Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [107]
The Basilica Mercatorum was the trading hub of the City, where merchants met to do business, and the Bailie settled disputes. Built inside the harbour wall, it was not far – not at all far – from the Square of St Sebastian, and the house of Louis de Magnac. Naturally, Primaflora was escorted to the Basilica; but was permitted to leave her protectors ouside the galleried entrance, taking only her woman as chaperone. The men, she knew, were paid by the royal household. As Zacco was doing with Niccolò, the Queen had let her out on a chain. Having lost sight of her once, Carlotta was taking no chances.
Inside, the rooms were busy, for ships came and went all through winter, exchanging the products of Greece and Italy, Asia and Africa. There was always money to change, and bills of payment to sign. The brokers, the notaries, the moneychangers all had their tables, and the merchants congregated, as the Knights did, according to tongue. Except, that is, for the Jews, who were familiar with every language. Modestly dressed, Primaflora passed among the dealers from Venice and Genoa, Marseilles and Ancona, Damascus and Chios, Crete and Sicily, overturning the tilth of their attention like the lightest of harrows. There were one or two Portuguese, but none from the family Vasquez, who had presumably completed their business. Nor did she see merchants from Florence. The ship from Constantinople had sailed, and their transactions were over. Eventually, a boy in the livery of St Pol appeared and led her upstairs to a gallery. In one of its many small rooms, she was again introduced to Katelina van Borselen.
The Flemish woman had been dictating, and a clerk was just leaving with papers. He stood aside for Primaflora, his eyes flickering. Primaflora smiled, and smiled again at the page, who closed the door on himself and her attendant. The room held a side table, a desk, a book box and two chairs, and no one else but herself and the woman called Katelina. Katelina van Borselen said, ‘It was kind of you to come. Please sit. I have some Candian wine. You see in me an envoy of my young Portuguese nephew. You have a disciple in Diniz for life.’
Primaflora sat, and pushed back her cloak. She had expected passion, but instead the young lady seemed remarkably calm. Then she saw the wine spurt from the flask, and realised that, like herself, the girl had been much about courts and was used to dissembling. And that in fact, she was angered, and even somehow afraid.
Primaflora said, ‘I thought your nephew had changed his mind. My young friend Niccolò said that he would. The child fancied himself in love with me, and no doubt thinks I have given my heart to someone else.’ She shrugged and smiled. ‘How difficult if marriages were truly thus! Or – Of course, demoiselle, your own is certainly of that order. I was thinking of my young fiancé, whose second matrimonial venture this is. And perhaps of my friends, who like myself, cannot afford the luxury of marriage except for reasons of policy.’
The wine flask clattered as Katelina put it back. She raised her cup, and they each drank. Katelina said, ‘We know Nicholas well in Flanders. I wondered if you had heard of his first marriage. It was successful, until his wife died.’
Primaflora, though polite, was less than serious. ‘There was nothing ominous, surely, about that? He was absent, I supposed, at the time.’
The younger woman reddened, but persisted in a level voice. ‘He was absent, with his step-daughter. He owes all his fortune to the help of his wife although, by merest accident, he failed to gain control of her original company. The step-daughters now have it, or one of them, and are determined to have nothing to do with