The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [100]
“Or vice versa,” said Julius. He had gone rather pale. He said, “The alum, Nicholas. She could tell him there’s alum at Tolfa. I know it’s in the Genoese interest, too, to keep the discovery quiet, but Doria won’t worry about that, if he can spite you…And my God, you talked to her about this other quarry in Asia?”
“Sebinkarahisar? That’s common knowledge,” said Nicholas. “As for Tolfa, you forget. Violante of Naxos is married to the rich and noble Caterino Zeno of Venice, who bought our silence to preserve the Venetian alum monopoly. Is she going to tell Doria about the new mine, and defy both her husband and the Serenissima? Surely not. Lovers I expect Zeno would manage to forgive. But if he ever learned that she’d divulged a Venetian stratagem to a Genoese consul…She’s too clever to risk it. Not for the sake of Pagano Doria.”
“He charmed Catherine de Charetty,” Julius said.
“Catherine is thirteen years old,” said Nicholas. “This woman is between twenty-five and two thousand. She also knows, by the way, about Astorre’s men. She was bound to find out, and I don’t see it can do any harm now. Anyway, I thought we’d continue to let her think we know nothing of her affair with Doria. If she has to be tackled, I’ll do it.”
“I’m sure,” said Tobie. “And tell us, of course, all that happens. We shouldn’t like it to slip your poor silly mind again.”
He tried not to be angry. For various reasons, it was quite hard. Of course, they had the right to question him. It was partly why they were here. Julius complained out of vanity and Godscalc—you had to suppose—because of his cloth. Only Tobie, when he attacked, applied the casual skill of a man dissecting a carcase. Yet, of them all, Tobie could sometimes come close to the bone. Of them all, too, he enjoyed girls with a natural and well-disposed liberality once shared by Nicholas. But of course their ways in that matter had parted. And now, banishing anger, Nicholas was left addressing the doctor with a somewhat inappropriate vehemence. He said, “Look. I had Monna Alessandra breathing down my neck. I wasn’t going to set off a rumour that might get back to Bruges about Violante of Naxos having secret assignations with lovers in Florence. Have a heart. Mine, if you remember, had my instructions nailed on it in Bruges. I’m to tell you everything. What I eat, where I go, when I shit…”
“I hope you are,” Tobie said. “Telling us.” He looked unfriendly. Not threatening, but unfriendly, and even impatient.
“Of course,” said Nicholas who, for the moment, felt unfriendly too. “Word of St Nicholas, patron of sailors, pawnbrokers…”
“…virgins, and children,” said Tobie.
You could always rely on Tobie to finish your thought for you.
Chapter 16
IN BRUGES, IN the same month of March, the skies fell on the lawyer Gregorio of Asti. He should have been prepared. Ever since the letter from Pagano Doria in Florence, the house at Spangnaerts Street had felt like a smothered volcano. Against all his advice, Marian de Charetty had told neither her friends nor her household about her daughter Catherine’s elopement and marriage. Through all her preparations during the last weeks of February and the beginning of March, she remained adamant. Until she returned with the facts, no one else was to know of it—not even Tilde. Catherine de Charetty, the world was led to understand, had been sent from Brussels to Florence to complete her education. And there her mother was planning to visit her.
Once before she had made this mistake, and failed to take a son into her confidence. Being only her lawyer, Gregorio could not persuade her that she must, at the very least, break the news to her remaining child, Tilde. She remained as strong in her obstinacy as in everything else: as if to give way in one thing would allow all the rest to crumble. And she seemed hardly to see the embarrassments. The natural questions of Lorenzo di Matteo Strozzi, whose mother resided in Florence. The stir among her fellow brokers and dyers, that the demoiselle should feel free to travel