Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [200]
Lorenzo gazed at him. He said, “Do ostriches walk?”
“I don’t think they fly,” said Nicholas. “Although I suppose it might learn, given a week or two. It’ll stop the English war if it flies over Calais. Ship will collide with ship.”
Lorenzo said, “It may not be serious to you –”
“All right,” said Nicholas. “Message to Brittany. Where is it, who has it, is it being fed and can it walk. They’ll think we’re discussing the Duke’s latest bastard … Lorenzo, it’s all right, don’t take it so seriously. I’ll find out for you, and I’ll arrange it so the Medici don’t worry you. What about Caterina and your mother? I’m leaving on Monday, if you want me to take letters. No charge. Pay me in ostrich eggs.”
He wasn’t sure if, in the end, he left Lorenzo looking less worried than when he found him, but he thought that he did.
Chapter 30
THERE WERE THEN four days left to Sunday. Nicholas told Gregorio about the alum mine, and the lawyer went very sallow and stayed that way for half an hour. At the end of that time the blood began coming back into his face and he started writing things down. After that, Nicholas noticed, Gregorio frowned every time he looked at him. Marian de Charetty, informed that he was now a fully-fledged member of both companies, asked him to spend some time in her office talking about it, and he emerged from that looking slightly calmer. He still frowned, however, whenever he came across Nicholas.
On the Thursday, Felix’s mother searched out the final list of White Bear contestants and found Kilmirren’s name on it. The further discovery that her household already knew this made her angry. Pointedly, she made no renewed or anguished appeal to Nicholas, on the few occasions he was there to appeal to. And after Sunday (whatever happened on Sunday), she was going to lose Nicholas anyway. When she wasn’t thinking about Felix, she thought about that.
Nicholas had to go, she knew that. The remarkable fees he had received, the even greater fees he was promised, depended on the information, of all kinds, he was taking with him to Milan. He had to see the Medici about the money they had advanced for Tobias to buy handguns and for Thomas to recruit his fifty extra gunners. He had to collect the revised condotta, and arrange how the money for it was to be re-invested.
He had to discover, from messages Tobias and Thomas and Julius and Astorre should have left, where the company was positioned and what its needs were, and its prospects.
He had to glean, officially and unofficially, from all his new acquaintances, the information he would bring back with him along with new dispatches. Some of it in difficult codes, and of greatest importance. Some of it merely market prices, of use to their own business as well as others. And some of it, from the Acciajuoli and the others, to do with the scheme she was frightened of.
He would take a good, strong bodyguard, although not the compact fighting-force which had gone with Astorre. And this time it was summer. He would travel quickly. But however quickly he travelled, he would be away for two months at least: perhaps longer. Leaving her alone to face the unfriendly Simon. And perhaps even Jordan de Ribérac. The prospect disturbed her. It struck her after a little thought that there was an alternative.
Had she not been so troubled, she might have gone about her plan differently. As it was, she waylaid Nicholas at dawn on Friday morning as he was running, fresh and cheerful, down the stairs, and said, “Sit down there.”
They were alone. The rooms all about them were empty. He sat with promptitude on the step that she pointed to and looked attentive. She seated herself well below him and folded her hands in her lap. She said, “You trust Gregorio?”
He said, “Yes, I do.”