The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [104]
“No,” he said.
“But Nicholas knows?”
“Of course. I sent word. I half-killed a courier…” He broke off, and said quietly, “He has known about Simon from the moment he set foot in Florence. But not, of course, about Catherine.”
“So you had discovered this long before I sent you to Brussels; and said nothing. You could have saved Catherine.”
“Do you imagine I haven’t thought of that?” he said. “But the ship had left by that time. I had no idea she was on board. I wasn’t in Antwerp myself. There was nothing then to link Doria with Catherine. Her letters to you were still arriving.”
But already she was throwing him, numbly, another challenge. “You told Nicholas, and yet he has sailed. Why? Why did he go on? The whole purpose of his leaving Bruges was to remove him from Simon.”
Gregorio said, “The galley is only on loan. He has made other investments. He had to go on, or the company would have suffered.”
She said, “One load of alum from Phocoea would cancel all of his debts. Against that is his safety.”
Gregorio did what he could. He said, “Would it have been safer for him in Europe, with Simon still close? At least, chance has taken Nicholas to where Catherine needs him. He may bring her home.”
The blue eyes were fixed on him now. She said, “He left Florence knowing nothing about her. Perhaps he will find and rescue her. But what good will that do, if Doria has orders to get rid of him?”
Gregorio said, “Nicholas himself doesn’t believe that. He has said so, in my letter. He describes Doria as a dangerous, competitive child, but not an assassin.”
“What does Nicholas know? The man has abducted a twelve-year-old child. He is working for Simon. Don’t you understand yet,” said Marian de Charetty, “that Nicholas cannot understand evil? Has learned nothing? Cannot conceive it exists? More. Nicholas, through beating and injury, will not think evil of Simon. You know that. When he finds out the truth about Catherine, he will be bewildered: he will not know what to believe. He may be able to hold off Doria, although it is likely, to my mind, that Doria is biding his time until there is a prize worth falling heir to at Trebizond. But Doria hardly matters. It is the wound of Simon’s enmity that harms Nicholas most, and could disarm him.”
There was a little silence. Then Gregorio said, “I have been trying to find Simon, to confront him. He has been in Scotland for weeks. But they say he may come for the Golden Fleece. The Duke is holding a Chapter.”
“You would speak to him?” she said. “About this? About Doria and Catherine? But I told you. The connection between Simon and Nicholas is not to be made known.”
“Of course,” said Gregorio. “We all respect that. But the feud is public knowledge; indeed, is in the realm of entertainment by now. The lord Simon and the young comedian Nicholas provoke one another; that is universally known. Hence—everyone knows—Simon and his wife think him intolerable. But a deliberate attack on his life would be thought quite uncalled-for, and Simon will never admit quite to that.”
“So what would you gain,” she said, “by meeting him?”
“Information,” Gregorio said. “Because he is vain. He has been mocked. He wouldn’t be human if he didn’t want us to know a little, at least, of what he has planned to ruin or ridicule Nicholas. He may say little enough, but we should know at least something of what to expect.”
“But we could do nothing about it,” said Marian de Charetty. “A letter from you to Nicholas would take four months to reach Trebizond.”
“It would help me to punish him,” Gregorio said. “Through the law. Or my sword.”
She was bleached with fatigue, but that touched her. Her anger, three-quarters rooted