Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [31]
And Tobie? Tobias Beventini of Grado was a short-tempered physician who had preserved his life at least once, and who had expected Nicholas to buckle down to business after the death of his wife. After a stand-up quarrel in Venice, Tobie had taken himself off to the Count of Urbino, who frequently led the Pope’s armies in the war to protect Naples from Anjou. Nicholas considered making towards Urbino to see what news he could find. It was on his way to the Abruzzi, and he had time and money to spare. Time and money to lose. Time and money to throw away, since there was nothing particular to spend them on.
Alone for the first time in his life, he let chance dictate his route. He stayed at inns, and bought the services of a groom or a guide as he needed them. He fell into casual talk with the people he met, allowing the motley facts he was given to pass unexamined into his consciousness; ignoring the slots, the niches, the network into which he should be fitting them. If something roused his curiosity, he pursued it without haste for its own sake and surprised himself, sometimes, by discovering something very like a new pleasure.
The first time this happened was in Cologne, where he stayed for six weeks. After that, he learned to foster some instinct which told him which place, which person, which road, which new experience was worth his attention. The journey, he began to see, was not unlike his first taste of Louvain and its library where, with Felix grumbling beside him, he had stepped from shelf to shelf, looking at books or unlocking and sampling them. He was crossing countries now, and scanning their offerings.
His anxieties grew less insistent. Sometimes he would fall into conversation with a man and feel what he had not felt for a while, an inclination towards understanding and friendship. Towards the less appealing, he felt amusement, and very seldom irritation or anger. Having dropped the frayed network of commerce he began to see, or was reminded, that there were other worlds to be mastered in much the same way. Observations randomly made would arrive at a sudden coherence: from filling cells would emerge the full honeycomb of a well-founded interest. He made room for it all, as he had made room for his gear on his pack-mule. When riding alone he also began, very occasionally, to sing.
He did not lack the chance of feminine comfort, but preferred to stay free. At times, he came close to admitting that this was unnatural. The easy love, the friendly tumbling of pretty girls had ceased when he married, and the constraint for some reason persisted. There had been one brutal exception: the night in Venice with Violante of Naxos. But Violante was the royal-blooded wife of a merchant, prostituting herself for amusement. For the rest, he had been told it was common: the impulse, after bereavement, to bury the dead in excess. Once or twice, he thought of what Anselm Adorne had told him. If he married, Tilde’s fears would be put at rest. He had not reached a point where Tilde’s fears were of importance. He kept out of churches.
His movements were not, of course, uncharted. His career for eighteen months had been remarkable: in the small world of merchants, a newcomer, an accumulator of bankable wealth, was perceived as an opportunity as well as a threat. Those friends of Colard and of Godscalc’s who met him in Cologne were swift to convey their impressions to Bruges. The Medici couriers, cross-hatching Europe, wrote accurate dispatches, in cipher, to Italy. There were other agents, as well, who received commands and who made reports, in French or Flemish or, once, in Greek, on his journeyings. Punctually and efficiently, news of his every movement was carried to Anjou where, as it happened, Katelina van Borselen was staying.