Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [52]
The square was excessively crowded. A fish market was in full cry at one corner, and a spate of hammering from the centre indicated that a podium for something — an execution, perhaps — was being erected before the Burgh Halls. Dogs barked, children screamed, seagulls shrieked overhead and, at the top of a fine flight of steps, the Straube door opened, and Julius stood in the entrance. ‘I saw you coming,’ Julius said. ‘It was either you or the Archbishop of Gniezno. Is that your man? Tell him the stable’s round at the back, and come up. You’re not staying anywhere else. I can’t wait. I want to hear everything.’
He looked the same: the vigour, the bonhomie, the bronzed, classical head with its oblique eyes. Nicholas would have thought him alone but for the scent, which he remembered from Bruges, from Augsburg, from Trèves. Anna, the blackhaired Anna of his dreams, leaned there, behind Julius, studying him.
‘You have been fighting,’ she said. ‘You arrogant man, when will you learn? Oh, come in, come in. I see we shall have to find someone to look after you.’
HIS CHAMBER, high at the back, overlooked the garden and was normally in use as a storeroom: it was only through Julius that he had obtained it. Straube’s house was crowded with visitors, and the welcoming meal had been served convivially below, with little chance to do more than exchange gossip. In any case, Nicholas was no longer a client, and Straube believed what he had been told: that having established his Bank, de Fleury had withdrawn his share and departed to enjoy it. Throughout the meal (a calf’s head with a full set of teeth) Straube could be seen eyeing Nicholas. Behind the disapproval lurked a flickering hope. Julius might run a business well enough, but de Fleury had created an empire; and with the right agent, might do so again.
His thoughts were easy to read, and to ignore. You couldn’t ignore Julius and Anna, interrogating Nicholas in their private room later. Not that Anna pressed him for answers. Anna sat still in her plain, fine-seamed gown without jewels, her hair veiled, her grape-coloured eyes moving from himself to her husband. Her second husband. Bachelor Julius had met this young widowed Countess and entered upon passionate marriage just over a year ago, long after his friends had despaired of him. Nicholas, nine years his junior, might boast that he walked off and founded a bank. But Julius of Bologna was happily married.
Julius also knew far, far too much, and was bursting, as ever, with joyous and indiscreet malice. ‘What a bloody fool you were, Nicholas! But only the company knows, and the Adornes, and they’re too pious to go back on a promise. You do have the devil’s own luck. I heard all the Scots merchants in Danzig were fawning over you, and you sent them a barrel of ale. I hope they thanked you.’
‘They couldn’t speak,’ Nicholas said. He had expected this, and so dealt with it.
‘Well, I hope they made the most of it. Although you look prosperous enough. I’m surprised. Laid hands on your African gold? Or got something else salted away?’
‘How did you know?’ Nicholas said. Neither guess was correct. The gold in question had been waylaid by the Knights of St John, who still had it, or believed that they did. And he had nothing now salted away, barring the money that guarded his son and his wife. But very few knew about that: least of all his son and his wife.
‘All the same,’ Julius said. ‘You’ve had a winter to play. Funds won’t last for ever. Here’s something I wanted to put to you.’
Nicholas half listened to what followed, since he could have guessed most of it. He was being offered, of course, a share in Julius’s branch of the Banco di Niccolò, refounded as a Polish-Imperial company. The capital would be put up by Julius and Anna; Nicholas would bring his experience and the goodwill of the Emperor Frederick. Nicholas ought to face the plain fact that men would speak out if he worked in the West, while Julius didn’t mind what he had done.
Nicholas wondered how much money Anna had. Julius would have some, of course. After his