Race of Scorpions (10 page)

‘You’d go with him? You’re going to take her? I must be drunk,’ Colard said. ‘I never heard such stupid decisions.’

‘No. You never heard them,’ said Primaflora, rising. ‘But when you wake up in the morning, you will see the basket and account for it somehow. Messer Niccolò, when do you leave?’

‘Tomorrow, by the Ghent gate, at daybreak,’ Nicholas said. ‘I think Colard is right. I think I shall go back to Italy and look for my army. I enjoyed –’ He broke off.

She stood, holding her cloak, and looked down on him. She said, ‘Thank you, at least, for remembering. I shall not encumber you for long.’ The door closed.

Colard said, ‘Are you asleep?’

Nicholas grunted.

Colard said, ‘She’s lost one man. You’ll be the next caretaker, unless you are careful. I wouldn’t object, but I know you. If you don’t want her, turn her off in a week or two.’

‘I’m asleep,’ Nicholas said.

Chapter 5

S
INCE HE HAD
promised to do so, Nicholas left Bruges by the Ghent gate in due course, accompanied by the late Ansaldo’s mistress and her servant, and protected by an adequate squad of free soldiers, picked and captained by Thomas. His mood, for various reasons, was subdued, and the girl made no effort to force herself on his attention. At dusk he chose a tavern and acquired suitable lodging for himself and the lady in ostentatiously separate chambers. He arranged for food, excused himself, and retired. As soon as his charges were sleeping, he rose, packed and left.

The following morning, the lady Primaflora was brought a letter which she read, standing very still, before dressing and summoning Thomas.

Thomas had received a missive as well. It contained a draft for a great deal of money and a letter from Master Nicholas, which he perused with the help of a finger. The letter instructed him to take the lady Primaflora and her servant safely and secretly to any destination she might select with the funds now provided. This done, Thomas was free to do as he chose. But since he was not needed in Bruges, Nicholas thought that he might wish to follow his trade, and rejoin Captain Astorre in the Abruzzi. In return, Master Nicholas could promise that Captain Astorre would be markedly liberal.

About the plans of Master Nicholas himself, there was nothing. Nor could he ask, since Master Nicholas had, of course, vanished.

Facing the lady Primaflora, Thomas saw that she was not going to scream, or cry, or otherwise embarrass him. She said, ‘So he has gone. Where, do you think? Perhaps to Cyprus, after all?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Thomas. He was counting, in his head, the money Nicholas had left him, and thinking, with slow happiness, about the Abruzzi and Astorre.

‘If so,’ the woman said, ‘it seems a pity that he has not asked you
to share his good luck there. On an island paradise, a man can live like a lord. There would be work for you in Cyprus.’

‘No. I’m going to Italy,’ Thomas said. ‘There’s a fellow called Piccinino who needs a good lesson. Astorre and me, we’ve fought him before. He’s in the pay of Duke John of Calabria. That’s King René’s son.’

‘I can see,’ said the woman, ‘that war in Italy is what you really prefer. And since that’s so, I won’t take you out of your way if you’re going there. I only want to find somewhere to stay, where I have friends, and where the Queen can’t reproach me for not bringing her your master Niccolò.’

Thomas said, ‘You’ve got it wrong. He’s not my master. He’s just paid me to get you home safely. So where will it be?’

‘Where? I don’t know,’ said the late Ansaldo’s mistress. ‘Not, of course, France or Savoy. Suppose you choose the route you prefer into Italy, and I shall find some secure place for myself on the journey.’ She smiled again. ‘Was Messer Niccolò with you when you fought against Jacopo Piccinino? I should like to have seen him.’

‘You wouldn’t,’ Thomas said. ‘It was a disaster. His first fight and all.’

‘But he has learned? He fought at Silla,’ the woman said.

He supposed she was hoping her next man wouldn’t die like the last one, but told her the truth, anyway. ‘Fight?’ Thomas said. ‘You want to ask what happened at Trebizond. He learned, all right. A blood bath. A blood bath. Sheer ingenuity.’

Her eyes, grey as water, looked unseeing straight at him. ‘How terrible,’ said Primaflora.

Nicholas, having got clean away, celebrated by taking a decision. By a route long and circuitous, he would convey himself southwards for the rest of the winter, stopping where he had never been. Cologne, for example. He had introductions to three people from Colard, and Godscalc’s name would produce more. He thought he might find something of interest in Basle. If he put off enough time, the spring campaigns would get under way and, one way or another, he would find where his friends were. The main army that had once been his wife’s had wintered, presumably, on the Adriatic. It was that part of the east coast called the Abruzzi that had seen much of the fighting to do with the challenge to Naples. It was there, or south of there that Astorre and his men would make for, he thought.

And Tobie? Tobias Beventini of Grado was a short-tempered physician who had preserved his life at least once, and who had expected Nicholas to buckle down to business after the death of his wife. After a stand-up quarrel in Venice, Tobie had taken himself
off to the Count of Urbino, who frequently led the Pope’s armies in the war to protect Naples from Anjou. Nicholas considered making towards Urbino to see what news he could find. It was on his way to the Abruzzi, and he had time and money to spare. Time and money to lose. Time and money to throw away, since there was nothing particular to spend them on.

Alone for the first time in his life, he let chance dictate his route. He stayed at inns, and bought the services of a groom or a guide as he needed them. He fell into casual talk with the people he met, allowing the motley facts he was given to pass unexamined into his consciousness; ignoring the slots, the niches, the network into which he should be fitting them. If something roused his curiosity, he pursued it without haste for its own sake and surprised himself, sometimes, by discovering something very like a new pleasure.

The first time this happened was in Cologne, where he stayed for six weeks. After that, he learned to foster some instinct which told him which place, which person, which road, which new experience was worth his attention. The journey, he began to see, was not unlike his first taste of Louvain and its library where, with Felix grumbling beside him, he had stepped from shelf to shelf, looking at books or unlocking and sampling them. He was crossing countries now, and scanning their offerings.

His anxieties grew less insistent. Sometimes he would fall into conversation with a man and feel what he had not felt for a while, an inclination towards understanding and friendship. Towards the less appealing, he felt amusement, and very seldom irritation or anger. Having dropped the frayed network of commerce he began to see, or was reminded, that there were other worlds to be mastered in much the same way. Observations randomly made would arrive at a sudden coherence: from filling cells would emerge the full honeycomb of a well-founded interest. He made room for it all, as he had made room for his gear on his pack-mule. When riding alone he also began, very occasionally, to sing.

He did not lack the chance of feminine comfort, but preferred to stay free. At times, he came close to admitting that this was unnatural. The easy love, the friendly tumbling of pretty girls had ceased when he married, and the constraint for some reason persisted. There had been one brutal exception: the night in Venice with Violante of Naxos. But Violante was the royal-blooded wife of a merchant, prostituting herself for amusement. For the rest, he had been told it was common: the impulse, after bereavement, to bury the dead in excess. Once or twice, he thought of what Anselm Adorne had told him. If he married, Tilde’s fears would be put at rest. He had not reached a point where Tilde’s fears were of importance. He kept out of churches.

His movements were not, of course, uncharted. His career for
eighteen months had been remarkable: in the small world of merchants, a newcomer, an accumulator of bankable wealth, was perceived as an opportunity as well as a threat. Those friends of Colard and of Godscalc’s who met him in Cologne were swift to convey their impressions to Bruges. The Medici couriers, cross-hatching Europe, wrote accurate dispatches, in cipher, to Italy. There were other agents, as well, who received commands and who made reports, in French or Flemish or, once, in Greek, on his journeyings. Punctually and efficiently, news of his every movement was carried to Anjou where, as it happened, Katelina van Borselen was staying.

Who is Katelina? A woman in Anjou
. So, once, Nicholas had diverted a question and he had not, in fact, lied. Katelina van Borselen was, although his own age, fully a woman: she had become, if recently, both a wife and a mother. She didn’t belong to Anjou, but could be found there. She came from a royally-connected dynasty in Flanders, and had divided her time since her marriage between Scotland and Portugal.

She was married to Simon de St Pol, whose loathing of Nicholas was only exceeded by her own. And she was in Anjou, much against her inclinations, with the obese and powerful father of Simon, who frequently commanded her company on his travels. Jordan de Ribérac was the King of France’s adviser in financial affairs, and when he talked of business matters, she listened to him. She did not enjoy travelling with him. The alternative, however, was staying with Simon. And she was learning. If Simon’s business was to prosper, she had better learn.

Katelina van Borselen had been twice now to the vast castle of Angers, fountain of all pleasures. Angers was a seat of René, King of Sicily, Count of Provence and Duke of Anjou whose son John of Calabria was in Italy, leading the new season’s fighting for Naples. The court of Anjou had a magnificence about it that Burgundy, for all its wealth, could never quite match. Katelina took away impressions of paintings and tapestries, ostrich plumes and grey and white taffetas and everywhere, manuscripts. King René, a man in his fifties with a young and beautiful wife, was himself the source and arbiter of half the beauty around him, and not merely the patron.

Now, he had relinquished the struggle for Naples to John, his son by his first wife. He viewed from a distance the fortunes of his daughter Margaret, bred to battle like John, and fighting to preserve the English throne for her husband Henry against a fierce Yorkist claimant. To those who helped his children, King René opened generous doors. The Flemish Queen Mother of Scotland gave aid and shelter to Margaret. His nephew Louis of France (a
race René neither liked nor admired) yet had the power to help not only Margaret but Duke John in Naples. René of Anjou was therefore willing to welcome Jordan de Ribérac and Katelina his son’s comely daughter, whose provenance from that viewpoint was quite excellent. René loved handsome objects, young and old, but the love was simply that of an epicure. His Queen, half his age, was his passion.

She was with him now, in the spacious chamber he used as a workroom, and so were half the court, as well as Jordan de Ribérac and his son’s wife Katelina. On the table before King René was an elaborate painting; an illustration for an allegorical romance he had just invented. His eye on his brush, the King hummed to himself occasionally, and occasionally spoke, showing that he was quite aware of his deferential audience, and not averse to teasing them. When he required observations, or broke into discourse, it was frequently Jordan’s opinion he asked. He smiled kindly, now and then, at Katelina.

No one, thought Katelina, could regard the father of her husband as an object of beauty. Once, the big frame, rolled in fat, might have belonged to an athlete. Now it was simply the bolster upon which hung his silks and velvets and furs, and within which his cruel wit resided. Before kings, he sheathed it a little. It was never quite absent.

The King addressed him. ‘My good lord Jordan: we see too little of your lovely kinswoman. Why not leave her with us while you attend to your business in the south? Your fleet at Marseilles must be crying out for you.’

‘It is my common fate, your grace,’ said the fat man Jordan de Ribérac. ‘Also, as it happens, they are crying out for crew members. The Queen of Cyprus has sent her ship on to Nice, and her shipmaster is clubbing children and rivetting them into the benches.’

‘So you said. It is being looked into,’ said the King. He withdrew his brush and sat back, his eyes on the painting. He turned. ‘But of course, when they sail, your ships will sail without you? I am not surprised. They would sink.’

‘They frequently sink, whether I am on them or not,’ said the vicomte de Ribérac. ‘I prefer to leave adventuring to my son, Katelina’s husband.’

‘Then I trust he is faring better than mine,’ said the King. He selected a fresh brush, and dipped it in colour. ‘Your Simon has no taste for warfare? I have not heard, at any rate, that he has been persuaded to support Duke John in the war against Naples.’

Jordan de Ribérac smiled, a matter of compressing several chins. ‘He has yet to master trade, monseigneur,’ he remarked. ‘I feel it will take a decade or two before he can successfully contemplate strategy.’

‘Is that true, madame?’ said the King over his shoulder. ‘Defend your husband. You know no man wins praise from this cynic de Ribérac.’

In Jordan’s company, Katelina was driven to feel pity, sometimes, for Simon. She treated the jibe, in any case, as a loyal wife should. ‘Monseigneur, I have no need to make excuses for my lord Simon. Wherever tournaments are held, his name is recognised. He loves independence, and will follow his fortune. That is why he is in Portugal, with his married sister. Her husband needs Simon’s help to market what he grows, and he has joined them in business. They have formed a new company.’

‘In Portugal?’ said the King.

The fat man answered before she had a chance. ‘Or in its remote, safer colonies far from Flanders. Simon has a running war with a bastard of his first wife’s in Flanders. He feels secure in Madeira.’