The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [152]
The clerk was new, which was why Gregorio had sent him. “And they all left Bruges together?” Gregorio said.
“After they’d called on my lord of Gruuthuse. They all went in his party to Artois.”
He dismissed the clerk and thought, while he cleared his desk. He should have expected it. Louis de Gruuthuse had married a van Borselen and was currently high in the ducal favour. For several good reasons, he might have taken care to rent an establishment in St Omer worthy of a family with royal connections. And there, Simon and Katelina would be accompanying them. He could hardly accost them on the road. He could not, in any case, leave the Charetty business at a moment’s notice, excellent though his deputy was. He had had, since morning, reason to go and visit Anselm Adorne. This he now did.
There was a canal at the foot of the Hôtel Jerusalem, the graceful building linked to its church which the Adornes had built for themselves in the eastern quarter of the city. He took one of the Charetty boats, and sent a servant to announce his visit. Adorne’s steward came to the postern at once with a welcome. Since Marian de Charetty went away, Gregorio had held one or two circumspect meetings with Anselm Adorne, host and guardian to her remaining child Tilde; and had satisfied himself that the girl was well cared for and reasonably happy. Circumspection had been due because, however long his line had flourished in Bruges, Anselm Adorne was in origin as Genoese as the Dorias, and one Paul Doria was godfather to Adorne’s oldest son.
From friendship and piety, Anselm Adorne had last year endorsed the unexpected marriage of Nicholas and Marian de Charetty which had taken place here, in this church. Profit had followed, of course. But there was no doubt at the time that neither Adorne nor his wife had welcomed the union so abhorrent to Marian’s children. Tilde, then thirteen, had hated Nicholas for it, and maybe still did. Her revulsion did not, it seemed, include the Adornes—perhaps because she too could sense their reservations. But speaking of Nicholas, Anselm Adorne was always tolerant; showing admiration and even affection where Gregorio himself might have been critical.
Tilde, a wiry fourteen, never mentioned her stepfather Nicholas. In the last year she had grown like her dead brother in appearance. Her hair fell dark brown and limp from its padded circlet down to her shoulders, and showed none of the bright russet gleams of her mother and sister. Her nose, like Felix’s, was a flattened stub that became red at the tip under emotion. When Gregorio came, she was usually about to be called for by friends. Once, getting him to herself, she had asked him a number of questions about the company’s loans. The questions were less than childish: he saw he was being invigilated. Otherwise, she spent quite a lot of time, Gregorio knew, at the Bruges home of the lord Henry van Borselen, especially when his royal Scottish grandson was there. The attraction, Gregorio suspected, was less the little prince than young Liddell, his tutor.
He was not over-concerned, for that sensible person Adorne’s wife had an eye on the affair. It might yet turn out to the good. Although Scottish, the man Liddell was well born, and the girl was of an age to be married. But, of course, nothing could be done until her mother came back from her mission.
It had been given out that Marian de Charetty had gone to Florence, to spend some time with her younger child Catherine, at present said to be staying with friends. No one had questioned it. In March, his employer had left perfectly openly, with a good, well-armed entourage to serve and protect her. This morning the entourage had returned, clattering into the courtyard at Bruges with the slightly loosened decorum of a pack of men dispatched leaderless home, who have lost more pay and had more girls on the trip than their wives would ever know. They had been cheerful, though, reporting to Gregorio. Delivered the lady to Dijon as right as rain, and seen her fitted out with another good escort for the rest of her journey.