To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [127]
Nicholas read them at night, when his work on the Nativity Play had temporarily ceased, for the business of the Bank had to go on. When the wax-wrapped duplicate ledgers arrived in their regular satchel, he rarely let a day dawn by without opening and studying them – and for their style, as well as their contents. Things changed quickly. Men changed quickly. A new wife, a new mistress, a bereavement, a quarrel; men were human, and nature enforced its priorities. And hence the reports upon which his business depended – the situation, problems, intentions of powerful men – might be incomplete, or unintentionally biased. Or intentionally so. There was that to beware of, as well.
In between the dispatches came other communications: sometimes testy personal scrawls; sometimes carefully penned lines with many abbreviations, displaying the grand seals of abbeys and duchies. These were borne as a rule by persons who had come to Scotland by licence to work until Yule: difficult men and cantankerous persons for the most part; artistic, flamboyant persons such as Nicholas had loved ever since he was Claes, and whom Gelis detested.
Laying his careless, extravagant plans for a careless and extravagant Mystery, Nicholas had always envisaged bringing artists from overseas, although equally he intended to sequester all the talent – or even the non-talent – he could discover in Scotland, and spend time on giving it classes.
Now he had been proffered a challenge. A small affirmation of the immortal status of man had taken place: a work of music created which represented the supreme endeavours of one gifted idiot and his friends. Nicholas was morally bound to do no less for them. A Pasche Play was out of the question – he would not be here for Easter. Therefore the royal Nativity Play must be his test piece, his offering.
Instead of ten months to prepare it, less than four, including the work he had already half done. Instead of a week-long performance with half-trained actors, and amateur craftsmen, a performance of one afternoon, to which would be brought painters, sculptors, carpenters from Bruges and Lille and Brussels and Tournai; scribes who could copy sixty pages a day; tailors who were accustomed to dressing an Entry at speed; men who trained men to walk like young women; men who made wigs for God. That did not take account of the materials which had already come and which continued to come in the holds of hired ships.
Only he did not need an engineer or a Master of Secrets, for he had John and himself. And he did not need a master craftsman, for Cochrane was that. And he did not need musicians, for he had the core of the new Chapel Royal with Whistle Willie at its heart and its head.
For all the people around Nicholas – those who feared him, or loved him, or were anxious for him – that autumn in Edinburgh was a strange one. In the Castle the King, having commissioned the Play, watched his own dearest plans take second place to a spectacle. Silent, obedient, barren, the Queen saw it as well. Without M. de Fleury’s financial reserves and sympathetic encouragement, James was not likely to leave her this spring to become a second Alexander. His brother Mar sulked, and jeered at the painter who came to take a likeness of the King for a placard. The King, annoyed at the jeering, had