The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [220]
Chapter 32
THEY HAD NICHOLAS. They had made their submission; and after many months of resistance, the tribe had their leader. Now they were to find out what it meant. What had seemed due to his deficiencies of age, of birth, of status now appeared as the self-sufficiency which, possibly, it had always been. The nature of his arrival had been expressly calculated, you would say, to achieve ascendancy. That the style of it was natural, or that he proposed to sustain it was not something that Godscalc had thought possible. He saw himself proved wrong immediately, in the conference Nicholas called the following day.
Round the trestle he had had placed in the parlour were the men you would expect: Tobie and Godscalc himself; Astorre and le Grant. There were also two others. Nicholas, coming in and sitting down without ceremony, said in Flemish, “I have asked Loppe to join us because our domestic organisation is now as important as the rest, and is going to get bigger. As bursar, he will control it. In the absence of Julius, we shall have the advice of Patou, his senior scrivener. I am going to talk for ten minutes. Then it will be your turn.”
He gave the appearance of being perfectly fit. One supposed that past beatings had made him practised at that. Only the fever could sometimes defeat him. He had not shaved off his growing beard, and no one chaffed him about it. A pity, Godscalc thought. In the profit and loss of this relationship, a number of agreeable credits had been wiped from the ledger. Then Nicholas spoke, and listening with an intensity that hardly allowed his mind to wander, Godscalc was reminded of the diagnostic sciences; of engineering; of medicine.
The case of the Charetty company was laid before them for dissection. First, their present situation. They had been in Trebizond for seven weeks. They had profitably sold or bartered their entire cargo. As both mercenary owners and commission agents they had earned further income and had used that, and their credit, for more purchases. As a result, they now had lying at Kerasous 300,000 pounds’ weight of goods, half their own and half to be freighted for Venice. This represented one galley load, with accommodation for the manuscripts, the dyes, and the payment in money or kind they received from the Palace, including the hire of the ship to Batum.
“Phasis,” Godscalc said. Nicholas looked at him. Godscalc said, “Beside Batum, the river Phasis in Colchis, where Jason went. The Phasianus is the Colchian bird. I didn’t know whether you knew that. The Vow of the Pheasant.”
Nicholas was still looking at him. He said, “Then perhaps John will bring us an egg. We could present it to Duke Philip of Burgundy. I ought to continue.”
“With the expenditure,” said Tobie. Sitting slumped on his spine, he spoke into his frayed doublet buttons.
“With the expenditure. First, we have to take into account any adverse slip in the exchange. Then, what we send home has to offset the hire and use of the galley, the losses at Modon, the cost of the wool taken at Pera and the other items purchased on credit, and those parts of our living expenses not subsidised by the Emperor.”
“And the lease of the new house in the Citadel,” Tobie said.
“Thank you. But I think,” Nicholas said, “that we shall have no trouble selling that, too, at a profit, if we need to. At any rate, I have made a calculation of both intake and expenditure, using exact figures where I have them, and where I haven’t, the least favourable estimate in each case. Provided the galley reaches home safely, we shall not only have offset our expenses, we shall show an extremely high return for one voyage. I am talking,” said Nicholas, “of a profit in the region of one hundred and fifty per cent. And it could be higher.”
He looked round them all. Astorre whistled. John le Grant’s thumbs stayed stuck in the armholes