Scales of Gold (83 page)

‘Of course he … Benedetto Dei does not live in Timbuktu,’ Tommaso said. ‘Although he is calling there. He went with the
Ferrandina
to Rhodes and Constantinople last year, and she was expected in Marseilles this spring. He may travel south from the Barbary coast. Is it a difficult journey?’

‘Not if you like camels,’ Nicholas said. ‘And while I remember, here is your commission from Abderrahman ibn Said. He says it should be correct.’

It was a draft on the Banco di Niccolò. Tommaso said, ‘I am glad to have it. It must have been difficult, carrying gold such a distance in safety.’

‘I brought books instead,’ Nicholas said. ‘I wanted to ask you. The coastal route, as you’ve heard, is impossible. Do you think there is room for us both in the Sahara?’

Tommaso stared at him. ‘You are considering a Barbary trade?’

‘I have enough ships,’ Nicholas said. ‘Or shall have, when my litigation is over. I find I rather like going to law. What a pity you’ve let Dei go without revising his contracts. Never mind. How are your brothers?’

Walking back to Spangnaerts Street, Diniz said, ‘That was disgusting.’ He was still red with laughter.

‘I know,’ Nicholas said. ‘He was always easy to tease. He can
command, and he can fawn, but he can never be anyone’s equal. Take it as a terrible warning.’

‘Did you mean it?’ Diniz said. They had reached the Charetty-Niccolò yard. ‘You won’t take the caravel route, but you might join the trade through the Sahara?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ Nicholas said. It was a reply Diniz was becoming tired of.

‘But you’ll buy Turkish alum?’ Diniz persisted. ‘Bessarion and the others won’t like it.’

‘I shall have to,’ Nicholas said. ‘Look. Come into my room. Not the counting-house. I had a visitor yesterday.’

Diniz had been in this parlour before. It was smaller than the great chamber in Venice, and inconvenient, and rather impersonal. He sat down while Nicholas hitched himself on the high stool at his desk. The desk was covered with drawings.

Nicholas said, ‘Do you remember Bartolomeo Zorzi? You will do. He came to offer me a great opportunity. The rights to sell papal alum in Venice and the whole of the region beside it. The Curia and the Medici have fallen out, and the Pope is inclined to seek other agents. Zorzi is one of the most skilled, but is bankrupt. He needs capital to buy basic stocks, and if I will provide it, I shall share in the profit. What do you think?’

Elbows on desk, he played with a pen and, lifting it, held it level between his two hands. It was a quill, of the kind they filled with gold dust in Wangara. Diniz said, ‘He was manager of the dyeworks in Cyprus. You apprenticed me under him. He encouraged me when I wanted to kill you, and let me escape, knowing I would end in Famagusta, and you and Katelina would come. He killed Katelina, in a way.’

Nicholas said, ‘Yes. The Vatachino expelled him from the dyeworks and he set up here in Bruges, and then failed. This offers a fortune. He doesn’t like either me or the Vatachino, but he would ask me first, because of his brother.’

‘And you said?’ Diniz asked. And then flushed and said, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No. I might have been hard-headed enough to agree, but I wasn’t. I rather think I told him what to do with his alum. I shall have to buy it, to a degree – everyone will. But I shall make it up, as I’ve said, with its Muslim equivalent. You approve?’

‘Yes,’ said Diniz. ‘I had forgotten.’

‘What?’

‘That it was you who placed me in the dyeworks in Cyprus. To humiliate me, everyone thought.’

‘Well, that was a damned failure, too,’ Nicholas said. ‘Look at you.’

Diniz said, ‘So you meant me to come here.’

Nicholas laid down the quill and left the stool. He said, ‘Only if you wanted to. It was your own choice.’

‘And Tilde?’ Diniz said.

Nicholas didn’t answer.

Diniz said, ‘I should like to think that you meant that as well. I hope you did. I’ve been afraid that perhaps it was not what you wanted.’

‘It was what I wanted,’ Nicholas said. ‘Just occasionally, something comes right. You were going to have half the Ochoa gold for your marriage. Now
there’s
a challenge. If you find it, you can keep it, provided they don’t hang you first. Go and tell Tilde. You wouldn’t think it, but I have some work to do.’

Then May came, and the time for Gelis to leave.

Chapter 41

Y
OU
WOULD SAY THAT
, when everyone else was celebrating in the streets, a private life would be easy, but in these last weeks Nicholas had not found it so.

It was, of course, the first spring of the Duke’s accession, and although he had already made his restless, moody, thorough entry into his town of Bruges (as he had done or was about to do in his other towns throughout Flanders and Burgundy), Charles returned to it in May. So Bruges found itself occupied by the Court, and witnessing the three-day gathering of the eleventh Chapter of the Duke’s Golden Fleece Order, and the Holy Blood procession on top, with every street filled with banners and choirs and platforms with actors and singers.

As once at St Omer, Gregorio saw parade before him the thirteen Knights in their collars and robes, Henry van Borselen and Louis de Gruuthuse among them. And Diniz, soldier of Ceuta, met again the Duke’s half-brother Antony, and spoke to Simon de Lalaing, remnant of the flower of chivalry. The Duke himself received Nicholas at the Princenhof, and questioned him about his adventures. His interest seemed to be part commercial, part religious and part romantic: Nicholas did his best to conform.

Charles, by the grace of God Duke of Burgundy, Lothier, Brabant and Limbourg and Count of Flanders, Holland and Zeeland, was less comely, Nicholas thought, than the late Timbuktu-Koy and, he suspected, not as shrewd. The Chapter of the Fleece, with boyish hilarity, had reprimanded the Duke for his reckless yearning for battle, and, with Arthurian gallantry, he had admitted it.

As to the possession of mistresses and wives, Duke Charles couldn’t even rank with King Gnumi. The Duke’s first two wives were dead, and the one he was about to marry was a well-used maiden, they said, who had given birth to at least one live child,
stupid girl. But an English alliance was necessary, and the King’s sister was the only royal bride then on offer.

After the audience had dragged to its end, it was made known to Nicholas that the Duke expected him to attend the bridal celebrations. ‘As the ape,’ Nicholas said, describing the complete scene to Gelis. ‘I come on between the dwarves and the unicorn. I’ve become the Guinea Minstrel of Burgundy. Why won’t you take your clothes off?’

‘Because I can’t,’ Gelis said. ‘As at Easter. Nicholas, I’m sorry. I’m as sorry as you are.’

‘
Christ!
’ said Nicholas, and gave a half-laugh. ‘No, you can’t be as sorry as I am.’

It was the last night he and Gelis had together before her ship sailed for Scotland, and they spent it in the Charetty-Niccolò mansion, where Tilde had kept her a chamber. The reason was genuine enough: the houses of Gruuthuse and Borselen were full of knights and their retinues. The excuse by that time hardly mattered. Before the household was fully abed, Gelis came to his room.

He had known he would pass the night awake, but not seated in stillness at a window, with Gelis in her chemise, white as his, at his knee, her head and arms laid in his lap. She said, ‘You would make a very good ape.’

‘I have been practising,’ Nicholas said.

Her head moved under his hand. In the moonlight, he could see the curve of her cheek, and her lashes, and the profile of her nose. It was red. ‘You’re not a plaything. Don’t pretend you could be,’ she said. ‘Anyway, you’ve reached perfection. You don’t need to practise.’

‘I enjoy it,’ he said. His throat ached. He said, ‘I wanted more. Tonight. Or even always.’

‘I know,’ Gelis said.

He waited, as he had learned to wait, and gazed out of the window. The stars were different. It was hard even to discover the stars, because of the glow of the city. Hung on the sky, he could see the ghosts of coquettish gables, and the round glass eyes of casements, and a branch of lilac blossom, swaying in lamplight. He thought of space, and slowly everything quietened, even his cheated senses.

Gelis said, ‘Sometimes, I am afraid of your patience. If I said – I still don’t know; wait for me twenty-five years? What would you do?’

‘Express astonishment,’ Nicholas said. ‘Anyone who can act as you do doesn’t need twenty-five years to decide whom to marry. I’ve seen you shoot to kill with a crossbow. This should be easier.’

He felt her cheek move as she smiled, but she didn’t change her position. She said, ‘We are discussing marriage?’

He said, ‘I thought we had managed to come round to it at last. You said, I think, that if you didn’t want me, you’d tell me. You also said …’ He didn’t finish.

‘That I was going to Scotland, unless I couldn’t manage without you. You know this Princess Mary in Scotland?’ Gelis said. She lifted her head. The place where it had lain felt damp and rather cold.

Nicholas said, ‘You’ve been serving her. She’s seventeen, and the Scottish King’s older sister, and has married into a family who have rather a questionable grip on her brother’s kingdom just now. They say King James wept at her wedding.’ He recited it. Gelis was sitting apart on the floor, her hands on her knees. She wasn’t looking at him.

‘Thomas Boyd,’ she remarked. ‘Boyd is the name of the family who are trying to dominate Scotland. King James is sixteen, and his brother, the one who stayed in Bruges, is three years younger. Bishop Kennedy, who would have helped them resist this, is dead.’

‘And you want to advise them?’ Nicholas said. ‘Canals and carpet-weaving, and how to get their fountains in order?’ She had spent endless hours rearranging the table fountains he had had made in Venice.

Gelis said, ‘Mary’s husband is to go away in July. Thomas Boyd. He’s to go to Denmark to arrange a royal marriage. She could be pregnant.’

‘I understand all that,’ Nicholas said. ‘Gelis. Would you sit on a chair, and let me look at your face? It’s a nice face, and I feel I shan’t be seeing it for very much longer.’

He stayed quiet. After a moment, without otherwise moving, she turned her face to him. Then he said, ‘Wait,’ and rose.

The brazier glowed by the bed. He lit a lamp from a taper and, bringing it back, stood it on the table beside them. She didn’t protest. After a moment, he sat down again.

He said, ‘At least, if you are weeping, it hasn’t been easy. I can say goodbye, Gelis, if I must. We exhaust one another. We quarrel. The bond we have from what we found on the journey may come to mean less. And you cannot forgive me, or forget.’

It seemed better that he should say it. She kept her eyes fixed on him throughout; pale blue eyes liquid with tears. Before he finished, her eyes on him still, she gave a short, barking sob, followed by others. Then she gulped and silenced herself. Her face was still contorted.

Nicholas said, ‘Oh, no, Gelis!’ and made to kneel with her.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. It’s … I don’t know what it is. I need a handkerchief.’

He gave her one, and she used it. He said, ‘It’s the time of the month; I should know. I always get –’

‘You always get hurt then,’ she finished. Her face, roughly dried, was patched and pink, and her eyes were deep-set and enormous. She sniffed, and rose to her feet. The front of her chemise was soaked. He could see the pink and dark-pink of her breasts, as if through buttered silk. He found he was very tired.

Gelis said, ‘Now I shall sit at your desk, and you will stay where you are, and I shall say to you what has to be said. Do you know that Godscalc spoke to me tonight?’

She had reached his desk by now, on its dais, and was perched where he usually sat. She picked up the quill he had picked up when Diniz came.

‘About us?’ he said. He had shut the casement and turned, so that he could face her.

‘About you,’ she said. ‘He said that, whatever I felt, you had a destiny that must be fulfilled, and that nothing petty should stand in the way. He said he felt you had found the way you were looking for, and wanted a partner. He said that he was not surprised that your choice had fallen on me, for I was in all things your complement.’

‘That at least is true,’ Nicholas said. ‘Here and there, we have proved it.’

‘Don’t!’ she said. ‘Nicholas, don’t. He said that you would accept me, without question, if I offered myself. He said the responsibility was mine, to bring you what was sound, and not what was secretly blighted. He said if I had any doubts about this at all, I should leave you for ever.’

Nicholas said, ‘What it is to have friends. I carried him …’ He shut off the words, and his eyes, with his palms.

She said, ‘Oh, Nicholas. Nicholas.’

He took his hands down. He said, ‘Tell me, then. Gelis, I won’t blame you, or harm you, or think ill of you. After all – did I tell you? – I love you. As it happens, I have said that to nobody else.’

She looked at him. She said, ‘I am going to Scotland. I have a duty. I want to fulfil it. I am afraid, too, of exactly the things you have mentioned. We may be natural mates, but not partners. What we have gone through together may run through our fingers. You have found a way of thinking, and I might destroy it. We need to separate for a while.’

He drew a long breath, and held it. Then he said, ‘Not outright rejection? Look. I am sitting prepared for it.’ His head swam.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, my idiot Nicholas, no. But a space of six weeks to consider. I am going to Scotland. You will hear my answer from Lucia.’

‘Lucia?’ he said. He thought of Lucia: the perfect hair, the screams in the bedroom in Lagos.

‘She is travelling to Bruges for the Wedding. If I stay to lead my own life, she will tell you.’

‘And if not?’ he said.

‘Then,’ she said, ‘I shall be on the same ship.’

She left presently: the shortest night but one they had ever spent together. The next day he went to Sluys to see the Scottish ship sail, and Godscalc, riding awkwardly on an old mule, accompanied him. Gelis was already there, surrounded by her van Borselen family. She kissed him chastely goodbye, and commanded her page, as she went, to deliver to him a leave-taking parcel. A gift, she said, in token of the many small kindnesses she had received from him.