Katelina said the court was full of Scotsmen calling to try and get the rest of the old Duchess’s dowry, which had never been paid. Katelina said that Jordan de Ribérac had come to court one day on business of the French king, who owed him money and who relied on him for everything. Katelina said that Jordan de Ribérac often rode through to the coast to check over his shipping. Katelina said that she acted as if she didn’t know him, but he had had the conceit to kiss her hand and chat in front of the Duchess as if he had never insulted her, or tried to kill Nicholas. Katelina asked her to ask Nicholas to write to her.
Katelina was a fool.
At the end of the first week in June a messenger arrived in Bruges from the Medici manager in Geneva with papers for Angelo Tani. He also bore a letter which he delivered to Marian de Charetty. It was from her husband Nicholas. It hastened to assure her that all was well, and Felix safe in his company. It added that, because of the money they carried, it seemed best for Felix to travel with him to Italy and come home at the same time. The experience, it further added, might do Felix some good. There followed some detailed information and other cogent suggestions on trading matters. The greetings with which it closed were all that they should be. It was a pleasant letter. Marian de Charetty, reading it, deduced that Felix was misbehaving and that this was the way Nicholas had chosen to deal with it. She had no fears for Felix. The concern she felt sprang from the same source as Tilde’s. Felix, when thwarted, could harm people.
Being unconscious on the banks of Lake Geneva, Felix de Charetty was incapable of harming anyone at the time the pleasant letter to his lady mother was being composed and written. Nor, in the days that followed could he be said to be a danger to anyone but himself, as he tried to release himself from the horse to which he was tied, or drive it out of the convoy on one side or the other, his head still thunderously sore from the blow which had felled him in Jaak de Fleury’s house.
How Nicholas had got him out of the house and out of Geneva he still didn’t know. The precious money-box, of course, was in Nicholas’ hands. The men at arms around him were all hired by Nicholas. His own two servants were there as well, more lightly bound than he was since they had less incentive, he supposed, to escape and attempt a moneyless journey back home. From the moment he returned to consciousness, gripped on the back of someone else’s horse, they had been travelling as if the devil were after them.
Of course, Jaak de Fleury would have sent those armed men of his to follow and rescue him. Or at the very least, would have enlisted the help of the Duke of Savoy’s handiest officer. At any moment, they would be overtaken and stopped.
They were not. Whatever trick Nicholas had used, no troop of avenging horsemen swept past them. When, on stumbling horses, they left the lake and began to tackle the rising ground which led up to the pass, Felix saw that no one was going to help him. If he was going to take home that box, and find the rest of the Charetty money he had been cheated out of, he would have to do it himself.
That night his new enemy felt safe enough, it appeared, to risk taking a room at an inn. Sitting on a led horse, with his hands tied together and his feet roped beneath him, Felix saw the man at arms dispatched ahead to arrange it.
He had refused to give his word not to escape. He had refused to speak to anyone. At the first halt he remembered, he had spat back the wine Nicholas offered him, and when they loosed his hands he had used them to do his best to throttle him. So they didn’t dare take him indoors. They rested and took their food in the open air, well concealed from the road. Until now.
He had wondered how Nicholas expected to prevent him from making a disturbance in a public place, but it was simple: he was gagged as well as bound and helped in, cloaked and hooded, as if he were drunk. He smelt food and charcoal and ale fumes and heard a confusion of languages and the clatter of booted feet, and the banging of trestles and platters and tankards. His feet found stairs and he hit on the idea of kicking them, but before he could do it, powerful hands took him under the armpits and carried him bodily upwards. He remembered Claes being lifted like that. On board the Flanders galleys, it was. Just before they flung him into the sea.
Had he resented it all as much as that? All the time? Hating and resenting him, and Julius, and Jaak, and his mother?
A door opened, and he was set down beyond it, held by the grip of a single hand. The door shut, cutting off the noise from below, and a key turned in the lock. Felix dragged on the restraining arm and tossed his head like a warhorse, to dislodge the muffling hood. His head began to ache wildly. The second hand returned to his other arm. Resisting, he found himself stumbling backwards and then pushed down, with a jolt, on a low bed. His hood was grasped and folded back, but the cloth round his mouth remained there.
Nicholas stood looking down at him. Nicholas said, “You hear how quiet it’s got? That’s how thick the door is. And anyway, my fellows are just outside. So don’t waste time shouting. I need some food, and some sleep, and so do you. And I want to talk first.”
It had puzzled Felix for some time: why Nicholas hadn’t killed him and his servants immediately. But that, of course, was merely because he was afraid of pursuit. Now he’d shaken it off, he could arrange for Felix to die more conveniently, and perhaps attach the blame somewhere else.
Felix had no wish to talk to his murderer. He made an elaborate show of closing his eyes while the other man was still speaking, and lying back on the bed, stuck his chin up. The mark of a merchant was his dignity. He hoped he also looked bored. His heart and his lungs, which were not bored, refused to co-operate.
Nicholas said, “Well, if I’m going to apologise to you, you might at least keep your eyes open. Is your head still as bad?”
Silence. The scrape of a stool. The voice of Nicholas, again, from a lower level. It sounded submissive. He said, “I don’t suppose I’d have the nerve to lie there, in your place. You must think I’m going to carve you up and send the pieces to your mother. I hit you on the head because I had to get you away. I had to get you away because I couldn’t let you go back alone with the money, and I couldn’t go with you. I couldn’t go with you because I’ve got to get to Milan. I’ve got to get to Milan because your mother and Anselm Adorne and a lot of other people are involved in a highly secret piece of trading which is going to make you so rich that the fire doesn’t even matter. But only if I get to Milan. And only if other people don’t get to hear of it. Other people like Jaak de Fleury.”
Felix lay still. His head ached.
Nicholas said, “Now you’ve heard that much, I’m coming to untie the gag. I’ve got a dagger, Felix. I know you’re not convinced, but you can’t overpower me. I only want you to listen. After that, I’ll answer any questions you like. And after that, I’ll give you my dagger. If you want to walk out, you can.”
Fingers pushed his head up. Felix opened his eyes. The gag came away from his dry mouth. He retched, and swallowed, and retched. Nicholas was pouring something from a flask to a cup. Nicholas said, “Spit it out if you want, but it’s good Candy wine and you need it. Look, I’ve drunk some. Now you drink the poisoned half.”
There was a smile in his voice. Felix didn’t smile. He drank when the cup was put to his mouth. His hands were still tied. He said, “Now I wait until you give me the knife, and I open the door, and your men kill me on my way out.”
“But you’ll have killed me first,” Nicholas said. “Come on, pay attention. Have you had a blow on the head or something?”
“I’ll begin to believe you,” said Felix, “when you untie my wrists, send your men away, and let me call the landlord of this place to help me get you back under guard to Geneva. You can talk all you want in Geneva.”
“Not about an alum monopoly,” Nicholas said. His gaze had concentrated and his forehead got lined in the way it did when he wanted you to remember something. He said, “You’ve got a reputation, you know, for being headstrong. Not like John and Sersanders and the rest of us. There was a feeling that you m
ight forget the scheme was so secret and talk about it. But you’re a merchant, and it is your business, and since you’re here, you might as well be in Milan when it’s settled. Do you remember the Greek with the wooden leg?”
The Candian wine was very good. Nicholas had refilled the cup, and Felix drank that off, too. His headache lessened and his stomach felt warm. “Do you remember …?” Nicholas had begun in the way he had so often begun to recall some exploit and embroider it. With a twitch of his shoulder, he had conjured up the austere, bearded Greek and his limp, and the whole hilarious business. Of the gun in the water, and the rabbits. Of the night in the Steen. Of the time the waterpipes burst.
Felix sat, cup in hand, against pillows and echoed, “An alum monopoly?”
“Yes.” Nicholas had seated himself again on the stool, the flask in his two hands. He seemed to be studying it. Without warning, the silly dimples appeared in his cheeks and disappeared again.
“What?” said Felix.
Nicholas looked up. “Nothing,” he said.
Felix waited angrily.
“That is,” said Nicholas, “I was just thinking. Wishing that you were sitting here and I was Felix de Charetty.”
“With a mother,” said Felix, his anger increasing. Why tell him now that he wanted to be Felix de Charetty? Most people did.
He had succeeded, anyway, in reminding the bastard who was who. The open eyes clouded over, and lowered. Nicholas said, “That was stupid of me. I’m sorry. About the alum. You’ve seen it. Casks of white powder in the dyeshop. Everyone needs it, to fix colours in cloth. It makes hides supple, and parchment last longer. It makes better glass, and better paper.”
“I know all that,” Felix said.
“I didn’t know if you did,” Nicholas said. “Then you probably know where it comes from. The poorer stuff from Africa. Spain. Up and down the west Italian coast in volcanic places like Lipari and Ischia. The best stuff from the Byzantine and Turkish end of the Mediterranean. And for hundreds of years, that’s been in the hands of the Genoese. You know that, too, of course. It’s been coming into Bruges for years in Genoese ships, and being handled by Adornes and Dorias, second cousins of the Adornos and Dorias in Genoa. That’s the connection between Anselm Adorne and Scotland. Antoniotto Adorno, Doge of Genoa, was visiting Scotland last century, collecting debts due him for alum.”
“That’s why you try to murder Scotsmen?” said Felix. “Over an alum monopoly?” A merchant would never show himself to be attracted by this kind of preamble. A kidnapped merchant might be forgiven if his heart was thumping with excitement.
Nicholas said, “When I’ve finished, you must make up your own mind about that. But listen a bit. You have to understand more about alum first. For instance, the purer it is, the better and costlier. And the best stuff, as I’ve said, comes from the eastern end of the Mediterranean. Deposits round the Black Sea used to be handled by Genoese trading colonies there, who had set up in Caffa and Trebizond under the Byzantine emperors.
“The best alum of all is south of Constantinople, in the Gulf of Smyrna, in a place called Phocoea. It was worked nearly two hundred years ago by Genoese brothers called Zaccaria, who had been agents in Constantinople. But the family lost its grip, and the Byzantine Greeks jumped into Phocoea and Chios, the island beside it, which didn’t suit the Genoese merchants at all.
“So just over a hundred years ago, an armed Genoese fleet arrived and took back Chios and Phocoea and established a sort of merchant’s co-operative, based on Chios, and run by the families and later the heirs of the original merchants who had paid for the fleet. Including the Adornos of Genoa.”
Felix said, “Thanks for the lesson. That was all ages ago, and anyway the Turks have it now. Have you done a deal with the Turks?”
“The Adornos did,” Nicholas said. “And the rest of the Genoese working the mines from the island of Chios. The Turks mastered most of the area, and the Phocoea Alum Company, to survive, had to pay 20,000 gold ducats a year to the Sultan. Then five years ago, Phocoea itself fell to the Turks, and the Genoese company kept Chios, but lost all the alum mines.”
“So you’ve done a deal with the Turks,” Felix said. He remembered, as a boy, being driven out of doors by the monotony of his father’s voice talking of subjects like this. Listening now, he forgot even his hunger. Trade, and money. A monopoly, he had said.
Nicholas said, “A Venetian merchant in Constantinople did a deal with the Turks. He had a dyeworks there, and he knew about alum. He told the Turks he could work the Phocoea alum mines if they gave him a concession, and they said they would think about it, provided he could raise enough money for his ransom. His name was Bartolomeo Giorgio or, as the Venetians pronounce it, Bartolomeo Zorzi.”
He stopped. He often did that, meaning that he had said something important. Felix thought. He said, bursting out with it, “The Greek with the wooden leg!”
Nicholas smiled. He said, “Nicholai Giorgio de’ Acciajuoli. Collecting a ransom in Europe to free Bartolomeo Giorgio, his brother. And especially collecting from places like Bruges, and like Scotland, which need alum.”
Felix said, “He liked you because you broke up his leg. He’s offering us special cheap rates of alum through his brother?”
Nicholas said, “He’s offering us special cheap rates of alum. And regular supplies of alum. And, indeed, a stockpile of alum if we want it. Which we do.”
“Why?” said Felix. And then, as Nicholas failed to answer at once: “Oh,” said Felix. “I suppose that’s the secret?”
“Secret?” said Nicholas. “It’s the business expedient which will make your fortune, and your mother’s. If you tell it to one other person – just one – your mother will lose everything but a pittance. I am going to tell you, but you must understand what it means.”
“In exchange for my silence. Oh, I know what it means,” Felix said. He wished Nicholas would look somewhere else.
Not looking somewhere else, Nicholas said, “When you get to Bruges, Gregorio and your mother and Anselm Adorne will all confirm the truth of what I’m going to tell you. In Milan, I’ve had Meester Tobie to help me.”
“Tobie?” said Felix.
“The doctor. Because he knew about herbs. And because the Acciajuoli and the Adorno know people who have worked in the Phocoea alum mines, and Tobie had an excuse to be in Italy, where he could look about and talk to them …
“Felix, listen. No one knows it yet, but in the hills north of Rome is a huge deposit of perfect alum. The best ever known. Better than the alum of Phocoea.”
Felix felt his heart swell. His voice was hoarse. He said, “Tobias is buying it for us? That’s what the money’s for?”
Nicholas looked down. He said, “Felix, no one could buy it, because it’s in the Papal States. The family who own the land are tenants of the Pope. As soon as the discovery is made known, the Pope will buy the rights and lease the mine, keeping the profits. The profits will be huge. Enough to launch a crusade.”
Felix said, “But if you’ve discovered it, Pope Pius would pay you. Us. Tobias.”
“I am sure he would,” Nicholas said. “But that would be all. Someone else would develop the mines. The Charetty business hasn’t the capital. Even before the fire, that was true. And once the mines are producing, the Pope has an alum monopoly.”
“He hasn’t,” said Felix. “You said it yourself. Bartolomeo Zorzi is producing in Phocoea. For Venice, paying tribute to Turkey.”
“That’s true,” said Nicholas. “And I suppose some misguided Christians, such as all the merchants in Bruges and Genoa and Florence, are buying from him. But once Papal alum is on the market, what faithful follower of the Cross will buy from the Crescent? Especially if the papal alum comes with a remission for sins, and the Turkish alum comes with excommunication. Hell hoist the price, too.”
“So?” said Felix joyously. What game? What prank? his mind was asking itself. Life was for having adventures. Life was for taking chances, accepting
offers, making profits. Life was not for staying at home with your mother.
“So we sit on the discovery of the new papal alum mines,” said Nicholas blandly. “And the Venetians pay us for doing it. And give us all the alum we want, at knockdown prices, for as long as we want. Or until someone else makes the discovery. We might get two years out of it, and an alum reserve that will serve us when the price starts to rise.”
Felix thought. He became aware that he had been thinking for a long time. His heart was thudding. Nicholas, he saw, was watching him and smiling a little. Felix said, “And that’s why you’re going to Milan?”
Nicholas said, “I do have courier business to do. Dispatches to deliver and collect, and fees for both. But yes. Tobie sent me the proofs. Adorne has seen them, and your mother. Now I have to talk to the Venetians. Not the Florentines, who would instantly expose the papal mines and exploit them themselves. But the Venetians, who control the Phocoean alum.”
“And that’s why you invested money in Venice?” said Felix dreamily.
Nicholas said, “Partly. When I started, I didn’t know all this would happen. Or that I should be staying in Bruges.”
“You were going to leave?” Felix said.
“I was sent away,” Nicholas said. “For improper behaviour. You must remember.”
“But you came back and married my mother instead,” Felix said.
They had been talking, man to man. He thought for a moment that, man to man, Nicholas was going to answer him. But although he hesitated, in the end he only said, “Yes.”