Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [227]
Gelis gave Tobie wine, and he pulled off his cap, so that the weak pink light glowed on his scalp and his short, kittenish mouth and curled nostrils. He did not look like the army surgeon of the Duke of Urbino, accustomed to wielding his saw and mallet and knife in the great bloody tents that followed the cannon. He said, prosaically, ‘So what is wrong? Jodi? If it is about Jodi, you would be better with Clémence.’
But he listened, and at the end said, ‘No. You were right. This is not about Jodi, it is about Nicholas.’
‘It is about them both,’ Gelis said. ‘As he grows, Jodi will deserve some explanation. I don’t wish him to turn against Nicholas. But Nicholas doesn’t write, except about business.’ It was true. Part of the core of me. It was untrue.
‘Because he has decided on a clean break from all except business. I happen to think he is right. Are you asking whether you should take Jodi and go to him?’
‘Without being invited?’ Gelis said.
Tobie looked at her. ‘Are you thinking of yourself, or of him? If you have convinced yourself that he wants you or needs you, then go. I suppose you can afford an armed troop to protect you. But don’t take Jodi with you. After all that has happened, that child needs to step into a home, not a trial marriage.’
She said, ‘I couldn’t leave Jodi.’
‘Anna wanted you to go,’ Tobie said. ‘Anna was desperate for you to go, after we had been to Montello.’
‘It was Anna who sent us to Montello,’ Gelis said.
‘She wanted to help Nicholas, and us. We might have proved his legitimacy. She didn’t know the outcome would oppress him.’
‘She gave him Jodi’s poem,’ Gelis said. ‘She’s good for him, but she isn’t as perceptive as Kathi. If he can’t come back, and if it’s not certain whether I could, or would, or should join him, it would be kinder to let him forget. She should allow him time to make his own choice, and send to tell me himself. She is simply causing hurt, otherwise.’
There was a silence. Her heart beat. Tobie said, ‘I want to say something. Since Julius left, you must have exchanged messages with his company. Friczo Straube in Thorn. The agents in Augsburg and Cologne. When you were with him, they did well. What is the state of his business now?’
She was silent.
Tobie said, ‘You don’t want to say it, because Julius proved himself a good manager both here and in Venice. But we know Anna brought him no money. Perhaps she burdened him with considerable debts. And the company obviously hasn’t recovered, although he has been too proud or too vain to tell us. Anna must have had great hopes of the African gold when Kathi told her about it. And Julius thought it important enough to abandon his office to juniors and join her in Caffa. It was a rash thing to do, unless he was fairly sure that Nicholas would use the gold to help him.’
Gelis drew a deep breath. She kept her voice steady, because it was so important and she was so glad it was in the open.
‘Everyone thought it was coming to Caffa last autumn,’ she said. ‘But it didn’t. Nicholas knew, as late as last November, that it was still buried in Cyprus. By January it had gone, but it couldn’t have reached the Crimea through the winter. If Ochoa dug it up, everyone would have to wait until the spring.’
‘Ochoa didn’t dig it up,’ Tobie said. ‘A Hanse ship is just in, with some Genoese merchants. They all rushed to their quarter as if reporting the plague, but I heard some waterfront gossip. Everyone knows Ochoa de Marchena. They said the Genoese captured him during the winter, and he was killed trying to escape. There was no mention of gold. And that was in February.’
‘Poor, silly Ochoa,’ Gelis said. ‘So David