The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [21]
Nicholas had enjoyed talking to him, all the time he learned how to make his little toy. Since the envoy was Italian, it was simple. They had reached a very good understanding, he and the merchant Michael Alighieri from Trebizond.
It had been unfair of him, after that, to tease Julius and Tobie over the toy, but sometimes he couldn’t prevent himself. They were ten years older than he was—one a pedagogue and a notary, the other a highly trained doctor. Until they left Bruges, he had never been quite sure whether they would come with him on a venture so personal. The money behind him was that of the Charetty company, but he had created it himself. If he lost it, the company would be no worse off than it had been when he was an apprentice. If he increased it, the profit he made would be his. If he ran into debt, his would be the responsibility. He had a fund of his own, stored in Venice. Except for utter disaster, he ought to be safe.
It was the hunger for adventure in Julius that had brought him back to Italy, Nicholas thought. That and a spark of generosity and even pride, for Nicholas had been in some sort his acolyte. And also, of course, a dream of personal wealth. He could imagine how Julius saw it. Nicholas was taking the risk, but he had his elders to advise him. If he failed, Julius would argue, of course his wife would empty her long purse to save him. If matters fell out as they might, there could be gold and to spare there for everyone.
And Tobie? What had brought that sardonic doctor from the comforts of the company office in Flanders? Curiosity, he supposed. Curiosity of the intellect, which had brought him to tour Europe binding the wounds of its armies instead of pursuing a safe academic life like that of the famous physician his uncle. And curiosity about himself. The doctor’s analytical eye that sometimes saw more than one wanted. Trebizond was his project; and he was Tobie’s.
Sometimes, sitting designing something in his own room, Niccolò would let his mouth and cheeks and jaw fall into the semblance of Julius and Tobie and Captain Astorre or Godscalc and the lawyer Gregorio. Under his breath, he would recall, for his own entertainment, their favourite phrases and attitudes; the alarmed cadences of their voices. He liked them all: he meant no harm by it. As a boy he had done it all the time, openly. Now, since his marriage, he didn’t. Nor ever made fun of the people close to him, now he was a burgess. And especially never of Marian, who had brought him up. Whom he had married. Whom he had in every way married.
He had heard from her since arriving in Florence. Her lawyer wrote every day, keeping him in touch with exchange rates and commodity demands and the letters arrived in two and threes, delivered by their own Milan couriers. Most he showed to the others; some he kept to himself. None of them, of course, was dated later than October. Marian inserted notes in her own hand: mostly practical adjustments to the lists he was carrying, or snippets of news likely to affect the market, such as the fighting in England to decide whether the Lancastrians or the Yorkists would end up with the throne. Until that was settled, it was unlikely that France or Flanders or England would send a soldier to fight for the Lord in the Levant. That left matters up to the Charetty company.
She said things like that, which made him smile; and mentioned friends sometimes. He was to buy a good rosary for the wife of Anselm Adorne. Lorenzo wished to send greetings to his mother Monna Alessandra, and to say that he had hopes that his father’s cousin was failing at last. The lord Simon, who had caused all the trouble, had taken his wife back to Scotland. Tilde was well, and Catherine wrote that she didn’t want to come home from Brussels.
All Marian’s letters were signed “your loving wife”. He didn’t need any more personal message. When he sent the couriers home with his answers he always included a note of his own. It would say something