Scales of Gold (84 page)

Long after the ship had moved out, he saw her face as she said it, the deep-set eyes wide, the lips pinched and curled at the corners.

When he was home, he opened the parcel. It was a working model, in wood and metal, of a table fountain. It solved the Baroviers’ three problems of linkage. He could hear, now, the critical van Borselen voice, and his own belated, tolerant answers. Godscalc said, ‘What is that?’

‘A reproach,’ Nicholas said. ‘But a clever one.’

Those who knew Nicholas, and suspected what had happened, treated him each according to their natures in the six weeks that followed. Tobias Beventini his physician arrived, accompanied by Captain Astorre, the head of his mercenary army. Tobie, having summed up the communal health problem of the double company, threw himself into the hilarious revival of friendships, interspersed with long sessions with Father Godscalc, spent partly on manipulating his hands, and partly on arguing about medical literature. From Godscalc, he learned all he needed to know about Nicholas and, as a result, left Nicholas to himself.

Astorre, to whom Nicholas was a mascot, slapped him on the back, asked a couple of questions (purely anatomical) about the Empire of the Blacks, and demanded to be taken to the seigneur of Gruuthuse, seeing that he had the right sort of men for the seigneur’s cannon.

Julius arrived three weeks later, disinclined to be apologetic about having left the Bank to itself in order to attend the Duke of Burgundy’s wedding. He said if Tobie came, he didn’t see why he
should miss all the fun. He wanted to know if it were true that Tilde de Charetty was going to marry the Portuguese boy, and the Charetty and the Bank were to merge? He wanted to know why Nicholas hadn’t come back to Venice.

Gregorio, acting as a one-man Bruges reception committee, assured Julius that he would see Nicholas soon, and that they had all found it hard to plan, because of the upheaval caused by the Wedding. ‘I can see that,’ Julius said. ‘Every street being repaved and scaffolding everywhere else. All the same. Is Nicholas doing any work? The
Ghost
. The
Fortado
. The missing gold. Nothing done about anything. I don’t know how you’ve found it in Bruges, but in Venice he just walked through the day as if it didn’t much matter. Of course, the Bank does run itself, in a way.’

‘What more do you want?’ Gregorio said. But, of course, it was true in Bruges as well. Gregorio had tried to set up enquiries and meetings, but so far nothing had come of them, because Nicholas largely ignored them. Nicholas worked, but not as he once had.

During this period Nicholas worked mainly, truth to tell, on the contrivances for the Duke of Burgundy’s wedding.

It began with a project so properly his that he hardly needed a cry for help from the town’s master carpenter to engage on it. From that followed other requests, tentative, plaintive or actively frenzied. Accustomed to the sufferings inflicted on all the Guilds and city technicians by the normal celebrations of a Bruges year, Nicholas had missed the Duke’s father’s funeral and was not born when the Duke’s parents had married at Sluys. He had had no idea until now of what was actually entailed in a royal wedding involving two weeks of festivities, six banquets, and a joust every day in the marketplace. When he found out, he went to the master of ceremonies and said, mildly, ‘Use me.’

When he was not there to greet Julius, and had not entered the Charetty-Niccolò doors for two days, Julius lost his temper. ‘Where is he?’

They were eating in the Charetty common-room, because it was bigger. The premises, once enough for Catherine and Cristoffels and Tilde, had already overflowed in the form of sheds into the gardens. Tobie said, ‘How should I know? Ask Gregorio. With the blacksmiths designing the waterworks, or the carpenters producing the show-pieces. At the Fox with Goeghebuer and the masons. Getting tents out of the sail-makers, or tapestries out of the weavers. On the streets putting up booths, or up a ladder painting something elaborate with Hennekaert or Coustain or Hugo or Colard.’

‘The bastard!’ said Julius enviously. ‘He’ll be pissed from morning to night. I remember.’

‘You remember him at eighteen,’ said Gregorio dryly.

Nicholas had not been drunk since the work started, which had been quite a feat, considering the company he kept. He felt he owed them his best: guilds were guilds, and but for the emergency he would never have been allowed to meddle. As it was, he was working side by side, day and night, with the best and most ingenious craftsmen there were. Hence, when he did actually arrive in the middle of the meal, Julius, viewing him critically, saw a kind of vitality which had been lacking in Venice, even if coupled with a disappointing sobriety.

Julius got up and, walking to Nicholas, greeted him with a slap on his back, which was dirty. ‘Well, thank God you’ve put the hermit behind you. What have you found to waste your time on now? And you’ve packed the lady friend off, so they tell me. That was a damn fool escapade. Stick to the Mabelie type.’

Even to Julius, the silence was startling. Then Nicholas began, quite genuinely, to laugh. ‘Welcome back, Julius,’ he said. ‘Give me a Mabelie, and I’ll stick to her. Do you know what else you’ve missed? Remember the bath you and I floated to Damme? I’ve just floated another from Brussels.’

‘Another bath?’ said Julius, sitting down, cheered.

‘No. What do you think of a timber banqueting-hall seventy feet wide by a hundred and forty feet long by sixty feet high, with five double windows fourteen feet high, and two gables? Horses bolted and women gave birth as we passed.’

‘But you did it.’

‘I did it. It is here.’

‘And what else?’ Julius said.

‘Come and see,’ Nicholas answered, smiling.

It would have been better if he had had Nicholas to himself, but Gregorio wanted to go, and then Diniz – the boy, the foreign boy who had somehow got round Tilde. It was too late, Julius assumed, to do anything constructive about that; but he was extremely glad (as, after all, he had said) that Nicholas had stopped making a fool of himself over the van Borselen girl, who had no money, and who had chased him all the way to Africa on the pretext that he was murdering his rivals in business.

Well, she’d had a change of heart, from what he heard. And having made the most of it for six weeks, Nicholas had shown her what he really thought by throwing her out. That was the interpretation Julius had heard. He had tried to pump Father Godscalc about it, and Father Godscalc had dropped off to sleep.

The work Nicholas was doing proved to be all over Bruges: they’d tented the streets near the marketplace where the lists were
going up, and near the Princenhof where the Duke would give the banquets for his bride. Some of the guilds were still trying to work in their houses, but wagons kept coming in from Dijon and Lille with harness and tapestries and furnishings to be fixed: all movement in the centre of Bruges was reduced to a compressed and bad-tempered crawl.

The mechanics were in a warehouse near the Princenhof, remarkable for its size, the number of people in it, and the sheer volume of imprecations filling the air. The sound of hammering was interspersed with curious noises which turned out to be a group of mermaids, squeezed out from neighbouring premises, who were attempting a chorus.

‘Bloody awful lyrics,’ said Nicholas equably. ‘They’re to sit in the whale. All that is the labours of Hercules. Don’t go near them; they broke their mountain, and they’re all blaming Theseus. That’s the fire-eating dragon, and that’s a man with a spit, toasting the birds that were meant to fly out of the griffon. That’s a copy of the tower of Gorcum, and that’s a goat playing the flute. There is also a consort of wolves, apes and boars. They’re terrible too, but I’m working on them. Now come and see this. Mind the dwarves.’

They passed a unicorn, a singing lion, and a leopard with a daisy in its hand. Gregorio lingered.

‘A marguerite. Her name’s Margaret,’ Nicholas said, ducking. An acrobat hurtled over his head, calling to him in English. Everyone knew Nicholas, and he knew everybody by name. Julius recognised some of the names. Andries. Pieter. Adrien. Joos. They passed some imaginative dispensers of wine, human and bestial. They passed Colard Mansion, up some scaffolding painting a giant, and Hugo vander Goes, on his knees before a row of wet escutcheons. He gave a roar as Nicholas passed, and Nicholas joined him in amiable chorus. ‘
Fourteen puking sols a day for all this!
’

‘Is that all he gets paid?’ Julius said.

‘I hope so,’ Nicholas said. ‘It’s going to come out of our taxes. You know Canon Scalkin?’

Clearly, Gregorio and Diniz were familiar with the man smiling before them. Long ago, Julius had met the canon of St Peter, maker of miracles. There was one standing in front of him now: a pair of candelabra. Or rather, a pair of towering castles perched upon flowery slopes and backed by seven immense mirrors. Round the slopes spiralled a path, slowly moving, up which rode or walked the effigies of men and women and animals. From each creation extended eight arms ablaze with wax tapers.

The figures moved; a windmill appeared; a dragon leaped, and then vanished. Diniz said, ‘How is it done?’

‘Ask your friend,’ said Canon Scalkin. ‘Without the seigneur vander Poele, all would have been lost. It is done from within, by a man. By, you understand, different men. It is a thankless task. Come and see. Nicholas, open the door.’

Later, it seemed to Julius that Nicholas really did not expect what he saw when, moving round to the back of the object, he gripped a projection and turned it. By then, they were all gathered round him. Nicholas opened the door, and stood back.

Within, naked but for his drawers, was a fair-skinned man of powerful build, his legs and arms still forcing onwards the mechanism, his head purposefully down.

The canon said, ‘Michael? You may halt now.’ The man stopped. The man turned his head. And Julius found he was staring at Michael Crackbene.

The shipmaster of the
Fortado
was not looking at him, or at Diniz, or Gregorio. It was Nicholas who eventually spoke. ‘You knew I was here?’

‘Of course,’ said Crackbene, and returned him an odd, crooked smile. ‘I thought we might have something to say to one another: you and I, and a young man I happen to know.’

‘Perhaps you would care to come back to my house with me. Canon Jehan,’ Nicholas said, ‘this is an old shipmate of mine. Would it much interfere with your work if I stole him?’

‘Not at all! Not at all!’ said the canon. ‘My dear Nicholas, what we owe you!’

They left, past the spouting archers, the dribbling pelican, the John the Baptist dispensing showers of experimental water. Julius suddenly shivered.

‘I know,’ Nicholas said at his side. His other arm was engaged with that of Mick Crackbene. ‘John the Baptist is hell for the bladder.’

They wasted no time on the journey, hurrying the seaman back to the house and quickly into the room private to Nicholas. Once there, Gregorio went and fetched Tobie and Godscalc. Both, like Julius, had known Crackbene in Trebizond. Tobie had been there in Cyprus when Crackbene had made off with the
Doria
, now called the
Ghost
. With all of them present, they had a chance of hearing the truth.

Crackbene waited until the six were sitting about him. A stolid man, he did not at once speak and Nicholas, rising, brought him wine, and then gave it to Diniz to serve. Diniz, his eyes cold, kept glancing at Crackbene. It was Gregorio who began. ‘Three years ago, you said to me in Madeira that you wished you had sailed with Nicholas, instead of with Doria. But you wouldn’t speak out for
Nicholas because you thought he had killed Diniz. Am I right?’

‘I owe you something,’ said Crackbene to Nicholas. His face, after the Gambia, had remained lined, although the heavy frame had recovered. He said, ‘I told your fellow, Gregorio, that bringing home the
Doria
with the boy on it was nothing to do with me. It was a contract with de Ribérac, and the blame lies with him. You’d no call to take me into the ring at Sanlúcar as you did, but you got me out of prison, and you put me ashore, which was more than Doria would have done. Doria went far too far in what he did on the Gambia. I had no part in it. But I heard from his own men what had happened, and the boy knows as well. Filipe.’

‘You know where he is?’ Nicholas said. He had shown, throughout, no extraordinary excitement.

‘He was on the ship with me. When we left, I got him work. Far away from the Vatachino and the rest, I can tell you. I knew they wouldn’t trust me to keep quiet.’ He broke off. ‘Truth to tell, I was hoping you’d bring your case against them, and win it. But you haven’t.’

Gregorio said, ‘We had only Melchiorre’s account of what happened to the ship, and those of the survivors for what happened on land. It was hardly enough.’ He paused. ‘You meant to meet us. Does this mean you would testify?’

Michael Crackbene, sailing-master, heaved a great sigh. He said, ‘I can’t go on hiding for ever. They’ll find me, one of them. De Salmeton, or the Lomellini, or St Pol. Even Anselm Adorne had shares in the
Fortado
. I’m not safe anywhere, nor is Filipe. Protect us, and we’ll testify.’

‘Adorne!’ Nicholas said.

Crackbene looked up. ‘Why? A few shares, not like the others. He’s into most kinds of trade.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Nicholas said. ‘Of course we’ll protect you. You’ll stay here, with Filipe. No more candelabra. And let’s have this law suit over and done with. That is, you would testify also to the
Doria
’s origins? We have to admit she is the
Ghost
, but we also hope to explain that she was a prize, and belonged to us in the first place. And since she was empty, we can’t face charges of piracy.’

‘Yes,’ said Crackbene; and smiled for the first time. ‘I was sorry to hear that, considering what she carried when she left the Senagana. I dare say Ochoa de Marchena could tell you a story.’

‘If we knew where he was,’ Nicholas said.

No one spoke. Diniz, flask in hand, lifted Crackbene’s half-empty cup and filled it again. He said, ‘I wish I knew, because I’ve been offered half of it as a gift on my marriage. I’m being married quite soon.’