Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [270]
‘You’ve had an audience, too,’ Nicholas said. ‘But why? You didn’t expect to be leaving?’
‘I suddenly realised,’ Acciajuoli said, ‘that I was about to experience another winter in Moscow, and all the pretty boys had grown up. You are not going to travel through Novgorod?’
‘It wouldn’t be much use for Florence,’ Nicholas said. ‘No. I’m on the road for Viazma and Smolensk. Informed advice from the stables. And after that, the fastest way to Bruges. Will some of that suit you?’
‘Perhaps all of it,’ said the Greek. ‘I shouldn’t mind meeting your wife once again. I have always enjoyed meeting your wives.’
Stupidly, Nicholas saw in this nothing suspicious. His thoughts were occupied with the town he had just left, and the people in it; and after that, with the terminus of his journey. He had never set his mind, methodically, to thinking about Nicholai de’ Acciajuoli, from the moment seventeen years before when that capricious, one-legged nobleman had appeared on the wharfside at Damme, fatally, at the same moment as Simon de St Pol and Gelis’s sister.
It did not occur to Nicholas, then, that by wives, the Greek meant also lovers, and that among these had been Violante, the mother of the catamite Nerio. Violante, of the exotic family which had produced the first of those crystallised sweets which had failed to cause his death in Cairo, but might have done so in Soldaia had he not recognised them. Because of Acciajuoli, he had been bewitched by those secrets of trade that had sent him to Trebizond, and later kept him in Cyprus, where Acciajuoli’s brother had tried to get rid of both him and young Diniz. Cyprus, where Nicholas had first met David de Salmeton.
The first day’s ride out of Moscow was a long one, and open ground and uninterrupted sunshine were soon left behind them as they entered the forests, bumping their way along wide, uneven tracks, across log bridges and causeways and into occasional clearings where the charcoal-burners and beekeepers lived; and where you would find sometimes the huddled timber shacks of a village, the cabins made up of whole peeled trunks outside and shaved wood within. Better far, in cruel frost and searching sun, than sweating brick, the Muscovites said. And Fioravanti, if pushed, would sometimes agree with them.
Nicholas had no desire for much conversation, but the Greek was a tactful companion, discoursing agreeably on innocuous topics spiced with occasional scandal, and insisting on paying the casual expenses of the journey, from the roubles for tolls to the den’gi he tossed to the boy who brought sour milk from a cottage. He was, it was apparent, of considerable wealth, and did not mind displaying it.
He did not mind, either, admitting to the infirmities of age, although he took his rest in the wagon, after refreshment, with a sighing deprecation, and did not do more than shift in the saddle occasionally when his leg started to pain him. It did not augur well for the speed of the journey; but for the moment Nicholas set the problem aside and suggested that they stop short of their chosen destination, and sleep in the open, rather than on infested straw in the village. They were debating this still when the wheel came off the wagon, and the question was resolved. Nicholas, man of utility, dismounted and settled to mend it, while Acciajuoli rode ahead with his servants to discover the village and send back whatever materials the repairs might require. He left the guide, since he was familiar, he said, with the way, and Nicholas kept the servant he had hired for the journey.
It was as well, for the servant was willing to strip