The Spring of the Ram by Dorothy Dunnett

Author:Dorothy Dunnett
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307762412
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2010-08-11T10:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

FAR FROM THE RAVAGES he had unwittingly caused, the Charetty lawyer Gregorio saw the time draw near at last when he could find and confront the Scottish lord Simon of Kilmirren with his crimes against Nicholas and Catherine de Charetty. It appealed to Gregorio’s liking for symmetry that he and Simon would owe their meeting, whatever its outcome, to that most select of chivalrous bodies, the Golden Fleece Order.

He had not, of course, forgotten the dispatch he had sent east from Bruges in January. He knew which reports should be arriving in April in Trebizond, whether or not Nicholas was alive to receive them. He was aware of the relationship between Simon and Nicholas. That there could be a relationship between Nicholas and the girl whom Simon had married did not, naturally, cross his mind.

He had thought quite deeply, as it was, before warning Nicholas that his rival Pagano Doria was an agent of Simon’s. He had hardly known how to soften the blow when, later, he had been forced to report the same Doria’s abduction of Catherine although it seemed likely that, by then, Nicholas would have found this out for himself. He could imagine the effect that might have on a young man like Nicholas; but not what he might be impelled to do about it.

Compared with all that, the birth of Simon’s son was a minor event, but he had taken care, again, with the way he had informed Nicholas; for the arrival of a supplanting heir was hardly good news. On the other hand, a child of his own might divert Simon at last from his contest with the son of his first wife. And Nicholas, given the chance, might get on with his own life and have the sense to leave Simon alone. Once, that is, he had dealt with Pagano Doria. And once Simon, daily expected in Bruges, had been informed by Gregorio of Asti himself that he proposed to take him to law unless he made proper amends and saw that the persecution was stopped.

The Tenth Chapter of the Order of the Golden Fleece had been commanded to meet on the second of May at St Omer in Artois, handy for the French and Burgundian knights. Duke Philip, its sovereign and founder, moved the court west from Brussels a month before that, dividing Easter between Bruges and Ghent. The arrival of hundreds of courtiers and servants at the Princenhof, Bruges, was the equivalent of the arrival of the Flanders galleys. You couldn’t move from one street to the next, and everyone worked from morning till night without complaint, making profits. It taxed Gregorio, already short-handed, to satisfy all his customers. It was not until the lord of Flanders and Burgundy had left his good city of Bruges that Gregorio drew breath and sent a clerk to find out when the van Borselen family were coming to Silver Straete.

“They’ve been,” said the clerk when he came back. “That is, they came in from Veere and went straight on through Bruges without staying.

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