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counting-house. Those with propositions to make do not make them. Invitations drop off. The market oscillates; the Bourse proceeds to lose bottom.
    Finding itself assailed by such rumours in Venice, the Banco di Niccolò took immediate measures to quash them. Fortunately, its management was adroit. Business clients were calmed by Gregorio, the company lawyer. The well born were embraced by the handsome notary Julius, and left heartened. The heir to the Banco di Niccolò, they all learned, was aged two. And the kidnapper was the Bank’s founder himself, the child’s legitimate father.
    The client was occasionally puzzled. ‘Ser Niccolò, you say, stole away his own son?’
    ‘Following a disagreement with the lady his wife. An irrational impulse. Ser Niccolò will tire of the boy in a week.’
    ‘Tell me if he does,’ said one client at least. ‘He can have my son instead. I would pay to have the turd stolen. And meanwhile, the Bank goes on as usual?’
    ‘As usual,’ the notary Julius always agreed, tilting his classical head and occasionally smoothing the silk on his uppermost knee. ‘That is, Master Gregorio will be in Venice, as always. I may have to go to Cologne.’
    That was between February and March.
    The news spread.
    The Duchess Eleanor of the Tyrol heard the tale from a band of noble pilgrims from Venice on their way home to Bruges in the Low Countries. Their leader Anselm Adorne broached the subject. ‘Youwill have heard. Nicholas de Fleury has disappeared. A dispute over a child. I am sure his company will keep you informed of it.’
    ‘Nae doubt,’ said the Duchess, who was Scottish. They had been hunting from her castle of Brixen. She finished feeding her dogs and, wiping her hands, picked up her embroidery. Despite her lack of youth and her girth, she was as adept in the field as she was at fending off probes about mineral rights. She said, ‘And how’s the wife taking it then? Glad to get rid of them baith?’
    ‘Glad!’ exclaimed Adorne’s son drolly. Adorne’s niece Kathi screwed up her face.
    ‘Katelijne?’ encouraged the Duchess.
    ‘Gelis is very sad,’ said the girl.
    ‘Sad. Deary dear,’ said the Duchess. ‘Mind you, that’s a handful, that fellow Nicholas. And you’re a mite peaky yourself, my wee lass. Come to me later, and I’ll find ye a potion. And how did ye manage on Cyprus? Is yon feckless lad Zacco properly married yet?’
    That was in the middle of March.
    The King of Cyprus, who was not properly married yet, heard the news in the third week of March, in the hills where he was hunting with leopards. Two days later, his party somewhat depleted, he rode back to Nicosia and called to the table the envoys of Venice, of Rhodes, and of all those other peoples who were immediately threatened by Turkey.
    ‘It appears,’ said Zacco of Cyprus, ‘that despite all he promised, the padrone of the Banco di Niccolò is not to fight at our side. De Fleury has fled. He has abandoned us, and his God. I cast him off. I wait to hear what you offer instead.’
    The man from Cairo sighed; the Venetians shuffled; and the Treasurer of the Knights of St John muttered under his breath. The consul for Venice said, ‘There is, my lord, the joy of your coming consummation with our daughter your Queen.’
    In Rome, the news was handled by the Bank of Niccolò’s agent Lazzarino, who sought to present his patron’s dramatic exit as an episode in a family tiff. Such acceptance as this received was then abruptly overturned by the Patriarch of Antioch, come in March with an envoy from Persia to press a Crusade on the Pope.
    ‘Nicholas de Fleury?’ roared the Patriarch, a hirsute Franciscan blessed with resonant organs. ‘The self-serving Ser Nicholas de Fleury, who put the fleshpots of the West before the fight for his Church in the East? Well may he vanish. And when he materialises once more, wherever in Christendom that may be, he will find mycrucifix at his jaw and my fist at his snout