The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [71]
So, entering his mistress’s office, he saw her seated, as ever, behind the great desk with its scales and its inkpot, its ledgers and showcard, decorated with small tufted wools, bright with the dyes of the East. And, now, a small silver box with her name engraved on the side which contained a coil of carved wool and a row of small hammers like teasels.
She wore pearls and double-cut velvet, folded into a high jewelled girdle that flattered her breasts. Her face was patched with past weeping. He said, “Demoiselle. What have you heard?”
Her eyes were half-closed by her lids. She said, “You look tired, Goro. You know where the wine is. Pour some for me too. I think we both need it.”
And when he had done that, and seated himself, and repeated his question, she said, “The same as you, I expect. Tell me first.”
She listened while he told the sorry story. All the letters, the reassuring, grubby letters which had come so haphazardly from her little daughter since early autumn had been fiction, written all in a day by the same little daughter and consigned to a middleman to send off at intervals. Catherine had stayed in Brussels only a matter of weeks, and had then left from Antwerp by ship, deceiving her host and hostess into thinking she was on her way home. She had left with a Genoese, a man who called himself Pagano Doria. And the ship had been sailing for Florence.
He laid on her desk the letters of distraught complaint and apology which had been pressed on him by the silly merchant and his wife who were supposed to be housing her child, and training and teaching her. And who had not been able to prevent her meeting a plausible and personable man who had found it simple to lure her away.
The letters said, in self-defence, something about Catherine’s fickle character which might have been more gracefully left unsaid. The letter ended with an offer, stiffly written, to help underwrite the payment of any financial demands that the rogue might now make. Although, as the demoiselle de Charetty well knew, their own resources were not without limits; otherwise they would never have incurred the anxiety of taking a child of unformed character into their home.
He watched her read to the end. He said, “I told them there had been no ransom demands.”
“No,” she said. She laid the last paper down. “No. He has married her.”
There was a breath of a pause. “Who?” he said.
Her eyes opened on him, and remained there. “Pagano Doria,” she said. “He has written from Florence. The marriage was contracted and witnessed in the city. He asks for nothing. He merely wishes me to know it has taken place.”
His mouth was dry. He said, “Without you, it can’t.”
She remained looking at him. “He says he has taken advice, and it is legal. He sent the papers beforehand to her godfather, Thibault de Fleury, in Dijon. My late sister’s husband. One of the many…Nicholas ruined. Thibault, or someone holding his hand, would be happy to sign them.”
Wine forgotten, he stared at her. He said, “It isn’t legal. She is under the age of puberty.”
The letter from Florence was there, too, on her desk. She lifted it in her sturdy fingers and held it, a little at arm’s length, to find the passage she wanted. Then she read aloud:
You may imagine my sorrow and hers at forgoing a mother’s blessing. I wished her to return to you a child, until she could come as a woman and join me. You do not need me to tell you of our Catherine’s impetuous nature. Where I would have wished for an absence, she insisted that we should not be parted. I need not tell you, I hope, that for as long as your daughter was a child, she remained an innocent, guarded from