The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [147]
The factor said, ‘You can’t keep them away, and it saves the chiels from stravaiging into the townships. They’re nice enough lassies, although there are others just as handy and cleaner. Tam Cochrane will tell you. He’s there now.’
‘And we can sleep there?’ said Nicholas.
‘Ye’d wonder, I agree, but you can. And there’s room for your men. You won’t know it when there’s a proper road made, and the grass grows, and we get some trees planted. Here you are.’
Gregorio didn’t speak. He could already see, approaching closer, that this was not the massive stronghold of his earliest fears, from which the men-at-arms of de Fleury would descend to spoil and harry Kilmirren. For one thing, the Semples of Elliotstoun were far too shrewd to allow him to build one.
But it was not, either, the mystical palace he had begun to dread, riding up through the sunshine: the très riche home, born of five cultures, into which a nameless rich man might pour all his longings.
Before him, half reshaped and still building, was the residence, without walls, of a powerful man with powerful connections. The comely range of living quarters now forming round the embryo square was of a style to lodge lords and their retinues rather than a troop of light horse. The hall and chapel which adjoined it were new and far from complete, but Gregorio saw the promise of tall windows surrounded with vine-scrolls, and colonettes and capitals that reminded him of France, rather than Flanders. Next to the hall was the tower, once the only occupant of the rise and now half restored, its windows enlarged and the space between them newly banded with ornament.
Three floors of that were secure, they were told, and would lodge them that night. The master mason already had his room there, and the vaulted cellars served as tool-store and tracing-house, and supplemented the long thatched lodge in the yard, thick with powder, where the masons patiently sat, carving stone.
Cochrane, when he emerged, was also coated with powder and still, absently, held a saw in one hand. Oliver Semple, as from long practice, ducked to one side when he started to speak. They were by now dismounted, and standing scattered among the giant rouleaux of timber, the new-cut stacks of stone, the piles of lime and the mountains of sand, the baskets and barrows, the canopied workspaces where men mixed mortar or sharpened blades at a forge.
Everyone worked, and everyone looked at M. de Fleury while working, so that the great hoist turned slower and slower and the withy ladders became congested with climbers, and the bucket banged on the side of the well. The faces under the caps were friendly – dirty but friendly. Most were labourers, but one or two were craftsmen whom Gregorio recognised. A carver, a tiler, a cutting-mason already employed in the Casa di Niccolò in the Canongate.
Members of a new army indebted to Nicholas.
Master Oliver, raising his voice, introduced M. de Fleury and Master Gregorio his lawyer, and announced that it was proposed to drink to the patron’s good health at sunset. There was a satisfied cheer, and M. de Fleury briefly addressed them. The master mason, still gesticulating with his saw, then placed himself before the arrivals and proceeded to lead them to the four quarters of the yard in order to explain, with some passion, the curiosities of his handiwork. The light faded. Gregorio followed.
None of this had anything to do with the Bank of Niccolò, or with Venice or Bruges, or with John sweetening the Mamelukes in Alexandria, or Astorre in Burgundy, or the trade links Nicholas was forging with Scotland. Gregorio could not guess its significance and, now, was reluctant to try.
He felt, in the midst of despair, a distinct cordiality towards Thomas Cochrane, master mason. He had felt the same for Will Roger. He then wondered if Nicholas had selected them, or the other way round. He knew,