The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [223]
The Baron had bequeathed his best sapphire to the Bishop of St Andrews, for love of Maarten his son. A stained glass window with the Adorne coat of arms was promised to the Charterhouse monks outside Perth. To mark his funeral, that of a prince among merchants, ells of linen in grey, black and white were stipulated for the church and his lying-in-state; and a file of twenty-four men, robed in black, from the weigh-houses. The bells of three spires were to toll, and a thousand poor men to receive alms. Bruges would remember its eminent citizen, Anselm Adorne.
Shriven, ducally sponsored, Adorne had planned to set out in February, and hoped to celebrate Easter in Rome. Seven companions had been invited to ride with him: a chamberlain in holy orders, two merchant kinsfolk, a niece, a monk, a ducal chaplain and an eminent burgess of Bruges. A son was to join at Pavia.
So Nicholas de Fleury was told. He did not know, because the message did not reach him till later, that when Anselm Adorne finally left, the number of his company had increased by two.
Proceeding in turn, Nicholas de Fleury travelled south from the Tyrol with his metallurgical padre and John. They called, on the way, at some of the mines. They stopped at Bozen, which had a market favoured by Venetian traders. They arrived in Venice in March. Julius sent the Bank’s grand oared boat to Mestre to meet them, and Nicholas saw Father Moriz assessing the silken canopy and the gilding and the carving and the preposterous liveries. Nicholas spoke to the oarsmen, who looked frightened, and then took his place and was silent.
He felt odd. It should have been terrible, this first return to the city he had left two years ago, rich and comforted and full of childish desires. But as the islands beyond Mestre slipped past – Murano, San Michele – and the familiar skyline appeared, with its golden domes and towers and palaces; as the boat skimmed through the winding canal and into the great thoroughfare of water that led to the Rialto and the Bank, he was touched by something like the warmth of the old days, returning to Bruges.
Bruges was no longer home. He had lost Bruges, with everything else. On the other hand, this was a place he had made. He understood, for a moment, the disappointment that lay behind Cristoffels’s stiffness and Gregorio’s past disapproval: disappointment that, having created this astonishing bank which he was entering now, this great mansion full of activity of which he should be the head, he had left it to others to run.
It was being well enough done. Funded as it was, it could hardly help but succeed. It was hardly his fault that he had spent, in his life, less than the makings of one year in Venice. He hadn’t chosen to go to Cyprus. He had had to leave for Africa, or the Bank would have failed. He had never ceased to communicate, except when circumstances made it impossible. The fact was, however, that he had guided it in the main from a distance, and of the people coming to shake his hand now – Padrone! Padrone! – he knew only half.
He understood, but that didn’t mean that he would change the course he had laid down because of it. It was his life he was living, not theirs.
Nevertheless, he arrived, and made himself known, and proceeded to launch a dense programme of work that was to last through the rest of March and the most of the following month. He sat with the clerks, and spent nights with the letter-books and ledgers, Moriz at his shoulder with Cristoffels and Julius. Summoned, the agents came in from their branches: Florence, Genoa, Milan, Naples, Rome; and he took the patron’s chair behind the big table,