To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [30]
‘Your wife is joining you?’ The fat man’s face showed simple surprise, but one hand was a fist.
‘I have sent for her. She is unlikely to refuse,’ said Nicholas, smiling.
‘Even if the child is out of your hands?’
‘All the more reason. Is that all?’ Nicholas said. He pulled himself from his seat at the window. Three more couriers had left, but the courtyard was still busy.
The fat man didn’t stand. He said, ‘All the more reason? Because she expects you to get it back? I hear some rubbish about your pretending to meddle with necromancy. You claim to divine.’
‘That’s M. de Nostradamus,’ Nicholas said. ‘A knowledge of charming, prophecy and other abused sciences. They have a menagerie, too. Apes and japes and marmosets tailed. You wanted to know about Angers.’
The other man stood. One forgot, because of his bulk, how nimble he was. Unprepared, Nicholas found his wrist gripped and his fingers splayed in the fat man’s painful grasp. Then his hand was thrown away. ‘Afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of the future,’ Jordan de Ribérac said. ‘Afraid the churchmen will burn you, as they probably will, if it suits them. My advice would be to attempt the real world without talismans. But you are probably inadequate to it. What have we settled? Nothing. How typical.’
Nicholas walked to the door. ‘We have settled, I hope, the question of whether or not I deal with messengers. Tell the King that if he places a proposition before me himself, I shall give him an answer myself. Good day, my grandfather.’
The broad face contemplated his with contempt. Then the fat man rapped on the door and, when it opened, walked off without looking back.
Next day, an escort of the King’s Archers came to conduct Nicholas de Fleury, Burgundian, to the presence of His Most Christian Majesty of France.
Eleven years had passed since his other brief audience with Louis, then not yet King. The wiry frame was the same, kept so by incessant activity at work and at sport, and often at both together. But the skin on either side of the long nose was sallow and lined, and the bright eyes deeper under the elderly hat. He wore only the badge of St Michael, although the courtiers grouped behind him were expensively robed. The table at which the King sat was deep in papers.
The King said, ‘Ah, M. Nicol de Fleury. Ser Nicholas, I am told; a worthy honour from my nephew of Scotland, if not so remarkable as the barony he seems to have given M. Anselm Adorne. Are you troubled by haemorrhoids?’
‘Who is not?’ Nicholas said. He rose from the formal obeisances and obeyed the finger which pointed to a station in front of the desk. ‘You obtain your unguent from Tours, from your apothecary, monseigneur?’ There was a box on the desk.
‘To a recipe from the Professor Giammatteo Ferrari in Pavia. The uncle of Dr Tobias, your company doctor. Dr Tobias has left you, I am told. Your Bank is dissolving?’ said the King. After the first glance, he had returned to his papers. He signed two, and handed them over his shoulder; one of his officers took them and left.
‘The reverse, monseigneur,’ Nicholas said. ‘It is too healthy to require medication. We can barely store the pledges which are offered us daily. We even have to refuse those we once dealt with most often.’
‘Ah,’ said the King. His hand did not falter, but as he completed his name, he laid down his pen and looked up. ‘M. de Ribérac told you my wishes. I hope he conveyed them correctly.’
‘As I understand them,’ Nicholas said, ‘they range, monseigneur, from the provision of privy information to the open transfer of my army and services from Burgundy to yourself. Including my financial services.’
‘That is what I told the vicomte to say,’ said the King. ‘There is, of course, scope for many permutations between. But the greatest honours are reserved for the man who makes the boldest move. The Constable of France and the Receiver-General