Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [229]
Messer Pigello, too, was charmed that Messer Felix had honoured him with a personal visit, and led the way to his office. He had on his table, ready for inspection, the box of silver from M. de Fleury, which Niccolò had brought him last night for safekeeping, but which Messer Felix himself was to check. To add to these, he now saw, he had several more bills from the ducal chancery. And were these the credit notes of which Niccolò had spoken?
He used Arabic numbers, Felix saw, adding quickly on scraps of paper; and so did Nicholas, counter-checking. The bills themselves registered sums in stately Roman numerals, less easy to tamper with. Accerito, the other brother, came in at some point and Felix was glad to cease looking as if he, too, were counting, and to join him in small-talk. He had seen enough anyway. Whatever else was happening, Nicholas wasn’t cheating him. He was making him rich.
They didn’t stay long, just enough to finish the transaction and take (indoors) some sugared nuts and some extremely good wine, served in heavy goblets decorated on the outside like orange segments. Messer Pigello, bowing to both Felix and Nicholas, made a graceful compliment about the marriage of the demoiselle de Charetty, and suggested that, despite the sad news of the fire, the company under such shrewd management would go from strength to strength.
News travelled fast. The subject, so painful at home, was reduced by its business setting to nothing. Felix had hardly bowed or Nicholas murmured his thanks before the talk had veered again.
Afterwards, Felix remembered trying to follow an amiable exchange about eastern silk markets. Since Chinese silk was hard to come by, Constantinople was crying out for silk to sell. Chios could get rid of it anywhere. A Florentine consul at Trebizond could pick up a fortune. It was Greek to Felix, in that he understood half of it. But even if it were no business of his, he always felt warmly towards anyone who was by way of making a fortune. Of course, the Medici in Florence had a silk botteghe. Marco Parenti, married to the Strozzi sister, was a silk merchant. So were the Bianchi of Florence.
The names, which Nicholas had not mentioned to him, meant as yet nothing to Felix. He listened, but was equally eager to accompany Messer Accerito on a tour of the half-finished palace. He returned, deeply impressed by the paintings on the walls and the ceilings and the marble floors and the way none of the clerks seemed to be impressed by them. He found Nicholas on the verge of departure, and smiling, the two dimples deep as buttons, at Messer Pigello.
Nicholas said, “How surprising! The Duke mentioned it even to me. You didn’t know he wished a trained ostrich?”
“Not,” said Pigello, “until I received word from Tommaso. Apparently it has been necessary to send to Spain for the animal.”
“Bird,” Felix said. He looked from Nicholas to Pigello.
“And there has been some delay in conveying it.”
“A shipwreck,” said Nicholas. “Unhappily involving some litigation. But the bird, I am told, is alive and well.”
Pigello Portinari was not, it seemed, deeply disturbed. He said, “And I am sure Messer Strozzi and my brother will contrive that it reaches Milan in the end. Of course, anything you can do to the purpose will be warmly acknowledged.”
“Well, thank you for the confidence,” Nicholas said. “But I seem to have my hands full. And the last thing I should wish is to deprive Messer Tommaso of his triumph. The ostrich, alive and well in Bruges, and able to leave as Duke Philip’s gift to Duke Francesco. There is an achievement.”
Out in the via dei Bossi, Felix said, “The ostrich.”
“Yes?” said Nicholas. He skipped as he walked, winding his way between sweating people and under awnings, and when he passed a pretty girl, he grinned at her.
Felix said, “The Medici had never heard of the ostrich. Messer Cicco never mentioned it either.”
“No,” said Nicholas, from behind. He emerged from a booth with three oranges and started to juggle them as he walked, disrupting sundry groups of housewives, and well-dressed