The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [51]
Even though he remembered, he did not smile, reading. Tilde was turning out a fine girl although it worried Marian that she hardly went out with her friends, but lingered about the office or dyeshop instead. With young Catherine in Brussels, now her mother could do what she wanted; everything had become less troublesome, in a way. But that should not be so, because Catherine was a member of the family too, and it was wrong that she should come to think of her uncle and aunt as her parents, and Brussels as her home. Marian thought that in a short while she would send Gregorio to Brussels to talk with her. Cool and sensible, Gregorio would weigh matters up and would bring back a report she could trust. She prayed for Nicholas. She had made him a scarf. It was not in the Charetty colours. It was for him, himself. She had put her thoughts, she said, in the stitches.
When he unfolded it, he saw how fine it was, and guessed, since her days were so full, that she had worked every night to complete it. Every night, probably, since he went away.
He had sent her something too. A little music-box which uncoiled like baled cloth, and had perfect small teasels for hammers. He had made it himself, and got someone to cast it in silver. Her name was engraved on the side.
He had told Gregorio, but not Marian, the developing story of the Doria. He would be careful, of course. But his brief acquaintance with Pagano Doria had indicated a light-hearted man, amused by small devices. Godscalc thought the same. “That is a man,” said the priest, “who sees the world as a mirror for his own excellent person. He toyed with me. He will toy with you. He does not seek to destroy us because we illuminate him.”
Often, Nicholas found himself disconcerted by Godscalc. He said, “I thought perhaps I imagined it. I’ve felt, all these weeks, that Doria could have stopped this voyage of ours, if he’d wanted.”
“And now he wants you to chase him,” the priest said. “I am glad you’ve decided against it. Is chastity difficult?”
This time, it was not asked by a woman intent on dissecting another woman. Nor, it seemed, did the question hold any special pastoral emphasis. Nicholas said, “Why do you ask?”
“I’m not sure,” said the priest. He wrinkled his brow so that the mess of black hair tangled into his eyebrows. He said, “He will look for a weak spot.” His brown gaze, though direct, remained civil.
Nicholas said, “We’ll dress Tobie up in my clothes. You liked Doria?”
“No,” said Father Godscalc. “I think I was sorry for him.”
“For him?” Nicholas said.
Shortly after, they sailed; precisely on time, thanks to the north winds of February. The mainsail was not painted; but in place of the lilies of Florence there flew from its mast a large silken flag in a peculiar blue which had cost Julius, in professional pain, three-fourths of the price of a weaving-loom. Below the mast lay one hundred and thirty-eight feet of floating debt called the Ciaretti.
The trumpets blew as she rowed out of Porto Pisano. The flourish sang through the boisterous wind and drowned the imprecations of fifty good seamen and a hundred highly paid members of the Charetty army, seated three to a bench and attempting to keep time with each other. They had been forbidden to sing leaving harbour, on account of their unlikely repertoire.
Every other man stood on deck and watched the land recede, their hair and cloaks snapped by the wind, and their blood hot for adventure. Nicholas turned and looked at them all: the marine bowmen already in place on the fighting-stage of the prow, or by the mast, or on either side of the long central gangway. The mates, the caulkers, the carpenters, the rowing-master and trumpets; the rest of his team of eight helmsmen. Then, in the stern with the pilot and steersman, his friends the officers of the ship and the company. Godscalc its reserved and powerful chaplain. Tobie, bald and acid, its barber-surgeon. Julius, former master and ally, its notary-purser, with beside him the black face of Loppe, and