To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [139]
She didn’t please. Her face changed, filling with something more violent than scorn. Then she walked out, the door swinging behind her.
The rolling step of Roger approached, by now unmistakable. There were others behind him. The time for celebration had come.
Chapter 19
FROM THAT TIME on (people said), the sun and the moon shone out of the backside of Nicol de Fleury, and he could do what he liked. The King loved him. The people loved him. Only the Lord Treasurer cursed him on the quiet.
It was not quite as rumour had it, of course, but it had increased the renown of the Bank. Even Govaerts was prepared to concede that. The real celebrations had taken place the following day, when the same Nicol had thanked his colleagues in generous Burgundian style, and they drank together all day and all night, with no water, by God, disgracing anyone’s cup.
After all that, it was not surprising, either, that the patron of a bank, having for so long neglected his business, had to move his bed and office back from the High Street to the Canongate. It pleased the King, amid the Yule feasts that followed, to have instant call once again on the Burgundian’s services, more especially since Adorne, of course, was understandably absent.
As to that, it pleased the King even more to see how kindly his little Queen treated the poor sick lady of Cortachy, showering her with delicacies as she recovered from her confinement. Since the afternoon of the Nativity it seemed to James that there had been some change in Margaret his spouse. She had asked Willie Roger, his musician, to repeat for her several of the verses that had caught her fancy that day, and to rewrite some of them to suit her voice and her lute. It was, however, usually Nicol de Fleury whom she invited to sing for her. The lady Mary was sometimes allowed to come too.
The visitors left, and the yards in the High Street and in the Abbey of Holyroodhouse returned to their previous state, to the disappointment of Jodi and the delight of the Abbot, who immediately set about his rebuilding, all of it distinguished by his personal monogram. The collegiate church of the Trinity, which had filled its coffers by renting itself out as a music-room, made known its loyal desire to commission a triptych depicting the monarch, his Queen, and Edward Bonkle, the Provost of Trinity. The initial response, such as it was, indicated that a donation in cash might be preferable.
The Palace’s caution was justified. The bills for the Play were coming in, together with those for the Court’s dress and entertainment for Christmas. All of it confirmed what was already apparent: James was not likely to lead an army next year into Brittany without a package of gifts, loans, bribes, requisitions, dowries and taxes on a scale hitherto unknown. Taxes depended on Parliament. He had no son yet to farm out in marriage. And the King’s loans from the Banco di Niccolò were of such a dimension by now that John Laing the Treasurer laughed when the King proposed an extension.
The Franco-Scottish courtiers, through all this, said nothing. Andro Wodman and William Monypenny kept to themselves whatever they knew or suspected of the dual interests of Nicholas de Fleury. A Scottish army was, after all, only one of his promised objectives.
Twelfth Night passed. Michael Crackbene returned, arriving by night at the house in the Canongate and slipping prudently through Govaerts’s room before announcing himself to vander Poele. To M. de Fleury. The session with vander Poele – M. de Fleury – was as effing difficult and as effing fascinating as it usually was, and he deserved the flask they shared afterwards. Mick Crackbene knew how successful he’d been. It was ninety in the hundred certain that everything would be in place, and on time. He said, ‘It’s lucky for us that Adorne isn’t going. Sersanders hasn’t the experience.’
‘It wasn’t so lucky for Adorne,’ de Fleury said.
Crackbene looked at him, surprised, and remembered something. He said, ‘It’s a pity Ada never learned to decipher. She