Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [179]
The company did some honour in its attire to the exquisite building. Margriet herself wore her good brocade dress with its high belt that met the point of her wide ermine collar, and her two-horned headdress. Anselm and their friends from the city council and from the guilds had come in proper robes, falling to ankle-height, with lapels or tippets of satin or fur, and sturdy felt hats of all sizes. Of intent, there were no women among them.
The bride wore what she had worn that morning, for lack of time to do anything else: a padded headdress which concealed all her hair, and a stiff little gown with neatly-tied oversleeves and a square neck to which she’d added a very fine pendant. The skin displayed for the first time under her chin was, Margriet saw, fair and smooth and perfectly acceptable. She had good blue eyes and sound teeth and usually, one could say, a fine colour.
The boy, too, was dressed as he had been when he had arrived to make the arrangements. Not, at least, the blue working clothes of the Charetty, which would have made the occasion not just comedy but outright farce. The dark serge doublet fitted well enough to be his own, presumably bought with his wages in Italy. Over it he wore a sideless tunic of the middle length that a clerk might have, but in dark green cloth instead of black, which would be too expensive, one supposed, for his pocket. His hair, well flattened, was struggling against the confines of his tilted cap, which was without ornament. His hose, also dark green, were the only unpatched pair Margriet had ever seen him in. She had never seen him, either, without a smile.
Afterwards, there was a difficult wedding-breakfast at a table laid for them all in her hall. Then someone mentioned the Flanders galleys and the conversation flowed as if it would never stop, because it was the subject nearest the heart and purse of every merchant in Bruges. So Alvise Duodo, the fool, had taken the Flanders galleys to London on his way home to Venice. And of course, the English king had impounded them, needing ships for his war against his kinsmen of York. Angelo Tani and Tommaso were fainting with horror. Not only over the loss of the cloth. Would the London branch get its tennis balls? Doria had sent trumpets and clavichord wire. Jacopo Strozzi had put in toothpicks and playing cards. Would they be unloaded at all, or spend their days in the hold while the ships were turned round and sent out to the Narrow Seas to fight other Englishmen sailing from Calais?
Bishop Coppini said very little. It was his task to proceed to Calais and reconcile the Englishmen there with the Englishmen in England who had impounded the Flanders galleys. A good idea, granted. But the moment that was done and peace declared, the Pope would be able to launch his crusade to recover Constantinople, and the King of France and the Duke of Burgundy and the King of England (whichever lord won the disputed succession) would have no excuse but to launch a fleet or an army and aid him. Then the Flanders galleys might well find themselves impounded next time at Sluys by Duke Philip, along with all the Scots barges, the Portuguese hulks, the Normandy balingers, the Breton caravels and the heavy ships from Hamburg. How was a merchant to survive these days? One needed an astrologer.
“You could corner fish,” said the bridegroom, who had up to that point been deferential in his few comments, and not grossly stupid. “Fishing boats are about the only ships you can’t send on a crusade. But it’s too near the end of Lent, perhaps, to expect much of a backing.” It was not too bad a joke, and they had drunk enough of Meester Anselm’s Candian wine to laugh quite heartily. Indeed, one or two of them began to think, privately, that the