The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [284]
Nicholas said, “Yes. It’s from the company lawyer, Gregorio, to say he is leaving for Venice. Was. He was writing in May. My wife is ahead of him. They mean to wait for me there; or until they hear if the galley is coming.”
“So you will have a welcome,” said the Greek. “And this transformation? You are fond of her.”
“Yes,” Nicholas said. He found he was smiling. He said, “Do you suppose I do all this for myself? How dull that would be.”
Walking back, he tried to remember every line of the letter, including the parts he had not told Monsignore de’ Acciajuoli, which had lifted a weight he had carried for weeks. He had met the lord Simon, wrote Gregorio. And, sad to say, had so far forgotten himself as to engage in a little swordplay. And had even got himself pinked (but was quite recovered, or Margot would have sent a severe reprimand). And had forced from the other lord, Jordan de Ribérac, a promise that, to save his son’s reputation, Catherine de Charetty’s marriage would be set to rights in whatever way her mother might choose.
Well, time had righted that situation, more or less, of its own accord. What mattered was that the meeting between Gregorio and Simon was over, with no harm to Gregorio. Over; over; and they were all safe. Walking through the night where once he had run, with his ship in flames on the water, Nicholas forgot Trebizond, and laughed aloud from pure pleasure, thinking of his private homecoming, and Venice.
He had never visited Venice before; but, since he was ten, had heard the men of the Flanders galleys talking about it in Bruges. He should have known what to expect.
It was largely because he was so busy that he failed to prepare himself. Busy and mad; for, despite Modon, or perhaps because of it, something of the old lunatic intoxication of Bruges had touched him the further north that they came. And the others, too, shared it. The excitement among the passengers alone would have buoyed them, as they drew away from danger and entered the Venetian gulf. Without the work they had to do, Julius would have been even more dangerous than he was. It was Nicholas who, on the brink of some eruption, had to stop and say, “Look. Later. We’ve got those God-damned lists.”
And indeed, half their days were spent with the clerks, and the bills of lading, the ledgers, the receipts, because nothing, now, would be permitted to go wrong. The round ship, once the Doria, had left them at Ancona, skippered by Crackbene, and carrying in place of her passengers half Astorre’s troop of soldiers to protect her on her voyage round Italy. On board she carried twenty thousand cantars of the world’s finest alum: the equivalent of a year’s production of the closed mines at Phocoea; the product of nearly six months of mining and the entire stockpile of the Greek mines at Sebinkarahisar. A few years ago, a load like that would have fetched nine thousand ducats. Now it would command three times as much. The round ship would unload in Porto Pisano, but most of her cargo was destined for Bruges and England. The ship from Constantinople, if it had arrived, would have delivered three hundred tons there already. He had listed exactly what was to go where, and what price it should fetch.
Some of the Genoese passengers had left at Ancona as well; preferring to cross the Marches on horseback rather than face another sea passage, and an unfriendly Venice. At Ancona, too, he had part-unloaded the galley to make room for the passengers from the round ship, sending some of the light, expensive goods, well guarded, by mule-train to Florence. Some of the manuscripts had gone that way also, including The Book of Zacharias on the Eye, which, at the time of its acquisition, had failed as a peace offering, from what he could remember. Tobie had his own copy by now. He had sent jewels too, and some spices; and some orchil and indigo and part of his seven thousand pounds of kermes, although he had transferred some of that to the round ship, which would also carry the horses: the