Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [38]
He thought it might not be good for her business, to be comely like that. No one in the workshop, naturally, would step out of place, but dealers and brokers might come to expect favours. His own manner he kept carefully formal. At the moment, his hands were clasped behind him, indeed, to help him subdue his fury and remain formal. He wished to God she were a man and they could simply bark at one another. Women either burst into tears or dismissed you.
He answered her questions about the magistrates’ decision, the fines and the damages, and watched her write the sums down. At the end she looked up.
“Well?” she said. “And how do you see your part in all this?”
He looked at his feet, and then upwards frankly. “Insofar as Felix was in my care, I suppose mine is the ultimate blame,” said her notary. “You may think me unfit to guide him in future. You may also think that part of the responsibility for your losses should fall on me.”
“All of them, surely?” said Marian de Charetty. “Or do you think my son should pay in some way as well? I leave out friend Claes, who has no money, and who must assuredly therefore find some other means to pay.”
“He has paid,” said Julius quickly.
“On the contrary,” said Marian de Charetty, “As I understand it, I paid to save him a second beating. I may even have to pay a second time, to satisfy this bloodthirsty Scotsman. Perhaps I should simply offer him Claes instead?”
Claes was a boy apprentice. Claes had been with the Charetty family since he was ten, sleeping in the straw with the rest, and sitting round the apprentices’ table. Claes was her son’s shadow.
Julius said, “I think the Scotsman would kill him.”
The blue eyes opened. “Why?” said his employer.
God in heaven. Carefully, Julius answered. “He is rumoured to be jealous, demoiselle.”
“Of Claes?” she said.
He thought she understood perfectly well. God damn it, she must: old Henninc would have told her all that, at least. Not the bits about Felix, but all the titbits about Claes, so that she would get rid of him. Julius supposed that she would. He said, “He’s a good worker, and trained. Other yards would pay to have him.”
“I’m not concerned about Claes,” said the widow. “Nor am I greatly concerned about you. You have investments. If you wish to remain with me you will, I am afraid, have to liquidate some of them. If Felix goes back to Louvain, you will return with him, leaving in Felix’s hands and in mine an exact accounting of your personal finances. For any misdemeanour of Felix’s, your funds will suffer and I shall then force him – in time – to repay you. In other words, if you find yourself unable to build his character, then clearly I must. The only redeeming feature in this entire crass chronicle has been the regard you have shown to some degree for one another. Your regard for other people has, of course, been non-existent.” She viewed him critically. “And you find all this unfair? You wish to leave?”
“It depends how much money you want,” he said bluntly. How did she know what he had?
“Enough to teach you a lesson.”
“I might teach Felix something you don’t want him to learn,” he said.
She went on looking at him, brushing the side of her mouth slowly, back and forth, with the ruffled edge of her quill. Then she laid it down. She said, “You negotiate very patiently, on the whole. You can sustain an argument or an attitude. Then you lapse, like that. Why?”
Because I don’t like working under a woman. He didn’t say it. He said, “I’m sorry, but it has all been rather a worry. I am not a rich man. As you know.”
“And therefore,” she said, “if I am going to use you as a means of training my child, I am not likely to be so unreasonable that you can do nothing but leave. You must have thought of that.”
He said, “I was surprised. I thought my private affairs private.”
“In Flanders?” she said.
He did not answer.
She said, “We do not all finish our training at twenty, Meester Julius. None of us. What drives you to a childish