Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [151]
His reasons, Nicholas supposed, were to be found in the only words of advice that the letter contained.
Why feel bitter? Life is unfair. People are often unfair. You and I were born with certain advantages. One does not waste time, then, on resentment. As your wife and your doctor will tell you, I live in peace with a friend, and consider the ambiguities of the world, and make music. You and I did not meet, and I am sorry. But I am content. Should you not be, also?
Then had slipped from the pages the first and last gifts his grandfather had sent him, A sheet of music, minutely ciphered, of a sort he had never heard in his life. And a page of delicate gibberish: a puzzle. Speechless, paralysed, discounted by his carers as senile, Thibault de Fleury had lain thinking, devising, conjecturing for half his days. And when the demons retreated, he had called up his talents and burnished them, and set them out to garnish his last years.
Nicholas put out the light, and lay looking up into darkness. It was too late, by now, for him to meet Thibault in life, whatever haste he might have made earlier. It was even possible that Thibault had not wanted a meeting. But Nicholas knew that when he came to untangle the puzzle, to track the music, phrase by phrase, with his voice, he would wish that he could imagine his grandfather there, his face critical, pained, full of exasperation for sure, but not without — perhaps not without some trace of approval.
But he could not imagine it, for he had not seen his grandfather’s face. Gelis had.
Chapter 21
THESE DAYS, when Gelis van Borselen moved, the trading world noticed. By the end of July, it was known that she was leaving Venice for the Bank’s house in Bruges, taking her child and the company physician, and an escort of exceptional strength. She crossed the Alps in fine weather, and made, at a leisurely pace, directly for Bruges, where she arrived at the end of September. It was, of course, a mark of the power of her Bank that safe conducts should be so readily procurable at a time of unease. It was interesting that, having invested heavily and operated successfully with the Venetian branch, the Lady should now, it appeared, be showing a similar interest in the Bruges-Antwerp company.
Meanwhile, of course, her estranged husband was moving through Europe as aide to the Patriarch of Antioch, which might bring in healthy new business, even though de Fleury had officially withdrawn from the Bank. There had been no scandal over his departure, other than the usual marital nonsense. His colleagues had been upset, it was clear, but there had been no hint of malpractice or fraud. He might even come back.
The merchant world approved of Gelis van Borselen.
THE BANK IN BRUGES was not quite so sure. Rooms were set aside for her in the Bank’s great range of buildings in Spangnaerts Street — the apartments that Nicholas had used when he stayed. A party of honour was arranged to ride out and meet her. No one spoke very much. Ever since Nicholas left, having exhausted the Bank to further his private vendetta in Scotland, they had avoided talking of him, except to maintain the fiction which explained his departure, or to curse the death by neglect of some little project he had kept to himself. Then Gelis had pushed into the business, and had silenced them by proving her reliability as well as her management skills.
Which was good, the Venice branch seemed to think. Diniz, now controlling the Flemish side he had once managed for Nicholas, had been inclined to agree, until his wife and her sister had expressed their opinion. ‘Of course Gelis is working from morning till night, amassing valuable friends, gaining credence. This is what she wanted, isn’t it? Nicholas is out of the way, and she is proving that she is better than he was. Wait. She’ll buy it all back — Venice, Bruges, Cologne, Scotland. Then she’ll laugh at him.