The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [224]
It had shaken them, that piece of news, and they had discussed it from time to time, he and Tobie. Nicholas had received it that morning, with all the other papers that had come in his absence. Godscalc had been there when he read them all quickly. There had been no time for comment, and his face had shown nothing. It showed nothing now. Godscalc said, “It’s as well, I suppose, that we’re staying. Doria has no cause to think kindly of the Charetty company now. Or his marriage.”
Nicholas stood. “She knows where to come,” he said. “Tobie, what do you do for a cough?”
Interest filled Tobie’s pink face. “I heard it,” he said. “Three beaten-up eggs in an ounce of turpentine daily. Never fails.”
“My God,” said Astorre.
“Not him. The camel,” said Tobie.
The marriage of Pagano Doria proceeded to founder. It was not entirely his fault. Now and then, in the course of an adventurous career—quite often, in fact—he had been bested by circumstances, and took some pride in accepting failure with the same flamboyance with which he greeted success. He then put it behind him with the greatest possible speed and began somewhere else. Very seldom had he been tied like this to the place of his defeat, and even more seldom was the defeat due to a single adversary playing the same game as himself. Moreover, he was bonded to a young wife who nagged him.
It had begun with questions to do with the silver. What had Nicholas meant? Doria had lied, not foreseeing that she would then go to his ledgers and work out why he couldn’t pay anything. She had then wanted to accuse Captain Astorre or Nicholas and his servants of stealing it, and he had had to explain that it had been carried off by the Kurds. Her attitude towards the return from the grave of her mother’s husband seemed to waver between relief and aggravation: she talked about him a great deal. Also, having found her way to her husband’s account books, she began getting interested in what he had sold, and planned to purchase on credit, and was paying for everything. She even tried to discuss it all with him and at last, when petting failed and he was driven to speak more directly, she lifted her pretty face and opened her pretty lips and criticised him.
What, said Catherine de Charetty, was she to make of a man who had wanted to take over her business and yet couldn’t buy shrewdly or supervise proper accounting? There were cargoes proper to galleys, and there were cargoes for round ships. What had he done to fill his? If Nicholas had never come back, Pagano might have taken and ruined the business.
He would have been less surprised if his horse had complained of his riding. Then he said, “Oh, those terrible books! With Flemish clerks, we’d have had none of this trouble. Sweetheart, don’t trouble your head. With the kind of clerking we have, Croesus would look as if he were in debt. We need a good Caffa notary, and we’ll get one.”
“No. Don’t bother. I’ll do it for you,” said Catherine. After that, he never saw her but she had some mistake to upbraid him with. He wondered if Nicholas knew it, whose rich elderly wife was safely at home, and who was sitting there laughing, with his silver, his goods and his profit. Pagano Doria was not much in the way of killing people with his own hands, but he wished that he had taken the trouble at Vavuk. He wondered who else was laughing. He took to going out a good deal to places where he was welcome, and nobody discussed the price of borax cakes while he was undressing them. In between, his mind was on ways of redeeming his status.
There was one. He had referred to it once, before he realised quite what an inquisitor she was going to turn out to be. When she had complained of going home empty-handed, he had said, “You know it all, don’t you? But don’t despair, my pretty Catherine. I still might have something to sell.” Then he had had the sense, smiling, to say no more, so that she turned away believing, he hoped, that he had been deluding her.
Had he been at home, he would have left her by now, although with real regret. He had trained her