Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [44]
In it were his employer’s son Felix, who had promised not to leave Bruges, and his employer’s apprentice Claes, who had been under house-imprisonment in her dyeshop, and Tommaso Portinari, to whom his employer did not wish to owe favours and who, by the cramped look of his nose, was going to exact from someone the price of suffering the smell from Claes’ apron all the way from Bruges to Sluys.
And last and worst, there in the prow was the pullet body and cockerel face of his employer’s captain Astorre, his beard pecking the air as he vaulted out. Then he stood on the quayside, the button eyes attacking the palaces of crates, the terraces of bulging bales, the landscapes of sacks and baskets and barrels through which chains and clusters and units of men were moving about, transferring their environment piecemeal to cart and barge and warehouse under the swinging stalks of the cranes.
Then the beard pointed shipwards and Julius drew carefully back. There were, after all, two galleys lining the wharf, and you could only pray that Felix and Claes and Astorre would choose not to come on board the flagship.
Two galleys with a hundred and seventy oarsmen on each, and thirty bowmen, and the navigating officer, and the scrivener and his assistant, and the caulkers and the carpenter and the cook and two doctors and the notary, all with their boxes open on deck displaying their little items for sale, and their price lists.
It was one of the perquisites of the Flanders voyage, the right of the crew to take small goods for private sale at the ports they touched at. He shouldn’t wonder if the priest hadn’t a bag below deck there, with a morsel of incense and some quite expensive church vestments inside it. And the commander’s cabin, you could be sure, was stacked to the arras with sweet wine and some items smaller and heavier, like gold dust from Guinea, where that wool-headed slave came from.
But all that, of course, was a matter for the friends of Ser Alvise Duodo, and not for vulgar public huckstering. The Greek with the wooden leg, Monsignore Nicholai de’ Acciajuoli, was in there with Duodo now, no doubt seeking news of his captive brother in Constantinople.
It was a pity that the Greek had not come alone. It was a pity that he had brought with him the noble merchant who had sailed with him from Scotland, the ungentle Simon. For the present, the curtain of the poop cabin was drawn, but at any moment, one of them might emerge before Julius finished his business. It was a pity, as well, that Julius was not entirely sober.
Julius did not, after the incident of the cannon, the girl and the dog, wish to draw the attention of Simon to himself or any member of the Charetty household. Already he had successfully dodged his gaze once: something not hard to do on a deck one hundred and eighteen Venetian feet long, and packed with people and boxes. As well as disliking Simon, he was inclined to be deeply envious of him. He wished he could watch Simon, but without being seen. He was aware that he had delivered an extremely capable seven days of work to the demoiselle de Charetty after his berating, and that he had celebrated the fact just a little too early this morning. He particularly, therefore, did not wish Felix and Claes to come aboard. As for Astorre, it would be a disaster. Julius cautiously raised his head, shaking it slightly, and looked over the rail.
It was a disaster. The boat with Tommaso in it appeared to have gone. But Felix’s head, wearing a hat like a bagpipe, was already visible as he climbed from the quay to the flagship. Behind him was Astorre, in a flat cap and a smart leather jerkin, with brocade sleeves stuffed like a goose pie. Behind trailed Claes in his felt working cap and sweaty shirt, its drooping neckline exposing his muscular chest and the upper selvedge of that silky dun-coloured thatch with which Nature, as Julius had envious cause to know, had endowed his virility.
Felix saw his tutor, smiled in an alarmed fashion and trained his bagpipe vaguely