The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [69]
Tobie reclined, propped by the sails, and considered Claes, the former apprentice. Then aged ten, he supposed, and newly come from the less-than-merciful hands of his uncle Jaak in Geneva, but still smiling, still helpful, still happy. With a three-year-old perched on his shoulders.
Nicholas stirred. “After that, I suppose she grew the way you would expect. She didn’t want to be treated like Tilde. Felix always ignored Tilde, or baited her. And Cornelis…Their father had a kind heart, but was strict, and a little unthinking. Catherine learned to cajole, and avoid trouble, and make people love her. She wanted the reassurance of love.”
“Who doesn’t?” said Tobie; and was led into a thought of his own. Toys for the pillow. But Claes, grown up, had turned to the farmuk, to puzzles. And a record, once, of simple, physical wenching. He said, “But what you mean is that she would be ready to fall, if a determined man courted her?”
“I had married her mother,” said Nicholas baldly. “Also…” The painful tone sank, unexpectedly, into one of parental defensiveness. “Also we’d refused her a lapdog. It was impossible. Marian told her.”
It was, in view of everything, perhaps the most ludicrous thing he could have said. And the most convincing, thought Tobie later. At the time, it moved him to a conclusion. “Well, for what it’s worth,” Tobie said, “I think there’s no doubt we have to follow that ship. I’ll tell our own people why. You’ll get the best out of the crew—they want revenge for the fire. And you’ll have no complaints from the rest of us.” He paused. “You were surely going to tell Astorre and Julius?”
“I suppose so,” said Nicholas. After a moment he said, “I saw her in Florence. Outside Doria’s house.” His hands glistened, one gripped in the other.
“Then she must have seen you,” said Tobie sharply. “She can’t be unhappy, or she would have come to you. I know it’s terrible, but he may be a man who makes women happy. And he married her. We know that.”
“In a way,” Nicholas said, “it’s the worst thing we know.” At the time, Tobie thought he saw the logic of that. Again, later, he wondered.
They fell very soon into silence, during which Tobie’s eyes closed. He opened them when Nicholas got up silently and went out: either he had already rested, or felt little need of it. Tobie lay in the warmth, and the problem dissolved before he knew it into oblivion. It was full daylight when he woke, and scrambled out, and found the cook and John le Grant together, and received, eating and complaining from habit, his Herculean orders for the day.
A methodical man with certain rules of his own, Tobias Beventini shirked none of his duties. At the same time he made it his priority to seek out Godscalc and Astorre and Julius and relate to each, on his own, what he had already told John le Grant, who had never heard of Catherine de Charetty, but ought to know, too, what he was probably going to be killed for.
He did wonder, lastly, whether or not to tell Loppe. He finally did, but found that Loppe already knew.
Under the same cold and fruitless skies of February, the news of the loss of Catherine de Charetty reached her mother in Bruges.
Returning from his errand in Brussels, the lawyer Gregorio of Asti had never in his cool and crowded career climbed the stairs to his mistress’s room more reluctantly, nor asked for admittance. He thought, as her voice invited him in, that she sounded almost prepared to hear what he had to tell her. He opened the door.
Although not prone to marriage, Messer Gregorio had long been the companion of a handsome and intelligent woman, and could appreciate good looks and courage, even in a woman ten years older than himself who owned and managed a business. He had only been with her a year. He himself was a Lombard and, fresh from Padua law school, had obtained his first post as a junior clerk to the Senate in Venice: an excellent training for a man with ambition. Approaching the end of his twenties, he had thought it time