To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [297]
‘I thought you’d like his being made an archbishop,’ Nicholas said. ‘Patron of Jan, friend of the family. Papal Nuncio soon, I shouldn’t wonder, licensed to collect Peter’s pennies and shillings and pounds.’
‘And that will make him popular, won’t it?’ Sersanders said. ‘There are those who think that Scotland deserved an archbishop, there are those who resent it. Fair enough. But to help rush it through, to outrage the King and bring about a clash with the Pope was not – tactful.’
‘You speak as if it happened overnight,’ Nicholas said. ‘With a Blackadder and an Arnot in Rome, not to mention an Adorne, the thing was hardly an impenetrable secret. It will settle. If your uncle wants some places and prebends, he’ll get them.’
Sersanders said, ‘I wasn’t thinking only of Jan. I’m thinking of Coldingham; the Tyrolean alum; all the other disputes James has got himself into. It won’t help your trade or mine if the Apostolic Camera gets annoyed and starts to call in its debts.’
Kathi said, ‘We think Jan will be all right. Chancellor Hugonet’s brother will take him. What will happen to poor Patrick Graham?’
‘It depends how good he is at keeping his temper,’ Nicholas said. ‘If he’s humble enough, James won’t think him a threat.’
Sersanders snorted. Kathi said, ‘Well, that disposes of his chances in a sentence.’
‘Quicker than a statement,’ Nicholas said. ‘Anselm, I brought a peace offering below. Will you drink it with me if I get it?’
Sersanders, predictably, rose to perform the errand himself. Nicholas said, ‘Willie Roger gave me a performance of your latest visiting-list. I thought I missed a few names.’
‘Or perhaps I did,’ said Kathi. ‘Damn Willie’s big whistle, that was private. Why don’t we meet very much? Because of Gelis?’
‘Various reasons,’ he said.
‘Gelis has your relationship and mine perfectly fathomed,’ Kathi said. ‘So has Dr Tobie. So have you. So have I. But if you avoid me, then people will talk. Call now and then. Or put all the visits together and take me out in an Eke Week.’
‘Dr Tobie,’ he repeated slowly.
Damn again. She said, ‘Oh well, it was worth trying. Courage, my friend. Courage is different from hope and intermediate between despair and presumption. It’s a finicky business being your comrade, Síra Nikolás.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. She could sense some of the things he wasn’t saying.
‘Don’t be sorry. I’m not the Unicorn, I’m the maiden. Take courage and call. I’ll be lenient,’ she said. ‘I shan’t slip anything into your wine.’
He said, ‘You wouldn’t be the first person, if you did.’ Then Sersanders came in.
She couldn’t drink, watching him talk to her brother. Again, he looked quite composed. Doctored wine. A breach of trust but, somehow, not a recent one. Not even some sly potion of Dr Tobie’s. Something much more important in his eyes, in his voice.
She wondered then if it had been in Africa; if it had been the beginning of all this; if it had been Gelis.
Courage. Courage, my friend.
You should have filled me with drink, and it would be over with. He drove the words from his mind, as he extinguished the whole of the interview he had just had, and walked downhill greeting his comrades, his friends, on the way to his Casa and the final phase of his programme.
You couldn’t be brought up in Bruges and trained by a capable woman of business without knowing that the well-being of any town, duchy or kingdom depended on its fiscal dexterity. In Timbuktu, in Ultima Thule, profit and survival depended on barter: gold for salt; fish for slippers and cereals. In Florence, in Venice, in Bruges, it depended on gold, and paper promises. Paper promises flying over the Alps, expertly sanitising the profits of usury.
Gold and silver were scarce. No country liked to export its coins or its bullion, even to Rome. Nicholas had been inestimably fortunate in possessing raw gold of his own, brought from Africa. When that was done, which would be at any time now, he would have to think about claiming the rest of what belonged to him, currently in the possession of the Knights of St John.
From the beginning,