The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [101]
At least, Gregorio thought, he had been able to disabuse her of that idea. Long before her mother reached Florence, Nicholas would have gone. Either forward, or back.
Apart from the practical, there was little enough he could do for Marian de Charetty. February had been a month, he could imagine, of empty anniversaries. Last year, he had not been here for the Shrove Tuesday carnival; but he supposed it had meant something to Nicholas, and to the demoiselle also. Their marriage had followed in five weeks.
It was the time of year, too, when young girls like Catherine and Tilde, guided by parents, sometimes found husbands through the traditional intermediary of the carnival. Last year, both the demoiselle’s daughters had been under age. This year Tilde, at fourteen, had looked forward to the delights of attending, properly gowned, unhampered by Catherine.
Instead, Marian de Charetty, explaining nothing, had locked herself and her daughter into the house all that day, and had turned away all who called, pleading sickness. Gentle Tilde, roused to weeping rebellion, had been rescued at last by the coaxing of Anselm Adorne’s wife who called and, with the obstinacy of a good lady accustomed to public life, had refused to leave without Tilde and her mother.
After that, the little distance between the demoiselle and her daughter remained, and widened as the plans for the mother’s journey filled all her days. Stress made her over-meticulous. Gregorio was primed again and again on his duties, as were all the others in the good team that Nicholas had left: Cristoffels and Bellobras, Henninc and Lippin. The demoiselle would take with her Tasse, the maidservant from Geneva who had sought her out when her master’s business collapsed. For the rest, she would hire men at arms to escort her. Florence might be her ultimate destination. But only Gregorio knew that she was travelling first and foremost to Dijon in Burgundy, to wrench the truth from her brother-in-law Thibault de Fleury, who was seventy and senile but had still, according to Pagano, signed the marriage papers of his god-daughter Catherine.
It would not be a pleasant visit. Thibault de Fleury was also the grandfather of the bastard Nicholas, and had been ruined by him. Thibault de Fleury’s first wife had borne the mother of Nicholas. The sad, dead, profligate mother, who had been rejected by her cuckolded husband—the cuckolded husband to whom Nicholas, grown, had become anathema. It was, of course, why Nicholas had been sent from Bruges. While his mother’s husband still divided his time between Flanders and Scotland, neither Nicholas nor the Charetty company could feel safe from his hostility.
Meanwhile, it was to no one’s advantage to publish the connection between Nicholas and the Scottish lord Simon. Certainly Simon and his second well-born young wife would never contemplate doing so. In the Charetty company, the secret belonged only to Gregorio, Tobie and Julius, who had received the confidence of the demoiselle after last year’s disasters.
Gregorio had told no one else; not even Margot, his discreet and sensible mistress of many years. But sometimes when she wondered aloud, as they all did, about the nature of the marriage between the Widow and the young man who had been her apprentice. Gregorio would say, “Don’t grudge him comfort, for I think it brings him that. His own family have had none to give him.”
That year, Marian de Charetty had taken the trouble to ask to meet Margot, and had approved of her. When, in March, he completed his first twelve months with the Charetty company, the demoiselle had invited them both to a gathering of all those who served her in Spangnaerts Street, and had thanked him publicly for all he had done. Her father and his had, long ago, been friends. When privately, later, she asked