The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [20]
“I can! I can!” said the child.
“Then you must take it off and practise. Then, when this kind friend of yours has gone, you will bring it in and show me. Thank him for his trouble. That is good. And now go.”
The child left, skipping, with the thing in his hands. His grandfather, turning, looked at Nicholas, and then at the two men standing still in the doorway. “Indeed, it speaks!” he said dryly. “And in Persian. I am right, I believe?”
“It is a Persian toy, monsignore,” Nicholas said. “If I may present Messer Julius, notary to the Charetty company. And Messer Tobias Beventini da Grado, our physician. And Father Godscalc, our chaplain.”
“I do not recall,” said Cosimo de’ Medici, “having invited them. But since they are here, there are stools for them. What do they want?” Lean, lined and cynical, the sallow face surveyed them all. When the gout was severe, as at present, he had himself carried through the house, screaming in pain as he approached every door. It was said that when rebuked by Contessina his wife, he explained that to cry warning after the hurt would be useless. The stories about Cosimo and his lady were endless. Julius had seen her once. She was fat and placid and content to be excluded from office and conference while she ran the great house as easily as Nicholas’s plaything.
Deceptive, like Nicholas. Nicholas, looking happy, was answering that awkward question without a trace of embarrassment. He said, “My companions came to save time. You know our company. We are brokers, dyers, commission agents. We have a cavalry troop. We are already extending from Flanders. We have served your agents as couriers. We have a mind to set up a branch in the Black Sea, in the remaining Greek Empire of Trebizond. We are here to suggest that the Charetty company might represent the merchants of Florence in that country. The Emperor of Trebizond will agree. We can offer him better terms than the Medici could.”
“Then you have my congratulations,” said Cosimo de’ Medici. “You have indeed. For a man of your years to have amassed the means to undercut the Medici makes you, my dear sir, one of the prodigies of the world.”
“Oh, our financial arrangement might well be the same as your own,” said Nicholas easily. “Only, of course, we should supply them with soldiers.”
There was a silence. Then the lord Cosimo de’ Medici said, “There, perhaps, we have the theme of a discussion. Stay. I propose to send for some wine, and my son and my secretary. Then we shall talk.”
He paused. “Like your plaything. It came, I judge, from the delegation from Persia and Trebizond now lodging at the Franciscan convent in Fiesole? With whom, of course, you have opened this matter.”
“Of course,” said Nicholas modestly.
Julius caught Tobie’s eye, and peered circumspectly to see how the magnificent plan had struck Godscalc. Julius felt successful, and happy, and on the verge of becoming quite rich. The name of Pagano Doria did not even enter his mind.
Chapter 4
TO NICHOLAS HIMSELF, the early summons to a meeting with the lord Cosimo de’ Medici was an advantage he had not expected. Presenting himself, he felt precariously elated. He was not, by now, straight from the dye vats and felt no apprehension about the meeting itself. His plans were complex but could be adapted. He had changed them once already, since coming to Florence; since receiving the letters from Flanders. But he had told no one about that.
He had begun to feel better ever since he found the little delegation sitting there at the Franciscans’ at Fiesole. They came, as Messer Cosimo had said, from Persia; Trebizond; Georgia—the lands Christian and Moslem which were under threat by the Turk. Their purpose, led by a practised missionary of the Franciscan Order, was to rouse the West to send an army to save them. They had just come from Venice. They were to pass Christmas at Rome. They were just about to see Cosimo de’ Medici. And among them was an envoy from the Empire of Trebizond who was far less