Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [90]
The house of the Acciajuoli was the sort that banking families liked to build. It was wide rather than tall, with a good big double-door that led not to a room, but to a short vaulted passage which ended in a square courtyard, pleasant even in rain, with evergreens placed on the cobbles, and a rank of solid buildings on its far side which presumably held the stables, and the horses brought with such pains for Pierfrancesco Medici of Florence, who had married an Acciajuoli. Somewhere, he could hear the mewing of goshawks. To one side, a balustraded flight of steps gave access to the principal floor. The porter, who had displayed no surprise at his arrival, showed Messer Tobias Beventini up the steps, from which a narrow balcony ran along the face of the building. Part of the way along this was another door which opened on his approach. Immediately inside was his uncle.
“Well, turd,” said Giammatteo Ferrari da Grado. “You were in no hurry to come. Here is where you put your cloak. You are prepared for what is going to happen?”
“I don’t know what is going to happen,” said Tobie coldly. “I can only repeat. There is no connection whatever between this boy and myself. Whatever he has done is his own responsibility.”
When little more than his own age, his uncle Giammatteo had been professor of medical logic at Pavia University, founded by a Duke of Milan. In a long career spanning thirty years Giammatteo had never moved from the faculty except to minister to the current Duke, its protector. Or, of course, to give his services, at a price, to those of the well-born and the famous whose appeals or whose politics touched the Duke’s heart.
When Tobie, resoundingly qualified, had rejected the sedate satisfaction of university life in favour of rampaging about with merchants and mercenaries, Maestro Giammatteo had publicly washed his hands of him, thus neatly preventing his nephew from exploiting his name. That, and the other things he had said at the time had not endeared him to Tobie. Neither had the fact that, although well over sixty, the professor was florid and hale, with all the positive features in his merry face which Tobie himself lacked, in addition to a beard and a full head of speckled brown hair.
Tobie said, “Is he here?”
“Oh, yes,” said his uncle. “As you know, he brought the horses for Pierfrancesco. Messer Agnolo and his sister made a point of inviting him back, even before they sent for me. A most amenable youth. We have all made it our business to speak to him. He shows a charming gratitude for all you have done for him. Your skilful nursing at Damme; your act of mercy at Geneva. We know how close you have been. You must see how, when you left captain Lionetto so suddenly, it might appear that the boy’s affairs had attracted you?”
“No. As I told you. It was captain Lionetto’s affairs which repelled me,” said Tobie curtly. Affairs, his uncle had said, with a certain slyness. Deviation had always amused Giammatteo. Tobie found it reassuring. That, then, was why he was here. It meant, at least, that his uncle knew nothing of hair dye, and love potions, and holly. Or of a possible fortune, in the hands of an enigma whom he might, or might not, bring to confide in him.
“As you now repel Lionetto, I am told,” his uncle was going on cheerfully. “Your former captain is in Milan, on his way to Piccinino. You would do well to be careful. Well, your young man is in the family chamber with Messer Agnolo and his sister and friends. You had better come with me to collect him.”
“In the family chamber?” Tobie repeated.
The professor smiled. “Playing cards, I believe,” he said with benevolence.
The leisure room of the Acciajuoli was little more than a painted cabinet, although the fireplace was handsome, and bright with a flickering brazier. All the other light in the room was placed round the card table at which four people sat, while