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more than the Loggia. I heard as soon as I landed that the Duke had sent to beg off the papal crusade, and so the groat was bound to improve. Trading must have been at its wildest: I’m sorry.’
    ‘It rose three on the ducat,’ Gregorio said. ‘I sent a courier to your newest office in Bruges. It’s been quite inconvenient, your arrival. So who paid your assassin? Not the Sultan of Cairo, for God’s sake?’
    ‘Well, not for God’s sake,’ Nicholas said. ‘I might be on his list, but Mamelukes prefer quieter quieti; it would be a stab or somepoison. I rather favour a madman from Bruges, although I hear Simon isn’t in Venice. Still, one of them could always have bribed some old loyal retainer. And of course, there are rival brokers. Has anyone tried to kill you of late?’
    ‘I suffer from overwork and neglect,’ Gregorio said, ‘but apart from that, no. Our one vicious rival is presently confining itself to killing the business, or trying to. You had a taste of the Vatachino in Cyprus. Would they murder?’
    ‘Their man in Cyprus wouldn’t,’ Nicholas said. ‘Or not yet. They don’t just want to get rid of us; they want to run rings round us beforehand. I’m not asking you what I want to ask you.’
    ‘I noticed,’ Gregorio said. ‘I propose to make you wait until we are private. My – your staff are good men. They saw you. What are you going to tell them?’
    ‘What do you think? Goro, they’ve been aching to have your life threatened. They long to be menaced. They want nothing more than to be the most hated Bank in Western Europe. I shall tell them that such is their power, the Signory’s own men have been sent to protect them. To make their wills, and pray, and prepare to become a legend in their own lifetimes. I think we have arrived.’
    They had. Gregorio disembarked, and slipped the boatmen some coins, and turned to do something about the Signory’s bodyguard, such as send them down to the kitchens. He realized he was happy, and ravenous. He turned and found Nicholas on the wharf, gazing up at the face of his Bank, with its handsome balcony and tall Gothic windows.
    It was the briefest of surveys, but it called to mind that Nicholas had barely seen the mansion before, and never in occupation. He had created the business and left. Whatever his homecoming had spoiled, it hadn’t been the return to a home. He had none that Gregorio knew of, unless you counted an estate office in Cyprus. This building belonged to the Signory. And the house he had called home in Bruges had belonged to his wife, who was dead. It meant, as it turned out, that he could make himself at home instantly, anywhere.
    It took him an hour to assimilate the Bank, from the entrance hall where Margot and Cristoffels received him to the third storey, where all the seniors but himself had their lodgings. Along with the geography of the Bank, he absorbed the people, from the clerks in the mezzanine counting-house to the men in the storerooms and warehouses, the boatmen at the wharves; the household servants indoors and out in the courtyard. He greeted many by name, and most with some obvious grasp of their duties.
    It was not the magic it seemed: by every packet from Cyprus hehad commanded this detail. The result, as he had foreseen, was to transform him at once from a symbol into a person. They were not going to like or respect him immediately, but the seeds had been sown; the easy manner barely touched with authority was perfectly judged. And, as he had divined, the events of the morning had done nothing to diminish his stature. He made light of his share, but hinted at the burdens borne by great institutions, whose success could shape kingdoms. They liked that.
    It was the same in the counting-house after dinner when, alone with Cristoffels and Lopez, he and Gregorio went over the ledgers. It wasn’t the tête-à-tête Gregorio had either hoped for or dreaded. At the end, Nicholas closed the last cover and said, ‘Eighty