Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [106]
‘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