The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [95]
‘Lucia died,’ said Gregorio sharply. ‘We heard.’
‘That’s right. She drowned, after Nicholas and Simon tried to kill each other. And then Nicholas took a sword to Adorne.’
‘Adorne! Why?’
‘He was trying to stop them. Listen. We’re to take Tommaso aboard, and Nicholas will butter him up, and then I’ve to keep him in talk so that Nicholas can have a word on the quiet with you. But I thought you’d better hear something beforehand. Scotland!’ said Julius. ‘You know what he used to be like in Bruges. But by God, Scotland has brought out the man in him.’
He turned away. Gregorio heard him address Portinari by his first name. Of course, they had known one another a long time. Crackbene said, ‘We had a wager that Ser Tommaso would find his way here.’ There was nothing in the large-blocked Scandinavian face except the marks of rough sailing and a certain hardness of scrutiny that in itself was not a bad augur.
Gregorio said something. He was not going to ask Crackbene for advice. Then he got into the skiff.
The Ghost was not a ship Gregorio had ever sailed in. He remained obdurately angry that Julius had been the preferred choice for Scotland, and not himself. He understood it, of course. Knowing nothing, Julius could not impede whatever Nicholas had set out to do. Whatever he had done.
The ducal chamberlain climbed aboard first, and Nicholas greeted him. Gregorio heard his voice, which was the same. At first sight he looked the same also, and the sombre magnificence of his dress manifested a style he had already adopted last autumn. Nicholas said, ‘There is no need to frown. You are looking at two salt-pans and a coal mine. Tommaso tells me his staff has burst into flower and he’s marrying.’
‘When my lady mother –’ began the Medici Bank’s agent in Flanders.
‘When his lady mother has found him a wife. It is much the best way, to leave it to mothers. Why don’t you come in? The poop cabin has been scraped fairly clean, and we bought some wine from a keel in Newcastle, and Julius swears the pies have stopped moving.’ His tone embodied no threat, no trace of recollection. Tommaso, innocently drunk last July, blurting out the news of the death of the African Umar, might have been forgiven, forgotten. Then again, he might not.
The Duke of Burgundy’s chamberlain was given his due. But in a remarkably short time Tommaso Portinari was sunk in his seat, relating some long tale of triumph to Julius while Nicholas, on some excuse, was on deck. Gregorio joined him. He said, ‘He’ll have a very bad headache tomorrow.’
‘God forgive me,’ said Nicholas.
They were surrounded by seamen. The hatches off, unloading had already begun, and the lighters were assembling below on the water. Crackbene’s voice came to them from the prow, but he did not look round or come over. The air was raw. Nicholas said, ‘There is an empty cabin,’ and leading the way there, closed the door and set his back to it. He said, ‘Well?’
His eyes, cold and deep, completed the question. Gregorio said, ‘I don’t know what you have heard.’
‘I’ve heard nothing since you wrote in October. How should I?’ said the other man.
The gulls were screaming outside the casement: their shadows stirred in the cabin like vermin. The bitch. The bitch. Gregorio drew a steady breath. ‘You know then that the lady –’
‘My wife.’
‘– that your wife retired from the Duchess’s court to a convent. Or so she said. She didn’t say where the convent was, either then or at any time afterwards. Not even her family knows where she is. She did, however, send them a message to say she was well. That reached Veere in December.’
‘Oh?’ said Nicholas.
Gregorio looked up. He said, ‘I didn’t know when I wrote to you about Margot. It means, if you care, that she must have carried for seven months successfully. Otherwise she would have come back.’
The grey regard, which had been intense, changed in quality. The other man said, his voice lenient, ‘Whom are you thinking of? Not my wife, surely. My wife and I invent much longer games. So you have heard nothing at all since December? No