Saint-Germain 19: States of Grace: A Novel of the Count Saint-Germain Read online

  Your letter informs me that your presence is required in Venice immediately. You may depend upon me and my men to do our utmost to enable you to arrive as quickly as can be possible. In demonstration of that intention, I will hand this to my men at once, and send them on their way to Amsterdam.

  I look forward to the opportunity of serving you again, my Lord, and I thank you for your patronage.

  Believe me to be

  Yours to command,

  James Belfountain

  PART III

  FRANZICCO RAGOCZY, CONTE DI SANTO-GERMANO

  Text of a letter from Rudolph Eschen in Amsterdam to Germain Ragoczy, Grav Saint-Germain, in care of his steward Simeon Roosholm in Antwerp, with instructions to forward it to Saint-Germain at his present location, delivered to Roosholm by private courier four days after it was written.

  To the Grav the most honorable Germain Ragoczy of Saint-Germain, this from the advocate Rudolph Eschen, on this, the 2ndday of July, 1531, from Amsterdam.

  Grav: I have in hand all the deeds, trusts, and transfers you brought to me three days since, along with your instructions in their regard, hard upon your departure from this city, and I am writing now to confirm those instructions so that you may review and modify them according to your wishes before I proceed with enacting them.

  Item: to give full and unqualified support to Mercutius Christermann so that he may continue to keep Eclipse Press in operation as long as the city laws and the Church will allow it; for the running of the press, you allocate the sum of ten ducats a month, for supplies and similar expenses, another five ducats, to be paid from your account at the van Wech Trading Trust, and from the Foreign Merchants Depository. For Christermann himself, you authorize five ducats a month, to allow him to live in reasonable comfort. To those pressmen and others who have elected to leave your employ, you have instructed me to provide a month’s wages as part of their release: this is another example of your admirable character but I would be remiss in my duty if I did not tell you that I am not in favor of such munificence.

  Regarding the continuing publications from Eclipse Press, you expect Christermann to produce at least four books in a year, and if he undertakes a more ambitious program, to adjust his funds accordingly. You have arranged for your books to be carried on your ships for sales abroad, the numbers and titles to be recorded here and where sales take place. I have executed the final copy of the contract you made with Christermann, permitting him to hire such men as he needs to produce the books scheduled and in preparation, with your admonition that he is to use his best judgment where your previous workers are concerned.

  I must tell you again, Grav, as your advocate, that I believe you are being too generous to those men who allowed themselves to be bullied into leaving your company. I repeat my previous advice—give them nothing, not even a recommendation, as they have done nothing to deserve your assistance. Also, as this Christermann is untested on his own, I would advise giving him a less free-handed amount of money until he has proven he is capable of fulfilling his tasks. I can think of few businessmen who would not second my admonition.

  Item: to Erneste van Amsteljaxter, unconditional life tenancy of your house, for herself and such companions as she may wish to have receive her hospitality, with such funds as are needed to maintain the building and the household, to hire such new servants as may be needed, and to make such changes in the house as may be prudent. In addition, you offer her the right to use the house in any way that suits her, as long as it is in accord with the law. You permit her to house those four women who were wounded in the so-called Women’s Revolt at the end of May for as long as it suits her, with no restrictions put upon her because of what many may see as an endorsement of an illegal act. In spite of this imprudent support of rebellious wool-workers, you have given her autonomy over the property for the duration of her life, as well as the use of your town carriage and your coachman, and your barge and bargeman, for which you will pay wages and maintenance. You also provide her with an annual grant of one hundred ducats so that she may be free to write and study as she wishes. You also wish to provide the funds for erecting a headstone for her Aunt Evangeline, of which I shall inform Deme van Amsteljaxter within the week.

  Item: for Bogardt van Leun, an annual stipend of twenty ducats beyond his usual salary, and the promise that he and his wife will have employment in your Amsterdam household for as long as they so desire, with the use of the cottage you own to the southeast of the city when he reaches the age of forty-five, when he will be eligible to retire from your service without loss of pay either to himself or his wife. You also propose to pay for the education of any children, male or female, they may have.

  Item: to Dries Altermaat, the authority to conduct business in your name as official factor for Eclipse Trading and Mercantile Company, with such sums as are needed to keep the company ships in good repair, ditto the warehouses, to provide reasonable sums for such demands of business may require, and sixty ducats per year for his work: this on condition that the trading accounts of Eclipse Trading and Mercantile Company be scrutinized and verified semiannually, with penalties for any irregularity beyond the amount of ten ducats. He is to work in regular consultation with your dispatcher and warehouse supervisors, and to provide monthly reports on those matters, along with inventories, to my office for my perusal, and my promise that any dispute in facts and figures will be addressed promptly.

  This last is, in my opinion, a very sensible provision, and I am pleased to see you have decided to include this element of restraint in your unusual magnanimity; few businessmen in Amsterdam are either so wealthy as you, or so willing to spend with your unselfishness. I will not refuse to follow your orders, but I would not be fulfilling my responsibilities to you if I did not remark on my reservations, especially in regard to your fortune, considerable though it may be. You may say that it is your practice, because of your long absences, not to restrict those in your employ by not allowing for unforeseen events; while that is all very well, you will permit me to observe that what you deem advisable I can only see as extravagant and possibly reckless, for your very largesse invites those in your employ to take advantage of you. With that for a caveat, I will carry out your instructions in every particular.

  Item: for any in your household or business brought before either civil or religious tribunals in this city, I have in hand one hundred fifty ducats to provide for the defense of any requiring it, and the bond that the court may require on their behalf, with the added assurance that should such a detention occur, I will notify you by private courier at once, with an account of the charges and the likely progress of the case, insofar as it is possible for me to determine such. You guarantee me an additional three hundred ducats if so great a sum is needed.

  As agreed, I will tender you quarterly reports regarding your businesses and property in this city, as well as any actions, requests, or changes from your household, your press, and your trading company. I will use the courier you have paid for, and I will act within three days on any crucial development to apprise you of each and every significant change in regard to those actions and accusations. Insofar as my acts are in accord with the law, I will assure you that I will honor my fiduciary responsibilities as laid out above.

  With every wish for your continued good health and prosperity,

  I am

  always at your service,

  Rudolph Eschen

  Advocàte-at-law

  By my own hand: a witnessed copy of this letter is included among my records of our association.

  1

  At Antwerp, James Belfountain joined with the rest of Saint-Germain’s escort which now numbered five; they traveled light, with only two pack-horses for their goods, and a single remount for each man in their remuda. Four leagues outside Antwerp, they turned south along the merchants’ road to Cologne, through the sodden summer heat, and the persistent dust-cloud that marked their progress. On the road there had been delays—two the result
of over-turned wagons, one caused by villagers throwing rocks at all who approached their gates, one caused by a fire in a field and grove of elms and oaks—putting them almost half a day behind what they had planned.

  “Do we press on?” Belfountain asked as they approached the outskirts of Cologne. “It is three hours until sundown.”

  “The horses are weary,” said Saint-Germain. “And the evening is not going to be much cooler than the day.”

  “Then we remount shortly and pony them in the remuda, all no faster than a trot,” said Belfountain, patting the sweaty neck of his blood-bay. “We won’t make up all the time we’ve lost, but we won’t be even farther behind.” He wiped his face with the hem of his light fustian summer cloak, worn more to keep off the dust than to provide unwanted warmth; he left a gritty smear across his forehead. “I would advise that we go on, if you want to reach Venezia within ten or eleven days.”

  Ruthger shaded his eyes and studied the clouds forming to the southwest. “We may yet have a thunderstorm before midnight.”

  “That we may,” Saint-Germain agreed. “I should think we would not want to be in the open if a storm begins.”

  “There is the rain itself, and the risk of fire,” Ruthger said. “Lightning can set a wood ablaze in an instant.”

  “It can also strike a house, or an inn, or a barn,” Belfountain said. “If there is a thunderstorm, everywhere is dangerous.”

  Jacques Oralle, a seasoned soldier at twenty-two who was from Bensancon, ahead on their way south, said, “Even if it rains, I don’t think we’ll get caught in the mud, not if we keep to the main road.”

  “Why not cut across the open country?” Timothy Mercer, a young English soldier, interjected. “We could save time, and spare ourselves unpleasantness.”

  Oralle held up his hand. “No; we would lose time, not save it, at least not in this region. Without the merchants’ roads and market roads, the fens would be unpassable, but the merchants’ roads, in particular, are well-drained, and among the last to mire. The market roads, a little less so, but this summer has not proven to be too wet in spite of all the storms.”

  The wind sprang up suddenly, shifting around to the southeast, and as it whipped past the small group of mounted men, it bore to them the cloying, metallic odor of decaying flesh; as fast as it had shifted, the wind moved again back to the west. Belfountain and Saint-Germain exchanged quick glances, and Saint-Germain said, “All may not be well in Cologne.”

  “Not with the charnel house on the wind; I know that much,” said Maddox Yeoville, who had only recently joined Belfountain’s company, and had come—amid ambiguous reports—from the household cavalry of Henry VIII.

  “If it is fever, then it will spread, and we must get beyond the miasma or we, too, will sicken,” said Belfountain.

  “If it is the charnel house, and not the gibbet,” said Saint-Germain, aware from the smell that no disease had killed the bodies that carried that stench. “In either case, it may be easier to enter Cologne than to leave.”

  “It is often better not to do than to have to undo,” Ruthger pointed out.

  “It is probably best if we don’t enter the city, not while there are secondary market roads we may travel. We have had to detour twice already; another such will not disaccommodate us, although it may delay us by another day.” Belfountain looked at Saint-Germain, his brow rising inquiringly. “If we create delays, our pay can be held back, so moving on is to our benefit, isn’t it, Grav?” he reminded them all. He leaned forward to ease his back a little, his brow touching the crest of his blood-bay’s neck. “I think we could go along as far as Beau Roison before nightfall. We should reach there in two hours if there are no problems; that will allow us an opportunity to rest the horses and have our dinner before everything is soaked. And departing in the morning could be swifter than it would be from Cologne.”

  “If the rain is heavy, it could slow us tomorrow,” Ruthger observed, noticing as he did that Saint-Germain was listening intently. He regarded Saint-Germain carefully. “What is it you hear, my master?”

  “Bells, and not ringing changes, but sounding the alarum,” said Saint-Germain, his tone slightly distant, his attention on the city ahead. “I think it would be best if we use the market road, not the merchants’ roads, and keep on. When we near Beau Roison, then we can consider what to do.”

  Belfountain raised his hand to signal his men. “Then we will move on, away from the gates and on to the south market road. We’ll leave the merchants’ roads to larger trains than ours.”

  “And to the Spanish patrols; they keep to the merchants’ roads, and pay not a copper for their doing so,” said Mercer, made uneasy by his own remark.

  “Most of the Hapsburg lands here are under the control of the Austrian branch of the family, and much less inclined to worry about heresy than the Spanish,” said Saint-Germain. “We will shortly be out of reach of Spain and across the frontiers of Charles’ Lorraine territories.”

  “A Hapsburg is a Hapsburg, and they are all treacherous,” said Yeoville.

  Saint-Germain glanced over at the young man. “While I may agree with you in many regards, I think Charles is a capable administrator, although his brother appears to like the minutiae of government more than Charles does.”

  “They all like killing honest Protestants,” said Yeoville, and looked away, his face set, his manner guarded.

  “Not all: another thing in Charles’ favor: he dislikes having to kill his subjects over unanswerable questions,” Saint-Germain remarked. “Given the Holy Roman Empire’s present fracturing, Charles’ policies have maintained it better than many another has.” He remembered his first glimpse, not quite six hundred years before, of Otto the Great, who had not been content with Karl-lo-Magne’s old title of Emperor of the Franks and Longobards and Imperial Governor of all the Romans in the West but had embraced the extended distinction of Holy Roman Emperor, the title the Frankish nobility had used unofficially since Haganrich the Fowler ruled; he dreaded what that tenth-century warlord would have done in the circumstances now confronting Charles V. He tried to shut out the recollection of cities sacked and put to the torch, of peasants rounded up to serve as slaves in the Emperor’s household, of broken bodies cast into common graves, of children spitted on swords. “At least,” he murmured in the tongue of Saxony six hundred years ago, “we have not come to that.”

  “Grav?” Belfountain asked.

  Realizing something of his recollections must have shown in his face, he was able to summon up a half-smile. “I ask your pardon,” he said quietly. “I was lost in thought—how politics and religion make for dangerous partners, as we see all around us.”

  “All the more reason for you to return to Venezia,” said Mercer, nodding as if he had made an original point.

  “Oh?” Ruthger interjected before Saint-Germain could speak. “You assume politics and religion are separate in Venezia?”

  “No,” said Mercer, affronted. “But it isn’t as confusing as what is happening in the north, is it?”

  “Not in the way that such matters are in upheaval, certainly; Venezia has a different style in dealing with dissidents,” said Ruthger.

  “That is exactly why Venezia will never have such disarray as they have in the Netherlands and the German States,” Giulio delle Fonde said, speaking up for the first time; he was in charge of the pack-horses and the remuda, a position he found useful for staying out of any discussion of politics, claiming that the horses demanded all his attention.

  “Or so we hope, and that is all we can do at present—hope, and that will change nothing but our own minds,” said Belfountain as he nudged his blood-bay to the position slightly ahead of Saint-Germain. “The market roads are toll-roads, Grav. You will have to pay to use them.”

  “I have money in my glove,” Saint-Germain said as he started his gray gelding moving again. The brief respite had not been sufficient to restore the horses, so they began at a walk, giving both men and animals a
little easier time of it.

  “We will change horses just before going through the gate; most toll-houses have a shelter-stall for such purposes.” Oralle rose in the stirrups and looked back. “That group of men with their families and carts is still on the road, about half a league behind us now.”

  “Poor devils,” said Belfountain. “To be uprooted from their homes and cast off on the world because they do not trust the Pope.”

  “Who does trust the Pope? De’ Medici or not, Clemente is a pawn of the Spanish, or he would have to be a martyr,” said Oralle, ready to press on, and fretting at their slow pace. “For all of us, it will be ten copper Fredericks.”

  Saint-Germain had only silver coins in his glove, but he knew what the men of his escort expected to hear. “Even secondary roads are becoming more expensive every day.”

  “So they are,” said Belfountain, moving his open hand in a circle above his head to indicate to his men that they should follow him to the right at the next turn. “And with groups such as the one behind us using the roads, it is small wonder that the cost of them increases. In May I saw a much larger group of families from the Swiss Cantons bound for Calais, of all places. Their town—near Zurich—had come under Huldrych Zwingli’s influence, and they would not renounce their Catholic faith, so were cast out on the world, like Cain.”

  “More’s the pity,” said Yeoville.

  “If we avoid these groups, the armies patrolling the merchants’ roads will pay less attention to us, or they have in the past,” Belfountain declared. “It will not serve us to be detained by any of them.”

  “Do you assume that they suppose you’re giving the wanderers protection?” Ruthger asked.

  “That’s their excuse—whether they believe it, who can tell,” said Belfountain. “I’m surprised we have only come upon this one company. We will have to be careful if we encounter others.”