To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [59]
The lady Mary was young: she was twenty. She was grateful to Nicholas de Fleury, who had helped her Tom escape his execution in Scotland with the King her brother’s reluctant approval. The lady Mary’s friend, young de Fleury, who had so cleverly planned that Adorne’s house would bear the brunt of the exile.
Thomas Boyd, Earl of Arran, was hardly less devoted to Nicholas. The two men had recently met, Adorne heard, in the Burgundian camp. De Fleury had spent some time, it would appear, advising Arran to take his wife and settle in England. Adorne had not yet fathomed why.
As for de Fleury’s reunion with his wife and his child, Adorne was glad, as he knew Kathi would be. During their long pilgrimage to the East, Adorne and his young niece had encountered Nicholas many times, sometimes as rival, sometimes as companion, sometimes, he feared, as an enemy. At the end of it, Katelijne, with misgivings, had helped remove the man’s child from its mother. It had been a wretched affair, and Adorne was pained still to think of Jan’s part in it. But it was over; the estrangement apparently finished, and child and parents together once more.
Good news, except that the prospect of young Nicholas in Burgundian employment was not one which gave Adorne any pleasure. He bore a wound in his thigh from the last time. And now, it seemed, the man was making for Scotland. Nicholas would have time to refresh all his friendships before Adorne staged his own impressive return, with his winning account of his travels. And meanwhile, the Holy Father was dead, and no one could tell what would happen.
Adorne stood still at the window, unseeing. He must go. He must take on the burden of transmitting the news to his friends. Bishop Patrick Graham was in Bruges, on his way to beg from a man who was dead. A Pope succumbs, and graveyards fill with lost hopes.
The very morbidity of the thought brought back his sense of proportion, and his will to act with his usual resolve. He would go at once to his wife, and to Jan. And presently he would write a letter to Katelijne Sersanders his niece, who was waiting in Scotland.
By a delightful disposition of fate, the death of the stricken Pontiff, Paul II, occurred just when the Bank’s notary Julius had abandoned Cologne to do business in Venice. Clearly, with all Christendom roused and all Italy held in suspense, the Banco di Niccolò should be seen where it mattered. A message was sent to its agent in Rome to inform him that Gregorio and Julius were coming.
The journey to Rome in the thick heat of August occupied nine busy days on thronged roads and through excited towns hoarse with speculation and gossip. Despite Gregorio’s inconvenient interest in ruins, the two men travelling together got on extremely well: Julius because he was about to attend a number of public events of unimaginable grandeur; and Gregorio because he was happy.
He was unselfishly pleased because Nicholas was communicating once more, and in the interval had kept his son safe. And he was selfishly possessed with the joy that had come with his marriage. Margot and he were to have their first child. They were to have a child in December.
Julius knew. It had been the first thing he had learned, arriving in Venice. He had arrived with a pang, because when Gregorio was absent, Venice was managed by Julius. When Diniz was made director in Bruges, Gregorio and Julius worked in Venice together, except when Nicholas decreed otherwise. It concerned Julius, now and then, to know where the priest Moriz was going to end up. Gossip now declared that Moriz had insisted on going to Scotland. And good luck to him, Julius thought. He remembered the banquets in Scotland. In any case, as he had recently realised, the senior managers of a Bank of this standing really required to be married. Nicholas of course had seen to that. So had Diniz and Gregorio. A man needed