The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [250]
From their places abroad, the refugees friendly to Louis began, with discretion, to return to their estates and their holdings in France. Among the first to arrive was Jordan de St Pol, vicomte de Ribérac; father of the fair, handsome and short-tempered Simon. Left in command of his Scots lands at last, Simon de St Pol expressed his relief in a week-long bout of tumultuous drinking, to the frustration of his wife Katelina whose bed was worn through already with the hours she brought him to spend there, although so far without profit. When she heard he was to go overseas, she would hardly leave him alone. Simon, whose vigour was considerable, was both pleased and amused. And she was quite right. One son was not enough. He would not, however, agree to take her with him to Italy.
Gregorio, the Charetty lawyer, had of course left for Italy ten weeks before, with the intention of stopping between Dijon and Geneva, rumour said, to collect and escort his employer, the former widow Marian de Charetty. The word from Bruges was that the elder daughter Mathilde, the one left with Anselm Adorne, had insisted on going as well. The object, of course, as Simon knew, was to untangle the marriage between the other girl and his agent Doria. He wished them well of it. He had intended to follow himself until his father had pointed out how unwise it would be. Fat father Jordan. Bloated father Jordan, who had reinforced the argument by withdrawing all Simon’s spending money and closing his credit, so that he couldn’t get away even if he had wanted to.
But now he could. The hog had gone back to the beechmast of Ribérac and would be too busy rebuilding his wealth to worry about Simon, who had a filled cog out there somewhere in the Black Sea, and a Genoese agent who seemed to be spending more time on his own affairs than on Simon’s, and who well might be pocketing the profits Simon needed to cut himself free from the old man. After he had repaid to the old man the original price of the cog and all it contained. As fat father Jordan had stipulated. Fat father Jordan, whom he loathed as much as he and his father had cause to loathe the upstart labourer Claes. Jordan who spied on him. After he, Simon, found out about the woman Agnès, he had told Katelina to get rid of her. And when she demurred, he had set his grooms at the old whore, who had made as much fuss as if she’d been a virgin and then fled to his father. There were plenty of women to look after Henry. What did it matter? There would be other sons, now. He had never known a woman so eager, so delightfully eager as his wife Katelina van Borselen.
In Florence, the sea consul Antonio di Niccolò Martelli received word of the arrival from Bruges of the Charetty company and, representing his colleagues the Medici, arranged a business meeting with the Charetty lawyer Gregorio, a dark, youngish man with a nose like a scimitar. To Messer Gregorio he was able to deliver the news that a round ship had just departed Pisa for Bruges containing a cargo of Phocoean alum consigned from Constantinople by Messer Zorzi on the instructions of the Charetty company.
The lawyer Gregorio, receiving the news, thanked the consul serenely while opening the letters the consul had kept for him. Martelli admired his composure. With the demand for alum now reaching the skies, the profit from this single cargo from Zorzi would pay for the purchase of the Medici galley. The debt to the lord Cosimo de’ Medici was now cancelled.
Then the