Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [200]
Govaerts went early to bed; Moriz didn’t come; and Julius and Claes, the ex-company notary and the former apprentice he sometimes felt he brought up, drank until nearly daylight.
Next morning, Nicholas found Julius already out, fulfilling his business commitments. He would be free and home, Govaerts said, at midday. Father Moriz had been detained overnight, but hearing that Nicholas had come, had sent a note for him early that morning.
‘You know what is in it?’ Nicholas said.
‘The superscription invited me to read it. As you see, Fra Moriz hopes you will join him. You would be back before noon.’
‘Then I shall go. But first, perhaps you and I should have a talk also?’ Nicholas said; and was glad he had, when he saw the man flush. It had been difficult, here in Cologne. He had not realised how difficult.
COLONIA, THAT GREAT Roman city, was a place for fine churches. Besides its Cathedral, church after church, monastery after monastery had brought its grace here, and had been nurtured by many nations. The Irish monks of Cologne were known the world over.
So were the Franciscans, and especially that severe sect called the Observatines, the particular favourites of Mary of Guelders, who had sailed to Scotland with Louis de Gruuthuse and Henry van Borselen, and married its King, and given birth to five living children, among whom were James, the present King, and the Duke of Albany, his rebellious brother. It was Sandy’s royal mother who had brought the Observatine Franciscans from Cologne to Edinburgh, from where they had now spread to Aberdeen, under the devoted sponsorship of Bishop Spens. It was to the house of the Observatines in Cologne that Nicholas walked now, to be admitted and shown to a guest-room in which were two men. One, springing up on his horseman’s legs, short and plain as a dwarf, was Father Moriz. The other he had last seen in Moscow.
‘Father Ludovico,’ he said.
‘Deference!’ said Ludovico da Bologna, Patriarch of Antioch. ‘Is one of us dying? There is nothing wrong with me, so far as I know, but a few bruises and a surfeit of Prosper de Camulio. Did you see him?’
‘No. He’d gone before I came,’ Nicholas said. He smiled at Father Moriz, who had risen from beside the Patriarch’s bed.
‘Didn’t want to talk about the late David his Procurator. Did he really try to kill the King and his brothers?’
‘He was careless with poison,’ Nicholas said. ‘And deserved all he got. So, how bruised? By the Empress Zoe, when you told her you were leaving Moscow? By the toe of her shoe?’ He sat down where Moriz had been.
‘He was set upon,’ Moriz said. ‘Nothing sinister, just ordinary robbers.’
‘You don’t look rich,’ said Nicholas critically. He eyed the Patriarch, who looked as hairy, as unkempt and as poverty-stricken on the pillows as he had ever been from the first time they had met and quarrelled with each other nearly twenty years earlier in Florence.
‘They wanted the mule. So you have given up Burgundy in favour of Bordeaux, my fine Nicholas?’
‘Well, not at least in favour of Porretta,’ Nicholas said. He hadn’t meant to talk about Milan. Faced with the most single-minded man he had ever known, he couldn’t help it. Uzum Hasan was dead, Cyprus was in Venetian hands, Caffa had been overrun by the Turks and the Tartars, Muscovy remained resolutely Greek in its faith and—the final blow—Venice had made peace with Turkey, thereby wrecking Ludovico da Bologna’s life’s mission: to remove the Muslim menace from the Latin communities of the East. And what was the Patriarch doing but quartering Europe in the name of a petty feud by the head of the Latin Christian church against Latin Christian Milan. It was to be expected of Camulio. But the Patriarch?
Except,