The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [37]
Nicholas murmured. He remembered poor Lorenzo. He remembered, he said, Caterina her daughter, married to Marco di Giovanni da Parenti the silk merchant.
Ah, said Monna Alessandra. That was so. Parenti. A Latinist; a so-called philosopher and, of course, rich. His grandfather had made a fortune from armour. But gente nuova, of the medium rank only. With a larger dowry, Caterina could have married a nobleman. But where was the money? To think of the farm, the very palace she had sold to that boor Niccolini. The provender one then took for granted. The oil, the wine, the corn. A little barley, some walnuts, a pound or two of good pork. Sometimes, when he remembered, the boor Otto would send her a pack of such things and she would be expected to value the favour. Otto, who had done nothing to help her sons back from exile. Every day, at Puzzolatico, she would tend the mulberry bushes with her own hands and buy the seed, the silkworm eggs in the spring.
“Tell me about the mulberry bushes,” Nicholas would say gently. He learned a lot about silk before he did anything about collecting his cargo. And Monna Alessandra, who also knew what she was doing, deduced a number of things about this fellow Nicholas, and made up her mind to learn a few more.
It was one of the six Martelli brothers who talked to Nicholas about possible sailing-masters. Watch out, they said, for the German Johannes le Grant. Red Johannes. He’s your man, if you’re sailing about Constantinople. He watched out; but if Johannes le Grant was in Florence, he didn’t make himself known. Meantime, on Martelli advice, Nicholas found his navigator and helmsman and, soon after that, they set up their tables before the sea consul’s palace to recruit the seamen they needed. Julius helped.
By this time, Tobie, Julius and Godscalc were all experiencing the uncertain euphoria of men caught in a whirlwind of fresh fish. They rushed behind Nicholas, arms outstretched to seize the largesse that showered upon them, and spent lamplit nights cramped over vellum, reducing it all to some sort of order. The formal visits, the contracts, the solemn conclaves with bankers, the heavy chests obtained from the Mint, the lists, the registers, the ledgers, multiplied to keep pace with his momentum. Christmas came, and the momentum failed to slacken, since Nicholas had by then found himself allotted a minor but tangible place in the hierarchy of the Medici. He met, in time, most of the family. Cosimo’s sons Giovanni and Piero interviewed him separately, and he became familiar with the house of Cosimo’s nephew Pierfrancesco and his wife Laudomia Acciajuoli. It was Monna Laudomia who found him a Greek tutor when he decided that he wanted to know more than Julius could teach him. Julius agreed to sit in on the lessons in case the man got it wrong. Privately, he was relieved. Five years had passed since his studies in Bologna, and the subsequent spells at Louvain as poor Felix’s tutor had barely freshened his memory. Nicholas, as Felix’s servant, had actually learned more than he had.
Bologna. All that seemed now to have been forgotten. The unpleasant Fra Ludovico had gone to Rome to proposition the Pope, it was known. His assorted group of Eastern companions would (he asserted) muster an army of 120,000 against the Sultan, provided the Western world raised the equivalent. The Pope quickly suggested that the party should slip over the Alps and put the matter to France and Burgundy, without whom a worthwhile crusade was impossible. The envoys agreed, while holding out for their travelling expenses. When they got those, it turned out that Fra Ludovico would rather like to be