To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [259]
‘Sire,’ said the messenger. ‘Provided the walls withstand the initial attack, there are reinforcements on the way such as will cause the Duke more damage than he ever thought possible.’
His commanders, when summoned, agreed. The Noyon garrison was already detailed to strengthen the city until the Grand Master should arrive with his army; this force would be followed immediately by M. Gaston du Lyon and two other lords with their troops, and another body of two hundred lances. The Provost of Paris had undertaken to send his commanders, and wagon-trains of food and munitions would be readied in Paris and Rouen. Beauvais would resist its besiegers.
‘If the walls stand,’ the King said. ‘You say that the Duke has brought up his full battery of artillery.’
‘Sire,’ said his adviser. ‘The walls are thick, and the spirit of the people is high.’
‘I am sure it is,’ said the King. ‘But the Duke’s cannon are famous, and he has a master of ordnance better even than d’Orson, I hear. So should one not take such steps as one can?’
‘Undoubtedly, monseigneur,’ said the adviser.
‘Undoubtedly. You will send therefore,’ said Louis, ‘and bring me the vicomte de Ribérac’
In Italy that same June, the Count of Urbino’s siege of the town of Volterra came to an end with a reasonable capitulation. By its terms, the Medici protected their local interest in alum, and the Volterrans (or most of them) gave up to Florence their semi-autonomy, on the promise that their possessions and property would be safeguarded.
There was a little delay, during which those Volterrans who still had misgivings gave voice to them. During this space the mercenaries within Volterra’s own walls, growing impatient, threw over their contracts and set out on a methodical if drunken looting of the city which paid them. Not to be outdone, the unpaid mercenaries of the Milanese army outside entered the town and made sure of their share. Very soon after, the rest of the Florentine army, defying its leaders, rushed into the town and completed its sacking.
On the eighteenth of June, the third day after the surrender, Federigo da Montefeltro, Count of Urbino, one of the great commanders of his age, finally reduced his unruly army to order. But for Volterra, it was too late.
Tobias Beventini, the doctor who had accompanied the Count through so many of his campaigns, did not take part, with the Count, in the three days of festivities in Florence, during which lands, houses and vases of bullion were presented to the conqueror, together with a silver helmet studded with jewels and bearing the crest of Hercules trampling on a griffin, the device of Volterra. He waited until it was over and then went to the Count and, with sorrow, resigned his commission. Then he packed, and took horse for Venice, and those friends who would welcome him.
Arriving at the Banco di Niccolò, he found – as he had expected to find – a thriving business, a group of old friends, and a new one – the child, now seven months old, born to Gregorio and Margot his wife. Tobias Beventini was just over forty, unmarried (although not necessarily celibate), pink, bald, and short-tempered, but he liked children. The boy, whom he took at once on his knee, had inherited the scythe nose of his father but also much of his mother’s good looks, and for a long time they spoke of nothing else. Gregorio knew about Volterra and, decent man that he was, had made sure that it need not be talked of, until Tobie was ready.
He was not ready yet. There were plenty of other questions to discuss. In the sixteen months since he left – since Nicholas vanished from Venice, that dark Carnival night – an astonishing amount seemed to have happened. Supping at the crowded company table he received a barrage of information and