Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [100]
The lawyer said something. He looked disturbed. They were moving to the door, all three of them, when it creaked and hopped open. Caterino Zeno looked down to meet the penetrating grey gaze of a brown-haired child of about six who stood, one hand upstretched to the latch, the other clutching a paper. ‘Ah,’ said Caterino Zeno paternally. ‘So this is the young lord your son. How like his father he is!’
The child, its regard switched to its mother, said nothing. It was the mother who surprisingly knelt, and put her arm round the boy and said, ‘Here is a visitor, Jodi. No, it is not Papa, but you will make your best bow to him.’ And after a tremulous moment, the child Jodi obeyed, and the Venetian envoy to Uzum Hasan was able, gravely, to leave.
‘Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!’ said the staid Gregorio wildly as soon as he had gone.
‘We shall get the truth from Bruges,’ Gelis said. ‘That was not the truth.’ But the boy looked up at her face, his own crimsoning, for the arm that gripped him was trembling.
IT WAS TRUE that the Burgundian Mission had been recalled, for the news was all over the Rialto next day, mixed with the latest reports of the Duke of Burgundy’s political and military blunders on the borders of Germany. There was enough to perturb the money markets, without paying attention, as yet, to the rumour that the German version of the Casa di Niccolò had lost its director: opinion had it that the company would continue under the widow, or amalgamate with Antwerp or Bruges. Gregorio spent the morning in conference with his officials, discussing what precautions to take and drafting communications to Diniz and Moriz and Govaerts in Flanders, for although the branches might now be separate, they were not rivals. Information was the lifeblood of banks, and the wider network, on which Gregorio depended, was managed by Gelis. Today she had remained in her room and, although he missed her, he did not send to hurry her, for he shared some of her helpless anger, mixed with distress. Julius was dead — the infuriating, life-loving colleague and friend who had run the Venice Bank for so long, and who had found in Germany autonomy and a happy marriage at last. And all they had found intolerable in Nicholas was now miserably reinforced by this news. For even though much of what Zeno said might be untrue, the picture he had painted of Nicholas in tribulation was painfully accurate. They had seen it happen before.
Then, at noon, when Margot came in and they broke off, gladly, to think about dinner, the courier had come to the landing-station with his satchel from Danzig, in which, brought by expensive relay, there was a letter from Katelijne Sersanders addressed to the lady of Beltrees.
Gregorio had taken it, and then, after thought, had asked Dr Tobie if he would deliver it to Nicholas’s wife in her room. For this, sent before Kathi left Danzig, would surely contain for Gelis’s eye the true account of what had happened in Poland. And Tobie, to whom his young Kathi was dear, was the best person to be at hand to interpret it. Also, he was a physician.
He was away for a long time. The household ate, with Margot, subdued, at the head of the table and Gregorio at its foot. The low, sensible voice of the nurse conversing with Jodi filled the spaces between the stilted talk of the clerks, and the nervous scraping of platters. Then, suddenly, Gelis came in, and the men raggedly stood, while Mistress Clémence finished what she was saying, her voice placid, her eyes on the doctor.
Gelis looked at them all. She had