The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [287]
Messer Niccolò fell in agreeably with all these plans, while listening with his other ear to the murmured promptings of Martelli. Gregorio and his family had arrived and were staying at the Palazzo Martelli-Medici, where there was sufficient room for them all. “This is kind of you. They didn’t, then, find a suitable place of their own?” Nicholas said. Another speech began, during which he failed to catch Martelli’s reply.
Alessandro Martelli, a man of fifty with black, grizzled hair, was the brother of the sea consul who had entertained Godscalc in Pisa. Five out of six of the Martelli brothers served the Medici in various parts of the world, as the Portinari family did. Indeed, it was a Portinari who had been in Venice before Alessandro.
Julius had joined the conversation now, and John le Grant. They couldn’t all leave. The ship had to be taken to the customs wharf and checked and unloaded; the seamen paid off. The practical part of the discussion dragged on. The ceremonial visitors left. The passengers left, some of them embracing him and pressing upon him inconvenient presents. Two of the children cried, and he carried them down the steps and handed them into the boat himself. When he came back he found that Catherine was there, with her boxes and her maid, and Loppe had got the rest of their personal baggage on deck, and the Medici barge was loading already. Loppe said, “I shall go with the barge, Messer Niccolò. The boat will take you to the piazza, with the demoiselle and Father Godscalc and Messer Martelli.”
“And me,” said Tobie. “Martelli says it’s quicker to land us and walk, and let the luggage go round by the canal.” He paused, and said, “There it is.”
The mist had lifted, and Venice lay on the horizon, flat as a platter of sweetmeats. Tobie, of course, came from these parts. Gazing at that long chain of pink and white fragments couched in late summer green, pierced by the stalks of belltowers, Nicholas could find nothing, as yet, to remark. Behind the mist, it could have been Bruges. Now, it was nothing.
Catherine said, “Florence looked better than that. I would live in Florence.” She was trembling. Nicholas helped her climb down into the Medici boat and, as it set off, she sat as close to him as she dared, in her handsome black velvet cloak and silk gown from Modon, which he had paid for. The widow returning with nothing. The runaway child, restored to the pity—worst of all, the pity—of her mother.
Nicholas said, “They call it the loveliest city in Europe, I don’t know why. Yes, perhaps I do.” For there, after all, was the palace the seamen had spoken of, dainty as a pink and white ivory comb. And the broad, efficient sweep of the waterfront, turning off into the great canal he could just see on his left. And ahead, the smooth red piazza opening into the interior, and fronted by two ancient pillars. They tied up at a long jetty and waited until they could move off in order between the two files of liveried servants, Martelli in front. It was necessary, for the piazza was crowded, and became more so as they penetrated its depths, moving further away from the sea.
Now Nicholas saw all the landmarks he had heard of. There on the left was the watchtower, and on the right the great basilica of St Mark. Its thick clusters of pillars were of the same coloured marbles as those in the Palace at Trebizond. The form of the doors was familiar, and the reliefs, and the hooded mosaics, their gold turned by shadow to sepia. And above his head were the domes of St Eugenios and the Chrysokephalos, and of Aghia Sophia. Which was nonsense, for they were of a different shape, and there were five of them. But the sailors who came to Bruges didn’t say that Venice had been ruled by Byzantium and also had ruled in it. The Hellenes and the Romans mingled here as they did on the shores of the