Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [17]
The youth Claes considered, his overbright gaze on the Greek. Then he said, “I don’t dislike anyone.”
Adorne said, “But you hurt them. You mock. You mimic. You offended the lady Katelina yesterday and today.”
The gaze turned on him. “But they offend me, and I don’t complain. People are what they are. Some are harder to pity than others. Felix would like to dress like my lord Simon, but he is seventeen, he will change. My lord Simon is not seventeen, but he acts like an oaf, and has the talents, you would say, of a girl; which must be a mortification to his father. But I think, Meester Adorne, that he does speak Italian, because he made a joke about you in that language. The lady Katelina will remember.”
It was Messer de’ Acciajuoli who took control before Adorne himself got his breath back.
“I think,” said the Greek, placing a manicured hand with care on the apprentice’s arm, “that the time has come for Claes to make for his home, if his beating is not to overcome him. Perhaps his friends would see he gets there. Honesty, Messer Adorne, is not a commodity that recommends itself everywhere. I am glad to have made its acquaintance however, and I would not have it penalised.”
“It has been penalised already,” said Adorne. “And you are right. We have been talking, these last five minutes, about the inclement weather. Meester Julius, you have leave.”
He could not stop the children from running after Claes into the yard, or from touching him. He hoped the notary would have the sense to take this apprentice straight to the Charetty dyeshop and keep him there until things had settled. Or better still, send him back to Louvain, and the boy Felix with him. He wondered, since Margriet was bound to ask, if it were true that the lad made Marian de Charetty’s headgear; and scooping up and studying the tangle of cotton the children had dropped at his feet, decided it probably was.
He saw to the departure of Katelina, and returned to find the Greek talking to Arnolfini, the Lucca silk merchant, whom he could not remember having invited. Messer de’ Acciajuoli had in his hands the children’s board game, and was idly settling the pieces. They both looked up as Anselm came in, and Arnolfini and he exchanged greetings.
The Lucchese had called, it seemed, for no particular reason. “Except,” he said, “out of regard for your selfless service. You gave of your leisure, I am told, to spare the échevins this dangerous case of the sunken gun. We are all impressed.”
The Greek spoke gently, his gaze on the board. “Heavy fines were imposed. But the Guilds are rich.”
“Indeed,” said Arnolfini. “Rich and solvent. I hear that payment has been made already. Before even the sentence was delivered. Who invented this very odd game?”
“I cannot remember,” said Anselm Adorne; and was not surprised to see the Greek look up, smiling.
Chapter 3
THE SKY WAS blue when Katelina van Borselen left Adorne’s house with her maid, and the wind barely stirred her cut-velvet cloak. She had been home in Flanders for two days.
The town house her father had taken in Silver Straete lay on the other side of the town. The painted canal boat of Anselm Adorne waited for her at the foot of the gardens, with three servants to care for her. She had them row her home the long way, past the convent of the Carmelites, and St Giles’ church, and the great pile of the Augustines, and the handsome church of St James, from which could be seen the towers of the Princenhof, to which the Duke of Burgundy’s bath had just been dragged with such trouble. She would not think of that, or the considering gaze of the notary Julius. She made them row her almost as far as the Friday market.
They said Venice had bridges too, but Bruges must have a hundred: in stone with almond-eyed saints and dulled gilding; in wood, with treacled timbers and bosses of greenery. The roads were thronged but the river, split and skeined and channelled everywhere, was the highway where boats passed gunwale to gunwale, hooded, laden, crammed