"Chelsea Quinn Yarbro - St Germain 2 - The Palace" - читать интересную книгу автора (Yarbro Chelsea Quinn)

The working men stopped, looked up. Gasparo shied a pebble across the gravel
and said something under his breath.
At the rim of the pit stood Francesco Ragoczy da San Germano. His dark,
fur-lined roundel over a black silk doublet and perfectly white shirt proclaimed him a
stranger as much as his slight accent and the foreign order around his neck on a
silver chain that was studded with rubies. He wore heeled Russian boots on his small
feet, embroidered black gloves, and a French chaperon on his unfashionably short
dark hair. "Well? What is it?"
Gasparo glared. "I said," he lied, "that we might as well go home. It's going to
rain."
"But not for some while yet. You need not fear to finish your work." He jumped
lightly into the pit, landing easily on the unstable footing. The builders exchanged
uneasy glances. None of them could have taken that drop without injury.
"You are doing well," Ragoczy was saying, walking across the gravel floor. "You
should be ready to cement it."
Enrico bowed ingratiatingly. "I hope that you are satisfied, Patron. We have
worked to your orders."
"All of you?" Ragoczy asked, looking at Gasparo. "Be that as it may, I am
satisfied. Yes. You have done well. I thank you."
"We are grateful, Patron." He waited, watching the foreigner stride around the
graveled bed of the pit.
Ragoczy bent and picked up a handful of gravel. "Why? I thought my opinion
meant little to you." He tossed one of the pebbles into the air and caught it, tossed it
and caught it.
Three of the builders stopped their work, eyeing Ragoczy with suspicion, but
Gasparo strode up to the black-clad stranger. "Your opinion is worth nothing," he
said belligerently. "You know nothing of buildings. I have been a builder all my life,
and my father before me. I tell you that all these precious instructions of yours are
useless and a waste of time." He waited for the blow or the dismissal.
None came. "Bravo," Ragoczy said softly, smiling. "You may very well be right,
amico mio. But nonetheless, you will do it my way."
Gasparo's jaw moved forward and he put his hands on his hips. "Yes? Why will
we continue with this foolishness?"
 "Because, carino, I am paying you. So long as I give you the money you earn,
you will build whatever I tell you to, in whatever manner I tell you. Otherwise you
may find your money elsewhere." He paused, still smiling. Although he was of
slightly less than average height, something about him—it may have been the smile,
or the dark clothes, or his disquieting air of command—dominated the builders in
the pit. "If I were to tell you to build a Moorish citadel or a Chinese fortress, if you
wanted to be paid, you would do it."
Even Enrico and Lodovico laughed at this, and Gasparo nodded his
encouragement. "If you think, stranger, that you have any power here in Fiorenza…"
"I think," Ragoczy said wearily, "that money speaks a universal tongue. I think
that even in Fiorenza you members of your Arte understand that." He threw the
gravel in his hand away, listening as the stones spattered where they hit.
Again the builders exchanged looks and Lodovico nodded knowingly to himself.
"The way you build now in Fiorenza, this palazzo will stand… what?—perhaps
three centuries." Ragoczy's face was desolate. "But what is that? Three centuries,
four, five, are nothing. I want my palazzo to stand for a thousand years." He laughed
ruefully. "Vain hope. But make the attempt, good builders. Humor me and build