The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [38]
During all this period the work didn’t lessen, but allowed some time for leisure. They had become used to their lodging. The repopulation of Florence had ceased to form part of Monna Alessandra’s conversation. Tobie, who was playing his own small part in that quarter, seldom came to the house in his free time. Monna Alessandra had warned her paying guests about the loose women of Florence who were required to wear gloves, high-heeled slippers and bells, to warn the eye and the ear of the godly.
Tobie took the lesson to heart. Julius, who slept in the same bed, swore that if a bird struck a bell with its beak, Tobie would be half into its cage with his eyes shut. Julius preferred bruising sports like the calcio and palloni. Quite often, attending, he caught sight of Pagano Doria. The little rat usually had two or three men at his side; and once the petite veiled woman. The sincere smile appeared everywhere, twinkling under broad, rakish hats with conspicuous jewels in them. Julius noticed that he had regular, unbroken teeth to the back of his jaw on each side. He stopped and spoke to Nicholas now and then, recommending a tailor, a tavern, a merchant who sold decent mattresses or practical tableware or stout travelling boxes. The twinkle, to the jaundiced eye of Julius, was meant to convey that Pagano Doria could consume the Charetty company any day between dinner and supper, but preferred biding his time until he left Florence. Nicholas gave no sign that he minded, but it made Julius uneasy. He spoke to the others about it. For example, January had begun, and with less than five weeks in hand they still had no sailing-master.
The Feast of Epiphany approached, a celebration dear to the Medici and regularly marked by a play presented by the famous company of the Magi, and an elaborate procession up the Via Larga itself to end at the crib in the friary of San Marco. Friends, clients, supporters, dependants of the Medici, obeyed the President’s summons to ride, pose or even perform on such occasions. When Cosimo de’ Medici was the president no one refused; certainly no one from the Charetty company. Already, their room at Monna Alessandra’s was littered with costumes for their share in the pageant, and above the window a humorist had tacked a pair of crowns and a single frayed wing. Nicholas was sitting alone in the muddle, adding figures, when Godscalc of Cologne opened the door and walked in.
“No,” said Nicholas.
“Well now,” said Father Godscalc. “As it happens, I wasn’t going to assault either your virtue or your vices. I had in mind an enquiry.” He spoke with perfect placidity. Chaplain, apothecary and meticulous penman, he had worked as hard as any since Pisa and, drawn into his company’s vortex, had continued to weigh up its members. The complex simplicities of Julius and the absent Astorre he knew well already. Tobie, with his acid doctor’s brain and inquisitive nature, was more apt to resist him: he didn’t fully understand Tobie yet. Nicholas who, after all, had advised his appointment, had shown a preference for evading his pastoral attentions, but had otherwise appeared free and open with him from the beginning.
Godscalc observed that this candour had limits, both on the part of Nicholas and on the part of the others, discussing him. Born to gossip, neither Tobie nor Julius ever talked to him about Nicholas, which was odd in two grown men set under another much younger. Godscalc had expected flashes of resentment and pique, and sometimes heard them, disguised as impatience. But even such moments were overlaid by something else he couldn’t quite fathom. They never joked about his curious marriage, even in private. He gathered they respected Marian de Charetty. They also respected, he saw, the presence of a peculiar talent and, perhaps to protect that talent, had closed