Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [271]
‘You’re going?’ she said. ‘Now you can move, you are going? Where?’
‘Where else but Bruges?’ Nicholas said.
Bruges in spring was the homecoming gift Nicholas had refused for three months to allow himself. When he left Venice, he took Margot with him, with the extremely ready permission of Julius. She was a quiet companion, and the journey, though hard, was not painful. No sweet singing voice disturbed the snows of the Alps, but the same voice was still lifted in song, if in a different land, and there were three children now to hear it, including a daughter.
The spirit of Marian de Charetty remained, but as a dear and benevolent presence, and no longer the source it had once been of self-reproach and of anguish. Marian his wife slept near Dijon. Six years ago, her two orphaned daughters in Bruges had forbidden him to enter the Charetty house. Since then, Tilde had met him in Venice, and he had tried to make her into a friend. She and Catherine her sister had permitted Gregorio to use part of their house for the Banco di Niccolò, and any lingering doubts, Nicholas suspected, would have been swept away by their new guide and manager, Diniz Vasquez. And Godscalc was with them.
Nicholas had heard from Gregorio, and from Diniz. Hasty letters received just before he left Venice, they expressed incoherent joy at his return. Godscalc had added a great sprawling line with a joke in it.
He had received other letters – from his fellow merchants, from the city fathers, from the boys he had grown up with. He was a burgher of Bruges; he had been seen to do the town honour: there would be a reception almost as great as the one he had been given in Venice. He was prepared for it; crowds did not disturb him now. He had not barred himself from society out of fear, only from a need to establish, in peace, what had happened to him. He knew what he wanted, but until Umar was safe, he would not snatch it.
He had received no letter from Gelis van Borselen, and looked for none. Whatever had to be said, good or bad, had to be spoken. She knew he was home, and could guess he would come, sometime, to Bruges.
If she did not want to see him, she had only to leave early for Scotland. She had not left. And if she had not done so immediately, he thought she would wait for him now.
He had forgotten how green and wooded the countryside was, and the noise of the birds, and the density of the colours: the chestnut of ploughing horses; the crimson caps, the russet tunics, the dark leather aprons of the men in the villages; the ruddy cheeks and muslin-wrapped heads of the women; the scarlet and gold of poppy and buttercup in the hedgerows. And on every side, the blinding flash of sunlight on water, brighter than diamonds.
Then the brown walls of Bruges stood before him, the windmills turning above; the tunnelled, towered portico open; the drawbridge down over the canal; and a crowd on the far side. Among them he saw silk and velvet, banners and trumpets. In the centre was the Black Lion of Flanders, the great standard of Bruges.
Nicholas brought his cavalcade to a halt, and rode forward alone. Understanding, he did not feel either a fool, or contemptuous.
From the town issued a group of three échevins and three laymen. He didn’t look at the échevins, for the other three were Gregorio, Diniz and Tilde. Beside him, Margot was weeping.
Then the leading official stepped forward, and to a flourish of trumpets, bid welcome home to his town the Knight Nicholas vander Poele, honourable burgher of Bruges.
Chapter 39
BEFORE HE SET OUT for Bruges, Nicholas had in mind that, by some subtle arrangement, his first words there to Gelis would be spoken in private. On the other hand, it was always possible that she would choose (as she did) to come face to face with him before others, and on an occasion as public as the reception given for him by the Lord Louis de Gruuthuse.
Considering Gelis, Nicholas took