Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [32]
‘She promised,’ the fellow kept saying. ‘Monna Alessandra Macinghi negli Strozzi. She promised I should be protected. I shouldn’t be in Murano. I should be under guard in a city. I want to go back to the Strozzi in Florence.’
‘Of course,’ Nicholas said. He avoided looking at Julius. ‘You may go where you please. But only here can you work with cristallo. I understood this was your greatest ambition?’
‘It is true,’ the man said. (‘Monna Alessandra?’ Julius murmured.)
‘And you are having success? It is providing the results that you hoped for?’ (‘And her son Lorenzo,’ Nicholas murmured back.)
‘Beyond my wildest dreams,’ said the Florentine, looking from one to the other. ‘It is true. It is unsurpassable.’
‘May we see?’ Nicholas said ‘It is new and wonderful to us all.’
He watched the man rise and disappear. Julius said, ‘What have the Strozzi to do with it?’
‘They supply barillo, salt-marsh weed, for the soda ash. They know the market. Monna Alessandra wants to make a lot of money almost as much as I do.’
He watched the Florentine coming back with the flat-lidded box in his hands. They had been discussing these boxes, he and Gregorio. He didn’t think they were as good as they should be. He saw Julius frown as the thing was set down. It was perhaps a foot square, and all of three inches deep. The Florentine opened the lid.
Artists always wanted to draw Julius, although he rarely had the patience to let them. His face would have looked well in marble; the blunt symmetry of the cheekbones and the straight, classical nose were enlivened by the slanting, archaic eyes with which he examined his fellows. Trained on the box, they were blank.
‘You’re staggered, I knew it,’ said Nicholas. ‘So many sets! You’ve never seen so many, and look at the binding. It’s leather. And the box. Two long double wells, and look how every piece lies without touching. Near vision on this side, and long sight on the other. Try one. Tilde’ll love it.’
And before Julius could move, he lifted one of the Florentine’s artefacts out of the box, clipped it on to the other man’s nose, and sat back on his heels, gazing at him. ‘Now that,’ said Nicholas, ‘is what I call a miracle. You look like Catullus. Or Vitruvius, maybe. Or you would, if they ever wore spectacles.’
‘Spectacles?’ Julius said. He moved his chin carefully up and down. Behind thick circles of glass, his eyes looked like ships’ biscuits. The upturned V on his nose gave him an air of fearful surprise which was not entirely misleading.
‘Rodoli da ogli precisely,’ Nicholas said. ‘Never before ground quite like this. Never before created from the special pure glass that only the Barovier know how to make. That lot, once the permit comes through, is destined for the Duke of Milan. After that, the King of Naples. Then Rome. Then Flanders. Then France, Spain, Germany, England. Every court will want to have them.’
‘They’re all blind?’ Julius said. He pulled the lenses off, with some difficulty. His face had gone red. ‘It’s a wonder they manage to win so many wars.’
‘Scholars need them,’ Nicholas said. He put a pair on his own nose and peered about in a bemused way. ‘Painters, teachers, men of the church, men of the law. Ordinary people as well, but they can’t afford them. Courtiers? They seldom need them, of course, but they’re not going to refuse if their short-sighted prince suggests that there is nothing more dashing than a bit of glass on the nose. They’re a mark of nobility.’
‘You hope to make them one,’ Julius contradicted. His eyes were beginning to sparkle.
‘No, they are. The Strozzi family have been acting as dealers for years, but their glasses are not very good. The market is there. We just have to step in and capture it.’
Julius was staring at him. He said, ‘I see what makes people want to put you quietly out of the way. Who will this make you popular with? Apart from your better-known enemies?’
Nicholas considered. ‘I don’t think the Medici will like it very much,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think they would bother to kill for it. Sir, my colleague is in ecstasies over