To Lie With Lions: The Sixth Book of the House of Niccolo Page 5

  In none of the letters did he say where he was, only that he was travelling in France, and would shortly make his whereabouts public. He was leaving Dijon in any case: the secrecy was for the protection of Jordan, who would stay there in retreat until sent for. They would not be parted for long, and Nicholas made light of his leaving. The child was well served, well protected. Mistress Clémence would manage the rest. Now, turning his back on the boy, he rode north to where the road joined the Loire, and from there found a boat – a fine-enough boat – to sail him to the castle of René at Angers.

  It was the third week in May, and the air over the leafy river was moist, the clouds low, the lions of thunder grumbling faintly abroad in the ether. Unknown to him, a kingdom had fallen, and his plan was already in motion.

  Chapter 2

  BY THE FOURTH day of June, the house of the Banco di Niccolò in Bruges knew that Nicholas was in France, and by the eighth the news reached Cologne and his child’s mother, Gelis van Borselen.

  The company notary Julius, who was also in Cologne, was candidly thankful. Not himself a family man, he had taken little interest in the (somewhat overdue) marriage of Nicholas to this strong-minded young woman. He had shared Nicholas’s evident lack of interest in the resulting progeny. He had found himself quite astonished when Nicholas, performing a total volte-face, actually quartered Venice one night and snatched the child from the arms of its mother.

  Julius had found it amusing until he saw the sober faces of all the others who witnessed the kidnapping. Gregorio and his partner Margot; Anselm Adorne and his son and his niece Katelijne; Simon, the chevalier son of Jordan de Ribérac, stared after the vanishing boat as if someone had died.

  After Nicholas disappeared, Julius was concerned, as Gregorio was, to restore public confidence. Cursing his wayward padrone during those chaotic first days of planning, Julius was relieved to find less sympathy than he had expected for Gelis, visibly raging through Venice, pouring out threats, gold and a fierce demoniac energy in the effort to track down her son. No one in authority helped. In this quarrel, Venice chose to stay neutral.

  Others, too, had held back. Kathi, the niece of Adorne, the Burgundian Envoy, had sided with Nicholas, not the child’s mother. So had Margot, once moved by her fears for the baby to leave even her beloved Gregorio. When, bereft and alone, Gelis van Borselen had stood weeping by the waterside that terrible night, it had been Gregorio who had walked forward in pity and led her back to her home. But he had done nothing since to help her find the child or her husband. And no one knew where Nicholas and the baby had gone.

  At first Julius was too busy to care; but he was by nature inquisitive, and finding Gelis hurrying through a public place, would stop and speak to her. At first, learning that he had nothing to tell her, she would treat him with stony reserve. But that changed. Julius enjoyed the pleasant aspects of life and was not a man to cast blame on others. Nor was he shy. When, one day, he asked her why Nicholas had done such a thing, his brashness unexpectedly brought him an answer. Gelis, at first silent, spoke slowly. ‘I kept the child from him. I was afraid.’

  Julius knew that much, from Margot. He said, ‘Afraid Nicholas would harm it? Surely not?’

  ‘I had a reason,’ she said. From a plump child in Bruges, she had grown into a lissome, fair woman of twenty-six with the looks to make a lusty man happy. Although uninterested in her himself, Julius was conscious, at these meetings, that they made a fine pair.

  He said, ‘And now?’

  She had looked at him. ‘Will he harm Jordan? He might. Even if he does not, how can he heal the shock of that night, stealing him from all that he knows? And he will teach him to hate me.’

  Julius said, ‘Margot tells me his nurses have gone.’

  ‘Even his nurses,’ she said. Her voice was bitter. After a moment she said, ‘But if they are with him, of course it will help.’

  Then, as she fell silent, Julius said, ‘What are you going to do?’ He supposed she realised that if Nicholas didn’t want to be found, she wouldn’t find him. And meantime she was friendless in Venice, and in Bruges would find no warmer reception, he suspected. He doubted if she had any close relatives living, apart from her cousin Wolfaert at Veere. On the other hand, she had money. Nicholas had endowed her as his wife with a fortune. He must be regretting it now.

  She said, ‘What are your plans?’

  It was not the sort of question a man like Julius would answer out of hand. Ten years older than Nicholas, he had once helped to run the small dyeworks in which Nicholas had begun as an apprentice. Since then, he had risen with Nicholas, and watched Nicholas surpass him without any real rancour. To Julius, the best years of his life had been spent serving the Bank with Gregorio in Venice or Bruges.

  He had no ties. At present, there was urgent business demanding his presence in the Imperial city of Cologne, six weeks’ journey from Venice. He proposed travelling there through the Tyrol, where he was to leave two of his colleagues. It struck him that the presence of Gelis van Borselen in Cologne might not be unsuitable. The story of the dispute over the child would be known, but would not, as in Bruges, be fiercely debated. She could act as his hostess, chaperoned by the wife of their agent. And Cologne was only four days from Bruges. Sooner or later Nicholas would emerge, or resume contact. Julius could not see Nicholas living in limbo, without numbers, without puzzles, without schemes: a hermit rearing a baby.

  He said, ‘I have some business in Cologne. Perhaps, if you are going to Bruges, you might like to stop there on the way?’

  She accepted his offer. If there was no outburst of passionate gratitude, he sensed she was deeply relieved. His fellows at the Bank were less so, although Father Moriz, who was also bound for the Tyrol, described his scheme as humane. John le Grant, their other expert on mines, swore in German when told and banged the door, leaving.

  To Margot, Julius said, ‘I think you will have to tell me what Gelis did that was so terrible.’ He tried to sound less enjoyably interested than he felt.

  Margot did not answer at first. Then she said, ‘She kept the child from him.’

  ‘I know that,’ Julius said. He looked to Gregorio for more.

  Gregorio studied his hands. When Margot took one of them quietly in hers, he glanced at her. Then he turned his gaze on Julius and spoke slowly. ‘Gelis tried to persuade Nicholas that this child was not his, but the son of Simon of St Pol. It is not so, of course. They have been competing with one another, Gelis and Nicholas. They have been looking for new ways to hurt each other.’

  ‘She and Simon were lovers?’ Julius said.

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ said Gregorio stiffly. ‘Only that she claimed the child might be his. It is not so, of course. The child and Nicholas are alike as two peas. By hiding the child, she prevented him from realising as much. It was a cruel deception, carried out cruelly, and Gelis has received her deserts. I am sorry for her, but not deeply sorry.’

  Julius left Venice entranced by this insight into the marital relations of Nicholas, and remained privately entranced all the way north with Father Moriz and John, although impeccably courteous to the lady de Fleury. At Bozen, he enjoyed practising his charm on the Duchess Eleanor, who was short, stout and Scots. She knew most of their news: Anselm Adorne and his party, it seemed, had passed that way five days before. Then, leaving Moriz and John to their mining, he and Gelis made for the Rhine and Cologne.

  Residence in the prince-bishopric proceeded much as he had expected. Although exhausted at first by the journey, Gelis soon became self-sufficient: making acquaintances; fulfilling the Bank’s social obligations in style with her fine jewels and rich gowns and royal manners. Indeed, Julius had no cause for complaint.

  Nevertheless, after six weeks of serious trading, he began to feel hampered, and even uneasy. Gelis was still there, and no word had come from her husband. She said nothing about it, but his agent’s wife thought she was pining. Ever since the loss of the child, the girl had had the look of a starv
ing dog kept in a pit.

  No one, therefore, was happier than Julius when the courier from Diniz in Bruges burst into his office with news. Nicholas and the child were in France. Within five days they were to learn his exact whereabouts.

  ‘You will go to Bruges?’ Julius said, in the girl’s chamber. She was sitting. She had dropped into a seat as soon as he started to speak.

  ‘Don’t you recognise a summons when you hear it?’ she said.

  The words were scathing, but her eyes were deep as two ice-pools in snow, and her hands were cramped in her lap. He said, ‘He won’t hurt you.’ It was hardly worth the pretence. She was married to Nicholas. She knew what he did. She deserved to suffer, according to Margot.

  She left the following day. Julius realised that in some practical ways he would miss her. But for her, the Hanse correspondence would have fallen behind, and she had a natural aptitude for ciphers. It was only away from his desk that he had begun to feel the want of his freedom.

  His doublet-maker was due. He set down his beaker of wine and took up and emptied a packet of buttons. He studied them, smiling, and smoothing the silk on his uppermost knee.

  The town of Angers was in mourning. The sadness which had dimmed the warm sun of Provence hung like a pall over Anjou and the capital where René, King of Sicily, Duke of Anjou, Count of Provence, mourned the fighting son lately dead in Barcelona, and now the death of Blanche, the little matron, the love-child he had looked to, with his wife, to comfort him in old age.

  Nicholas, careful of such things, had advertised his coming in terms of subdued condolence, but would have been surprised to learn that he would be unwelcome at René’s Provençal castle at Tarascon, or could not be entertained by the bereaved monarch at Angers. A merchant banker with Burgundian connections was not likely to be ignored at this juncture in Anjou’s affairs. The greeting he received at Marseilles from René’s godson and namesake confirmed this.

  He was expected, therefore, at Angers, even though the royal boat which met his at the junction of the Loire and the Maine was pinned with black taffeta, and Fleur de Pensée, the herald who welcomed him, had discarded his beautiful livery of white and dove-grey and black for one of mourning. So too had Ardent Désir, the second herald who awaited him with a small cavalcade on the quay. High on its rock a hundred feet over their heads loomed the seventeen striped dark towers of the castle in which, ceremoniously, Nicholas de Fleury, banker of Venice and Bruges, was about to be received.

  He felt no qualms. He was trained to formality; knew to appear in some dark colour that was not the black of the sorrowing family; knew that everything about him would be documented, including his own feud with Jordan de Ribérac, finance officer to the King of France, René’s nephew and overlord in this duchy. The vicomte de Ribérac’s grandson, Henry, had been in training here as a page. He would be ten now.

  The heralds preceded him. Behind the romantic names were two experienced courtiers and trusted friends of the King. Ardent Désir, whose name was Pierre de Hurion, was a writer and poet. So was the King’s maréschal des logis, Jehan du Perrier, commonly known as Le Prieur, who soon joined them. Nicholas de Fleury was shown to his chamber, in which there was no food but a lavish provision of wine, which his companions were happy to share with him. Then he was sent for.

  Poet, painter, musician, maker of buildings and gardens, prince of learning and of pleasure, René King of Sicily had withdrawn in bereavement into a shadow seated in a great chair, his hand at his cheek. About him stood his courtiers, among whom were no pages whom Nicholas recognised. Beside René was Jeanne, the second of the two queens whom he had coaxed, like his peach trees, into long ripening at his side. Ysabelle, mother of all his legitimate children, had brought him Lorraine, the duchy his dead son had held, and thirty-three years of successful partnership. After Ysabelle had come Jeanne, twenty-one when he had married her seventeen years ago. For her, young and loving to him and to all his children, he had sought to lead a simpler life away from the grand palaces such as Saumur and Angers where now perforce he sat in splendour below the painted ceiling and the heavy tapestries, among the tables laden with treasures.

  He was in Angers because his heir was dead, and all he had planned had to be replanned. He was in Angers because France and Burgundy were face to face to his north, and he did not wish to lose Anjou to either. He was in Angers because his daughter Margaret was the Queen of Henry of England, and striving, her son at her side, to maintain her husband’s throne claimed by another. He would not begin, however, by referring to any of that.

  ‘M. de Fleury,’ said the King. ‘You have come to condole with me on the loss of my son. You fought against him at Naples and Troia.’

  ‘Nine years ago. My company did. As monseigneur knows, there is no ill will in such cases. He was a gallant opponent. There are no words to salve such a loss.’

  ‘No.’ The King stirred. Below the black brim of his hat, something winked: his eyeglasses, left hung at one ear. He said, ‘You were travelling, I was told, with a child.’

  ‘With my son. I left him at Dijon. He is a little young, or he would have wished to thank you himself for the generosity of your captain at Tarascon. He produced all a child could wish save for the monster La Tarasque himself.’

  ‘I trust he fares well at Dijon,’ said the King dryly. He indicated a stool, and Nicholas sat. The wine had been strong. He supposed he knew why. ‘He is with his mother your wife?’ the King added.

  ‘Not at present. But his nurse is of frightening competence, although not a Tiphaine, a Caieta.’

  ‘You know my theories, I see. The master may make the warrior, but the nurse makes the man.’

  He broke off abruptly. There was a little silence, during which the Queen his wife turned her head. Nicholas said, ‘I am sorry. You are waiting for news.’

  ‘From England, yes,’ said the King. ‘It would suit the Duke of Burgundy, of course, if Edward of York wins back the throne, and my grandson dies in the field, whatever the quality of his nursing. That is why you are here?’

  His face was grim. This was not to be an exchange of formalities. The King, oppressed, was obeying his moods. Nicholas kept his voice calm. ‘The Duke of Burgundy is my master, as the King of France considers he is your overlord and the Duke’s. An observer would say that if Lancaster prevails, Burgundy will be at the mercy of France. If York wins, the King of France, fearful of Burgundy, may turn next to master your Anjou.’

  ‘And Burgundy would save me?’ said the King. ‘Your observer has a confidence that perhaps others lack.’

  ‘I think,’ said Nicholas de Fleury, ‘that the King of France would find it hard to fight against England and Burgundy both.’

  He said no more, for he had been out of touch with his spies, and had no intention of guessing how far the secret talks between René and Burgundy might have gone. That they were taking place he had no doubts. He himself was concerned, here and now, merely with demonstrating which side he had chosen, and why.

  René said, ‘You have land in Scotland, M. de Fleury.’

  He was shrewd. The remark should not have been unexpected. René knew Jordan de Ribérac; had entertained his son and his wife and his wife’s offspring. The Loire was awash with retired Scottish Archers.

  Nicholas answered elliptically. ‘Scotland has always been a friend to the lady Margaret your daughter and France. But if York retakes the throne, Scotland will have to court York, just as Burgundy must.’

  ‘You think Edward of York will prevail.’

  ‘I am married to Gelis van Borselen of Veere,’ Nicholas said. ‘And the opponents of York have been unwise enough to promise Zeeland and Veere to their supporters. It is why the fleets of Veere and the Hanse support York.’

  René did not speak. His Queen smiled. She said, ‘We should like to meet your lady wife. You said she was elsewhere?’

  Nicholas said, ‘She is in Cologne with some friends, but I expect her to join me this summer.’

 
‘Then we shall receive her,’ said René. He rose, his palm on the arm of his chair. ‘Unless affairs forbid. The play for Corpus Christi has suffered already. Perhaps you have noticed the suspended tortures of St Vincent? But of course you would. You are an expert in the engines of illusion. Go and look at ours before supper. Madame will conduct you through the gardens.’

  Outside, he was offered more wine, and did not refuse, although he drank slowly. Then the Queen led the way through alleys and arches while her ladies scurried behind and Le Prieur and Ardent Désir brought up the rear. She said, ‘It needs irrigation. We have difficulty with leading in water. You are an expert in water?’

  ‘I employ those who are,’ Nicholas said. ‘They are in the Tyrol at present. Perhaps they could help you.’ Afterwards, he realised that he had been thinking more slowly than he should.

  ‘We have heard of them,’ said the Queen. ‘But you yourself are curiously gifted, are you not? I am told that you can divine the presence of anything: water, silver. They say you divined the whereabouts of your own son.’

  They had walked so quickly that there was no one within earshot. By now he was fully on his guard. He said, ‘The Church does not approve. What I achieved was by accident. I have stopped now.’

  ‘Can you predict the future?’ she said. They passed a pavilion. Her veils swirled in reflection across the glass of the windows; her cloak rustled over the grass. He said, ‘No, madame. In any case, you have your own astrologers.’

  ‘But they cannot tell us,’ she said. It was a cry. When he didn’t answer, she continued. ‘You named your child Jordan, they say, after the seigneur Jordan de Ribérac?’

  ‘My wife named him,’ he said. The wind was cold on his skin.

  ‘A fine name,’ said the Queen. ‘Breton, surely? Simon, Jordan, Gaultier de St Pol. Your wife preferred it to the van Borselen names? What of Wolfaert, or Francis, or Henry?’