Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [144]
At dusk, after everyone was indoors, the cart arrived back in the yard and she could hear the cellar door being unlocked. There was a tramping of feet which went on for a long time. Then the yard boy, looking cheerful, tapped on her door and said that there was some good new stock just come in, and would the demoiselle like to see it for the inventory? She folded a shawl round her shoulders, took a lamp and went out, her key bunch rattling. The wind blew under the fluted voile on her head with all its matronly gofferings, and tugged where the folds bound her chin. Claes was in the cellar alone, kneeling among sacks with the candles lit. She shut the door.
He turned his head and said, “I took the yard boy because he’s a bit simple. He thinks half of this is wool. Look.”
She walked to him and bent. Some of the sacks were already unpacked. Behind them were boxes, whose lids he was lifting. She saw, firstly, a packing of straw, and then metal, glinting dully. A steel cuirass, with another beneath it. Shoulder guards, nesting one into another, and thigh-pieces, and coudières. A sack of something which might have been cabbages, but in fact were iron helmets, in the German style. Another box of massive body-armour. Marian de Charetty let drop the lid of that box, and sat on it, saying nothing.
Claes, working quickly, pulled open the last of the sacks and checked their contents. Then, picking up his candle, he whirled it in an extravagant gesture, and bringing it over, set it beside her. “Well?”
She said, “I heard you won a mail gauntlet.”
His skin was suffused, oppressed after all the bending. But no one had a smile as wide as Claes. He tapped a barrel, and then hitched himself on top of it. “Two dozen others in there, from the Hospital of St John. If anyone wants to know, that’s all I won. You bought them from me, and Thomas will take them south to Astorre. Of course, he’ll take the rest too, mixed up with the stuff I bought on the way north. That lets us outfit fifty more men than we contracted for. They supply the horses, and we supply the armour.”
He was speaking to her man to man, as he often did now. She took her eyes from his rolled-up sleeves and the purple bruises all over his arms, and said, “And what am I paying you for the barrel of gloves? I had better know, I suppose.”
“Not too much. They’re old ones. I’ll write it into the ledger. Of course, you don’t pay me anything. All this came from the arsenal at the Hospital by arrangement with the Adorne family. There is no record of it, and none of us has ever heard of any of it, except for the barrel of gloves.”
It was cold in the cellar, and the three or four candles he had lit did little to warm it. But she was far too stubborn to let him away with all this. She crossed her hands on her knees and said, “So how did you pay for it?”
“With promises,” he said. “I’ll tell you when Messer Adorne and I have had our meeting. I came across something interesting in Milan. A way to profit the Adorne family and the Charetty company. Messer Adorne doesn’t yet know the details, but he was willing to make this much of an investment. And as I’ve said, we can put fifty more into the field, whether the scheme works or not.”
She said, “Yes. I gathered you wanted me to buy Astorre an army. I don’t see any weapons here.”
“No. Well,” said Claes. “I told you Messer Tobie was going to Piacenza. He had a commission to buy guns and powder for Thibault and Jaak de Fleury. I asked him to get fifty schioppetti for captain Astorre as well. Handguns.”
“And pay for them?” she said.
“You know,” said Claes, “it’s a wonderful system. The Medici bank are backing Milan and King Ferrante of Naples, so their Milan manager – that’s Tommaso’s brother Pigello – is quite willing to advance us the money for the handguns, as well as recruiting money for Thomas to pick up fifty more men than Astorre is expecting.
“Then we go to the Duke of Milan and offer him fifty fully-armed