‘Perhaps,’ the nurse said. She was sewing. Since her under-maid Pasque had returned to their homeland in France, Clémence had performed most of the small tasks herself. She said, ‘Have you ever spoken to M. Govaerts about the realisation of the investments in Scotland?’
Sometimes, Mistress Clémence seemed to know a great deal too much. Tobie said, ‘No. Why?’
‘It is probably not worth your while. But it involved, I am told, a number of tedious and convoluted transactions. I would not have mentioned it, except that the indications are that M. de Fleury has no money at all, apart from the sum set aside for his family’s protection.’
‘The letter said nothing of that,’ Tobie said. He paused. ‘I would need to speak to Kathi herself.’ He paused again. The nurse knotted her thread and bit off the end. She had a fine set of teeth. Tobie said, ‘There was something else in the letter.’
Mistress Clémence sat up. She said, ‘If you wish to know where I stand, I am unwilling, as yet, to form a judgement. The lady of Berecrofts may be correct, and your friend must be left to repair his own character. In such cases, it is wise to appoint a sympathetic observer, and the Gräfin may prove to be such. Monseigneur’s own intentions, of course, may be less responsible. What does the young lady suggest?’
Tobie was silent. Every line of Kathi’s letter had been an implicit appeal to Gelis to take back her husband. What else she had written he was not as yet free to quote. Tobie said, ‘She understands that Gelis must decide for herself. I understand that whatever remorse Nicholas may feel, it need not prevent him from going out and committing the same crimes again. I don’t want to know whether he tried to kill Julius deliberately.’
‘Yes. I comprehend. I think,’ said Mistress Clémence, folding up her sewing and rising, ‘that neither of us can know what to do until you have consulted with the Lady. I shall wait, and follow your direction.’
‘You will?’ Tobie said, with marked incredulity.
‘Within limits,’ Mistress Clémence agreed.
Chapter 14
THAT WAS IN the third week in July. Before the next week had ended, couriers recently tumbled over the Alps were racing to Rome, to Florence, to Venice, relaying their news from the Burgundian frontier at Luxembourg. The war simmering ever since the fiasco at Trèves was about to break out between Duke Charles and the Emperor Frederick. And the precise trigger was a dispute between the two princes over Cologne. A Burgundian herald, arriving in Venice, petitioned the Doge and the Senate to permit the Duke to hire the services of the great condottiere Colleoni, a request which was refused. In the Ca’ Niccolò, Gregorio and his partners called an internal meeting which lasted all day.
In Cologne, heart of the quarrel, lay the tenantless business of Julius. In Flanders, working the last of their official contract, lay the mercenary army of the Banco di Niccolò, as yet without new direction. They talked all day, and in the end, were reduced to silence by the unanswerable arguments of Gelis.
‘I have practised with Julius in Cologne. I have worked with Diniz in Bruges, and seen how the army is managed. I have heard my husband’s schemes and hopes for the company. Let me go to the Flemish Bank, and help them devise what to do for the soldiers and Julius. We may be separate concerns, but we all need to support each other now.’
They agreed, in the end. The orders were given that would transfer her household, her staff and her child north-west to Flanders, and turn her face from her husband, not towards him. When the meeting was over, she asked Tobie to come to her room.
‘Will you come to Bruges? Or will you stay?’
She knew what she was asking. This time, he had not been idle in Venice: his uncle’s printing-presses were almost ready, and so were the experiments, so long delayed, that he intended to publish. He thought that, on the whole, he would not mind leaving them for a while, to see Moriz again, and Diniz and John. He had another reason as well, which he thought he shared with the lady of Beltrees, although he approached the subject with caution.
‘The letter from Katelijne.’
‘Yes?’ He was the only one, apart from herself, who had read it through. Her tone indicated that he was not to presume on it.
Tobie said, ‘Are you going to the Bosco del Montello before you leave Venice? She said the vicomte de Fleury was there. Adorne’s son had seen him, and told Julius.’
‘I haven’t forgotten,’ she said. ‘But he is Nicholas’s grandfather, not mine.’
He persevered, as carefully as he knew how. ‘Jodi has no one else.’
‘I hardly think,’ Gelis said, ‘that a speechless, paralysed old man could do anything other than terrify Jodi, or be terrified himself, for that matter, if someone saw fit to badger him about his dead daughter, poor man. It has occurred to you that the truth about Nicholas’s birth may be very nasty indeed?’ She looked at him, with an exasperation that was not wholly unkind. ‘Unless you’ve decided, with Kathi and Anna, that we should all forgive him, and take steps to fabricate his birthright? Have you found it possible to overlook what Nicholas did?’
‘No one could,’ Tobie said. ‘The theory is that a good woman might redeem him.’
‘I am afraid,’ Gelis said, ‘that I don’t know any such.’ She waited. ‘But Clémence thinks otherwise?’
‘I haven’t discussed it with her,’ said Tobie. ‘I speak as a doctor. I dislike the idea of an old man dying neglected because his grandson has gone. According to Kathi, Nicholas supported him.’
‘So why should he have stopped? Arrangements are easy to make, and Nicholas is hardly in want.’
‘I hear otherwise,’ Tobie said. ‘I think someone should make sure the money is there.’
‘You hear otherwise? From whom?’ Gelis said. When he didn’t reply, her tone softened. ‘Tobie, he may have lost his income, but somewhere, Nicholas must have salted away all his past profits. By now it will be ten times as much as I’ve given the Bank. Wherever he is, Nicholas is rich.’
‘You may be right,’ Tobie said. ‘It doesn’t matter. But you wouldn’t mind if I went to see the old man and made sure? I would pay his dues myself. You have done more than enough.’
‘I should mind very much,’ Gelis said. ‘If anyone goes, then I do. If anyone pays, then it is someone of Jodi’s blood. If anyone hears the truth, then —’
She broke off, perhaps before the look on his face. Tobie said, ‘I know the truth about his other son, and I don’t remember anyone doubting my discretion. But if you don’t want me to go, then I shan’t.’ He hadn’t meant to insult her. He felt as she did about Nicholas: thinking about him revived all the nausea. Neither he nor Gelis, as yet, had attained even the limited tolerance of Kathi and Anna. Tobie felt responsible for the old man, that was all. He had even considered telling Gelis what he knew about the vicomte and his brother and Nicholas, but had decided against it. If Thibault de Fleury proved to be dying, or dead, there was no reason for her ever to know.
Something of his humane purpose must have come to her. He saw her swallow. Gelis said, ‘I’m sorry. Go to Montello, of course, if you want. Write to Nicholas, if you wish, when you have been. Or go and join Nicholas.’ Her eyes were bright, and her fists folded tight in her lap.
Tobie said, ‘I thought I was part of your household. If you want me, I’m with you.’ He considered her, sharing her trouble, as he had shared the long, dreary pilgrimage which had begun with the disaster at Trèves and had ended here in Venice. On that journey, he had not mentioned her husband to Gelis, for he knew he could not fully comprehend what she felt. For himself, all he would allow was that the focus of a consuming interest had gone; a source of fascination and study that had begun fifteen years ago, at an unsavoury turning point in his own life. Gelis had been a child then.
Her partnership with Nicholas, when it came, had been a physical one so intense that its reverberations were evident still, underscoring, undermining all they both did. Perhaps Nicholas would succeed in securing something to match it, but Tobie suspected
that Gelis would not. With the loss of Nicholas, Gelis was left with an intellectual life, nothing else. And unlike Kathi, she was not made to support it … Kathi, to whom Tobie had been and was doctor, consultant, but also devoted companion and friend.
He had no similar bond with Gelis. He felt pity for her, and admiration and even occasionally lust. But he did not understand her, or she would not allow him the means. And he knew she had never tried to understand him. He simply applied, therefore, his general experience of humankind, and acted accordingly.
Tobie said, ‘I still think someone should go to the monastery. It would only be a day’s journey there, and another day back. Would you come with me?’
She frowned, but her hands had loosened a little. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Tell me later,’ he said. ‘I expect Jodi is waiting for you just now.’
GELIS REACHED HER DECISION that night. Two days later, in the cool of the dawn, she and Tobias Beventini left Venice together, with two servants and four men-at-arms, and took the road that led north, towards the looming range of the Venetian Alps with, behind them, the peaks of the Dolomites. By the time the sun was high, its heat beating down on their straw hats and dust-covered cloaks, they had reached the ancient provincial capital of Treviso, with its frescoed houses, and its cathedral, and its brick church dedicated to San Niccolò. Here, as in every trading town, the Bank had clients and correspondents but today, by mutual consent, the Lady and the doctor avoided them. Instead, they passed the midday hours resting in the shady garden of a small tavern, with the waters of the little Sile running at its foot, and the scent of flowers mixed with the dung of the stables. They were given pork in jelly, and curds, and sipped wine, and let the time pass in silence. The heat dwindled. Tobie said, ‘They tell me the road gets steeper from now on. The place is on a hill?’
‘On one of a little group of low hills, covered with trees. Oak. The Bosco del Montello, owned of course by Venice: we are still in the Veneto. The Carthusians are supposed to pursue lives of silence and simplicity in the wilderness, and this was presumably the nearest that this lot could get. It’s about as wild, I suppose, as the Cartusia outside Perth.’
‘Perth?’
‘St John’s town of Perth in Scotland. The first King James built a Carthusian monastery there, prodded by his cousin Bishop Kennedy and his English Queen, who was a granddaughter of John of Gaunt. It still has the occasional Prior from Ghent, and organises some of its finances through the Carthusian convents in Bruges, much supported by the Adorne family. That is why Anselm Adorne’s brother became a lay monk at Montello at the end of his life. And why Adorne makes gifts to the Cartusia in Scotland.’
‘Does he?’ said Tobie.
‘Yes. His son Maarten served there. Now Maarten’s a Carthusian monk at the Holy Cross monastery in Bruges. His grandfather died in the same place nine years ago, and his sister Margareta is a Carthusian nun. It’s a very ascetic order,’ Gelis said. ‘They may not welcome visitors. Kathi said she had to wait here in Treviso.’
‘We don’t want to see the choir monks,’ Tobie said. ‘If he’s paralysed, the vicomte must be living apart. In a hospice, perhaps.’
‘They are not a hospital order.’
‘Then how did he get there?’ said Tobie.
‘Money,’ Gelis said. ‘Presumably they were paid a lot of money. Perhaps he has his own servants and nurses. Did you know that …’ She hesitated.
‘What?’ said Tobie.
His brusqueness seemed to reassure her: she glanced at him, and then resumed. ‘Gregorio tells me that Tasse retired to live quite near here. The little maid who used to serve Marian de Charetty, my predecessor in the marital bed. Tasse is dead now, of course. As is Marian, and Primaflora, who followed her.’
‘You sound as if you blame Nicholas,’ Tobie said.
‘Only for attracting bad luck,’ Gelis said. ‘He was in another country when each of them perished. I suppose we are only unfortunate, all of us, that we met him. Should we perhaps be riding on?’
SHE HAD BEEN RIGHT about the trees. They had only twelve miles to travel, and quite soon, as they left behind the vineyards and grazings, Tobie welcomed the fact that the fiercest heat was no longer continuous, but increasingly dissipated under a dappled green canopy. Soon, it became apparent that the road they had begun to traverse led not through random trees, but into the outlying groves of a forest. The men-at-arms, who were paid by the Bank and knew each other well, closed up watchfully, cursing the servants who were less accustomed to the saddle and fell behind. Gelis’s man, chosen from the Bank’s workshops instead of its stables, was especially culpable, straying from one side to the other and lingering behind trees like a man with the flux. Then he would spur on his horse, and scamper up and talk to the Lady. They saw him waving his arms. Once, he seemed to be holding his hands out for her to sniff. And another time, instead of catching up, he cried out for her to come over to where a blackened patch told that something had been burned.
Had there not been a good beaten path, they might even have lost their way with his antics, although after a while it was obvious where the monastery was, because of the numbers of people they met coming towards them, picking their way through the woods with baskets and bowls and loaves under their arms stamped with the initials of the Blessed Virgin and St Jerome. It was the day for alms, it would seem. One of the groups had a wheelbarrow, and another a sledge pulled behind them, although both were empty. They all stopped when they saw the horses, and the men would pull off their caps and hold them until the cavalcade had gone past.
Then they had to climb to the gates, where they dismounted and the porter asked them to wait. Gelis said suddenly, ‘It was March, when Adorne was here.’
‘What?’ Tobie said. Now they were out of the trees, he could see that the monastery was surrounded by vineyards, climbing up the slope of the hill behind the church tower. He saw the end of a vegetable garden, and a bakehouse and a dairy.
‘When we all left Venice three years ago. Kathi and Adorne and his son travelled home this way. Then four days later, John and Father Moriz and Julius and I left for the Tyrol the other way, reaching Trento by the river. You came with us as far as Padua.’
He remembered. He had been on his way to Pavia. Nicholas had just snatched his child and disappeared. It had been the second last time Tobie had parted from Nicholas. He said, ‘Was that when it happened?’ At least, nothing seemed to have happened. Jan Adorne presumably mentioned the old man when next he met Julius, which must have been in Rome that December. And Julius, in the throes of his new passion for Anna, had forgotten about it until now. Julius, although inquisitive, was selective in the matters that interested him. Julius had been as reasonable a friend as most men hoped to have, but all the same, Nicholas had shot him.
Then the porter broke into his thoughts, returning with an authoritative figure in white who gazed with disdain at Gelis, and, addressing himself to Tobie’s dust-laden physician’s gown, hood and cap, imparted, in Latin, a lofty dismissal.
Gelis said, ‘Say how surprised we are, considering the hospitality he has just clearly proffered to the suffering and the needy. Ask how many came for alms today.’
Tobie asked, and relayed the answer. His Pavian Latin was better than the Procurator’s. ‘Five hundred. He finds it hard to believe that we are needy. They do not have travellers’ quarters or a hospice. They are a silent order.’
‘We know that, of course. We had hoped,’ Gelis said, ‘that the Prior would extend to us the same kindness he showed three years ago to our friend the Duke of Burgundy’s eminent councillor, and benefactor of your order, my lord Anselm Adorne, Baron Cortachy. His brother was, we believe, a religious here.’
She had spoken directly, this time, to the Procurator, in the same French-Latin as his own. The Procurator looked from her to the doctor and back. Then he said, ‘Exceptions were made. I am sorry.’ The belligerence had faded a little.
‘It is impossible even to admit
a single physician?’ Tobie said. ‘Would you have turned away my late uncle Giammatteo Ferrari?’
He did not often invoke his famous late uncle, with whom he had not seen eye to eye. He was all the more surprised when Gelis broke in, disrupting his strategy. ‘I am sure you would find Dr Tobias professionally helpful. But I myself wish to speak to the Prior. We request admission for three: Dr Tobias, myself and my colleague.’
Tobie gazed at her and then stared, as did the Procurator, at the sturdy, liveried form of her servant. The Procurator said, in a tone of finality, ‘In that case, madame, I am afraid there is no question of entering.’
‘To discuss certain matters of forestry,’ Gelis serenely continued, ‘of particular concern to ourselves, as officials of the Casa di Niccolò. And of even more concern to my companion, as representing the Lords and Commissioners of the Arsenal, reporting to the Council of Ten.’
There was a silence. The Procurator said, ‘I have misunderstood. I am sorry. Perhaps the two gentlemen and the lady would be kind enough to come in?’
Waiting, wild-eyed, before Christ Crucified in a spartan reception-room, Tobie addressed Gelis under his breath on the subject of her cheerfully insouciant companion. ‘He’s the Bank’s head carpenter! He doesn’t come from the Arsenal!’
‘He did. He used to examine their trees,’ Gelis said. ‘Montello is one of the Arsenal’s principal forests. If this is mismanaged, Venice can’t get the timber she needs for her ships. Sit and watch this.’ Then the door opened, and the Prior of the monastery entered.
Tobie’s heart bled for him before the interview had lasted five minutes. Tobie thought he knew Gelis. He had forgotten how much she had picked up from Nicholas. He had forgotten how alike she and Nicholas were, in many ways. With seductive calm and pitiless logic, the lady of Beltrees, partner in the Venetian Bank of Ca’ Niccolò, detailed for the Prior, with the help of her timber adviser, all the transgressions of the monastery of the Blessed Virgin and St Jerome, situated in the Arsenal’s forest of Bosco del Montello. Charcoal-burners admitted? Sheep and cattle permitted to pasture? An absence of ditching; a patent neglect of the requirements of thinning, trimming and sealing; the evidence of flooding caused by the unwise admission of mill-dams? And if, as would be freely admitted, much of this was the responsibility of the commune, what of the ravages of five hundred pilgrims, allowed to traverse the forest when coming for alms, and departing, if the eye were to be believed, with something of far greater value? How much prime ship’s timber was carried off weekly in those barrows and sledges, to end up as firewood?