prudent defences, thick as two castles, to settle the question of her erring son Felix. Her unmarried daughters, aged eleven and twelve, rode beside her. Behind her came five horse-drawn wagons, one smith, one carpenter, two clerks, three servants, a cook, and her bodyguard led by a professional soldier called Astorre, an abbreviation which had long since replaced his original name of Syrus de Astariis.
With the Flanders galleys almost due, she would have to have come anyway. It was an annual journey, but not one she enjoyed. Louvain to Brussels; Brussels to Ghent; Ghent to Bruges the roads had been as crowded as the canals and worse to navigate, what with other peopled draw-oxen and broken-down carts and inn-keepers’ rumours of brigands lying in wait round the next hedge.
Which was usually rubbish. Which needn’t, anyway, concern the Charetty company, which had its own bodyguard. More than that, its own band of mercenaries. So no one molested them and, at last, they had come to Bruges. For her entrance she wore a good cloak of rich mulberry and had an extravagance on her head, a voile contraption fronted with seed pearls. Astorre and all her servants behind her wore the Charetty blue, the special dye Cornelis had concocted which she preserved in his memory. Her horsecloth and those of her daughters were of gold wire and velvet, and their harness was silver. Bruges should know, when one of her burgess-widows rode into town. To erase the impression made by her son Felix.
She had forgotten how noisy it was. First the creak, the groan, the thud of the windmills. Then the long portal-arches into the city which trapped the jingle and clatter of stamping horses and the squeak and thunder of cartwheels and the din of country voices.
In the streets, the leaning houses smacked the same noises between them. In September, every workshop and every shutter was open. Sheheard the rasp of a saw, and the slap of the baker and the clang of his ovens. She heard the buzz of the grinding-stone and the chime and clash of the smith and voices raised in anger and voices raised in mirth, and dogs, and pigs, and the crow of a cockerel. She heard the gulls disputing above and the uniform creak of the house signs and she heard, most of all, the clacking of looms, resounding in street after street like a clog-dance.
In the three months she had been at Louvain, there were changes as well. She noted them, and made, courteously, the correct responses to her fellows who called to her, but she made her way to her own home without stopping. Her home and her business. It was the same thing.
And here was the entrance to the dyeworks Cornelis had been so proud of: well-swept, with no grass between the cobbles: good. The reek of warm dyes and the stench of urine. Smells which disturbed other people, but not her. And there in the yard (of course: why forego the chance of an hour off their labours?) stood her loyal employees to greet her.
The dyers in their aprons, with their hands hanging like indigo pumpkins. The male house servants in neat coifs and caps and their summer cloth doublets, black at the cuffs with nose-wiping but with no unmended holes about them. And the women with decent gowns, and head-napkins carefully ironed and folded round under their chins. The grooms, without waiting, skipped to help with the horses.
In the middle was her manager Henninc, in cuffed hat and sideless coat that reached to his calves at the back and his knees at the front because of his belly, which had not got any smaller. Because of her food or her wine, she was not sure which. But an honest man, Cornelis had always maintained. Plodding, with no head for figures, but honest.
The need for a man with clerk’s training was what had led to the appointment of Julius. There he was. A sturdy stance, but one that avoided defiance. Or deference, if it came to that. Too handsome by half , Cornelis had grumbled at the hiring. Not from any distrust of herself: he knew better
With the Flanders galleys almost due, she would have to have come anyway. It was an annual journey, but not one she enjoyed. Louvain to Brussels; Brussels to Ghent; Ghent to Bruges the roads had been as crowded as the canals and worse to navigate, what with other peopled draw-oxen and broken-down carts and inn-keepers’ rumours of brigands lying in wait round the next hedge.
Which was usually rubbish. Which needn’t, anyway, concern the Charetty company, which had its own bodyguard. More than that, its own band of mercenaries. So no one molested them and, at last, they had come to Bruges. For her entrance she wore a good cloak of rich mulberry and had an extravagance on her head, a voile contraption fronted with seed pearls. Astorre and all her servants behind her wore the Charetty blue, the special dye Cornelis had concocted which she preserved in his memory. Her horsecloth and those of her daughters were of gold wire and velvet, and their harness was silver. Bruges should know, when one of her burgess-widows rode into town. To erase the impression made by her son Felix.
She had forgotten how noisy it was. First the creak, the groan, the thud of the windmills. Then the long portal-arches into the city which trapped the jingle and clatter of stamping horses and the squeak and thunder of cartwheels and the din of country voices.
In the streets, the leaning houses smacked the same noises between them. In September, every workshop and every shutter was open. Sheheard the rasp of a saw, and the slap of the baker and the clang of his ovens. She heard the buzz of the grinding-stone and the chime and clash of the smith and voices raised in anger and voices raised in mirth, and dogs, and pigs, and the crow of a cockerel. She heard the gulls disputing above and the uniform creak of the house signs and she heard, most of all, the clacking of looms, resounding in street after street like a clog-dance.
In the three months she had been at Louvain, there were changes as well. She noted them, and made, courteously, the correct responses to her fellows who called to her, but she made her way to her own home without stopping. Her home and her business. It was the same thing.
And here was the entrance to the dyeworks Cornelis had been so proud of: well-swept, with no grass between the cobbles: good. The reek of warm dyes and the stench of urine. Smells which disturbed other people, but not her. And there in the yard (of course: why forego the chance of an hour off their labours?) stood her loyal employees to greet her.
The dyers in their aprons, with their hands hanging like indigo pumpkins. The male house servants in neat coifs and caps and their summer cloth doublets, black at the cuffs with nose-wiping but with no unmended holes about them. And the women with decent gowns, and head-napkins carefully ironed and folded round under their chins. The grooms, without waiting, skipped to help with the horses.
In the middle was her manager Henninc, in cuffed hat and sideless coat that reached to his calves at the back and his knees at the front because of his belly, which had not got any smaller. Because of her food or her wine, she was not sure which. But an honest man, Cornelis had always maintained. Plodding, with no head for figures, but honest.
The need for a man with clerk’s training was what had led to the appointment of Julius. There he was. A sturdy stance, but one that avoided defiance. Or deference, if it came to that. Too handsome by half , Cornelis had grumbled at the hiring. Not from any distrust of herself: he knew better
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