Race of Scorpions (6 page)

The monk paused, a chicken leg in his hand. ‘You’re none the poorer, I notice, for serving him.’ He swirled the bone. ‘As for money to support a crusade, I’m an optimist. Venice will offer me something. It’s more than she’ll do for the little lady you rescued this morning. The Queen of Cyprus needs your men, and your silver.’

‘So she has told me. Twice,’ said Nicholas.

‘You met her in Venice?’ said the friar.

‘I met everyone in Venice,’ Nicholas said. ‘I had five different offers. Six, now I think of it. That’s why I left. The Pope made you Patriarch, then?’

The friar smiled. It was like a rat diving into a hedge. He said, ‘He nearly put me in prison. It appeared I was not meant to make use of the title so early. I reassured him. I shall enter Holy Orders the moment I travel to Venice. Why are you going to Bruges?’

‘To collect my belongings. To finish my business. To see my stepdaughters,’ said Nicholas.

‘And because,’ said the monk, ‘you can think of nothing more original to do? You look like a fellow who likes making money but has little idea what to use it for. But what am I talking about? Queen Carlotta has seen you. You are a youth who depends on feminine patrons. You will never escape.’

‘I have escaped,’ Nicholas said.

He was young. He was twenty, and a widower.

Chapter 3

M
ARIAN DE CHARETTY
, owner of a flourishing dyeworks in Bruges and not in the springtime of life, had died between Auxonne and Dole, on her way south to Italy. To make his pilgrimage, to use a recent, sickening phrase, her former apprentice and very young husband had to cross the Alps, pass through Geneva and, in foul winter weather, find his way north to Burgundy.

He made the journey in silence, with Thomas sulking beside him. For once, Nicholas made no effort to please Thomas or anyone. He knew that illness had caused Marian’s death, although imprecisely the name of her malady. It had afflicted her as she travelled, but she had succumbed within reach of friends. A sister, long dead, had married in Dijon. Marian had found refuge with a family fond of her sister, and for her sake Enguerrand and Yvonnet de Damparis had given Marian shelter and nursing, and had comforted her as her illness grew mortal.

Nicholas knew of them, and supposed they knew of him. The house when he reached it was large and turreted and supported clearly by many acres of seigneurial land. Enguerrand himself was away, but his wife’s greeting to Nicholas was of extraordinary warmth, tempered by something of diffidence and something even of anxiety which he took to represent the usual response to bereavement. He was glad she thought him bereaved since, not excluding Carlotta of Cyprus, most considered his loss to be monetary. He allowed Thomas the happiness of getting drunk with the steward, and sat with the lady of Damparis while she talked about Marian.

He let her talk, although he did not, in fact, want to hear. He knew the death had been natural, from other sources. An infection acquired on the journey had occasioned a crisis: she had been overtired, and burdened with anxieties. He knew that as well. He had a letter Marian had written to him: he did not wish to have repeated, however well-meant, the things she might have said
about their marriage. He doubted in fact if she had said them. What lay between them had depended on privacy, and as he kept silent about it, so would she.

He had brought a gift with him: a Persian jug he had intended for Marian’s office. The jewels on it were less important than the engraving. The friend of Marian’s sister was touched by it; overwhelmed even, and tears came into her eyes. He rose at that point and tried to take his leave, but she insisted he eat, and asked him questions about his future, and Marian’s daughters, and how they would manage the business. She had met Tilde de Charetty, the elder, to whom the dyeworks and broker’s shop had been left. ‘A sharp-brained girl, but still very young. And Catherine, the other, is in your charge?’

‘Financially,’ Nicholas said. ‘I have set up a trust for her. She lives with her sister in Bruges. There are competent people to manage the business, including Marian’s priest and her notary. But I shall visit them, and make sure all is well. Please don’t fear for them.’

‘I don’t,’ said Yvonnet de Damparis. ‘With you as their stepfather and friend, I am sure they will never want for anything.’ She hesitated. ‘You are going to Dijon?’

Marian belonged to Louvain. But Louvain was far off and it was not odd, perhaps, that she had asked to be laid to rest by her sister, in the crypt of the family into which her sister had married. Nicholas knew the place well. He had been visiting it since he was seven. He said, ‘Yes, to the Fleury chapel.’

She was a kind woman, his hostess: not young, for her skin was seamed and the line of hair under her headdress was grey. She said, ‘You know, M. Nicholas, that your grandfather is no longer there?’

Few people knew of his relationship to the Fleury family but, of course, she would be one of them. He said, ‘I know. I had no expectation of seeing him.’ He had, as he remembered, partly ruined him; but he was not sure if she had discovered that.

Later he left. Thomas, rejoining him, was at least merry within himself, which was just as well, for there was nothing else to cheer an off-duty soldier. A professional from the English–French wars, Thomas was familiar with both redundancy and bereavement, and patently believed Nicholas had mismanaged both. Nicholas, having been denied the Charetty company, had lost his nerve for everything else.

Nicholas wondered if this was true, and concluded it probably was. He had left Gregorio his lawyer in Venice to set up a bank of exchange. He had neither been helpful nor sympathetic, but Gregorio had shown no sign of minding. He had allowed his notary Julius to take himself off to Bruges. But Julius had wanted to go, and he had encouraged him. Then, of course, there was the army –
the mercenary troop that had begun as a bodyguard for the Charetty money and goods, and ended as a marketable unit.

In the short term, the army was committed. It was returning to fight in the contest for Naples, this time alongside the leader Skanderbeg and his Albanians. The action would be in south Italy, and Astorre would lead his own company. The army’s doctor Tobias, on the other hand, had joined the camp of the Count of Urbino, who was fighting for the same cause in the north. It made sense. Nicholas couldn’t drag them all with him. He had kept Thomas, or Astorre had foisted Thomas on him. Astorre thought he was in no condition to look after himself, and had explained, speciously, that Thomas could protect his little step-daughters at Bruges. He might be right. Tilde needed a bodyguard. After Silla, Nicholas thought that he had proved he could manage quite well by himself.

On the way from the Château Damparis Thomas sang, now and then, and Nicholas wished he had got him drunk sooner. When they reached the outskirts of Dijon and began finding their way to the priest’s house at Fleury, he was disconcerted to find that Thomas, too, wanted to pay his respects to his late employer. Which he had a right to do. Thomas had been a senior Charetty mercenary while her future husband was stoking the dyevats.

So Thomas was there when the priest took his keys and led them off to the family church, and then down to the crypt. He had, however, the soldier’s good sense to let the first mourner enter alone. Descending into the crypt, Nicholas carried a lamp, but nothing else: in December, there were no flowers in Dijon. He went, as was right, to his usual place. After that, it was easy to see the new coffin. The light glimmered on brass, where the wreaths – old now, and dried – lay upon the shining lines of inscription. He drew them aside with scrupulous fingers. The plate said what he had expected it to say:
1420–1461: Marian, daughter of the late Berthélémieu of Louvain, and wife of Cornelis de Charetty, 1400–1458
. It continued, as he had not expected it to continue:
and of Nicholas, son of Simon de St Pol and Sophie de Fleury
.

He sank back on his heels. After a while, he brought himself to think of all the ordinary, mundane implications of that brave proclamation of his parentage. The priest would have seen it, and the engraver, and even perhaps Thibault de Fleury. They presumably accepted it as a lie. Marian had wanted it said, and to please her they had engraved it to lie here in darkness. Even so, it was as well Simon de St Pol didn’t know that Nicholas was written down anywhere as his son, even ten feet underground.

Afterwards, there were papers to sign, and the priest led the way to his house. When he heard that M. vander Poele wished to endow the chapel, the priest had smiled, deprecating but amiable.
The family had made arrangements. Then, receiving the papers from Nicholas, he had scanned them and reddened. At the finish he said, ‘… but not of course on this scale. On this all too generous scale. They will wish to –’

‘I would prefer that they didn’t communicate. Anything to do with the fund will find me care of my own bank in Venice. From time to time, they will visit, to see if you require anything.’

The priest brought out wine at the end of the paperwork, but Nicholas made some excuse and left without tasting it. It embarrassed Thomas, as the priest was still talking, and had offered them supper. On the road, he complained. Nicholas said, ‘We learned nothing new. He only wanted to gossip.’

Thomas grunted, but as time went by, his expression became somewhat more hopeful. Nicholas could read his mind. It was December, and freezing, but at least nothing stood now between him and Bruges, and warmth, and comfort, and mates of your own ordinary kind who would speak to you.

In the event, Bruges came upon Nicholas rather suddenly. He had thought he was prepared for it. The sergeant in charge at the bridge was a burgess’s son who recognised him. He said an awkward word or two about the demoiselle’s death, and then asked, after a pause, if Nicholas was going to Spangnaerts Street. Or the dyeyard?

Spangnaerts Street was the address of the excellent quarters – house, warehouse and stables – where he and Marian and all their clerks lived and had their offices. The yard, elsewhere in Bruges, held their work force. Answering, he saw the other’s eyes flicker. But if something was wrong, Julius would have sent word, or met him. He was aware that news of his coming would have been in Bruges for days. But the sensation, surely, was over. The demoiselle de Charetty was dead, and had left her husband nothing, as everyone knew, because he needed nothing. Why should he be here, except to comfort and help his wife’s daughters?

Thomas said, ‘There’s something up.’ Simple though Thomas might be, he had an instinct.

Nicholas said, ‘Yes. Never mind. Too many people. Let’s go.’

As usual, he had fortified himself against the wrong catastrophe. In the crowded streets, he saw hardly any faces he knew; was stopped for no funereal outbursts. The streets were busy, of course, as they always were, and faces turned as he and Thomas rode by, but he was not called on to act. Thus, with undiluted insistence, there fell on his ears all the sounds he had missed for a year: the clack of the looms, the rumble of barrels, the creak of signs, the echo of under-bridge voices; the splash and trickle and rush of canal water. The sounds and the smells of the great Flemish town where he had grown to manhood and marriage. Marian’s town.

Spangnaerts Street was not far away, and filled as usual with draught horses and oxen, boxes and barrels, servants and merchants and the chilled and shadowy scents of fruit and spices and dyes. Outside the tall, gabled house he had bought for his wife there were clusters of people who were neither neighbours nor passers-by, but who seemed to be waiting. He saw, as the faces turned, that they were waiting for him. He stopped Thomas. ‘You know the
Avignon
hostelry? Go there. Find beds for us all, and wait for me.’

Thomas frowned. ‘Not here? There’ll be beds.’

‘If I change my mind, I’ll send for you,’ Nicholas said. There were spikes on the high wall that enclosed the courtyard of his house. He had put them there himself. He had never had guards standing below, as they now did. He rode slowly forward to the gate and dismounted. He said, ‘Will you hold my horse?’ to one of the boys, and walking to the closed gates, pulled the bell. The postern opened.

It was not Julius who stood on the threshold, or Godscalc, or any of the men he and Marian had employed or trained. The stranger said, ‘Yes?’

Nicholas said, ‘I am the husband of Marian de Charetty, come home from Venice. Are her daughters there, or Meester Julius, or Father Godscalc perhaps?’

‘They are all away,’ said the man.

‘Really?’ Nicholas said. ‘Then perhaps I might wait for them?’

‘I regret,’ said the man. ‘I cannot admit you.’

‘I understand,’ Nicholas said. ‘But I do intend, of course, to come in. There is nothing difficult about it. You can either bring out someone who knows me, or I will bring you a man of good faith to identify me. Which would you like?’

‘Monseigneur,’ said the porter. ‘I regret. I have instructions not to admit the late demoiselle’s husband. The guard will tell you out there.’

‘Whose instructions?’ said Nicholas.

The man was unlike any porter he and Marian had employed. Of middle age, weathered and scarred, he had the look of a skilled roving soldier. He said, ‘My mistress is Mathilde de Charetty.’

Tilde, of course. Tilde, Marian’s daughter. ‘And she is not here?’ Nicholas said. ‘Or is here, and afraid to deal with this personally?’ He pitched his voice to carry as far as the house; and stood, ostentatiously relaxed and ostentatiously alone.

Tilde’s voice said, ‘The porter has told you. We prefer not to receive you.’ Her voice, trembling slightly, was deeper than you would expect in a girl of under fifteen. He remembered it from Venice. She had been afraid of him then: afraid that he would push her and her sister aside and take over the business; and he had played on the fear, trying to make her stand on her own feet. If
her mother’s workmen remained; if he released (and he had) all the senior company men who were willing to go back to Bruges, the business could prosper.