Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [102]
Louvain? Oh. Well. What did Claes want to know? Oh yes: his mother was there just now. Well, she spent half her time there. My God, the new manager there was a handful. It was like listening to Goliath and David, his mother and that fellow standing up to one another. Bark, bark. Yap, yap. No. He was wrong. Goliath and God-damned Goliath. Felix couldn’t imitate them as well as Claes could. It would make John and Anselm and the rest spew up into their beer. They went to a new tavern now: they’d fallen out with the old fool at the other one. That was after the explosion.
“What explosion?” said Claes tenderly.
But Felix had veered off the subject again. Felix always resisted direction. He had, however, drunk quite a lot and, before too long, was steered back, mildly aggravated. The explosion. What about it? Numbskull incompetence, as was usual. One of the dyevats went up like a cannonball, shattering the suction pump and cracking the sewage pipe and losing a whole list of cloth and a boiling of crimson. It had taken a week to replace everything, and his mother had foamed at the mouth for a fortnight. Useless idlers! They deserved all they’d got.
“What did they get?” Claes asked.
“Red faces,” said Felix adroitly. He made a space for the laugh. “Ernout was worst – remember that idiot? The others lost a few yards of skin here and there, but that’s nothing.”
Claes said, “I thought I saw a few new faces.”
“Personally,” said Felix, “I think they’re all Henninc’s nephews, but when I say so, he just gets angry. I’ve found a man who can cut taffeta in the French way. You know. It’s expensive, though. What did you pay for those arms you bought at half-price?”
But Claes, unaccountably, had fallen asleep and did not hear him. When Felix kicked him a couple of times he merely grunted, and turned over on the settle he had appropriated, which was high-handed enough, for an employee. With some trouble, Felix tipped the settle over, depositing Claes on the floor, where he continued to sleep. From experience, Felix knew that there would now be no awakening him. He lifted the waterjug and emptied it, concentrating, on the fire. Then he made his way, with slight difficulty, to the door, the staircase and his bed.
He was still in bed early the following morning, when Claes left sedately to pay a social call, as invited, on the Medici bank. It was, on the face of it, a minor event. Tobias Beventini might have warned them otherwise.
Angelo Tani, the manager, had shown, in arranging the interview, the qualities his Medici masters had honoured when they made him managing partner of the Bruges company, with five hundred shares of its capital, and a right to one fifth of its profits. His deputy was Tommaso Portinari, whose two elder brothers controlled the Medici bank in Milan. It was Pigello Portinari who, in some distant convulsion of madness, had entrusted this youth with a courier service. Hence Tommaso was to receive Claes as well.
Angelo was well aware that Tommaso Portinari was a jealous young man; jealous even of his own brothers. Angelo did not enjoy the sensation that every now and then mysterious reports on his own shortcomings found their way to Florence, but he put up with it. Ambition was a hone to performance, and his own record for a youngish man was unshakable.
Tommaso had some ability. Left in charge, he could wriggle out of a law suit; placate a customer. But he also liked flattering patronage. When Tani came back, he would find a few deals, a few loans on the books that he and his masters had doubts about. And, criticised, Tommaso would go off and commune in a corner with his opposite number, that fool Lorenzo Strozzi. At such