To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [223]
Part IV
Summer, 1472
THE MULTIPLICATION OF PAINS
Chapter 30
AMONG THE RICHER class of dealers and traders, the disappearance of the principal of a bank in search of profit is not a matter of immediate concern. His non-return, as weeks go by, creates anxiety. The owners of banks obviate this, where they can, by the dispatch of consoling reports to their agents. From Nicholas de Fleury came nothing for four wintry weeks. And the message that did come, in the end, was carried by no agent of man, but arrived as dust on the wind.
Nicholas had taken certain precautions, but it had not been his intention, setting out, to unsettle the market by dying, or by occasioning rumours of death. By the end of the first week in March, his own counting- house in Bruges knew where he had gone, and the news spread to the financial arms of the French and Burgundian and Angevin courts, and thence to their princes. Captain Astorre heard, and was impressed. Anselm Adorne learned of it as he stepped from his vessel at Sluys, but did not even reply to the man who hurried to tell him, however unexpected the threat to the Unicorn. He had other things on his mind.
The relatives of Gelis van Borselen wondered if she were about to become a rich widow, and whether they would be expected to find her a husband. The vicomte Jordan de Ribérac sent a message by one of his ships to Madeira. It said:
I think you may now come home. Your late wife’s good-brother would appear to be either lifeless or greatly subdued, and I should value your presence in Kilmirren.
These reactions were however highly subjective, and the business of the Bank was not, in such a short time, disturbed. Indeed, the news had no time to reach Venice and activate the orders Nicholas had so judiciously sent there before he left Edinburgh. That is, Gregorio would have hesitated about carrying them out. Julius would have obeyed them regardless.
In Edinburgh, closer to events, the merchant class evinced a guarded interest in reports of the venture; interest which blossomed into a worldly-wise pessimism when members of the Berecrofts family were not within sight. The magnates, pursuing their own affairs and the affairs of the country, said little, although individuals tended, with the passage of time, to find themselves closeted in contentious dialogue with their King. Mistress Clémence de Coulanges, in the High Street, watched the lady Gelis respond to the waiting, while ushering the lady’s son, with a firm hand, through the character-threatening perils of convalescence.
Pasque, who had made herself reprehensibly absent during all the first stages of illness, recovered her nerve as soon as the spots began to disappear, and was to be found several times a day hopping, juggling or playing tunes on the comb for the edification of young Master Jodi as a kind of atonement. The offer to send her to Dean, where the Countess of Arran’s two children were equally smitten, had also had some effect. For a while, Mistress Clémence had expected to see Bel of Cuthilgurdy, the elderly lady who had a kindness for the sick boy. Instead, it turned out that the lady had generously offered her assistance to the Countess at Dean, where Mistress Sinclair, they said, was overworked and short-tempered these days.
Mistress Clémence listened to everything, and permitted the younger gentleman of Berecrofts to visit the sickroom when he came to call on the Lady. Jordan reminded him, she thought, of his son. Master Roger also came once, with a very small kettledrum. He was not invited again.
Then the Unicorn sailed into Leith, and Master Martin of the Vatachino rode into Edinburgh looking, they said, as if he had swum all the way from the North Pole himself, but openly triumphant. The Cologne merchant Reinholdt was with him. Naturally,