Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [107]
Then the porter broke into his thoughts, returning with an authoritative figure in white who gazed with disdain at Gelis, and, addressing himself to Tobie’s dust-laden physician’s gown, hood and cap, imparted, in Latin, a lofty dismissal.
Gelis said, ‘Say how surprised we are, considering the hospitality he has just clearly proffered to the suffering and the needy. Ask how many came for alms today.’
Tobie asked, and relayed the answer. His Pavian Latin was better than the Procurator’s. ‘Five hundred. He finds it hard to believe that we are needy. They do not have travellers’ quarters or a hospice. They are a silent order.’
‘We know that, of course. We had hoped,’ Gelis said, ‘that the Prior would extend to us the same kindness he showed three years ago to our friend the Duke of Burgundy’s eminent councillor, and benefactor of your order, my lord Anselm Adorne, Baron Cortachy. His brother was, we believe, a religious here.’
She had spoken directly, this time, to the Procurator, in the same French-Latin as his own. The Procurator looked from her to the doctor and back. Then he said, ‘Exceptions were made. I am sorry.’ The belligerence had faded a little.
‘It is impossible even to admit a single physician?’ Tobie said. ‘Would you have turned away my late uncle Giammatteo Ferrari?’
He did not often invoke his famous late uncle, with whom he had not seen eye to eye. He was all the more surprised when Gelis broke in, disrupting his strategy. ‘I am sure you would find Dr Tobias professionally helpful. But I myself wish to speak to the Prior. We request admission for three: Dr Tobias, myself and my colleague.’
Tobie gazed at her and then stared, as did the Procurator, at the sturdy, liveried form of her servant. The Procurator said, in a tone of finality, ‘In that case, madame, I am afraid there is no question of entering.’
‘To discuss certain matters of forestry,’ Gelis serenely continued, ‘of particular concern to ourselves, as officials of the Casa di Niccolò. And of even more concern to my companion, as representing the Lords and Commissioners of the Arsenal, reporting to the Council of Ten.’
There was a silence. The Procurator said, ‘I have misunderstood. I am sorry. Perhaps the two gentlemen and the lady would be kind enough to come in?’
Waiting, wild-eyed, before Christ Crucified in a spartan reception-room, Tobie addressed Gelis under his breath on the subject of her cheerfully insouciant companion. ‘He’s the Bank’s head carpenter! He doesn’t come from the Arsenal!’
‘He did. He used to examine their trees,’ Gelis said. ‘Montello is one of the Arsenal’s principal forests. If this is mismanaged, Venice can’t get the timber she needs for her ships. Sit and watch this.’ Then the door opened, and the Prior of the monastery entered.
Tobie’s heart bled for him before the interview had lasted five minutes. Tobie thought he knew Gelis. He had forgotten how much she had picked up from Nicholas. He had forgotten how alike she and Nicholas were, in many ways. With seductive calm and pitiless logic, the lady of Beltrees, partner in the Venetian Bank of Ca’ Niccolò, detailed for the Prior, with the help of her timber adviser, all the transgressions of the monastery of the Blessed Virgin and St Jerome, situated in the Arsenal’s forest of Bosco del Montello. Charcoal-burners admitted? Sheep and cattle permitted to pasture? An absence of ditching; a patent neglect of the requirements of thinning, trimming and sealing; the evidence of flooding caused by the unwise admission of mill-dams? And if, as would be freely admitted, much of this was the responsibility of the commune, what of the ravages of five hundred pilgrims, allowed to traverse the forest when coming for alms, and departing, if the eye were to be believed, with something of far greater value? How much prime ship’s timber