Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [117]
Meeting, ruefully, Anna’s benign eye the following morning, he had temperately agreed to remain for a further night in the Archbishop’s company, and because he stayed sober this time, kept a very clear recollection of the discussion and the course it had taken. They had placed in his hands — he had turned the pages of — an exquisite copy of the De Republica; and for the first time in his life, he had desired to be rich in order to own such a thing. But, of course, it was not for sale, and he had nowhere to keep it, even if it had been. They embraced him when he and Anna departed, accompanied by a small escort to take them on the next stage of their journey. He felt a little dazed, a little silent and, had he been honest, even more deeply confused.
Anna had left him alone until the first rest for the horses, when the party settled under the trees, and she came to spread her skirts at his side and eat melon. Her eyes smiled above her wet chin. ‘So you have theories, but must be drunk to express them.’
‘Drunk, mad or stupid,’ Nicholas said. ‘I thought I’d grown out of all that.’
‘Of course,’ Anna said, ‘you may be above it. Or perhaps it’s really the opposite: you missed it all when you were young, and didn’t know how good you were. But now you do.’
‘That’s fine. So I’m happy,’ said Nicholas. ‘And I don’t need to do it again.’
Anna completed her pacific munching and wiped her chin. ‘You’re not happy,’ she said. ‘Because you have a picture of yourself and your life that doesn’t fit in with the world of ideas. You’re afraid of religion and music because you think you’d have to give up horseplay and plotting.’
‘Well, exactly. No contest,’ said Nicholas reasonably. He stood, and leaned to help her to her feet. ‘So what would you do if I retired to my cave with a begging-bowl? You wouldn’t come to visit me.’
‘That would depend,’ Anna said, ‘on how full the begging-bowl was.’ But when he raised his eyebrows, she laughed. ‘You don’t understand? Never mind. I shall explain it all to you one day.’
She said no more after that, and they resumed riding very soon. Thinking about it, he recognised the truth in much of what she had said. However unregulated he might appear, he was not blind to the inconsistencies of his own character, or the circumstances which had created them. He did not, however, propose to offer himself for dissection, any more than he was anxious to offer his theories. It suited him that they rode in amicable silence from station to station of this journey, although she poured her energy, as he did, into all that was necessary for its success, and sustained without complaint the disappointments and hazards that did not fail to occur.
They were following in the footsteps of Ludovico da Bologna and his party, but so far had not overtaken them. The organisation of the expedition fell to Nicholas, but it owed much to Anna as well that a demanding company and its servants would arrive in good heart at the end of a stressful day’s journey. It was not surprising, therefore, that she chose to spend the evenings of such days in well-earned seclusion, with only Brygidy her maid to be soothed and encouraged. Intentionally or not, it freed Nicholas to spend those leisure hours as he wished, carousing of course, with his fellow merchants in this tavern or that, but also straying to where his curiosity led him, from the booths of the Armenian artisans in Lemberg to the rocky fortifications of Kamenets.
He fell into conversation, too, with families taking the air and men playing at board games or arguing over their ale; and he compared what they said with the gossip he absorbed every day from his fellow travellers. Also, he stopped whenever he found someone at work in the mellow sunlight of evening, and sat beside them and talked. Often, weavers