Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [42]
They came every year, and every year reached the Narrow Seas and separated: two for Bruges and one for London – or Southampton, if Londoners happened to be campaigning against foreign merchants that year. The total freight of three Flanders galleys, they said, was worth a quarter of a million golden ducats. Yes, there was that much money in the world. So they said. And look, to prove it: the Doge and that lot in Venice voted twenty pounds a year to bribe the customs clerks at Bruges to undervalue the cargo. That’s true. I tell you. I had it from one of their widows. And ten times that much to spend on a sweetener for Duke Philip himself.
So the crowd would say, watching the customs men being rowed aboard, two to a galley, and the Sluys reception committee, and later the fellows done up in their gold chains from Damme, and much later – for some folk would sire their sons after the christening, if they thought it would add to their dignity – the big bell on the Bruges tower would start tolling and someone – Jan Blaviet, that’s who – would come riding a mule with a hat on him like five ells of bandaging caught on a thorn bush, followed by Anselm Adorne and Jan van den Walle and a clutch of grooms and servants and soldiers with the Bruges blazon and flag. And with them, the Venetian agents – big Bembo and thin Contarini and that great bloated miser, Marco Corner.
And later than that – for the Venetians got first whack at the scriveners’ lists and the unloading, just as they got the first chance to get their goods on before sailing – the rest of the partnerships who were expecting consignments.
Such as Tommaso Portinari, with all his rings on, if he could persuade Tani to let him handle it, which he probably couldn’t. And Jacopo Strozzi, who might bring young Lorenzo with him, if his gout was bad. And Jacques Doria and Lommelin and the rest of the Genoese. And Pierre Bladelin, the Duke’s household controller, to check on the goods the Duke had especially asked for, and João Vasquez, to do the same for the Duchess, with Figuieres and the other Portuguese with him. Someone from the Corps of Hosteliers, to see who needed putting up. The Germans from the Hanse, anxious to hear about rates. And the Lucchese, with Giovanni Arnolfini and his long, pallid face, who knew the Duke’s taste in silks and had a few private commissions worth a groat or two.
Oh, a lot went on behind the scenes when the Flanders galleys came in. The big men never came out in the early days to the harbour, just waited until it all arrived by barge at the Staple in Bruges and the Waterhalle. The real haggling went on, they said, at the meetings afterwards. After all, there was all winter for wheeling and dealing. Six months while the galleys sat in the harbour and every tavern and brothel in Bruges and the waterside entertained four hundred seamen.
The Flanders galleys had come, and the bells and the trumpets were merely the prelude to the deafening jingle of money.
Unwisely, on the third day after the galleys’ arrival, Marian de Charetty released her son Felix from his duties, on condition that he did not set foot outside Bruges. That put Sluys out of bounds.
She assumed, with some reason, that he would go straight to a tavern, from which Julius would later be sent to extract him. Julius himself was at Sluys, with Henninc her manager, taking a close interest in some bales of weld and woad and kermes and some sacks of brazil blocks, and a wistful interest in a valuable item called alum. The demoiselle de Charetty herself was due at a meeting of the dyers’ guild, to which she hoped that Julius would come with his bulletin. She sent for Henninc’s deputy, placed him in charge, and went off on foot, with a maid, to her meeting.
Henninc’s deputy, a hardworking fuller called Lippin, remembered that there were shears to be brought from the grinder’s and, finding Claes handy, dispatched him forthwith on that errand. That Claes had not been allowed to leave the premises for a week had not