To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [121]
The child’s marriage had concerned him for years. She was without financial resources. However exquisite the girl, Italian princes demanded a dowry. The man who would make Zoe his bride must value her not for her wealth, but for the one priceless asset she had: her claim to the blood of Byzantium.
Once, it had seemed to the Cardinal that the wild young King Zacco of Cyprus would take her, securing his throne, for Zoe was second cousin to Carlotta his rival. But Venice had seen a more direct advantage in forcing upon him – there was no other phrase – the daughter of Marco Corner and Fiorenza of Naxos. The Cardinal knew more than might be expected of Fiorenza and Violante her sister, wayward beauties with unfaithful husbands.
Nevertheless, in the war against the usurping Turk, the Venetian–Cypriot match could be useful; and so could the disposal of Zoe. Zacco’s small paper bride, sulkily pure, represented a physical link with Uzum Hasan and his Turcoman armies. Young Zoe’s husband, if she married the ruler of Muscovy, would embody the impetuous might of White Russia. Both princes hated the Turk.
There was a third power, as yet unmentioned, which the unsavoury skills of the Patriarch might yet tempt into the arena against Mehmet the Conqueror – had indeed been expected to do so, before Nicholas de Fleury had forgotten his promise and turned his back on the East. But no one openly mentioned that. No one spoke of the Golden Horde as the allies of Rome.
*
Jan Adorne arrived late, having spent half the day in the Leonine City as co-opted giovane di lingua, attempting in languages other than Latin to disentangle the Bishop of St Andrews’s sins of commission from his sins of omission. The trouble with Patrick Graham was that he had been spoiled all his life: given a prebend, aged fourteen, by Pope Nicholas; elected Bishop of Brechin by Pope Pius before he was thirty. By the time Bishop Kennedy died, his nephew’s transfer to become Bishop of St Andrews was already negotiated, at a price of 3,300 gold florins. After that, every fresh appointment had brought its own problems.
Descendant of kings, the Bishop was, of course, loftily sure of his worth and his rights. But the favouring Popes were all dead; his uncle was dead; and there was a limit to what the Adorne family, however willing, could do. Yet Graham seemed to be foolishly persuaded that, having fallen out with half Scotland, he could expect the new Pope to befriend him. He was so grotesquely certain, indeed, that you would think he knew something Jan didn’t.
But at last the lawyers rose from the table, and Jan was able to rush, deafened, between the armourers’ shops on the bridge and through the mud to the portico of the Banco di Niccolò, where he found that Julius had already left for the Bessarion reception. ‘Dragging his feet,’ said the porter, with a grin. ‘We’ve just had news that a client is coming, and Master Julius was keen to stay here to greet her. You may see her yourself. The Cardinal has agreed to receive her at the Palazzo if she cares to attend.’
Jan searched his memory. A countess. A German countess with whom the lawyer was flirting. He wasn’t interested. Except that, if she came, it would keep Julius occupied while Jan found the late Pope’s nephew Cardinal Barbo, and reminded him that, among all his new-acquired treasures, he might count on Master Jan Adorne of Paris, Pavia and Bruges as his most sparkling, his most willing amanuensis.
The rain pattered on the orderly bushes and trees in the courtyards of the Holy Apostles, the only uncooperative element so far in the dignified reception taking place in the Palazzo