Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [55]
‘No, but their employees might,’ Diniz said. ‘And the said rich merchants won’t stop them. Tommaso Portinari is in there, complaining with the best. The Duke died owing the Medici Bank six thousand groats.’
‘Stupid Tommaso,’ Gelis said. ‘But it must have been good while it lasted. If Tommaso breaks your windows, I’ll send someone to spit on all the oils of himself that he commissioned.’
‘You couldn’t even count them, never mind spit on them,’ said Diniz. ‘Damn!’
She also had heard it. Breaking glass. Painted glass, expensive as painted gold. ‘It wasn’t Tommaso,’ said Diniz, beginning to move, ‘but I’d better find out.’
Gelis went to the counting-house, then to the kitchens, then went to Tilde’s rooms and found Clémence and Jodi with Diniz’s wife. Gelis said, as she’d said to everyone else, ‘It isn’t personal, Tilde. We represent a rich business that won’t be worried by competition with the Franc, and they resent it: it’s as simple as that.’
‘I’d feel safer with something more logical,’ Tilde said. ‘Some day they won’t let Anselm Adorne calm them down. They’ll get their pikes out and start wrecking in earnest.’
There was another crash. Jodi looked from one face to the other. He said, ‘Papa will save us.’
Clémence said, ‘I’m sure he would, if we needed saving. But that’s just window-glass breaking, not us. And the door is barred. No one can get in.’
It was true. It would also be true of Kathi, behind the high walls of the Hôtel Jerusalem, well away from the centre of town. But other houses were less well protected.
Diniz came in. ‘Good news. Adorne sent to Gruuthuse last night, and he’s bringing an armed troop from Ghent.’
Tilde said, ‘Won’t that make it worse? If they feel they’re being rounded up before being given a hearing?’
‘He knows the dangers,’ Diniz said. ‘Adorne does understand his people, and they respect him. All it needs is some face-saving. An excuse to stop the violence and talk.’
When he left the room, Gelis went with him. It would be dark by late afternoon. If the unrest lasted longer, they would keep all the staff overnight. There was food, and bedding of sorts. She wished that Andreas was with them, a wise man as well as a doctor, but he was somewhere in battle-torn France, called to the side of some friend in distress. Dr Tobie, Clémence’s husband, was in Nancy. It didn’t matter. They were hardly going to need doctors.
She listened. Now the noise from the south was coming in waves, suggesting single voices followed by massed shouting. Diniz said, ‘Adorne’s troops and Breydel are at the Grand’ Place, protecting the way into the Burg. Look, I’ll have to go and help. Don’t tell Tilde.’
The Burg was the Duke’s territory. A fortified square, washed on two sides by the river, it held the prison known as the Steen. Also the Hôtel de Ville, the Duke’s collegiate church of St Donatien, and the elaborate, defenceless town hall of the Franc.
The prison held prisoners, ripe for releasing by compliant jailers. The Hôtel de Ville held the burgomasters and magistrates of Bruges, including those appointed by the late Duke. The church of St Donatien, although bearing the ducal arms on its doors, had yet objected so strongly to paying the last lot of ducal war taxes that half its canons had ended up in the Steen. And, finally, the Palais du Franc was a sitting target to everyone.
Gelis said, ‘Diniz, one man won’t do much for those odds.’ Clémence had quietly joined them.
‘If they break through, no one can stop them,’ Diniz said. ‘Or not until Gruuthuse comes. But if they can’t break through, they’ll try something else. The arsenals. The Belfry—it’s got the town seals. The houses of men from the Franc. I can take some men and reinforce the worst places, or get people out.’
‘They don’t know Gruuthuse is coming?’ Gelis said. ‘It might even stop them. Or—Who holds the keys to the gates? Adorne and the other captains, I suppose.’ There were five miles of ramparts and nine gates into Bruges, each with its drawbridge and portcullis, and some with a depot of arms. The Ghent Gate,