The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [226]
Although her kiss was deep, his response – once automatic, overwhelming – was reliably absent. He wondered if, at twenty-nine, this was usual. First the years of natural joy; then the rule of passion closely confined by society; and finally conjunction to order, as with Sigismond’s whores. If he had to, he could become the lover of Fiorenza or Violante once more, but he was no longer driven by appetite. It seemed likely he never would be again.
Which was convenient. Nicholas left Venice satisfied, no matter how he left the Venetians.
The elderly galley Ciaretti, highly taxed (as privately owned galleys properly were) and loaded by Livornese boatmen (as was the rule) moved out of her own Porto Pisano at the end of May, bound for Alexandria. With her she carried her patron, Nicholas de Fleury, Knight of the Unicorn, and for sailing-master she had John le Grant, fulfilling again the role he had occupied at his first meeting with Nicholas. Or half the role. Then, he had also been sailing-instructor.
Nine years before, his first ship, she had carried Nicholas and his company to all that awaited him in Trebizond. Now she was expendable. He had lent his better ships, for one reason or another, to the Signoria. They were well insured. He disliked both of them.
Behind in Venice, the Bank under Moriz, Julius and Cefo was primed to subside into its usual routine, but with more than its normal vigour.
Behind in Florence remained a number of satisfied merchants, a busy agent, and various amused or astonished representatives of the families Medici and Strozzi. A week before their departure, Alessandra, purveyor of spectacles and mother of Lorenzo Strozzi, had let Nicholas take her hand, lying back in her chair attended by the sisters Antonia, the future wife of her son Lorenzo, and Maria, bride but not yet bedded wife of Tommaso Portinari of Bruges.
Alessandra had said, ‘Marietta would never have done.’
The sisters looked down. ‘No,’ Nicholas had agreed. Everyone knew whom Lorenzo’s first choice had been, and why it had been firmly scotched.
‘I have to tell you,’ Alessandra had continued, ‘that I fear that you, too, have been irresponsible in your selection.’
‘You disapproved of my wife,’ Nicholas had said. ‘But a van Borselen is not to be sneezed at.’
The matriarch of the Strozzi family had almost smiled. ‘I am unlikely to disagree. I assumed, for that reason, that you would wish to keep her, although her precipitate arrival last autumn seemed childish. It is clear, having spoken to her, that she is so far from childish that she poses a problem.’
He had released her gnarled hand and sat back, displaying amusement. ‘I am used to capable women, madonna.’ The girls peeped at one another, and away.
She said, ‘Oh yes, you see me, a widow, managing my possessions. You saw your first wife, also a widow, do likewise. I daresay the same applies even to courtesans.’ Her spectacles slanted. Her mantled head, lifted, brought the cords of her neck into view. ‘A married woman who runs after power, signor de Fleury, may end as a rival to her husband, instead of a partner. You should have asked the good Duchess Isabelle to pick you a bride. Sweet maids like Antonia and Maria ask nothing more than the arms of a good husband about them, and to experience the joy that many handsome children will bring.
‘There is no happiness like it,’ had continued Monna Alessandra, bestowing a fond if absent smile on each of the sisters. ‘Those who pretend otherwise are misguided, and must depend on a good man’s love to correct them.’
It had been an extraordinary conversation, too good to keep to himself. He couldn’t tell anyone. What she was saying was, Get her to bed.
*
The last message to reach him from Venice began so ominously that John