The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [100]
There was not enough room, even yet, for the luxury of a permanent table in the salon where the Charetty–Niccolò company met, and where it entertained its clients in Bruges. The Bank of Niccolò now employed thirty agents in the field, and had added eight clerks and factors to its already large staff in Venice, together with an under-manager for Cristoffels, who led the Venetian house.
It was obvious to all men of sense that Julius should not have been taken to Scotland, and that either he or Gregorio should be sent at once to operate the main Bank at Venice now that Nicholas de Fleury was back home in Bruges.
It was assumed he was going to stay. The commands streaming without cease from Scotland had seemed to herald – to confirm – the end of the sterile calm which had followed their African triumph. One ought, of course, to congratulate a man wealthy enough at twenty-eight to rusticate, if he chose, with his family. But the young padrone they thought they knew and had fostered – ablaze with ideas, theories, plans to force through new frontiers, to explode ancient barriers, tease and outwit former enemies – was the magnet they wanted to follow, even though few of them would admit it.
And only a few, of whom Gregorio was one, had taken time through the months to listen to Godscalc the priest when, thumping his stick with the claw-hand he had brought back from Africa, he would exclaim, ‘But whom are you following? Do you know? The boy you once liked? Or the man who has come from nowhere and is going nowhere, but like a meteor will end in dead rock and dust, and you with him?’
‘That was the man who went to Africa. I thought another came back,’ said Gregorio the first time. But as the winter passed, and the commands came hurtling from Scotland in impersonal and increasing profusion, Gregorio had avoided the priest and those others who thought that men should not live by whim, but from conviction. And that Nicholas had no convictions.
Because it was true, in its way. It seemed that Nicholas had abjured whatever lessons the absent years and the desert had taught him, and had turned in their place to the pagan gods of men such as Crackbene, whom he had taken for pilot. And yet Gregorio, afraid though he was, understood, and could not condemn Nicholas outright. For the occupations of trade and of law were not, he felt, bad in themselves, and often drew others to greatness.
So the lawyer, overcast in mood, waited for Nicholas de Fleury in the council-room, and was joined by Julius (who would have been entertained by his misgivings) and by Godscalc, who slowly entered with Diniz and seated himself. Diniz was talking soberly of his mother. ‘Once Tilde is delivered, I’ll go to Scotland. With Nicholas, if he’ll let me.’
‘You should,’ Julius said. ‘That’s the place to be, I’ve got to say. You know Nicholas. He can spot opportunities the way other men can find water. You wouldn’t believe what he’s doing.’
‘Ask not the honey where swarmeth the bee,’ said the man he was talking about, entering with extreme suddenness, as if travelling to the seat of a fire. He threw a heap of papers on the cloth-covered table the secretaries used and sat down in the single chair at the end of it. There were benches along either side. His five partners settled about him while he leafed through his papers.
Being warmer, he looked slightly less bleak, Gregorio thought, but his manner remained the reverse of intimate, and the loose sable velvet and the resplendent sleeves distanced him further. Gregorio saw again, on his skin, the fading scars and marks that once had been burns. Tobie’s eyes had been fixed on them also. There was no need to speculate. Whatever had happened, Julius would tell them, in detail.
Gregorio set his papers, too, before him and listened, while Nicholas de Fleury addressed them briefly from where he sat, and called on him to speak. No time was being lost. Time was money. Time was not only money, but a black,