“Of course it will happen!” he said. “They won’t stay in Florence for Christmas! If they’re going home, they’ll have to cross the Alps soon. If they’re sailing, why should they linger? You’ll have your earrings, my love, and everything else that you wanted. Now, if you like. Except that I can’t show you off until we are married. You do know that? You do remember? So your stepfather isn’t really holding you up at all, is he? Only that small gift from God that you and I are waiting to share. And once that happens…”
She had calmed. She searched his face, her own brightening a little. She said, “Of course. When I’m a woman and married, Nicholas can see me as much as he likes. Can’t he? Because he couldn’t send me home then.”
“It won’t arise. He’ll be gone before Christmas.”
“I hope he isn’t,” said the child dreamily.
Despite the dirt, she was amazingly pretty, as perhaps her mother once was. The reddish brown hair flamed in the light of the brazier and her eyes were a very bright blue. He stayed quite still, except for the fingers stroking her hands.
She said, “I’d like to be a woman while Nicholas is still in Florence. I’d like to walk into a palace in earrings and gold brocade like the Duchess Bianca, and speak to Nicholas.”
He said nothing.
She blushed. She said, “Tilde has little breasts.”
Then he drew her to him, but carefully as always, and dislodged the cap, and put his other arm round her shoulders. He said, “Yours, my Venus, will be more wonderful than Tilde’s, or any woman alive. I know it. I am waiting for you, Caterinetta.”
She had relaxed. Her lashes lowered. She was tired: she had ridden a long way, with whatever escort she had forced to come with her. She was, he had found, an excellent horsewoman. And she was not without courage, the little thing. She said, her eyes lightly closed, “Who did you kiss?”
It took all his control to stop the shock travelling through both his arms. What had Godscalc said? Sisters, mothers.
Pagano smiled, his lips touching her brow. He said, “The priest and I supped with the sea consul, and his wife gave me the kiss of friendship on parting. A good woman, Caterinetta. My mother was very like that. My mother would have loved you. I love you.”
“Earrings,” she said; and fell asleep smiling.
Chapter 3
BY THAT TIME, Nicholas vander Poele, juvenile leader of the Charetty company, had been in Florence for two or three days. With him were his notary and the company doctor. Other officers were expected, but not his wife, who was of course at home in Bruges with her older girl Tilde. The younger daughter Catherine had been sent off to Brussels before her stepfather had even left home. It had caused some talk.
By the time another three days had gone by, all the merchants in Florence knew that the Charetty company were here on the chance that they might get a great galley and set up a branch, fools that they were, in the East. No doubt they hoped the House of Medici would help them.
Since they could expect (everyone knew) a long wait, they had taken rooms in the Red Lion quarter. That they were not always to be found there had something to do with their preoccupations as merchants, and something to do with the temperament of their landlady. The day of 14 December was, however, an exception. Master Julius the company notary and Tobias Beventini the company physician were both in the parlour, for the purpose of improving their appearance.
Since not a great deal could be done for Tobie, their attention was centred on Julius, who possessed a certain kind of athletic good looks. With difficulty, Tobie was wielding the scissors. Julius was complaining.
“He’s got a new plaything,” Julius said. “Holy Virgin, that was my ear!”
“So I supposed,” Tobie said. “If you don’t want your hair cut, I’ll be happy to get on with something else, and you can find a barber to look after your ear. Who has a new plaything?”
“Nicholas, who do you think?” Julius said. “He came back with shavings in his shoes and his doublet all covered with sawdust, and this ridiculous toy.”
“Toy?” said Tobie. His mood lightened.
“Toy. Nicholas saw it at the Franciscans’ and they let him make one for himself. He plays with it. He’ll carry it to the Palazzo Medici unless we prevent him, and the lord Cosimo will give us alms for our halfwit and send us all back to Bruges. That was my ear again.”
“Do it yourself then,” said Tobie briskly. He tossed down his comb and the scissors, and went to pick up his cup of warmed wine from the windowsill. In a moment, as they both knew, he would go back and finish the job. Crossing the Alps interfered, as Tobie had observed, with a gentleman’s grooming. Crammed into the modest house of their hostess with their servants sleeping in cart sheds, they hadn’t expected the summons from God quite so soon. The appointment with the lord Cosimo de’ Medici was for that afternoon, and Nicholas didn’t know of it. Nicholas, oblivious, had gone out somewhere again. Perhaps to play with his toy.
“So what’s normal about Nicholas?” Tobie said. “He likes to look like a halfwit. He has a genius for figures. The Medici bank, how amazing, have discovered it. They won’t forget, will they? More. He is the kind of halfwit who seemed to like being a dyeshop apprentice. He married the Widow who promptly let him manage the business. He is managing the business. The fact that he killed five people in the process and ruined a sixth has made the Widow a little wary: one doesn’t blame her. But the Widow still trusts in Nicholas her juvenile husband, and hopes that if he strays from the path of good Flemish practices we will correct him. Nicholas is bizarre. If he weren’t, you and I wouldn’t be here. We have discussed this before.”
“Before Nicholas acquired a toy. I remember discussing it. I feel the need of talking it over again,” Julius said.
Tobie was actually quite pleased. Although roughly the same age as Julius, he was older than Julius would ever be: his short acquaintance with Julius had confirmed it. He said, “Julius, everyone’s got a toy. I like mine on my pillow. Captain Astorre likes to cook his and eat it. Godscalc hangs his on his girdle and counts it. The Widow prefers to accept hers in matrimony. When Nicholas gives up being weaned, I’ll become anxious.”
Julius brooded. He could see Julius despising the medical school of Pavia. Tobie said, “Nicholas managed the journey from Flanders all right. Deferred to you, joked discreetly with me, got on like a dyeworks on fire with the muleteers. And you know what the trip to the Franciscans was for. If it succeeded, he could put pressure on the Medici.”
“He should have taken us with him. You know he should. That’s what we’re here for. To keep him out of trouble.”
“Well, so far as I know he isn’t in any yet,” remarked Tobie. He picked up the scissors. “Let’s get on with the other ear, or Monna Alessandra will personally send you her barber.”
Alessandra Strozzi, high in Florentine society, low in means, owned the house they were staying in. Julius gave, unthinking, the smile that made people follow him, sometimes, in the street. He said, “Have you seen her glaring at Nicholas? She isn’t going to be duped like her son and her daughter. Mother Strozzi is regretting that she offered to lodge us.” He twitched the towel over his shoulders.
“Rubbish,” said Tobie, snipping steadily. “She’s getting free medical attention from me, and free legal attention from you, and we are the dear friends of her poor son Lorenzo in Bruges. It’s only Nicholas she’s regretting. Once a servant always a servant. Keep still, can’t you? I’m only quoting. Has she asked you yet why you haven’t married? She will. Florence needs babies.”
“What’s that to do with marriage?” Julius said. “My God, she shouldn’t spurn Nicholas. The stud of Flanders. They’d have to build new city walls if Nicholas let himself go. Not but what…”
“Gossip, gossip,” said Tobie reprovingly. “But I take your point. Since he married the head of the company he’s led the life of a committed eunuch. But then, she’s his livelihood.”
“Unless he finds something better,” said Julius. F
or two years as employee and tutor to the Charetty son, he had encouraged this cheerful lout Nicholas to better himself. Tobie could understand how Julius, more than almost anyone else, had been flummoxed by Nicholas’s marriage.
Tobie said, “Who, for example?”
Julius turned his head and was nicked without even feeling it. He said, “Or someone worse. Could you do without girls at nineteen?”
Interested, Tobie considered. The topic was a new one for both of them. For all the months he had known Julius, Tobie had failed to catch Julius toying with anything. He said, “Maybe he prays.”
Julius grunted, frowning. He said, not entirely obscurely, “I wish Godscalc would come.”
“Perhaps he won’t,” Tobie said. “Perhaps he and the army have written a note excusing themselves from joining Nicholas. For Alexander the Great our leader is not. He was falling off his horse until yesterday.”
“I thought—” began Julius. He yelped and restarted. “Do we expect Astorre’s soldiers to fight? I thought we were taking them just to protect us.”
“That depends,” Tobie said, “on what the young man our master has found out at the Franciscans’. He should know by now if it’s worth going on with the venture. Then all that matters is whether the magnificent Cosimo de’ Medici will allow us to run it. That’s surely Nicholas now.”
Julius rose to his feet. The towel dropped, showering cut brown hair over Monna Alessandra’s elegant tiles. His hair, finely tailored, clung to a thick-boned face with slanting eyes and a blunt profile which would have looked well on a coin. Tobie, who had almost no hair at all, gazed at him sadly. Julius peered through the segments of window glass coloured pink, green and yellow, and said, “Oh, Jesus Christ, yes. And he’s got the toy with him. And his hose are mud up to the knee and his hair needs a cut. That’s the spokesman of the Charetty business.”
“Well, get the coffer out,” said Tobie roundly. “You find his clean clothes and I’ll cut his hair round his cap and wash his ears out. Then, when we get to the Palazzo Medici, you imitate his voice and I’ll sit him on my knee and move his arms up and down. Where is the problem?”
“There in front of you,” Julius said. “And I don’t know if I want to solve it. I want to lead a quiet life witnessing wills and drawing up dowry engagements and counting the rings found on corpses. I think I’m leaving.”
“Wait until Godscalc comes,” Tobie said. “Then we can all leave together and Nicholas can repopulate Florence. I don’t know. I might stay and help him.”
“Do that,” said Julius. “You know what Monna Alessandra will do? She’ll geld you both.”
“Personally?” Tobie said.
“No, she’s no fool,” said Julius. “She’ll employ you to do it, and then dock your fee because you’ll be too sick to handle the aftercare. Oh, my God.”
The door opened. “You blaspheme?” said their hostess Alessandra Macinghi negli Strozzi, straight as a pair of book-boards. Her plucked brow, high as Tobie’s, was finely printed by age in what could have been numbers. “It is time your priest came. You will make confession tomorrow, or leave this house of mine. Is that your fellow, this Niccolò?”
Julius, employee of widows, was readier than Tobie to answer. He said, “We’ve been waiting for him, Monna Alessandra. His Magnificence Messer Cosimo has sent for us.”
“Hence the cutting of hair. I am glad that some circumstance brought the need to your attention. Do you propose to go to the Palazzo Medici with your Niccolò in his present condition?”
She finished the sentence, even though by that time Nicholas had entered the room. Studying him, Tobie tried to be objective, and succeeded. The head of the Charetty company of Bruges was a very large young man, and well-developed. His throat was stalwart; his face widely framed and most remarkable in repose for its eyes, which were large and misleadingly innocent. It was however seldom in repose, being expert in the business of imitating the faces of other people. A scar less than a year old marked it from eye to chin on one side. He had never explained it. Gossip had long since put it down to a belting by some ex-virgin’s master or father, and if Nicholas was prepared to let the theory pass, then so were the few who knew better. His hair, the colour of dirt, had become wet during his walk, and was crimped like a spaniel’s buttocks. In one hand he grasped a stained jacket, flung haphazard over one shoulder. In the other he held a small object. Monna Alessandra said, “Hah! And what is that?”
Nicholas looked at her fondly. He turned the same smiling gaze towards Julius and Tobie, lingering only on the bead of blood standing on one of Julius’s ears. Julius’s scalp moved in annoyance. Returning his gaze to his hostess, Nicholas held up to the object in question. It was very small, hardly two inches across, and shaped like two mushroom heads stuck together. “This?” he said. “It’s a plaything. I made it. After my lord Cosimo has seen it, I’ll show it to you.”
Tobie and Julius gazed at him. Only Monna Alessandra took action. “You are stupid,” she said. She walked forward, plucked the object from his hand and, crossing the room, thrust the toy into the brazier. It burst into flame. “Playthings are for children,” she said. “You are an infant no longer. You are responsible. To your wife. To your company. To your colleagues. If they will not tell you, I shall. You will now clean yourself and your clothes and take the advice of your elders, or you will disgrace us all at the Palazzo. Do I wish the Republic to know that I have taken cretins into my home?”
Julius, mesmerised, gazed at the woman. Tobie preferred to watch Nicholas. He saw a single flicker of movement, then nothing more. Nicholas stood where he was, his gaze on the place where the little toy burned. It had, one supposed, taken some trouble to make. He had fashioned it, paring, shaping and buffing the wood, while holding that series of talks, as their representative, in the hilltop cloisters of the Franciscans. The Friars had not reproved him. He had joked, of course, about showing it to the Medici. In Bruges, he had liked to make playthings and puzzles.
Julius said, “Where have you been? The lord Cosimo has sent for us. You look disgusting.”
“I know,” said Nicholas. “But I’ve just found out I’m going to make a fortune. Say I’m beautiful.”
Monna Alessandra stared at him, frowning.
“You’re beautiful,” said Tobie quickly.
“Ravishing,” agreed Julius, staring also. “How?”
“By impressing the lord Cosimo de’ Medici with our honesty, worth and acumen, which he is already inclined to credit us with, from the mere fact that we lodge with Monna Alessandra. Madonna, you are perfectly right. I shall dress. I shall be responsible. I shall listen to the wise heads around me. Has anyone cut Tobie’s hair?”
“Find it,” said Julius, “and I’ll cut it. That extraordinary woman said we could make a fortune. So you believe her now?”
“What extraordinary woman?” said Monna Alessandra with some sharpness.
Julius, pulled up short, had the sense to answer carefully. “A lady from the Levant. Nicholas and his wife met her in Bruges. They valued her interest, of course, but we don’t expect to see her again.”
Tobie had forgotten the lady in Bruges. Optimism possessed him. Toys. Toys for the pillow. He turned his back on his hostess and lowered a lascivious gaze upon Julius. “Don’t we? By God, don’t we?” he said.
Attended by two servants in Charetty blue jackets, Julius and Tobie walked to the palace of the Medici, one on each side of Nicholas.
There was no need to ride. Florence was a town you could cross from side to side in twenty minutes, using the butchers’ bridge over the Arno. Tobie, a native of northern Italy, was accustomed to Florentine fripperies and strode between stone and marble, bronze and ironwork, like a dog going home to his dinner. His attention, as in every city, was solely drawn to the skin, the limbs, the gums, the lids of the people he passed. Some, resenting his stare, spat in his wake, upon which he was quite likely to turn back and examine the sputum, which annoyed them even more.
Julius, trained in Bologna, looked about him with pangs of nostalgia. Throughout his time of rebellious exile he had tried to forget the things Italian money could do; the skills it could buy. But even in five years Florence had changed; become richer. Between the hill-mounting walls there were churches and towers and piazzas, gardens and loggias and galleries, doors like carpets and ribbons of arcaded windows. There were statues and shrines, fountains and cloisters. The market booths and their awnings were laid out like pigment on parchment. And through the city, the swift, yellow river. And about it, the pastures and the comfortable shapes of the hills.
Florence was smaller than Venice, although it was bigger than London. Venice (Julius had never been there) had long since lined its canals with the mansions of merchants made rich by carrying goods to the East.
Florence was rich as well, but from making and selling particular goods of its own—silk and fine woollen cloth and gilded leathers. And, of course, there was the income from banking. In the Old Market in summer, they said, you could count seventy-two bankers and bill-brokers seated behind their baize tables.
Somewhere in Florence was the branch bank of the Medici, just as there were branch banks of the Medici in Bruges and Milan and Venice, Geneva, London and Rome. They were managed by trusted families whose sons and nephews followed one another, selected by Cosimo de’ Medici, the head of the company. Cosimo’s home, where they were heading, in the Via Larga, was not a branch of anything: it was the centre of Florence, where all the real business of the Medici was done. In the large house lived Cosimo and his wife and his sons and his grandchildren. Pierfrancesco his nephew stayed in the next dwelling. And as well as his household staff Cosimo entertained all the famous who visited Florence: gave permanent beds to the representatives of the Pope or the Duke of Milan; kept his records and dictated his letters to the clerks of his chancery. For although he claimed to be a private citizen within an elected republic, Cosimo de’ Medici was Florence.
Built straight on to the street, the Medici palace was monumentally square, with corbelled eaves wide enough to shelter the foot of its walls, where the servant benches were fitted. The two storeys were faced with rough-bevelled stone blocks painted in red, white and green, and the private apartments of the upper floor were lit by ten thin-pillared windows. Julius, looking up, said, “Five thousand florins. That’s what they say it’s been valued at. Five thousand florins for one house.”