To Lie with Lions (37 page)

‘Catamite?’ Nerio said. ‘Does Nicholas have a catamite?’

‘He is talking rubbish,’ Julius said. ‘He is angry with his father – I can understand it – and with himself for having to defend him. Anyway, Jan himself prefers girls. Nerio should know.’

‘It must seem a strange taste,’ said Jan. He was still speaking loudly. The Cardinal, glancing over, could be seen speaking in a low voice to some servant. Jan said, ‘Your own runs to older rich women. I thought we were going to meet Anna von Hanseyck with her dubious offspring? Or has she heard what we all know, that you are a bastard yourself? That you stole from Bessarion when you were his clerk and will steal from any master, or mistress no doubt. Or are you really besotted, and mooning after a woman who laughs about you with her friends? I should like to meet her. I could tell her something.’

‘You may have the opportunity,’ said the Patriarch calmly. ‘If I am not mistaken, the lady is about to arrive.’

Jan Adorne heard it, breathing hard, and felt himself turning white. In the heat of the moment, he had meant all he said. He had
not expected the Gräfin herself to appear. He drew himself up, and was surprised when Julius, too, took a quick step forward and fell silent. The boy Nerio, after looking from the one to the other, had turned his smile on the great double doors of the hall which stood open. Beyond them, several people were waiting. One, the Cardinal’s major domo, stood with head bowed. One, a very young girl plainly gowned, appeared to stand in attendance. Two men stood beside her, presumably from the Cardinal’s household. To the right of the doorpost a second lady was waiting, of whom nothing could be seen but elegant rings, and the fall of exquisite silk from one sleeve.

The major domo, a Cypriot, straightened. The girl curtseyed. The major domo entered the room and his guest took her place at his back, the two men falling in behind with the girl. The Countess, it was apparent, was diminutive, but wholly composed. Although her person might be obscured by the bulk of the Cypriot, her robe swept the tiles, it could be seen, without trembling; the set of her arms, it was plain, was relaxed.

The procession halted. Julius took another pace forward. The major domo raised his wand and with deliberation, stepped to one side. There was a collective sound; not quite a gasp.

‘So there is your whore!’ cried Jan Adorne; and burst into laughter.

The servants behind must have been waiting: as he uttered the words, they grasped his arms and pulled him backwards, and through a discreet door. He made no resistance. He had shamed Julius, as Julius and Nerio had shamed him. And yet, he still could not believe what he had seen.

Indeed, the Gräfin Anna von Hanseyck had turned out to be small; short would be the better description. Indeed, she was splendidly dressed in a gown of heavy silk in deep blue, whose volume and cost could only be guessed at. Its oversleeves, embroidered and gemmed, were of velvet, and jewels were bound into her hair and appeared to encircle her throat. Appeared, since her neck was so fat that its corbels concealed all that might lie in their creases. The same amplitude invested her clothes: the rounded bastion of the lower torso and the twin parapets of the bodice, with between them a nook-shaft fit for a putlog and hoarding. The oversleeves, falling back at the elbow, exposed silk-covered arms stout as balusters and wrists whose bracelets seemed pressed into place with a chinsing-iron. The face was round, the expression benign, the thick-painted eyes little short of magnificent. But nothing softened the terrible truth. The creature was vast. The sweetheart of Julius was the fattest person Jan had ever encountered.

He let himself be taken off and sent home, still hiccoughing
weakly. So he did not hear the major domo make his announcement, in Latin followed by Greek.
My lords, ladies and gentlemen, pray honour the Despoina Zoe Palaeologina, niece of Constantine, lately Imperator Constantinopolitanus; honour the prince Andrew Palaeologus, Despot of the Morea; and honour the prince Manuel Palaeologus, his brother
.

‘Jan thought she was your lover. Do you have a lover?’ said Nerio to Julius.

‘None of your business,’ said Julius, choking. There were tears in his eyes. The lady had begun, in a stately way, to make a circuit of the far end of the room. He said, ‘She’s just been painted for Muscovy. Do you think the panel was big enough?’

‘All princesses are beautiful,’ murmured Michael Alighieri, joining them. ‘All paintings proclaim it. All envoys call them so, for fear some turn of the political wheel may make it necessary to believe it. All speak of Catherine Corner as an angel of pulchritude: you have probably seen her. And before you call it hypocrisy, Patriarch, recall how you fumed long ago over that
stinking Greek turncoat
, Zoe’s father. But now she is a valuable pawn, is she not, in your game?’

‘Poor Ivan. Poor Zacco,’ said Julius. He began to laugh again, very quietly.

‘Holy Church,’ said Father Ludovico, ‘does not have recourse to pawns. Here is the Cardinal. He will tell you. The lady is the Pope’s beloved daughter in Christ. On the day she marries Duke Ivan of Muscovy, she will draw the worth of her dowry and more from the returns of the Tolfa alum mines. So the papal alum will pay for the downfall of the infidel. And should the Golden –’

‘Enough,’ said Cardinal Bessarion. ‘This lady lives under my roof, and will be respected. Master Julius, you have leave.’

Julius flushed. He said, ‘Monsignore. I have to apologise for Adorne. He is young.’

‘He is not helped,’ the Cardinal said, ‘by his friends. I should like you to retire. This reception in any case is nearly over except for my private guests. I shall send for you presently, when I have a communication about banking matters. Patriarch, a word.’

The two men paced off. Julius, still scarlet, smoothed his doublet and began to move to the door. Nerio walked with him. ‘But it was worth it!’ said Nerio. ‘Poor boy, it was worth it! I suppose there is nothing for him but the Bishop of St Andrews? He looked very glum.’

‘There never was anything for him but the Bishop of St Andrews,’ Julius said. ‘He’ll have to make the best of it, like everyone else. That’s my cloak. It’s still raining.’

‘So it is. Which way do you go?’ Nerio said.

‘Not in your direction,’ said Julius.

There were fifteen taverns in the centre of Rome. Jan began with the Sun, which was just off the Campo de’ Fiori, and worked his way through the rest until he began to distrust his legs. Then he returned to the hospice and, taking a razor, bloodily hacked off his beard.

Julius walked in the rain until he was sure Nerio was quite out of sight; then he held his sword down and ran to the Casa Niccolò. He took the shortest way, which meant the most crowded, looking all the time from side to side without seeing anyone he knew. He passed within sight of the Palazzo San Marco and a number of taverns, but Jan Adorne had long since gone from his mind. His cloak was soaked and his boots and fine hose were stinking with mud. As he came near the Canale, the rain stopped, and a watery sun touched the overlapping red roofs and the white loggias of the international money market of Rome: the foreign banks with their strange food and odd tongues and busy, busy counting-houses.

Outside the pale portico with its vines, he saw a magpie flash of the Niccolò colours: Lazzarino had set someone to look for him. Julius increased his pace. By the time he arrived, Lazzarino himself had come out. He looked composed, but called across with a little more emphasis than was customary. ‘Our client has arrived. She did not wish to trouble the Cardinal, and preferred to wait for you. I have placed her in the garden chamber to rest.’

Julius nodded. Shedding his cloak, he saw a manservant he knew in the room with his porter, and smiled at him as he passed. There was no sign of anyone else. Julius walked through the house.

The garden chamber was small, and during winter was closed off from the loggia, although the garden could still be admired through glass. The light from the sun, weak and low, touched the windows to gold, and rimmed the hair of the woman who rose at once as he entered. Her face was lost in the dimness, but he smelled her scent, and heard, in the stillness, the sound of her faint, exact breathing.

Then he whispered,
‘Anna!’
and crossed; and threw himself at her feet.

Chapter 17

N
EWS FROM ROME
travelled badly in winter: it would be two months before Nicholas, in Scotland, learned all that Julius and Lazzarino in their separate ways would send to tell him of these events, and at least as long before he would hear from Gregorio. The Bank had to put up with these delays, as had its competitors. Dispatches, although out of date, arrived in Edinburgh that autumn in the usual steady stream: in repressive mood from Achille in Alexandria; from an agitated agent in Damascus; from Paris and Orléans and Lyons; from Lisbon and Valencia and, nearer at hand and much more recent, from Diniz in Bruges and certain unspecified persons in Antwerp, London and Newcastle, as well as from Tom Yare in Berwick and from Eric Mowat, moved discreetly from Copenhagen to Bergen.

Nicholas read them at night, when his work on the Nativity Play had temporarily ceased, for the business of the Bank had to go on. When the wax-wrapped duplicate ledgers arrived in their regular satchel, he rarely let a day dawn by without opening and studying them – and for their style, as well as their contents. Things changed quickly. Men changed quickly. A new wife, a new mistress, a bereavement, a quarrel; men were human, and nature enforced its priorities. And hence the reports upon which his business depended – the situation, problems, intentions of powerful men – might be incomplete, or unintentionally biased. Or intentionally so. There was that to beware of, as well.

In between the dispatches came other communications: sometimes testy personal scrawls; sometimes carefully penned lines with many abbreviations, displaying the grand seals of abbeys and duchies. These were borne as a rule by persons who had come to Scotland by licence to work until Yule: difficult men and cantankerous persons for the most part; artistic, flamboyant persons such as Nicholas had loved ever since he was Claes, and whom Gelis detested.

Laying his careless, extravagant plans for a careless and extravagant Mystery, Nicholas had always envisaged bringing artists from overseas, although equally he intended to sequester all the talent – or even the non-talent – he could discover in Scotland, and spend time on giving it classes.

Now he had been proffered a challenge. A small affirmation of the immortal status of man had taken place: a work of music created which represented the supreme endeavours of one gifted idiot and his friends. Nicholas was morally bound to do no less for them. A Pasche Play was out of the question – he would not be here for Easter. Therefore the royal Nativity Play must be his test piece, his offering.

Instead of ten months to prepare it, less than four, including the work he had already half done. Instead of a week-long performance with half-trained actors, and amateur craftsmen, a performance of one afternoon, to which would be brought painters, sculptors, carpenters from Bruges and Lille and Brussels and Tournai; scribes who could copy sixty pages a day; tailors who were accustomed to dressing an Entry at speed; men who trained men to walk like young women; men who made wigs for God. That did not take account of the materials which had already come and which continued to come in the holds of hired ships.

Only he did not need an engineer or a Master of Secrets, for he had John and himself. And he did not need a master craftsman, for Cochrane was that. And he did not need musicians, for he had the core of the new Chapel Royal with Whistle Willie at its heart and its head.

For all the people around Nicholas – those who feared him, or loved him, or were anxious for him – that autumn in Edinburgh was a strange one. In the Castle the King, having commissioned the Play, watched his own dearest plans take second place to a spectacle. Silent, obedient, barren, the Queen saw it as well. Without M. de Fleury’s financial reserves and sympathetic encouragement, James was not likely to leave her this spring to become a second Alexander. His brother Mar sulked, and jeered at the painter who came to take a likeness of the King for a placard. The King, annoyed at the jeering, had dismissed the artist after a sitting of no more than ten minutes but, being ingenious, the fellow found another rough sketch at the moneyers’.

In the Casa Niccolò in the Canongate it was the same. Govaerts, as ever, controlled the business, but admitted to himself it was less stressful when Nicholas was abroad than when he was physically present but almost wholly engaged in other concerns.

Nor was it better when John le Grant and Father Moriz arrived, angered at the interruption in their difficult programme. All that was left in full swing was the boatbuilding, which de Fleury wasn’t crazed enough so far to compromise. John however had to abandon his guns and replace them with quite different mechanisms and finicky castings: hours of concentrated fine work for the benefit of a Christmas playlet. Being John, he presently took fire and would have refused to do anything else. Moriz, suspended between the true God and one made of hide-covered clay, took longer to become reconciled, being disturbed by both his own conscience and suspicions of Nicholas. Meanwhile the business did without both of them. Only the goldsmith, who always worked directly to Nicholas, appeared wholly happy.

Archibald, Abbot of Holyrood, was happy because he was an able, energetic man who didn’t mind his entire yard being dug up and remade to hold a long rectangular platform with a stand of seats on two sides, and an end which was fixed to the porch of the Abbey. Beneath the yard was positioned a network of rooms, pits and tunnels, some of them filled with machinery. Above it were workshops. Sometimes Abbot Crawford would make his way there after matins just to smell and look at the pigments: sinople and cinders of azure, verjus and brown of Auxerre. There were two pounds of vermilion, at seven shillings the pound. And all the scenery was painted on vellum, not paper; so that nothing could buckle or flake. His highly numerate intelligence kept track of some of the costs.