The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [173]
“Those things are vanity, too,” said the Emperor’s great-niece. “But without him, neither the Church nor the learning could flourish. And after him, an abler might come. Have you thought of that, Scotsman? Or would you prefer honest ignorance, sat on the tombstone of culture?”
“I should prefer Uzum Hasan,” John le Grant said.
There was a long silence. She said, “Well? You must have been told to say more.”
“I was told,” he said, “to find you, show you what he was making, and ask for your wishes. He said nothing more. That is why we complain of him.”
“But,” she said, “you must know what he thinks of the Emperor?”
“Yes, I know,” said John le Grant. “But, like me, Nicholas has an engineer’s method of viewing things. A faulty cog doesna alter a principle. The Emperor isn’t part of the equation, or Uzum Hasan, or Mehmet even. It’s what they stand for.”
“You are alike,” she said.
“No,” said John le Grant. “I wouldn’t be like yon young fellow for anything.”
Nothing more of importance was said. He left soon after, and was impatient of the horseplay back at the fondaco, because he had several decisions to make. In the end, he told Nicholas all that the woman had said. The talk took place at dusk in the bedchamber, where part of his day was still spent. He couldn’t see, in the darkening room, how the other man was receiving it. Eventually, Nicholas said, “Why mention Uzum Hasan?”
“He is her uncle,” John le Grant said. He waited. He said, “She doesna know your opinion.”
“But I seem to know hers,” Nicholas said. “Unless you have left something out.”
“I wanted to,” the engineer said. “But unless you knew the facts, you couldn’t interpret.” He waited again. He said, “You can’t escape, you know. You think like Julius, or you think like you. Your butterfly days are behind you.”
“I don’t know,” Nicholas said, “how you get out of step with all the rest of this team. Everyone else thinks that these are my butterfly days.”
He sounded quite entertained. But then Loppe came in, and set a spill to the lamp, and le Grant saw that there was no expression in his hollow clown’s face at all.
The uneven convalescence; the weeks of restraint and suspicion were brought to an end, typically, by Julius, abetted by Tobie.
Elsewhere in the City, and subject to no one, Pagano Doria obeyed with alacrity every Imperial summons through all that ripening spring. It was easy to study his movements.
Julius chose one of his absences to march into the Genoese consulate and demand to see the demoiselle Catherine, returning speechless with rage to the compound of yard, villa, warehouse, garden and stables that was the present Florentine fondaco.
It was afternoon; the time of torpor when Trebizond took its ease, no matter how anxious its foreign merchants might be to do business. After a morning of work that had started at dawn, Tobie had taken a pack of cards out to the little pleasance Alighieri had made for himself behind the villa, where he had built a pool with a fountain and set a marble table and benches under the almond trees. Today, the sun was hazily warm and the tulips lining the water channels seemed made of scarlet satin: the scent of narcissus and hyacinth was dizzying.
Annoyingly, Nicholas was already there, lying with his shirt open on one of the benches. When he tired, it was less from walking, Tobie suspected, than from a bottomless drain of frustration. He opened his eyes at the pause in Tobie’s footfalls, and then closed them again. In silence, Tobie resumed his way to his chosen table and, sitting, shuffled and dealt his cards, his shoulder to Nicholas. Two weeks before, they would have shared a game. Now he played against himself, making mistakes and conscious that they had been noted. But when he turned his head, Nicholas had changed his position so that he no longer overlooked the table.
Tobie had wondered, with Godscalc, what to expect of Nicholas once he recovered. They, alone of the company, knew the wretched story of Katelina van Borselen. Since letting it slip, Nicholas had never referred