The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [172]
For a while, Tobie stayed. Because he was tired, he drifted now and then into sleep. As any doctor would, he came to the surface when Nicholas stirred or changed his position, however slightly. Nicholas. Claes vander Poele whom he had tended, dumb and desolate, in another place, a decade ago. He had witnessed, then, evidence of a hurt no physician could cure. And now, with the same Nicholas under his hand, a good man and a priest had proved helpless.
In time, the lamp flickered and Tobie rose to his feet. He dared not wait, and to end that shallow rest would be pointless. Climbing noiselessly down, Tobias Beventini extinguished and replaced the lantern and left, miserable because he was angry with Godscalc; and Godscalc was dying.
Chapter 24
HELD A WEEK AFTER his death, the funeral Mass of the Charetty chaplain was widely attended, the Duke himself sending a representative (Tommaso Portinari), and most of the chief burghers of Bruges and their wives crowding into St Donatien’s in their black.
Apart from honouring the good man, commended by the Holy Father himself for his travails in Africa, Bruges was curious to witness the entire House of Niccolò on solemn display: Diniz de Vasquez and the two Charetty girls, one of them his wife; Tobias Beventini the doctor; the red-haired man they called John le Grant, who worked for them in the Levant. And most of all, the big fellow Claes himself, now Nicholas de Fleury, knight, who had come with Gregorio the lawyer all the way from the King’s wedding in Scotland to be at the deathbed. And got there, too, the very day the old man sank into his final coma.
The lady wife of Ser Nicholas wasn’t there, since she had to leave to return to her infant. And Astorre, the army captain, hadn’t been able to wait. But everyone else from the yards and the house had turned up, and the business closed for three days as a mark of respect.
Good feeling, that showed, since the old man had none of his own friends or family left, barring two Germans who had found themselves in the town. One of them, Father Moriz by name, had stood up in church and seemed to be telling them about Father Godscalc’s early days in Cologne. Then he had switched from German Latin to the Louvain kind, and read out a lot of things about Father Godscalc’s later life in Bruges and elsewhere which were very fine, and made those who could understand them blow their noses. Later, there was a Flemish translation for the women.
The funeral feast was well done, too, for those who were invited. And everyone leaving St Donatien’s was correctly thanked by Claes – Ser Nicholas – himself at the door. They said he had had enough of Scotland and was going to stay and look after his own business now, which was only right for a young man with a wife and a baby. His first anniversary was just the other day now; but you couldn’t celebrate with the old man so recently gone. And if young Nicholas married Catherine off, they’d have a wedding to go to as well.
‘Ghouls,’ said the engineer John le Grant as the doors to the Spangnaerts Street house closed behind the last of the guests. He didn’t say it with vehemence, in case he needed the vehemence for something else. He felt drained, by death and by his first experience of Nicholas on his home ground.
He should have listened to Gregorio, with whom he had held, over the years, a long and illuminating correspondence. He knew Tobie and Godscalc and Astorre. He knew, God help him, the step-daughter Catherine. He had known the negro he used to call Loppe. He had been with Nicholas in Florence, in Trebizond, in Cyprus, in Venice, but never here, in the Hof Charetty-Niccolò, Bruges.
John le Grant, pioneer, shipmaster, gunner, had come from Alexandria to Bruges because Nicholas had demanded his services in Scotland. And now Nicholas was here, and not in Scotland. And he wasn’t making toys any more, or none that John liked the look of. Living with Nicholas had always been unpredictable. Now it was like running on top of an icefield.
Astorre, who had departed,