Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [289]
“But Nicholas wouldn’t,” said Tobie. “Not if he stays here in Bruges. I wonder what he wants. I wonder what he’s thinking now.”
“I wonder where it is now,” said Julius. He wrinkled his brow. “The ostrich.”
“What?” said Tobie.
“He said something about going to see the ostrich. It’s to go to the Duke of Milan, and Tommaso keeps complaining that it’s dying on him.”
“That sounds like Nicholas,” Gregorio said in his solemn, rumbling voice. “If he can’t bear to face us, depend on it that he’s gone to look at an ostrich.”
Nicholas had indeed gone to look at the ostrich.
The principal problem, to begin with, was that there was nowhere to go.
Confining the problem to Bruges and not allowing it to assume cosmic proportions, there was nowhere, that is, where he could be sure of avoiding Tobie, Gregorio and Julius, now in possession of knowledge about him that they should never have had. He couldn’t go home without meeting Marian, now aware of his … engineering, and struggling somehow to trust him.
The rest of Bruges was occupied by people who had seen and heard what happened at the Gruuthuse palace this morning. Or who wanted to talk about Jaak de Charetty, or Lionetto, or Felix. And finally, somewhere in Bruges were Simon of Kilmirren and his fertile wife Katelina, whose mood he could guess, but whose plans he did not know.
So Nicholas thought of the ostrich, which was supposedly in the stable compound of the house of the Florentine merchants, and set off to inspect it. It seemed fairly certain that he would find there none of the Charetty employees. And Florentines had been largely absent from the morning’s High Mass for a Scottish monarch. The Flanders galleys occupied them far more seriously.
And since the Flanders galleys occupied them, he might not have to consider ciphers, or dispatches, or any of the alluring, dangerous strands that might lead to a new set of devices or echo old ones. Just the simple matter of an ostrich to be dispatched to Milan.
He met Angelo Tani, the Medici manager, before he had crossed the threshold of the handsome, towered building by the Bourse. Tani said, “I’m off to a meeting, but go in. Tommaso’s there somewhere. There was a message for you – why here, I don’t know. A boy brought it. You’re wanted at Silver Straete this afternoon, at Florence van Borselen’s house.”
Nicholas heard his voice saying, “I thought he was away.”
“He is. His daughter Katelina wants to see you. Hangings for the accouchement, perhaps. They’ve bought some fine christening silver from me already. They pay, too.”
“So they do,” Nicholas said. He stood looking after Tani, and was bumped once or twice by people coming out or in. A boy of fourteen, a giovane, said politely, “If you want Messer Tommaso, he’s gone to the stables.”
The civility was not unmixed with something else. Looking again, Nicholas saw it was the boy he and Felix had spoken to, the day they had taken the Medici barge with Lionetto to Damme. Nicholas said, “I hear you’re keeping the whole company right these days. What’s Messer Tommaso doing? Taking a journey?”
The youth became a little less guarded. The power of Milanese manager Pigello, it was easy to see, hung over the Bruges branch of the Medici. The boy said, “Oh, no. He’s gone to look at the ostrich again.” One of his eyes gleamed.
Nicholas said, “Again?”
“To look at its droppings,” the youth said. Both eyes gleamed.
With a gigantic effort, Nicholas detached his mind from everything else and said, his chin on his chest, “Messer Tommaso is doctoring it?”
The Medici giovane gave a sudden and seraphic grin. He said, “No. He’s just watching its droppings. It’s eaten Messer Tommaso’s hat jewel and two of his rings.”
Nicholas said, “I should have thought it was the giovane’s job, to help your under-manager with a problem like that.”
The boy looked at his face, and then, relieved, grinned again. “He tried to make me, the first day. But he got the idea I wasn’t looking closely enough.”
“Poor