The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [99]
Tobie said, ‘What happened? Never mind. We heard you were with her. Are you cheering her up?’
He had just realised, Nicholas saw, that by joining him here he had debarred himself from all the sensitive topics. Gregorio had talked to them, he deduced, but not Julius, or he would sense anger and not just anxiety.
He said, ‘Of course I’m not cheering her up: I want some advice about Scotland, and she’s got a better brain than either of you. Unless she keeps it in her stomach, and you think facts and figures will upset it?’
Tobie sat on the opposite bed-step and looked at her, and at Nicholas. He said, ‘What’s new? You affect everyone’s stomach. Go ahead.’
Nicholas delivered his talk. It was, in effect, a summary of his doings in Scotland. Julius knew it all, and Gregorio had the gist, but Tilde herself would take pride in telling Diniz her husband, and Catherine.
So far as it went, the account was perfectly accurate and, because indeed she had a good business head, he added to it specifics of costs and prices and outlay, ending with accurate figures of the profit to date, and impressive estimates of the income still to accrue, once he had returned to complete the whole project. He knew Gregorio, and could counter his arguments without having heard them.
In between, he clowned his way through a few true anecdotes and some not so true, and made Tilde smile and then break into real laughter. She asked questions: he answered them. Then he received, without appearing to, the unspoken message from Tobie and, rising, brought it all to an end. Hugging him, she whispered a message for Gelis. He realised that she had taken him to be afraid of, or revolted by pregnancy, and hence to have avoided his wife and herself. Now she knew differently. Soon she would begin to wonder why he had stayed away.
There were seven years between them. The age difference between Marian and himself had been nearly three times as great. He did not like being called cousin Nicholas.
It amused him then to walk through the house, noting the changes; to penetrate to the kitchens and charm the cooks and chat to the yardmen and porters. On the way, he came face to face with young Catherine, breathless from running and still wrapped in cold furs. Her cheek was fresh when he kissed it, and her eyes were brilliant blue.
He said, ‘Gregorio and Diniz have commanded me. We’ll talk later,’ and squeezed her hand. It would be much later. Business had to come first, for there was not very much time, and he had to plan every moment accordingly. And, of course, he would be cornered by Godscalc and Tobie, who could not ask him in public what they most wanted to know. That would be the real inquisition, where they would demand answers and would, of course, get them. Of a sort.
So he went on, and found his way to the counting-house, big as a park, where he shook hands and greeted clerks and stopped once, to someone’s terrified pleasure, to leaf through a ledger and comment. It was not difficult. It was different. It was different with every return. However long he had known these men and women, none of them now treated him as an old boyhood playmate, or would dare. Which was what he wanted.
Tobie had stayed with him, doctor’s cap rolled in his fist, bald cranium pink with frustration. Tobias Beventini was of the same generation as Julius and Gregorio, but his snubbed pink face had always looked younger, until you examined the marks round the small mouth and pale eyes. Service with Astorre had left its scars: an army doctor lives in the field and suffers as soldiers do, and sometimes more. It was a hunger for knowledge that sent Tobie abroad with his scalpel and saw – that, and a repugnance for the easy life of the studio, such as his famous uncle in Pavia enjoyed.
Jan Adorne was a student in Pavia. Walking with Nicholas now, Tobie managed one interjection. ‘You raised a sword to Adorne!’
And Nicholas said, ‘He had a very good doctor.