“You would think all the world was writing to its master,” said his courier cheerfully. “The letters for Messer Nori at Geneva alone! More, I dare say, than even Messer Pierfrancesco has written to you. And, of course, the letters to be forwarded to Lyons. Everyone seems to be buying their helmets at Lyons these days. Not so fine as the Milanese, they say, but much cheaper.”
“Cheaper than Bruges?” said Tommaso.
Claes lifted his face from his cup. “You’d have to ask the Justiniani. The Venetians. They bought some, I’m told. Or Messer Corner might be able to tell you: I brought a letter for him. They say the Venetians pay cash. Of course they can afford to. You can pay cash and allow credit, can’t you, if you’re as rich as they are, and the Lucchese.”
“The Lucchese?” said Angelo Tani. “We know our Lucca merchants in Bruges are capable men, but their town is hardly as rich as Venice.”
Claes looked mildly surprised. He said, “I’m sure you’re right. But they’re allowing such credit on their silks – you’d hardly believe. It’ll suit our Duke and his Duchess, at any rate. I shouldn’t be surprised if all the court turn out in matching cut velvet for the Holy Blood Procession this year. I gave a fat letter to Messer Arnolfini (from his backers, I suppose), and he looked very pleased when he opened it.”
“Have some more wine,” said Angelo Tani with generosity, and without catching the eye of his deputy. The Medici silk-making business in Florence was managed by Angelo Tani’s father-in-law. Only two years ago he had written to Florence begging for permission to sell silk on credit to Burgundy. Begging. For permission to make a huge profit. But the agreement, when it came, was so circumscribed that it was hardly worth getting. In general, of course, he was in accord with the company’s credit policy. His contract made his duties quite clear. He was to lend money only to merchants or master-artificers. Sales of foreign exchange on credit to nobles and churchmen were expressly forbidden except by written consent of Cosimo’s two sons, or Pierfrancesco his nephew. Angelo observed the rules. He saw that Tommaso observed them. But in every business, there were exceptions.
He was glad he had thought to have the boy visit. He acknowledged Pigello’s acumen. He welcomed the new courier service and would tell Pigello that he hoped it would continue. Angelo Tani, sitting back, led the talk genially into a discussion of the current market in silk and then, smoothly, in the direction of the other missives which the youth had carried. The Spinola were mentioned, and the Doria. Savoy and Cyprus and sugar. The traffic in hides and the effect of the English-Scots truce.
The boy had asked about that. Before Angelo could reply, his deputy gave a winsome smile and, forgetting, flashed his rings. “Don’t rely on it to keep your noble friend Simon away from us for long. Scotland can’t make up its mind whether to favour the English king Henry or the Yorkist rebels. There seem to be heralds at Veere every other day conferring with the van Borselen. The rest of the time they’re at Calais. Has anyone asked you to carry messages to London yet? That could make you a few enemies.”
Angelo moved his feet. He did not want the boy ruffled or scared out of Bruges. The dashing Simon might have returned to his own country but the peculiar father, the fat French merchant de Ribérac, moved in and out – buying gunpowder, the rumour went, and small arms. From whom, Tani wasn’t sure, nor under what sort of licence. The noble Simon’s Scottish uncle, they said, had a taste for gunnery.
Angelo watched the boy’s face, but it was innocent, he saw, of anxiety. The boy said, “And the van Borselen want King Henry to stay king of England, do they? Like Bishop Kennedy did?”
“It is as well,” said Angelo Tani, “to consider them neutral. As is your illustrious Duke.”
“Duke Philip?” said the newly elevated courier with, unfortunately, the familiar candour of Claes. “But he prefers the Yorkists, they say. Otherwise he wouldn’t be sheltering the Dauphin. Which reminds me. They have a fine menagerie in Milan. I brought back a porcupine for Meester Felix, but he doesn’t want it, and it’s to be a prize in the lottery. Unless you want it, Messer Angelo?”
“My God,” said Angelo Tani.
Tommaso smiled, and then grew serious as he understood this as an expression less of disgust than of consternation. Tani repeated. “My God. Theostrich.”
“The ostrich?” said Claes helpfully.
The governor flicked a hand. “It’s no matter. A request in the Milanese dispatches. We were a little unwise, sending four fine horses to Messer Pierfrancesco and failing to consider a gift for the Duke.”
Tommaso said, “But Messer Pierfrancesco was buying the horses. And the Duke breeds his own.”
“Of course. But Messer Pigello your brother has pointed out, rightly, that it is not seemly for the Medici family to be seen in Milan making better display than the Duke. We should have sent him an offering at the same time. A spectacular offering. Messer Pigello has suggested an ostrich from the Duke of Burgundy’s menagerie. An unsolicited gift between the two duchies which Milan would appreciate, and which would cost Burgundy little. The animal –”
“Bird,” said Tommaso.
“– creature,” said Angelo Tani, “would be sent at our cost. Tommaso is to interview Messer Pietro Bladelin on the subject tomorrow.”
Tommaso, he was glad to see, sat up abruptly.
The courier stood. “I can see,” he said, “you’ve a lot to talk about, and I mustn’t waste all your time. I’ll thank you for the wine, Messer Angelo, and get on my way. I’ve enjoyed listening to everything. That’s how you learn, isn’t it? Listening to great men and the business of nations.”
He bowed himself respectfully out and controlled his inclination to laugh until he was in the street, and round the first corner. From there, he sped to keep quite a different appointment at the unsavoury tavern newly patronised, he understood, by the junior riff-raff of Bruges.
They pelted him for being late, and pelted him again for being clean, and hammered him good-humouredly until his chair broke for talking about Dukes with every breath. When he could get a word in edgeways he told, spluttering, the tale of the ostrich.
Anselm Sersanders, who knew everything, said, “The Duke hasn’t got an ostrich at Bruges.”
The Bonkle boy, cross because of his burden of guilt, said, “How would you know? He must have, if Sforza’s got his eye on it.”
“No, he used to have, but it died last year,” said Sersanders. “Poor Angelo. He’ll have to send something else.”
“Mabelie?” said Claes.
John Bonkle went crimson.
Claes grinned at him. “She wouldn’t leave, would she? It’s all right. I took the owner’s label off before I went away. All right, what? Felix’s porcupine? No, the Duke has one.”
“Wait!” said Lorenzo Strozzi.
Since the topic had nothing to do with money, they all looked surprised. Strozzi said, “Wait! Don’t you remember I told you? We’ve an ostrich in Spain. Unless it’s died. In Barcelona.”
“That was Loppe,” said Claes.
“No! An ostrich. Messer Angelo can tell Pierre Bladelin, and the Duke can buy it, and ship it to Milan as a gift. It won’t have come from his menagerie, but that won’t matter.”
They looked at one another. It was Claes who punched Lorenzo’s shoulder and said, “What ideas you have! Of course! Why didn’t I think of it! I’ll tell Messer Angelo as soon as I’ve had my drink.”
“Oh,” said Felix suddenly. “No. You’ll tell him tomorrow. I forgot. Mother’s back from Louvain. I was to tell you to report to her instantly.”
The serving-girl, her hand on Claes’ shoulder, had already asked Claes what he wanted, and he had probably told her. She and Claes were smiling at one another. Claes said, without looking round, “You forgot to tell me.”
“I didn’t,” said Felix. “I’ve just told you. And you’d better hurry as well. She’s in a fair temper.”
“When I’ve had my first beer?” said Claes cajolingly. “Or half of my first beer
?”
“Now,” said Felix sharply. “She employs you.”
A chorus of appeal, not unduly strong, was raised on Claes’ behalf. Felix remained adamant. He looked round, frowning. “He’s my servant,” he said. There was no gainsaying that. Claes rose, pulled a face, and trudged off with a dejection so precisely that of Henninc after a bad night at the dice that they all sent cat-calls after him.
Outside, he straightened. The smile lingered, and lessened, and faded. Then he set off at an even pace through the streets that led back to the yard, and the Widow.
Chapter 16
LEAVING THE inn, Claes regretted the heavy wool cloak he had left behind that morning. It was cold. Colder than the Alps, because of the dampness. Now, on the way to the dyeshop, there was time to notice it, as there hadn’t been yesterday, in the scramble to deliver his dispatches.
He had been away often before. Every few months, the Charetty cavalcade had left Bruges for Louvain. Then had followed the weeks of trying to persuade Felix in from the hunting-field, away from the kennels, out of the taverns and brothels to attend his lectures. Julius, of course, had helped too. Some of the time they had both been successful. Some of the time they had all grown impatient of the responsible world at the same moment, and had embarked on some escapade which got them all into trouble. Well, now Julius was with Astorre, and that was possibly where he ought to have been all along. And he himself was back in Bruges after three months. After an absence no different from any other, as far as time went. It should all look the same.
There had been heavy snow not so long ago. It lingered in darkened wedges on cellar-steps, and it edged towpaths like tarnished drawn-thread work. Where river-water still flowed, ice followed the frozen mud of its banks, faithful as a lace collar. Where the water was still, the middle was crazed with welded floes, broken and broken again to let barges through. The thudding of ice-breakers’ hatchets went on all day. There, the water’s edge was dark and liquid from the warmth of the houses, and cats prowled, watching for comatose fish to rise gasping. And there too, you saw, as you saw every winter, a child’s dress on a pole stuck by a canal bank, hanging stiff and frozen. Clothes were not easy to come by for some folk, but no one would take it: not until the parent of the drowned child had been found, and the child named. Sometimes, of course, it was an infant, and there were no clothes to hang on the pole.
He passed the Crane, idle this morning, but although the men recognised him in spite of the blue jacket, he walked on with a cheerful wave of apology. It wouldn’t do to keep the demoiselle waiting. The gates of the Charetty business were open, but whatever train the Widow had brought back from Louvain was already disbanded and invisible. Claes saw men in the yard he had spoken to yesterday, but today they didn’t look round. It was odd, in fact, how little attention they paid.
In the house it was the same. He saw the Widow’s cook pass in the distance. He caught the flash of her face, then she hurried off. A bad sign. Not even Henninc, to tell him where he was expected to present himself.
Commonsense told him that she wouldn’t receive him in her parlour, although her son had. The storm, whatever it was, waited for him no doubt in her office. He reached it, and hearing nothing, tapped with caution. “Demoiselle!” he said. Here, one word was enough to identify him.
“Enter,” said the voice of Felix’s mother. There, too, one word was enough.
He gazed at the latch in his hand. Then he rapped it down like the spring of a stone-thrower, and made his way in. She sat behind the desk. Her face, matching her voice, was chilled and rigid. There was a man seated beside her. The man smiled. “Perhaps,” he said, “you are going to claim that you don’t know who I am?”
The thought had entered his mind but he had dismissed it. There was no doubt who this was, even although he had never met him face to face. A man of perhaps not more than fifty, but of so large a framework and so heavily fleshed that he topped his reed chair like a marrow. But an opulent marrow. His robe fell to the floor, lined with marten. His jowls sank into the layers of muslin, quilting and fur which lay on his solid shoulders. His hat, a double cartwheel infilled with drapery, had an enamelled crest set with gems on its underbrim. The same crest hung from the jewelled chain over his shoulders. The face under the hat was fresh-coloured and vast; the mouth small; the eyes sparkling.
Jordan, vicomte de Ribérac, wealthy and powerful merchant of France who had attended (so he had heard) the autumn banquet for the commander of the Flanders galleys. Yes, there could be little doubt. Monseigneur de Ribérac: the French father of the Scots nobleman Simon.
No one spoke. The fat man’s eyes, fixed on him, continued to sparkle. Claes said, “You are well known, monseigneur.”
The fat man turned to the Widow. “Without a change of expression! You see? I commend your teaching, demoiselle. The youth is a model of composure. He answers, they tell me, to the good farmyard name of Claes.”
The bright eyes quizzed Marian de Charetty, and she returned the look with hostility. She was wearing, Claes saw, a gown stiffened like leather, and her hair was locked into some sort of container. Her colour, too high to have left her entirely, had confined itself to a bloom on either cheek, above which her blue eyes glittered like lapis. She said, “Farmyard? Claes is merely a short form of Nicholas.”
“To allot him three syllables would, I think, be going too far,” said M. de Ribérac. “The Flemish form, after all, is proper for artisans.”
“It is true,” said the Widow, “that our artisans are worth more than another land’s aristocracy, but Claes is no longer one of them.”
She sat without moving, holding down but not hiding her anger. Claes stared at her, and then switched his gaze to the man. The older, dangerous man.
The fat man said, “Has he been made a burgess, then, since his last exploit? He has been chosen by some very strange people to run errands for them. So, boy. You run fast, do you?”
“If I have to,” said Claes.
“And carry letters for the Medici. And others. You open them, do you?” said the fat man.
Claes said, “I can’t, if they’re sewn with thread and then sealed.”
The chilly eyes stared at him and then, measuringly, at the hands that hung at his sides. “I think I believe you. And of course, even if you opened them, you couldn’t read, could you?”
The demoiselle’s eyes flashed, but he didn’t need the warning. He said, “I can read.” He added, his voice helpful, “I read the ones I can open, unless they use cipher.”
The fat man smiled. He said, “Now I am pleased with you. We are having an interesting conversation, are we not? You read the ones you can open, and the news that is not in code. And you pass that news on. Who to?”
“The people who pay me,” said Claes, showing surprise. “I earn money.”
“So I realise. And are you earning it for yourself, Claes, or for your employer here? For you still belong to her company, don’t you?”
Claes smiled at his employer. “Yes, of course. The demoiselle de Charetty employs me.”
“And so you take your wages, and bring her back all the profits. How kind of you. Do you imagine she and I are imbeciles?”
Pause. “No, monseigneur,” said Claes carefully.
The fat man moved. “Then why are you smiling?”
“Because,” said Claes, “I have had this conversation before. With Master Tobias the doctor. He wondered if I wanted to be rich, or powerful, or just get my own back on other people.”
“And what did you tell him?” said the fat man.
“What he wanted to hear,” Claes said. “But we fell out, just the same.”
Silence again. Then the fat man said, softly, “You spy. Don’t you?”
“I told you,” said Claes.
The fat man said, “Ah yes. But for yourself, not for the demoiselle here. You spend a great deal of time with Agnolo Acciajuoli. Have you told anyone? What use can these meetings be to the Charetty company? You fall in
– was it accidental? – with Monsieur Gaston du Lyon, the Dauphin’s chamberlain, on his way to Milan for – what was it? The jousting? And when he suddenly breaks off his jousting and makes his way to Savoy, you know that plan too? Don’t you? And sell it to whoever pays highest?”
“Well, I’d be an imbecile if I did that,” Claes pointed out earnestly. “Because if I offended the Duke of Milan, or the Medici, or the Dauphin, they wouldn’t pay me any longer, would they? You have to think of things like that, you know, in this business.”
A smile came and went, on the demoiselle’s face. Good.
The fat man said, “I see you are someone who thinks deeply. So, when you earn money, after such deep thought, for your employer – why do you then invest it in your own name? And not in Milan, but in Venice?”
Claes looked at his employer. Then he hung his head.
She said, carefully, “I think you had better answer.”
Claes said, “The Medici made the transfer.”
“From Milan to Venice. So my informant tells me. They clearly thought it worth their while to pay a certain price for your services?”
Claes studied his boots. “They thought it worthwhile because I had given them the wrong rates for Venice. In one of the letters I opened. It wasn’t in cipher.”
“You falsified a dispatch?” said the fat man.
Marian de Charetty’s face had lost colour again. She said, “You idiot, Claes. That’s the end of you.”
“But you won’t tell.” Claes reassured her, reviving. “And it’ll make a fine profit.”
“I won’t tell,” said Marian de Charetty. “But have you forgotten who he is?”
“No, I haven’t,” said Claes.
“I’m glad you haven’t,” said the fat man. He lifted a hand. “Come here, clod.”
Claes stirred. Then obediently he moved along the side of the desk and presented himself.
Jordan de Ribérac looked at him. He said, “You made a childish attempt on the life of my son. You failed to kill him. But you will try again, won’t you? Once you have money and a little authority, and people no longer laugh at you and fling you in the Steen. That is why you are suddenly ambitious?”