To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [313]
She said, ‘You haven’t talked to your wooden-legged friend.’
His mind clouded with ale, he looked at her, puzzled. She continued. ‘Nicholai Giorgio de’ Acciajuoli, the noble Florentine oracle. I heard he appeared with young Nerio in Rome. I thought I told you I once met him in Florence. He instructed that you were to have no more progeny. Your posterity is already secure.’
‘You believed him?’ he said. From the beginning, from his boyhood in Bruges, the Florentine had interfered.
‘No. But you do,’ she said. ‘When you cut yourself loose from your beginnings you became easy prey, didn’t you, to all the so-called magicians? Any strolling astrologer can frighten you. Even without me, you were going to fail.’
‘The way I failed in Venice?’ he said. ‘I took Jodi from you. I can do it again. What if you grind me to powder, and are still left with nothing?’
She said, ‘What do you think I have now? And what would you have? A son with no home and no future, like Mary Boyd’s children?’
There was a silence, which Gelis eventually broke. ‘So have we reached a conclusion, despite the condition of one of us? We meet at the end of December: the war ends; one of us will capitulate. Meantime, I am to take Jodi to Venice?’
He roused himself with an effort. ‘You will be safer. Crackbene will escort you. I have my service to Burgundy; you can join me there in the autumn.’
She said, ‘You would leave Jodi for so long?’
Nicholas said, ‘He is older now. He knows us both well. I shall write.’
‘And you will have me watched,’ she remarked.
‘As always,’ he answered. ‘It is you who placed us on a footing of war. You have money. You are free to have me followed, to employ whom you like. Only don’t hurt Gregorio.’
‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘But Gregorio is the Bank. And the Bank is you.’
‘I thought it was also Jodi,’ he said.
He left very soon after.
In his room was a letter in Greek. It was the third such he had had; Govaerts knew by now to leave it unslit. He broke open the seal.
Come. Come. For love of me, come.
It was unsigned. It was addressed to the lord Nikko.
Part V
May, 1473
VOLERIES
Chapter 43
A MAN OF HONOUR, recently weighing the claims of two friends, Tobias Beventini had soberly set need against need, and had chosen.
Nicholas de Fleury chose at once, with his heart. Then, being Nicholas, he set about making his choice not only desirable, but mandatory.
He was aided, he was not unaware, by fortuitous happenings in Burgundy. He went there to free himself, and found himself already free. He left the Duke, left Astorre, left Diniz and Moriz in Bruges and, travelling fast with only one servant, arrived in Venice in May, only three days behind the cavalcade of his wife, his son and his doctor.
Cristoffels, staggered to see him, had to admit, in his incoherence, that none of the household was here: Master Gregorio and his guests had taken fowling-boats north to the lagoon, where the Bank owned an islet with lodges.
They were still in the boats when the bissona swept up in all its glittering splendour and the padrone stepped into the craft containing Margot, Gelis and the two children. Jodi screamed. Gelis whitened. The vessel dipped. The bissona, professionally detached, proceeded to the small island jetty and began to unload. Glasses winked, and a damask cloth floated over the sun. Nicholas said, ‘Mon fils, what were you aiming at?’
‘That,’ said Jodi, letting him go. He had been bending a very small bow at a water hen. At his feet was a bowl of clay balls.
Nicholas said, ‘No, no. The bird would object. It is much more amusing to shoot people. See. Dr Tobias, Master Gregorio in the next boat. You might even reach –’
‘My lord?’ said Mistress Clémence.
‘Or,’ said Nicholas, ‘it might be even better to throw them. You take these balls, and I shall take these. There! A hit!’
The balls were only