The Long Sword(143)

            And he used his winnings – by the sword or the dice cup – to buy his gloves. He always kept one pair inviolate: virgin, as we all called them. One pair of perfect chamois gloves sat on top of his portmanteaux, and he would wear them in his belt, clean, uncreased, unstretched.

            Nerio, who never purchased gloves, had a tendency to pick up Fiore’s virgin pair as if by right. He would lift them off the Friulian’s trunk and put his hands into them before poor Fiore could speak.

            Fiore would scrunch up his face in rage.

            This happened several times, until it threatened to return them to the state of enmity from which they had begun. And Nerio never did understand why because he could replace Fiore’s gloves and his horse, sword, purse, and all his clothes if he wanted. Every time, he’d say ‘For Christ’s sake, I’ll pay for them!’

            And Fiore would shriek, ‘Buy your own gloves, you whoremaster!’

            The story had a happier ending that shows, perhaps, the utility of having your friends in fives. We were sitting in our tower – it might have been May or June – and I was reading a bit of Petrarch from a manuscript I had borrowed from de Mézzières. Juan was reading the gospels, and Miles was sharpening a dagger, and Fiore was staring off into space. I think it was the day we met the Vernonese artist Altichiero and he had sketched Fiore in some of his postures of fence; anyway, Nerio was going out to church with the grocer’s daughter and he snapped up Fiore’s gloves. He didn’t even think about it; he took them and thrust his left hand deep into the virgin chamois, and Fiore screamed and lunged at him.

            Nerio had his dagger in his hand – without thinking, I expect. Fiore grappled for the dagger hand and made his cover, of course.

            Miles leapt between them. That was a braver action than it sounds and Miles did it without a thought. He smothered the dagger. When he rolled away, Juan had Nerio, and I had Fiore.

            ‘Whoremaster!’ Fiore roared. ‘Sodomite! Banker!’

            Nerio was white and red with anger. He struggled. ‘You idiot,’ he said. ‘They’re only gloves! I’ll buy you a pair!’

            The bell was ringing for Mass.

            ‘I want my own gloves,’ Fiore bellowed.

            Of course it makes no sense.

            Juan stepped between them. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘it is time to go to church. But I propose, to solve this problem, that Ser Nerio give Ser Fiore one hundred ducats, and Ser Fiore, of his courtesy, take him to the glovers and get him ten or fifteen pairs of these gloves. And that he takes half for himself, for a penalty of Nerio’s poaching. And that Ser Nerio take the other pairs for his own, stack them in a drawer, and use them, and not Ser Fiore’s.’

            I laughed. Nerio and Fiore were still full of fight, but we got them to agree to Juan’s plan. Indeed, Nerio eventually referred to it as ‘The judgment of Solomon’.

            My point is that Nerio had little respect for the possessions of others. He could be a bad friend, but by God, he was a worse enemy, as I discovered. He would use the full power of his father’s house against any rival, however pitiful and he would not stint to bribe or threaten. After I began to recover, he informed me one evening of the steps he’d taken to ruin d’Herblay.

            He laughed. ‘You’ll be pleased at one of my little stratagems,’ he said. ‘Do you remember forming a society for sharing ransoms?’

            ‘After Brignais? In sixty-two?’ I asked. He nodded, and I said something like ‘Of course. I’ve told you—’

            ‘And you recall that my father bought your account from the Bardi,’ he went on.

            I struggled not to feel a little humiliated, but they were bankers. ‘Yes,’ I said.