To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [341]
He left his thoughts to find Adorne speaking. ‘… with her fiancé. Of course, she had to display him in Ghent, and in Bruges. But she should be joining us any day now.’
‘I’m sorry?’ Nicholas said.
Adorne looked amused. ‘Kathi. Katelijne Sersanders. She is contracted to marry at last. And of course, you can guess to whom. But I am not going to confirm it. She wishes to tell you herself.’
Four days after that, Nicholas found his path blocked by the large, unkempt figure of the Franciscan Ludovico da Bologna, Patriarch of Antioch, carrying a dead duck on a string. He had recently shaved. He said, ‘Ah. Lord Bullturd, I hear. Follow me.’
‘Belchtrees,’ Nicholas corrected, entering the small chamber after him. He thought, felicitously, of something Julius had told him. ‘And how is Antioch, le pissoir?’
The Patriarch paused, clearly pursuing the phrase. At last: ‘Nerio the sodomite,’ he said with satisfaction, closing the door and dropping the duck on a board. ‘Whose mother you resorted to with such vigour in Cyprus. Hadji Mehmet was shocked. And then you have the impudence to turn your back on Persia and Venice, who have kept that indefatigable envoy her husband so conveniently busy elsewhere?’
Nicholas walked across to the table and picked up the duck. He said, ‘Are you saying what I think you are saying?’
‘Or you’ll ram that where I will enjoy it least? I said what you thought I said. Nerio is the son of Violante of Naxos. Watched you, did he?’
Nicholas dropped the duck on the floor and sat down. He said, ‘Christ.’ After a moment, he gave a half-laugh. ‘Who was the father?’
‘I’ll tell you one day,’ the Patriarch said. ‘If you make it worth my while. So you don’t like what Venice did, and have bolted to Burgundy?’
Nicholas said, ‘I don’t like what Venice did, but I didn’t bolt. It was my plan all along. Burgundy and the Emperor.’
‘Burgundy, the Emperor and the East. Now you can have power in them all, if you want,’ the Patriarch said. ‘That’s what our meetings here are about. The Emperor has appointed a commission of Germans and Burgundians to study the Eastern question. I have the Pope’s sanction to drum up money and armies. I’ll get conscience money at least out of the Emperor and the Duke, and the troops they finance could be yours. Did Bessarion speak to you?’
‘Yes,’ Nicholas said.
‘And you liked what he said, but won’t throw your weight behind Venice. So what about other places that need help against the Grand Turk? Uzum Hasan isn’t Venice, although he’ll use them. Caffa on the Black Sea isn’t Venice.’
‘It’s a Genoese colony,’ Nicholas said.
‘Not entirely,’ said Ludovico da Bologna.
‘In any case, the answer is no,’ Nicholas said. ‘Or not at the moment.’
‘Not at the moment?’ said the Patriarch in astonishment. ‘How long would Lord Bullbelch wish the Grand Turk to wait? Two years? Three?
‘I have something to resolve,’ Nicholas said.
‘Well, resolve it,’ the Patriarch said. ‘She rode in today with that mountebank doctor. She’ll be at the banquet tonight. Do you need someone to tell you how to wipe your own nose?’ He stood up. ‘I’ll pick up the bird. I don’t trust you.’
‘Why ever not?’ Nicholas said.
The banquet followed a mass at St Maximin. The Duke, not the man to solicit advice, had clothed the Abbot’s halls of reception in cloth of gold embroidered with pearls, and himself in a golden robe to match, edged with scarlet and laden with jewels. The Abbey blazed with the Duke’s chapel ornaments, and the banqueting chamber contained a complete suite of tapestries and his famous nine-storey credence stacked with gold plate. The guests sat at eighteen tables, and the meal lasted