Niccolo Rising (56 page)

He said, “I did think it through. It is the best solution. Best for me, too. Or I think so just now. There are things which may be escaping us both because it’s late, and we’ve been talking so long. Do you think we should say no more tonight? And then tomorrow, as early as you wish, perhaps you would send for me?” His eyes, again, were scanning her face. He added, “This is not ingratitude. I realise what you are offering. I want you to think about it again.”

She said, “I understand. I agree. Take as much time as you want. Leave it, if you like, until you are ready to go.”

He answered at once. “No. Tomorrow, early.”

She said, “I’ll send for you tomorrow.”

His face, which had been tense, relaxed suddenly. He smiled straight at her, reassuringly. He hesitated just a little, and then said, “Then I wish you a good night, my mistress. Not a sad or a difficult one. Whatever comes of it, nothing shall harm you if I can prevent it.”

My mistress
, he had elected to call her, avoiding both the informal and formal. He always knew the right thing to do. Or nearly always.

“Good night,” she said. And he smiled and, turning, left the room. She wondered, looking at the shut door, what else he could have said, what other gesture he could possibly have made; and realised that there was none.

A night on both sides, to consider it. And tomorrow, an insistently early decision, to save them both prolonged embarrassment. Or – who could blame him? – for entirely practical reasons. If he were now to proceed with this frightening bargain with Venice, he had sensitive information to gather and many calculations to make before he left for Italy. Together with everything else that needed handling. Including Felix.

Marian de Charetty sank back in her chair. She rested her swathed
and wired head on its cushion and her sleeves on its arms and found, forlornly, that her heart was beating like a bass drum. She had forced it on him. But he would never regret it. Never. Never.

Chapter 26

T
HE FIRST OF THE
shock waves was sustained by Meester Gregorio of Asti, who had known his new employer the widow de Charetty for only a week. He didn’t know the workman Nicholas at all, except for a passing encounter at the yard pump which had shown the youth to be unreliable. He had also understood that the young man was called Claes.

Summoned very early the following morning, almost as soon as he had tied the strings of his black cap and slipped on his robe, Meester Gregorio opened the office door to find his employer seated, a little flushed, behind her desk. The scales were still on the table, and the ledgers, and the inkstand and pens. Also the rate card, displaying its columns of bright tufted wool. At the end of the desk sat the youth of the pump, wearing the ordinary blue Charetty livery. His head was bent, and, surprisingly, he was running a pen down columns of figures, or names, on the topmost of a large sheaf of papers resting on one of his knees.

He looked up and smiled, conveying the smile also to the demoiselle de Charetty, who was wearing, for a small, round, not unattractive woman, an expression quite formidable. The demoiselle de Charetty, clearing her throat, said, “Meester Gregorio. Thank you for coming. This is not in fact a matter of business, although I should like to say, for the company, that I’m glad you have joined us, and hope you will enjoy working with us. Nicholas and I need your help in a personal matter.”

Us. We. During his interview, she had spoken of the business as wholly her own. Her son was not present. The boy was. Formerly Claes, and now Nicholas. His help in a personal matter? Meester Gregorio of Asti, who had notarised in his time a great many contracts, a great many bequests, a great many affirmations of one sort or another, waited calmly; his gaze moving from the youth to a spot just below his employer’s girdle. Age made it unlikely, but one never knew. Unless the boy was a bastard son, newly recognised?

“I shall be glad to do all I can,” he said formally. He noticed that the
youth smiled at the woman again, and her nervousness unexpectedly changed into something like unwilling humour.

She said, “It is not, I must tell you, a question of pregnancy or of adoption. Claes, who will now use his full name of Nicholas, is the illegitimate son of a distant relative. This is perfectly authenticated. He has been trained on these premises since he was young in, of course, a menial capacity. He knows the business through and through. He is also, and you must accept this, a young man of quite unusual ability.”

Meester Gregorio smiled agreeably. He was certainly a young man of unusual appearance. One saw eyes like that, and inflated, aimless lips like that, among the mentally afflicted. Even the broad, low, seamless brow. He had scored his cheek. Still smiling, the youth had referred back to his papers. Meester Gregorio said approvingly, “I see he can certainly read and write.”

The widow of Charetty said, “Yes. You have been over the ledgers, of course. You have seen the transactions undertaken by this company since mid-February, and the notes of meetings attended by me, with Nicholas as my escort. You should know that all these meetings were planned and arranged by Nicholas, that he suggested all these acquisitions, costed them and carried them through in all but the official preparation of the documents and the formal agreements, which were concluded by myself. He is more able, Meester Gregorio, than I am. Than indeed anyone I have employed until now. He wishes to stay with the company. He hopes, with the advice of us all, to make it large and successful. But he is not, as you see, of the degree to wield any power. I have therefore discussed with him how I may give it to him.” She paused.

Gregorio of Asti, who was fond of church litany and had a taste for after-supper dramatic readings, felt that he had become part of a dramatic reading, and should take his share. He said, “You wish to marry? But how excellent! I should be delighted, of course, to help notarise it.”

She looked at him as if over the rims of non-existent spectacles. Her sleeves, this morning, were much more elaborate than the ones she normally wore and her hair, although still invisible, was covered with a sort of brocade pumpkin instead of her usual voile, wired and bent like a siege engine. She said, “You are now planning, of course, to approach me after the wedding and present your resignation from this company. I hope you won’t. We need you. And we are about to make a great deal of money.”

He was sure they were. He wondered what the boy meant to sell off. If he had indeed been behind these transactions he was certainly able. He could marry the woman, milk the company and desert with the gold in a month.

“Some of this money,” said his employer the bride, “will come from the normal expansion of the various interests of this, the existing
company. Although Nicholas has been the cause of much of this expansion and will continue to help and advise with it, he will take no profit from it. All the businesses and all the property at the moment possessed by me, including the Louvain business, which was my father’s, must be fully protected so that the proceeds can go only to me, and after me, to my son. Everything that Nicholas earns as my agent will also be paid into this company, from which he will draw an agreed salary.”

This was interesting – she was protecting herself. The youth, from his face, did not seem to be at all abashed. No. Of course, he wouldn’t be. Meester Gregorio said, “Forgive me. But you have a son and two daughters? They depend on you for their eventual inheritance and their dowries?”

The boy scribbled something and then looked up at the woman. “That’s it,” he said. “I knew we’d forgotten something. I could lie on cloth-of-gold cushions all day and you could sell Henninc and hang me with diamonds, so that Felix has to beg in his tavern and Tilde and Catherine have to marry street-sweepers. Your spending and my wages have to be controlled. That means trustees. That means good accounting and an independent check on the ledgers.” He turned to the notary. “We’d already reached the conclusion,” he said, “that it isn’t so much a wedding as a re-write of contractual law. That’s why we need you. We want it to take place this morning.”

Laymen always said this sort of thing. Gregorio of Asti said, “It’s unlikely, I’m afraid, that that could be done.”

The boy said, “Mm. I think it might. I’ve sent a message to Meester Anselm Adorne. Once we’ve considered the worst of the problems, I’ll leave you and the demoiselle to draft out a contract. Messer Anselm can call out the écoutète, the public attorney and perhaps one of the burgomasters to represent the city. I’ll call with him on the dean of the Dyers’ Guild and on Meester Bladelin, and on the Bishop of Terni for special permission. I’ve sent a message to him as well. Before noon, we might have enough people at the Hôtel Jerusalem to let us go through with the civil contract in a proper manner. Then the Bishop or, failing him, Meester Anselm’s own chaplain, can hold the wedding Mass in the Jerusalemkerk, and it’ll be done.”

Gregorio looked at the widow. She looked as if, despite herself, she felt a little dazed. Dazed did not describe how he, Gregorio, felt. She had been right about one thing. The fellow had brains. He was dangerous. A stirring of compassion for Marian de Charetty came to her notary. He said, “I see. You have planned very well. But why the speed, might I ask?”

The young man looked at him with apparent frankness. “Because everyone will think exactly the way you’ve been thinking, and there’ll be a commotion. Once the wives get hold of the story, there won’t be a wedding: they’ll intimidate their husbands. We want the conditions of a
normal business meeting in which to transact a good contract which will protect every party.”

“Except, I see, yourself?” said Gregorio sympathetically. “If, as you say, you wish to be excluded from any financial gain directly or indirectly through your future wife, apart from your allotted wages? How will you live, for example, if, God forbid, she were to die? The inheritance would then devolve on her son, and he would be free to dismiss you. I gather, since you don’t mention him, that he has had no say in this arrangement?”

“That,” said Marian de Charetty, “is the other difficulty. My son is seventeen and headstrong. I want this marriage complete, if possible, before he knows of it.” She paused and said, “I may say we disagree about this. We do it this way on my insistence. I will not have my personal decisions interfered with beforehand by Felix. Afterwards, it will be bad enough. And if the law normally requires his consent or his presence, you must get round the law.”

Gregorio said, “There are ways, if the Church is sympathetic. But if he is minded to be vindictive, in later years if not now, this contract gives him power.”

The young man said, “He needs all the power the law can give him, only reserving the rights of his mother. Let there be no doubt of that. Felix will be no trouble to me or to you, when you get to know him. He’s only young. And as for money, I can find that without the Charetty business, Meester Gregorio. I think the demoiselle hinted at a new venture. That will be mine, made with my partners and drawing nothing from this company, although I hope it will benefit from it. You too, if you are so minded. It is why, since I am sure you are wondering, Meester Anselm will be willing to help us. You may think he is a guarantor of some stature, and that I am a little less unreliable than I seem. But only time can prove it to you. Meantime, all we ask of you is your help in making a contract. Are you appalled?”

Gregorio was amazed. He was filled with horrified admiration. He felt a strong desire, before this meeting was over, to set his hand to a marriage contract for this manipulating pair that would do what they said they wanted it to do – precisely, fully and properly. One so binding that, no matter what trickery the youth had in mind, what delusion the woman was under, it could never be broken.

Then, he thought, he would much enjoy staying on for a bit, to see what happened.

The second to receive the news was Anselm Adorne, to whom a packet was delivered as he rose from his knees and led his wife and family and servants from their morning devotions in the Jerusalemkerk, the private church built by his father and uncle. The packet proved to contain a densely-written letter of several pages, whose contents caused him to lay his hand on his wife’s arm and say, “Before you begin your
household duties, we must talk together. Then the hall is to be put in order. We shall have guests this morning.” He had to wait, as he might have expected, while she hurried to the kitchens with instructions. Then she joined him in their bedchamber.

She was a little excited. Not worried, for all their children were about them, even Jan, home from Paris for Easter. And after sixteen years, she knew her careful, courtly husband and his good feelings. Anything wrong with Father Pieter in his quiet retreat with the Carthusians, with the uncles and aunts, the sisters and brothers, the numberless cousins and nieces and nephews of the Adorne and van der Banck family, would have led him to tell her immediately.

She didn’t think of business. She knew of course of some of his many concerns. Margriet van der Banck had been fourteen when she married him, and an orphan, but she had been well trained. She was a good organiser, a good mother, an expert in household matters. That was her business and there was no need for her to meddle in his. Except, of course, when it was a matter which affected their joint future, like this alum affair. He had told her all about that. She still wished he wouldn’t touch it.

So she was alarmed when, settling down to hear of some exciting new prospect, a presentation, an appointment, an acquisition, she heard him speak of the very thing that troubled her. About the alum negotiation, and this dyers’ workman, this very decent young man Claes who had been so good with Marie and Katelijne, and who, one was asked to believe, had invented this whole dangerous proposition, with some doctor in Italy backing him. Using him, more likely, to presume on his acquaintance with Anselm. Although Anselm appeared to believe in the youth’s capabilities.

But not every man was brilliant as Anselm. Anselm had married her at nineteen, and had become a Bruges counsellor at 20, and won his first prize in the White Bear joust the same year. Anselm was a burgess, but in lineage he was an aristocrat, kinsman to Doges. This was a workman. And now Anselm was saying, “You remember young Claes, of course, of the Charetty household. This is a letter from him. He’s coming here in a moment to ask for our help for Marian de Charetty. The business has expanded so much that she now needs a partner. She thinks Claes himself is the best person to run it but, of course, he hasn’t the standing. That she’s decided to deal with, it seems, by proposing to make the young man her husband.”