Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [293]
In the light from the window in Nicholas’s room, it could be seen that time had passed. Nerio was twenty-four now, his skin coarsened beneath the light paint, his eyes anxious under the languor. He came in, none the less, like a courtesan, and, clasping his hand, stretched to kiss Nicholas lasciviously on the cheek. ‘My dear! No more a banker! A scarred and beautiful giant, bruised by Fate, striding relentlessly onwards!’
He drew away, with his triangular smile, and then glanced down, for Nicholas still held his hand. ‘I am sorry,’ Nicholas said.
‘Why?’ said the boy. But the paint stood out on his cheeks.
Nicholas said, ‘Your father is dead.’
It was like breaking the news to a girl, you might say, except that Nicholas had seen bearded men sit weeping like this, mewing in the extremity of their distress as the story unfolded. He had kept a flask of something strong for the time when it ended, but the boy crouched on his seat and did not touch it. Nicholas sat not far away, and said nothing until the sobs died, and Nerio lifted his head from his fingers. Nerio said, ‘He would be here but for you.’
‘I didn’t ask him. I didn’t know,’ Nicholas said.
The immense, drowning eyes were full of anger. ‘Why you, and not me?’
‘Both of us,’ Nicholas said. ‘Whatever he believed was to happen, you have a role. He told me.’
‘But without him,’ Nerio said.
‘Would you have him live on in pain?’ Nicholas paused. ‘I told you that he had left all the gold he had hidden for you.’
The lead-heavy wood had cost him something to bring across Europe, but Nerio lifted it in both hands and flung it from one side of the room to the other. A joint gave, and a few coins spun and settled. ‘Do you think that I care?’ Nerio said.
But when Nicholas pressed the cup again in his hands and, leaving him, went to empty the gold into the box he had prepared for it, Nerio did not protest; and he lifted the treasure when, as he left, Nicholas gave it him.
It seemed that that would be all. But at the last moment Nerio had thrust back, and taking up that sophisticated, elegant leg had carried it off, graceful as Hermes, in the curve of his arm.
IN A SMALL HOUSE in Ghent, Julius of Bologna had become reconciled with his wife after a period of unusual friction. With Nicholas dead, and Gelis for the moment inaccessible, Julius was inclined to see little point in remaining in Ghent, spending money, when he should be taking command of his business elsewhere. He had wanted to move immediately to Bruges, and then to Cologne, but Anna persuaded him to wait for a little. She still had hopes of talking to Gelis. The future of Bonne was at stake.
He agreed, against his will. He assumed he might at least visit Spangnaerts Street, but she broke into uncharacteristic tears at the prospect, and he did not speak of it again. He did not tell her that he had tried to arrange a visit regardless, but had learned that both the Bank’s officers would be away. He wrote to them instead: questions about the present state of the German business; a long account of the trade openings he had created in Caffa (before it fell), Poland and Muscovy. He mentioned Nicholas once, in connection with Tabriz, and once more to ask about a tale that Ambrogio Contarini’s chaplain had seen him alive. He had not so far received an answer.
After two weeks of it, Anna’s firmness of attitude, not for the first time, began to vex him. He knew a fair number of people in Ghent, but she seemed unwilling to entertain them, although she had little else to do. He began to wonder whether the separate couch, the abstraction, the uncertain moods were all truly due to the effects of her injury. He wondered if, in some unthinkable way, she missed Nicholas. And one day, rashly, he asked her.
Afterwards, he went out into the cold of the garden, and sat and retched. She had not troubled to give him a direct answer. She had simply narrated, movement by movement, the process