Authors: Dorothy Dunnett
Felix lay still. His head ached.
Nicholas said, “Now you’ve heard that much, I’m coming to untie the gag. I’ve got a dagger, Felix. I know you’re not convinced, but you can’t overpower me. I only want you to listen. After that, I’ll answer any questions you like. And after that, I’ll give you my dagger. If you want to walk out, you can.”
Fingers pushed his head up. Felix opened his eyes. The gag came away from his dry mouth. He retched, and swallowed, and retched. Nicholas was pouring something from a flask to a cup. Nicholas said, “Spit it out if you want, but it’s good Candy wine and you need it. Look, I’ve drunk some. Now you drink the poisoned half.”
There was a smile in his voice. Felix didn’t smile. He drank when the cup was put to his mouth. His hands were still tied. He said, “Now I wait until you give me the knife, and I open the door, and your men kill me on my way out.”
“But you’ll have killed me first,” Nicholas said. “Come on, pay attention. Have you had a blow on the head or something?”
“I’ll begin to believe you,” said Felix, “when you untie my wrists, send your men away, and let me call the landlord of this place to help me get you back under guard to Geneva. You can talk all you want in Geneva.”
“Not about an alum monopoly,” Nicholas said. His gaze had concentrated and his forehead got lined in the way it did when he wanted you to remember something. He said, “You’ve got a reputation, you know, for being headstrong. Not like John and Sersanders and the rest of us. There was a feeling that you might forget the scheme was so secret and talk about it. But you’re a merchant, and it is your business, and since you’re here, you might as well be in Milan when it’s settled. Do you remember the Greek with the wooden leg?”
The Candian wine was very good. Nicholas had refilled the cup, and Felix drank that off, too. His headache lessened and his stomach felt warm. “
Do you remember …?
” Nicholas had begun in the way he had so often begun to recall some exploit and embroider it. With a twitch of his shoulder, he had conjured up the austere, bearded Greek and his limp, and the whole hilarious business. Of the gun in the water, and the rabbits. Of the night in the Steen. Of the time the waterpipes burst.
Felix sat, cup in hand, against pillows and echoed, “An
alum
monopoly?”
“Yes.” Nicholas had seated himself again on the stool, the flask in his two hands. He seemed to be studying it. Without warning, the silly dimples appeared in his cheeks and disappeared again.
“What?” said Felix.
Nicholas looked up. “Nothing,” he said.
Felix waited angrily.
“That is,” said Nicholas, “I was just thinking. Wishing that you were sitting here and I was Felix de Charetty.”
“With a mother,” said Felix, his anger increasing. Why tell him now that he wanted to be Felix de Charetty? Most people did.
He had succeeded, anyway, in reminding the bastard who was who. The open eyes clouded over, and lowered. Nicholas said, “That was stupid of me. I’m sorry. About the alum. You’ve seen it. Casks of white powder in the dyeshop. Everyone needs it, to fix colours in cloth. It makes hides supple, and parchment last longer. It makes better glass, and better paper.”
“I know all that,” Felix said.
“I didn’t know if you did,” Nicholas said. “Then you probably know where it comes from. The poorer stuff from Africa. Spain. Up and
down the west Italian coast in volcanic places like Lipari and Ischia. The best stuff from the Byzantine and Turkish end of the Mediterranean. And for hundreds of years, that’s been in the hands of the Genoese. You know that, too, of course. It’s been coming into Bruges for years in Genoese ships, and being handled by Adornes and Dorias, second cousins of the Adornos and Dorias in Genoa. That’s the connection between Anselm Adorne and Scotland. Antoniotto Adorno, Doge of Genoa, was visiting Scotland last century, collecting debts due him for alum.”
“That’s why you try to murder Scotsmen?” said Felix. “Over an alum monopoly?” A merchant would never show himself to be attracted by this kind of preamble. A kidnapped merchant might be forgiven if his heart was thumping with excitement.
Nicholas said, “When I’ve finished, you must make up your own mind about that. But listen a bit. You have to understand more about alum first. For instance, the purer it is, the better and costlier. And the best stuff, as I’ve said, comes from the eastern end of the Mediterranean. Deposits round the Black Sea used to be handled by Genoese trading colonies there, who had set up in Caffa and Trebizond under the Byzantine emperors.
“The best alum of all is south of Constantinople, in the Gulf of Smyrna, in a place called Phocoea. It was worked nearly two hundred years ago by Genoese brothers called Zaccaria, who had been agents in Constantinople. But the family lost its grip, and the Byzantine Greeks jumped into Phocoea and Chios, the island beside it, which didn’t suit the Genoese merchants at all.
“So just over a hundred years ago, an armed Genoese fleet arrived and took back Chios and Phocoea and established a sort of merchant’s co-operative, based on Chios, and run by the families and later the heirs of the original merchants who had paid for the fleet. Including the Adornos of Genoa.”
Felix said, “Thanks for the lesson. That was all ages ago, and anyway the Turks have it now. Have you done a deal with the Turks?”
“The Adornos did,” Nicholas said. “And the rest of the Genoese working the mines from the island of Chios. The Turks mastered most of the area, and the Phocoea Alum Company, to survive, had to pay 20,000 gold ducats a year to the Sultan. Then five years ago, Phocoea itself fell to the Turks, and the Genoese company kept Chios, but lost all the alum mines.”
“So you’ve done a deal with the Turks,” Felix said. He remembered, as a boy, being driven out of doors by the monotony of his father’s voice talking of subjects like this. Listening now, he forgot even his hunger. Trade, and money. A monopoly, he had said.
Nicholas said, “A Venetian merchant in Constantinople did a deal with the Turks. He had a dyeworks there, and he knew about alum. He told the Turks he could work the Phocoea alum mines if they gave him a
concession, and they said they would think about it, provided he could raise enough money for his ransom. His name was Bartolomeo Giorgio or, as the Venetians pronounce it, Bartolomeo Zorzi.”
He stopped. He often did that, meaning that he had said something important. Felix thought. He said, bursting out with it, “The Greek with the wooden leg!”
Nicholas smiled. He said, “Nicholai Giorgio de’ Acciajuoli. Collecting a ransom in Europe to free Bartolomeo Giorgio, his brother. And especially collecting from places like Bruges, and like Scotland, which need alum.”
Felix said, “He liked you because you broke up his leg. He’s offering us special cheap rates of alum through his brother?”
Nicholas said, “He’s offering us special cheap rates of alum. And regular supplies of alum. And, indeed, a stockpile of alum if we want it. Which we do.”
“Why?” said Felix. And then, as Nicholas failed to answer at once: “Oh,” said Felix. “I suppose that’s the secret?”
“Secret?” said Nicholas. “It’s the business expedient which will make your fortune, and your mother’s. If you tell it to one other person – just
one
– your mother will lose everything but a pittance. I am going to tell you, but you must understand what it means.”
“In exchange for my silence. Oh, I know what it means,” Felix said. He wished Nicholas would look somewhere else.
Not looking somewhere else, Nicholas said, “When you get to Bruges, Gregorio and your mother and Anselm Adorne will all confirm the truth of what I’m going to tell you. In Milan, I’ve had Meester Tobie to help me.”
“Tobie?” said Felix.
“The doctor. Because he knew about herbs. And because the Acciajuoli and the Adorno know people who have worked in the Phocoea alum mines, and Tobie had an excuse to be in Italy, where he could look about and talk to them …
“Felix, listen. No one knows it yet, but in the hills north of Rome is a huge deposit of perfect alum. The best ever known. Better than the alum of Phocoea.”
Felix felt his heart swell. His voice was hoarse. He said, “Tobias is buying it for us? That’s what the money’s for?”
Nicholas looked down. He said, “Felix, no one could buy it, because it’s in the Papal States. The family who own the land are tenants of the Pope. As soon as the discovery is made known, the Pope will buy the rights and lease the mine, keeping the profits. The profits will be huge. Enough to launch a crusade.”
Felix said, “But if you’ve discovered it, Pope Pius would pay you. Us. Tobias.”
“I am sure he would,” Nicholas said. “But that would be all. Someone else would develop the mines. The Charetty business hasn’t
the capital. Even before the fire, that was true. And once the mines are producing, the Pope has an alum monopoly.”
“He hasn’t,” said Felix. “You said it yourself. Bartolomeo Zorzi is producing in Phocoea. For Venice, paying tribute to Turkey.”
“That’s true,” said Nicholas. “And I suppose some misguided Christians, such as all the merchants in Bruges and Genoa and Florence, are buying from him. But once Papal alum is on the market, what faithful follower of the Cross will buy from the Crescent? Especially if the papal alum comes with a remission for sins, and the Turkish alum comes with excommunication. Hell hoist the price, too.”
“So?” said Felix joyously.
What game? What prank?
his mind was asking itself. Life was for having adventures. Life was for taking chances, accepting offers, making profits. Life was not for staying at home with your mother.
“So we sit on the discovery of the new papal alum mines,” said Nicholas blandly. “And the Venetians pay us for doing it. And give us all the alum we want, at knockdown prices, for as long as we want. Or until someone else makes the discovery. We might get two years out of it, and an alum reserve that will serve us when the price starts to rise.”
Felix thought. He became aware that he had been thinking for a long time. His heart was thudding. Nicholas, he saw, was watching him and smiling a little. Felix said, “And that’s why you’re going to Milan?”
Nicholas said, “I do have courier business to do. Dispatches to deliver and collect, and fees for both. But yes. Tobie sent me the proofs. Adorne has seen them, and your mother. Now I have to talk to the Venetians. Not the Florentines, who would instantly expose the papal mines and exploit them themselves. But the Venetians, who control the Phocoean alum.”
“And that’s why you invested money in Venice?” said Felix dreamily.
Nicholas said, “Partly. When I started, I didn’t know all this would happen. Or that I should be staying in Bruges.”
“You were going to leave?” Felix said.
“I was sent away,” Nicholas said. “For improper behaviour. You must remember.”
“But you came back and married my mother instead,” Felix said.
They had been talking, man to man. He thought for a moment that, man to man, Nicholas was going to answer him. But although he hesitated, in the end he only said, “Yes.”
After that, there were other questions and answers. At some time Nicholas, still talking, untied Felix’s hands. Food was brought, and eaten. The bed, which was broad enough for five, was prepared for the night. At that point Nicholas said, “I’ve told them to free your two men, and tell them that you’ve decided to travel on to Milan of your own free will, but that if they doubt it, they can come and speak to you. Apparently they fell asleep without troubling. Was I right?”
“I suppose so,” said Felix. Between food and warmth and wine and
sleepiness, the words had some trouble forming themselves. He said, “You were supposed to give me your dagger.”
“I forgot,” said Nicholas. “There it is. Which side of the bed do you want?”
But Felix was already in bed, and although he thought he answered, he didn’t.
Chapter 33
T
HIS TIME, THE
cavalcade of the Charetty entering Milan caused no shutters to open. For one thing, it was too hot. For another, the rival captains had mostly departed long since for their respective battlefields: some south to Naples, and some spurring east after the renegade Count Piccinino.
Those who were not captains were not impressed by the appearance of a merchant’s young son and his factor, however strongly escorted. What gained Felix immediate entrance through the Porta Vercellina and a ready welcome at the Inn of the Hat was the safe-conduct carried by Nicholas, with its manifold Medici and Burgundian signatures.
But of that, Felix was unaware. For seven days he had ridden at Nicholas’ side discussing business, the way a man should with his manager. To his questions, Nicholas had given long, careful explanations which he had found not at all boring. They had talked about Henninc and Bellobras, and about Gregorio, and Cristoffels at Louvain. Nicholas had asked his opinion about many things. Nicholas, anxious that he should follow all the negotiations they were going to have, annoyed him from time to time by trying to teach him Italian.
Arguing with Nicholas, echoes of his mother’s diatribes and inquisitions had come back to Felix, together with some of his father’s impatience. Nicholas was not deferential, but had dropped into the same reasonable, commonsense voice that Julius had habitually used with his employer. Felix approved of that. Some of the shame and the anger and the fright of the last eight weeks began to ebb away.
In the city of Milan where, instead of air, they had marble powder and brickdust, Nicholas had four calls to make for the Charetty company, and Felix, if he so wished, could attend him on each. Felix so wished, once he had got his boots off and his doublet unfastened and a good night’s sleep and a lot of wine behind him. He flopped on the inn bed, leaving Nicholas to order food and see to their escort.
Nicholas, who still had his boots on, looked quite pleased and said he would arrange it all for tomorrow. And meanwhile, did Felix want to come and watch him deliver dispatches? Weariness fought with the dregs of suspicion, and weariness won.