening his fingers, allowed it to drop spectacularly to the ground. It lay as frost in the dust, with only shells to show what it once was.

  Marietta Barovier, daughter of the greatest glassmaker in the world, said, ‘You will pay the cost of that, to the last ducat. And then leave. This contract is cancelled.’

  Nicholas smiled at her. His skin glistened. Beneath the ridiculous cap he now wore, his curls dripped; his eyelashes were beaded. ‘It would deserve to be,’ Nicholas said, ‘if you set a master’s price on that glass, and I paid it. I don’t mean to insult you, but I should like you to treat me, too, with respect. Those are the shelves of your rejects. You keep them, perhaps, for tuition. You do not sell them, I am perfectly sure.’

  She stared at him. Her black eyes were ringed with brown. She said, ‘How was it flawed?’

  ‘How? The blue trailing was perfect, but the flowing of the enamels had failed. A mishap in the annealing-chamber. My friends from Damascus tell me they have the same trouble at times.’

  She looked at him, then she turned her head and nodded abruptly. A man, bowing low, began to sweep the glass from her feet. She said, ‘It was plain glass your manager spoke of.’

  ‘It is plain glass I want,’ Nicholas said. ‘But there is profit, and joy, in the making of all things. I cannot teach you or your workmen, but if you care, I can bring a man here, a Syrian. He works my sugar now, in exile in Cyprus. He would come. Signor Lopez here could arrange it.’

  ‘Come into my office,’ she said. And entering and offering seats, she said, ‘You know something of glass.’

  ‘Something,’ Nicholas said. ‘But at second hand only. I brought you a gift.’

  Gregorio had no idea what he meant. To the quick glance the woman threw him, he could only reply with a smile. What Nicholas drew from his satchel was a mosque lamp. He said, ‘They have lost the means, now, to make them. Soon, they will have to buy from the West. Could you copy this?’

  She took it from him. Briefly, Gregorio saw it: an oblong, enamelled and gilded. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘But Venice is at war with Constantinople.’

  ‘I have an agent in Alexandria,’ he said. ‘There is a good potential market, even in war. I have brought carpets to copy, and other things. But I knew you could make the glass if you had an example. Accept it, please. It comes with no obligations. If you decide to make them, you can use other merchants.’

  She sat with the lamp in her hands, and looked at him. She said, ‘Perhaps, after all, you are the head of a Bank. I shall look at this. I shall tell you something. I have been impressed by the quality of the goods you have sent me. I learn that you have brought another bargeload today. The yard is full of broken glass. I have no more warehouse space to keep it.’

  ‘You have enough, then?’ Nicholas said. He was almost smiling.

  She opened her lips in a genuine smile, showing blackened teeth, and a sweetness beneath all the weariness. ‘You must know, one never has enough. I have considered what Signor Gregorio has proposed. I am satisfied with the bargain and so, I take it, are the Council.’

  ‘We spoke of it this morning,’ Nicholas said. ‘Madonna?’

  She raised her brows.

  Nicholas sat, muscular knees planted apart, wide brow wrinkled. He reached up and scratched under his cap which tilted back, allowing a frenzy of hair to escape. One dimple appeared. He said, ‘I shouldn’t have done that. The trouble is, when you’re new, people don’t take you seriously. Your father must have been a good padrone di fornace.’

  ‘He was,’ she said.

  ‘Because they follow you, all those men out there. They know you, and in any case, you are a maestra. It is harder for me.’

  ‘Signor Gregorio spoke well of you,’ she said.

  Nicholas said, ‘My friend Lopez would have been harsher. Madonna, if we agree, there are papers to sign. After that, if I may, we should like to visit our friend the Florentine. He is no trouble? You are not unhappy to have him so close?’

  ‘The booth was too small for any purpose of ours,’ she said. ‘He sleeps there and buys his food from us. He passes for a worker in gold, and the dogs protect him as well as our stock.’

  ‘During the day?’ Nicholas asked.

  ‘During the day, of course, they are tied up.’ She followed his gaze to the window. ‘Why? You saw one of the dogs? They are fierce.’

  ‘No,’ Nicholas said. He rose and crossed the room. Beneath the sleeveless pourpoint, his shirt was soaked and his hose might have been dye on the skin: Gregorio saw the woman’s eyes follow him. Nicholas said, ‘I thought I saw someone. Could he have heard us?’

  ‘There was nothing to hear,’ said Marietta Barovier.

  ‘Only that there was something to hide,’ Nicholas said. He opened the door to the yard, looking first about, and then down, where the rough ground was sprinkled with ash. Already, Gregorio could see, the house-shadow had lengthened: the long storeroom outside lay half in darkness. Then Nicholas said, ‘Yes. This way!’ and flung himself outside. Over his shoulder he said, ‘Fetch the soldiers!’

  Lopez was already beside him, and Marietta Barovier, following quickly, stood in the doorway looking after them. In the yard, men turned and looked up. Gregorio wheeled and raced through the house, heedless of rattling shelves. The soldiers were in the front where they had left them, and came running as he threw them explanations. Then he was back in the yard, which was crowded.

  The main gathering seemed to be round the storehouse. Lopez, appearing, said, ‘It was a man. Meester Nicholas cut off his escape, and he was forced to run back. They think he is hiding in there.’

  ‘A spy?’ Gregorio said. ‘Or another marksman?’

  ‘He doesn’t seem to be armed,’ said the Negro. Gregorio looked at him, and ran on.

  Approaching the barn, he could hear the voice of one of the soldiers demanding in harsh Italian that the man inside give himself up. Nicholas was standing beside him, breathing q
uickly. The woman Barovier was moving about her workers, talking. The barn seemed to be filled with straw, and clay pots and channels, and sacks of barillo, stamped with the name of the Strozzi of Alicante. When no one came out, the two soldiers moved in, followed by a number of burly yardmen in aprons, bars in their hands. Within moments, someone screamed.

  Nicholas was still standing outside. Gregorio walked up to him. He said, ‘Who is it? Do you know?’

  ‘No,’ Nicholas said. They were dragging out the intruder by the arms. His face was covered with blood and his booted feet trailed. He was a small man, pallid of limb and dressed as a labourer. One of the soldiers came over to Nicholas. Under his helmet, his face was lit with delight. ‘We have him, my lord. We’ll find his weapon, and we’ll find out who hired him.’

  ‘Well done,’ Nicholas said. He seemed to be studying the captive, who at that moment looked up. Instead of speaking, Nicholas turned back to the soldier. He said, ‘Search for a weapon, but I don’t think you should interrogate him here. Can you keep him under lock and key until the boat comes to take us back to the city? Then he can be restrained under proper conditions.’

  ‘Proper conditions?’ said the man-at-arms. ‘My lord, the wretch tried to kill you.’

  The man spoke, through bleeding lips. ‘I didn’t! My lord, believe me! I was only –’

  ‘I think,’ Nicholas said, ‘you should bandage his lips. They seem to be bleeding. And he sounds as if he is going to be tiresome. Madonna, forgive me. But since we are here, might I ask you to show us the booth you were speaking of? I meant to pay it a visit.’

  It seemed odd, after all that had happened. Gregorio saw that again, the woman was taken aback. But, after all, that was why he was here. There was no reason to abandon his purpose. After a moment she nodded, and pointed the way.