The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [344]
The lawyer Gregorio, after a difficult crossing of the Alps, finally made his way to the Ca’ Niccolò in Venice along with Margot his mistress. They received a welcome from Julius, together with a faint impression that he thought they had come to see what he was spending on parties. Cristoffels and Father Moriz showed genuine pleasure, and took them off very soon to find the doctor and John and exchange gossip. Later: ‘And so where is Nicholas?’ Gregorio said.
‘Coming,’ said Tobie. The word, or its echoes, sobered the lawyer. He looked at Tobie and John, and saw a warning. Later, the three of them met.
Shutting the door: ‘It’s Gelis, I assume,’ said Gregorio. ‘We know she travelled part of the way south with Adorne, and for a while she was thought to be dead.’
‘She came to Egypt,’ said John le Grant. He cleared his throat. ‘There was trouble in Cairo, and she found her way to Mount Sinai. We don’t know where she went after that. But she’s supposed to be coming to Venice when Nicholas does. You don’t know where she is?’
‘She moves about,’ Gregorio said. ‘She’s been in Genoa. She writes to her family. Every now and then she disappears, or perhaps she just wants some privacy.’
‘And the child?’ Tobie said.
‘I don’t know,’ Gregorio said. ‘No one, not even Margot, knows where it is now, or if it’s alive. And I have no information about it. Margot made a promise to Gelis, and nothing that I know of would make her break it.’
He left presently, being tired from the journey, and Tobie sat for a while in silence with John.
It seemed, although no one had spoken, that something had been said. John said, ‘I think you should do it. You know what Gelis made him go through. Margot would listen.’ After a while he said, ‘She was married once, wasn’t she?’
‘He is dead,’ Tobie said. ‘She never lived with him.’
‘But Margot has been free ever since? Do you know why she hasn’t married Gregorio?’
‘Yes,’ said Tobie. ‘She consulted me.’
John’s freckled face with its white chin was intent. ‘It’s a medical matter?’
‘It’s private to them,’ Tobie said. ‘But it has a bearing. There is deformity in Margot’s family. Some are born normal; some are brutes. Every generation suffers from it, and they all know, as she does, how to nurse the afflicted. That is between you and me.’
John said, ‘Does Nicholas know?’
‘No,’ said Tobie.
After a while Tobie said, ‘I shall go and see her. But if she agrees, we should have to tell Gregorio.’
Then it was February, and they were all there, in Venice. Few of them would recognise all the threads which had brought them there. Most of them were aware, now, of the kind of calendar of which they were part, although they might not have counted the stages. The sixth, which had started in Cairo, had brought the game, lure by lure, to one field.
In the north, soon, another hunt, another season would open. It was time that this one was called home.
Part V
THE PRISE
Chapter 47
NICHOLAS DE FLEURY arrived last in Venice, with no more ceremony than, say, a ducal chancellor performing his annual audits. The boat went to the mainland to collect him, since he had given the precise time of his arrival: communications had never ceased flowing between himself and the Bank. He had with him the small household he had collected to look after his personal needs, and he had asked for no one to meet him but a clerk with a box of the most recent papers.
He read them through sitting under the hood on the misty voyage to the collection of islands that called itself Venice. His small staff, mostly Catalonian, stood huddled in the open air, talking in low voices as the Grand Canal opened before them. He proposed keeping them with him.
By the time he stepped ashore at the Ca’ Niccolò, he had added the news of the last few days to what he already understood of events in the ten months since he was last in Venice, and the five since he had departed from Cyprus.
That much was essential. What was also essential was a sense, impossible to obtain at a distance, of shifts