Scales of Gold by Dorothy Dunnett Page A

walk on my own, but I reminded him that you had a bodyguard. I don’t see them, by the way.’
    Nicholas had the impression, he didn’t know why, that Loppe wanted to laugh. Nicholas said, ‘Gregorio wouldn’t want Tilde to be worried. Someone tried to make a target of me again, but we caught him. He’s locked in one of the glassmakers’ sheds until you came back with the boat.’
    ‘That’s just happened?’ Julius said.
    ‘You’ve just missed it. I had to go to the Podestà, that was all. Will Tilde mind sharing the boat? It’ll be safe. The two soldiers are with him.’
    ‘Who is he? Where is he?’ said Julius.
    ‘We don’t know who he is. Here,’ said Nicholas, indicating the Barovier house. He had begun to feel that he had invented the entire day, playing all the parts himself.
    To Marietta Barovier, emerging immediately, he introduced a startled Julius. She barely looked at him. She said, ‘You will remove these men, I demand it. If you had stayed away very much longer, I would have gone myself to the Magistrate. They are animals.’
    Loppe, behind him, was standing very still. Nicholas said, ‘Who? The soldiers? The prisoner?’
    ‘You wanted to know who had paid him,’ said the woman. She marched through the house and flung open the door to the yard. Heat burst upon them, and a chiaroscuro of black and red, lacedwith points of swaying yellow. The red glittered in her eyes, and in those of Julius.
    Julius said, ‘You work at night?’
    ‘We are the Barovier,’ the woman said. ‘We work at night. We, alone of all makers of glass, work in winter. You know why? Because we make what no one else does, pure cristallo . Pure, colourless glass, of the kind your Florentine needs, Venice needs. I made a contract for that. I did not make a contract to imprison a man to be beaten until he screams. Your soldiers are animals.’
    ‘They belong to the Serenissima,’ Nicholas said. ‘The Republic pays them to protect me. But it is not right that they should take the law into their own hands. Let me remove them.’
    There was no screaming, now, from the store where they had locked the man he had caught. The soldiers, both sitting outside, scrambled to their feet when they saw him. The leader started to speak. Nicholas said, ‘Be silent. I gave you orders. What were they?’
    The man looked sulky. He said, ‘You wished to know the name of your enemy.’
    ‘My orders,’ said Nicholas, ‘were to leave your prisoner untouched, or I would report you to your captain. Have you done this?’
    ‘He needed only a little persuasion,’ the second man said.
    ‘That is not what I hear,’ Nicholas said. ‘Show me the man.’
    The key hung outside the shed door. The principal bodyguard took it. Nicholas saw Julius brace himself, and the second man place himself ready, his sword in one hand. Marietta Barovier didn’t move. Behind her, the yard began to fall silent as men lifted their tools and drew near. The key turned, and the door was flung open.
    No one rushed out. The short man Nicholas had chased from the window lay inside on the dirt floor, his face bruised and bloodied, his tunic blotched, his arm twisted beneath him. He didn’t move.
    Nicholas walked in. He said, ‘Why not kill him outright at the beginning? Where is the use of the law if a man doesn’t live to be tried? What can we believe of his story if he is no longer alive to be questioned?’ He came out. They were all staring at him, except Loppe. He said, ‘Leave him. He is not the one who is going to be dealt with.’
    The soldier said, ‘Monseigneur …’
    ‘Get to the boat,’ Nicholas said. ‘For every word you speak I shall see you lose a week’s wages.’
    They turned. They were halfway into the house when the screamcame from behind, and then a confusion of shouting. Nicholas swung about. The cry had come from the woman, kneeling on the dirt by the body. But now there was no body, but a man with a broken face and a tunic drenched in