‘With that purchase came the documents on your unpaid shares of the society and your share was collected by Sir John Creswell, an Englishman. He in turn divided the money with the Count d’Herblay and the Bourc Camus – I have a witness statement, signed.’ Nerio smiled.
I writhed. I had known it, and yet at another level, to hear it this way …
‘So I’m suing them in a French court, and again in a Savoyard court, and again in a Genoese court.’ Nerio laughed. ‘I have a suit against the Bourc and d’Herblay in Avignon that’s making him smart as if he’d been stung. The irony is that Father Pierre had d’Herblay taken up for attacking a man on vow of crusade – that’s you. And because he’s held at Mestre, he cannot escape my suit for debt!’ Nerio roared. This pleased him inordinately.
I wanted d’Herblay’s neck between my hands and I said so.
But Nerio said I was a barbarian. ‘Or do you want the rich widow?’ he asked.
I put my hand on my dagger, but I bowed.
‘Bless you, your account was worth two thousand ducats when I bought it, and I’ll make five thousand off your court cases. You can borrow all you like from me. And I can punish your enemies. Isn’t it droll?’ He smiled. ‘I’ll break d’Herblay financially.’
I shook my head. ‘He’s very rich. I don’t think five thousand ducats will break him.’
Nerio played with a rich ruby on his finger. ‘It will cost him three times that to fight the case, and he’s enough a fool to fight.’ He shrugged. ‘Pater owns the college of cardinals, or at least, he should. He’s paid them enough. Perhaps not enough to get everything the Queen of Naples wants, but certainly enough to ruin a little French nobleman.’
It was a little like kissing a beautiful maid and finding that she had the eyes of a serpent. Nerio was too fond of money and power.
And Juan – Juan was more nearly the perfect knight than any. He was a perfect jouster, a cool swordsman, a deadly hand. He rode better than any of us, and he had the eye for horses that makes a great rider even better. He, too, had riches, but he had a childish temper that too often got the better of him, especially when there was wine involved. With three cups of wine inside him, he could suddenly turn to a waspish pedant given to telling the rest of us about our failings. And he hated to be compared to Miles Stapleton. Just as Nerio detested, or affected to detest, Fiore.
And Fiore? Petty, self-aggrandising, foolhardy and miserly. He hated poverty and dreamed and schemed for worldly fame and fortune in a way that Juan and Nerio found tiresome, even infantile, the more especially as they sometimes paid his bills in secret. He resented their money and breeding, and as his fame as a master of arms spread and more men came to him for lessons, he used his money to buy clothes and cheap jewels. But – and I hate to say this of a friend, but it still makes me laugh: his taste was on a level with his talent for wooing, and just as he could ignore a comely girl to discourse on a lance blow, so he could wear a jupon of the most virulent orange with hose of a deep scarlet, simply because each individually had been expensive and fashionable.
And second-hand. He never bought anything new. He and Nerio almost came to a fight one night when Nerio accused him of following coffins to get dead men’s clothes.
They were not perfect, and none of us always loved the others. But taken all together-brawling, playing dice, praying, going to Mass, in the street or in the Doge’s palace or going into action by sea or land, they were my comrades. For every display of rancour or selfishness, I can name ten of selfless friendship.
Which was all to the good, because we were to be sorely tested.
It was a good time. I have seldom known a better. And about that time, I had a meeting with Nicolas Sabraham.