Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [172]
“You draw a harsh picture,” she said. “Go on. What else would happen?”
He said, “You know, of course. The business people of the city would accept me, because they would have to, but their families would be a different matter. You would find your friends rather less hospitable than once they had been, and amazingly unable to visit you here. It would be obvious that your business would profit from the information I collect on my travels: I should be less in demand as a courier by the general merchants at least. As the business improved, rivalry would become much more cutting than normal. Competitors and suppliers who so far have treated you leniently would vie with one another to try and best us both. And as you would lose your friends, so I should lose mine.”
“Yes, of course,” she said; and rose, rather stiffly, from where she had been sitting for so long. “You have answered me completely. No one would gain. I shall sell, then.” He stood up so quickly that she suddenly realised what he must think. She said, “I mean, of course, once everything has been provided for and your future, too, has been secured.”
“Great God,” he said. “Did you think I suspected you of forcing me into something? You have provided for me since I was a child. I can make my own way now, if I have to. But what would please me most would be to serve you and the company at the same time.”
She looked at him. She said, “I’m sorry. But I can’t go on. I would rather sell while I still have some pride in it, and in myself.”
He said, “Will you sit again?” Then, when she stood, a little uncertain, he moved forward and led her back to her chair, and placed her in it, and this time sank to the floor not far away, his head on the same level as her knee, like Felix when he was younger, playing games on the tiles. He said, “If you sell, what will you do with the money? Buy a grander house? Entertain dyers’ wives? Collect books? Give Felix all the horses and armour he asks for? Take up embroidery? All those people out there would be workless, unless their new master employed them. You would have no work, no interest, no place in the community but that of a wealthy widow. Is that what you want? You would die of it in a year.”
“What, then?” she said.
Claes said, “In six months I’ll have made you a team you can trust. I can always help you replace them. I shall spend all the time I can here. Name me your clerk, your assistant factor, your footservant, anything. You can do it.”
“Yes, of course I can,” she said. “I can tell Cristoffels what to do. Sell Louvain. Bring the broking business – did you say? – back to Bruges and expand it. Train Gregorio. Open the cellars in the new property. Watch out for Felix – if he survives the joust – and see that he doesn’t ruin the tavern. And play a part in the world trade in alum. All by myself. Of course I can do it.” She could hear her own voice grow hoarse with the pain in her throat. She stopped speaking.
Claes turned his back on her. She didn’t need to use her kerchief. Her cheeks were not wet, although her eyes dazzled a little, because of the light. Claes’ hair, rimmed by the fire, was dry now. When it was brushed, it would lie straight and flat, with strange bumps and kinks at the edges, as if it had been singed. When he was young, in the apprentice-loft, he had had to make himself neat for Mass like all the boys, and she had always liked to see him, marked out from the rest by his size, and the clown’s face with its dimples and the observant, good-humoured glance. She had brushed his hair for him when he lay, fevered after the wound. Tobias had treated him. It was one of the reasons she had asked the surgeon to work for her.
Claes had always been free with girls. She knew that. Of the many unspoken factors in his great disclaimer,