Caprice and Rondo

  Karaï Mirza was here to talk of the disputed appointment. His own possible candidature was not mentioned. None the less, in extracting the views of the household, his very competence threw into relief the weaknesses of the late Governor’s brother and son. He was not only experienced, after all. He was of the inner council of Mengli-Girey himself.

  The Russians, Nicholas could see, were won over. If Karaï Mirza were to be accepted as governor, Dymitr and his friends might expect a spring present from Moscow which would allow them to compensate Anna and escape the penalty for her loss. It was a bonus, naturally, for Nicholas too.

  The visitors did not stay long. Before he left, the imam Ibrahiim took Nicholas to one side. ‘I have a letter for you from Brother Lorenzo. Find me if you wish to reply. I have not read it.’

  ‘I shall like to find you, if I may, in any case,’ Nicholas said. ‘And hear news of my friends.’

  The imam closed the folds of his hood over his beard. ‘I am busy,’ he said. ‘But of course, you may always attend one of my classes. Any Believer will tell you where to go.’

  Nicholas caught Karaï Mirza’s small Tartar grin as he left. Damn Karaï Mirza. Then he tore open the letter and retracted it all, for inside was a message from Ochoa.

  He took it to Anna. As once before, he hurled himself into his house and had to be halted: the Lady was entertaining. The guests included one of the more self-important officials of the Uffizio della Compagna of Genoa: having got rid of them all with extraordinary speed, the Gräfin shed her fine, high-bred calm and, hearing Nicholas out, hugged him at the end of his recital as closely as she might have hugged Julius. ‘You’ve heard from Ochoa! And he’s bringing the gold in the spring!’ And then, pulling away, ‘Show me! Wait, we must have wine — Brygidy, bring us more wine. Now, show me.’

  Only when he spread the page before her did her face cloud. ‘It’s gibberish! I can’t read it! Cipher?’

  ‘Of course you can read it,’ said Nicholas. But although he was patient, she found the sheet of letters beyond her and instead turned, like a satisfied mother, to stroking the words of his transliteration. ‘All your gold, in the spring. He has deceived the Knights of St John? And once he can move, he will send you word where it is?’

  ‘In code,’ Nicholas said. ‘So you mustn’t fall out with me, whatever I ask, before then.’ Then he drew a breath, wishing he had put it some other way, or left: the whole story till morning, for her lips had parted and her eyes had become very bright.

  Anna said, ‘But we shall never fall out. Our fortunes are bound together. Don’t you feel it?’

  What he felt he did not want to put into words, although there were many words for it. Nicholas presented her with one of his generous grins, only a little breathless, and said, ‘Naturally. I’m joining your company, and am about to make you both exceedingly rich. I didn’t tell you that Moscow is about to compensate you for the loss of your furs? Well, possibly. And only if the Khan thinks I am helping him. And not at all if the Genoese get to hear that I met his secretary at the Russians’ tonight …’

  The story took a little time in the telling, and allowed him to master himself, and presently to leave her in a civilised way, and take himself back to his room. Even then, he continued to think of her. The night was not over. Long and industrious practice had taught him some understanding of women’s desires, and he was afraid for Anna as well as himself. It was not surprise that shook him, therefore, when he heard a sound at his door, and Anna’s voice spoke his name. It sounded muffled. He rose, and let her in.

  She had been on her way to bed. Her hair flowed over her bedgown, and his mind’s eye saw below the hair, and the gown. Then he saw, as she stood looking at him, that her eyes were wet, and her face tracked with tears.

  Nicholas walked away from her and turned. He said, ‘I am sorry. You shouldn’t be here.’

  The door had closed. She stood before it, the tears running, and said, ‘Are you never lonely? Are you never lonely because you are happy, and have no one to share it with?’ And coming forward, she dropped on a seat and said, as if she could not help herself, ‘Talk to me of Jodi. I wish Jodi were mine.’

  The early childhood of her own daughter was over: Bonne’s life in a convent was now separate from that of her mother; and there was no one to nurture. Nicholas knew how skilful Anna could be with the young. He remembered her sure understanding when dealing with Henry; with the unacknowledged son she did not know he possessed. He remembered her perception on other long-past occasions which had nothing to do with the young, such as a moment in Bruges when they had faced one another, and she had recognised his exhaustion, as not even Diniz had done. He said, almost at random, ‘Who can own Jodi? We belong to ourselves. We possess no one. It is by being alone that we learn.’

  ‘Who told you that?’ Anna said. ‘The Greeks, the Muslims, the humanists, the emissaries of the Pope? None of them is alone, as we are.’

  ‘I am not alone,’ Nicholas said; and standing aside, let her see the smoke feathering up from the brazier. The scent was different from hers. He said, ‘I shall be asleep before you are in bed. Shall I give you some?’

  She rose. For a long moment, they faced one another. Then she said, ‘No, Nicholas,’ and turned slowly, and left.

  As soon as her footfalls had died, he raked out the pastilles and dismantled the embers until the brazier was black. The sickly smell faded. He stood at the open window until the cold made him shiver, and then closed it and turned back to bed. He had smothered the fire, for this one night at least.

  THE SHOCK OF ISOLATION struck Gelis in Ghent that December, when she realised that the chain of communication between herself and Nicholas was now stretched too far. The smooth, informative messages from the Black Sea to Venice, to Bruges, could not be expected to seek her out where she was now, or where she was going. The informative messages which latterly had contained, here and there, a comment, an allusion, a fragment of gossip which were for her eyes alone, and which brought back, in a flood, all that once she and Nicholas had shared. And she had begun to reply in kind. She had begun, out of longing, to refashion the chain that once had linked them, but now it ended in nothing. She had lost Nicholas, and she had sent Jodi away. It had been necessary to keep the child safe, but she mourned the lost routines, the high, swooping voice, and the pattering step. For a year, she had been close to her son as never before, and had come to understand and to value him. Now he, too, had gone.

  For a year, she had also been occupied in restoring the fortunes of the Bank, and now in something much greater, in planning the growth of the Bank within the duchy. But she had not realised until now how much she had come to rely on the motley collection of men and women who had been the friends, the family, the long-suffering partners of Nicholas, and who had been willing to lend to his wife some of the tolerance he had so wilfully forfeited.

  Now she was alone, if anyone could be alone in Ghent, moving between the vast garden palace of Hof Ten Walle, the home of the Duchess and her step-daughter, and the grim walls of the Gravenkasteel, prison, law court: and mint, where the high officers of state — Chancellor Hugonet among them — prosecuted their business while responding, with a calmness they may not have felt, to the continual importunities of the Duke, shouting from some distant frontier for men, for arms, for money, money and still more money.

  In a month, wielding the power of her name and her Bank, Gelis van Borselen had extended some of her contracts and secured openings for others which Diniz from Bruges and his agents might not have perceived, or have risked. Other contracts she allowed to end, or did not pursue. The future of Burgundy depended on too many imponderables: on the rashness of the Duke and the skill of his enemies; on the power of the towns; on simple accidents of mortality which might reverse every plan. Weighing up the probabilities, in the past, Nicholas had discarded France in favour of the Empire or Burgundy. Now the Empire was in dispute with Burgundy, and from Ghent, she could not tell how the die was likely
to fall. To study that — and to deal direct, for her Bank, with the Duke — she must go to the war-front at Neuss.

  It was not a long journey: in summer it would take a good rider six days. She travelled just before Christmas, at a time when Ghent would be given over to festivities, and her safe conduct was signed by the Chancellor. Raffo, her best man-at-arms, had gone with Jodi, with whom he had formed a firm friendship; but she had another, Manoli, nearly as good, and a strong escort to protect her after she left Jooris, their agent at Antwerp, and took the Roman road south-east to Maastricht, and then, for safety, to Aix. She had written to that one-eyed veteran Captain Astorre, who was already encamped with the Bank’s troop of mercenaries, besieging Neuss with the Duke, and had received a reply which indicated that she would be met. He did not say by whom.

  It snowed. The countryside for miles around the west bank of the Rhine had been scavenged for food by the army: as her party approached, they found taverns closed, or unwelcoming. They had brought their own fodder and fortified themselves with food they had carried from Ghent. Shivering over some chill, smoking brazier, Gelis envisaged the scented warmth, the indolent peace of the Genoese colonies in the closed months when trade ceased, and intimate relationships formed. Nicholas, with his gift for attracting companions, would probably make his own arrangements in Caffa; would be surrounded by eclectic new friends. Thinking of it, from the sober perspective now forced upon her, Gelis recognised that, even when Nicholas was sought-after and rich, she had never seriously feared his casual liaisons, or even minded the strange intellectual attachments which he continually half admitted, then shed. It was news of a lasting physical bond that, against all reason, she dreaded to hear.

  But at least there was Anna beside him. Kathi had faith in Anna’s powers to protect Nicholas; and she was probably right. Anna herself would be sacrosanct: after what had happened to Julius, that was certain. She was not jealous of Anna. Only, as the days passed and the pendulum did not find her, she wondered why.

  CAPTAIN ASTORRE was not against women in camp: he regularly exceeded the Burgundian ration of thirty per company, and always found they made handy auxiliaries. He was accustomed, too, to women as negotiators: Muslims and Christians both made well-accredited use of their wives and their mothers; Uzum Hasan and the present Sultan of Turkey sent their old ladies all over the place. When Gelis van Borselen set off for Neuss, Astorre dispatched his most famous gunner to meet her. Astorre and his soldiers missed Nicholas, but if the fellow didn’t choose to come back, then maybe he’d get his wife to talk sense to the Duke. Whatever Nicholas had done, Astorre didn’t mind.

  The engineer John le Grant did. He rode to intercept the wife of Nicholas without pleasure, knowing that she had suffered, as he had, over the wreck of their achievements in Scotland, but that she must be allotted some share of the blame. Once, when his hair was a brighter red and his Aberdonian tongue still round and raw, he would have begun by announcing as much. But now he was in middle years, with a great reputation behind him, and a desire not to be embroiled any more in the life of Nicholas de Fleury. He had had enough.

  It reassured him, locating her tavern, to find that her entourage was well controlled and well armed, and that they had had the sense to bring food and conceal it. He thought, when shown into her chamber, that, long-limbed and fair as she was, she had the air of a pre-occupied man, of an upper seaman, you would say, preparing to tackle some puzzling duty. He saw that the rumours of what she had been doing in Venice must be true. Although they had met many times, from Scotland stretching back to Mount Sinai, his greeting was deliberately commonplace, and he plunged into business as soon as they were seated over the flask he had brought. ‘We need to take some decisions. Do you want me to speak, or would you rather wait and talk to Astorre?’

  ‘I want to talk. How is he?’ she said.

  John le Grant grunted. ‘His joints ache. He’s still the best in the profession.’

  ‘You must both get offers,’ she said. He had forgotten what she was like.

  ‘We’re both daft,’ said John le Grant shortly. ‘So what d’ye want to know first?’

  To his relief, she took company statistics for granted. Astorre and his guns and a hundred lances had been lodged on the river-banks of the corn port of Neuss ever since the end of July, when Duke Charles hit on the idea of intimidating Cologne by surprising and capturing its small Roman neighbour. Except that on the knoll of Neuss or Novaesium was a stout little town, stuffed with food, stuffed with arms, which declined to fall, and had chosen, vindictively, to allow itself to be besieged. According to history, it had already survived thirteen sieges, and clearly aspired to a lucky fourteenth. Meanwhile, it was successfully occupying Duke Charles and the finest army he had ever assembled.

  ‘Really?’ had said Gelis when John used the phrase.

  ‘I was exaggerating,’ said John. ‘Thirty bombards, fifty great serpentines, a hundred smaller pieces of ordnance, and twenty thousand Flemish, English, Italians and borderline Germans, all with their own whimsies, fancies, prejudices and silly ideas, led by Charles the Mange, who listens to nobody. And while his Castilian siege machine sinks, and the wheels come off his Italian castle, and the Neussois sally forth and kill hundreds, the Emperor Frederick and the French and the Austrians and the Swiss are making friends and arranging to dine off him.’

  ‘He wants Cologne,’ Gelis said. ‘He wants to tidy his frontier with Germany. He wants to join his lands in the Low Countries with Burgundy. Meanwhile, he’s accidentally opened so many fronts that he’ll pay you to fight almost anywhere. You think I’m here to get you to protect Dijon and Fleury for Jordan. I’m not.’

  He felt like being sardonic. ‘Nicholas doesn’t want his son to have Fleury?’

  Gelis said, ‘He couldn’t afford it. We’ve traced his grandfather. Nicholas has no provable right to the vicomté of Fleury.’

  ‘He could buy the land.’

  ‘Nicholas has no money,’ Gelis explained, in the same helpful, even solicitous manner. ‘Tobie mentioned a rumour, and I investigated with Govaerts. When the business in Scotland closed down, the funds passed through various accounts on their way to the Bank’s central ledgers. On the way, Nicholas arranged for them to sweep up all his own personal money and include it as part of the Bank’s commercial surplus from Scotland. No one noticed.’

  ‘No one noticed!’

  ‘It wasn’t difficult. Would you have questioned what the contents of the castle of Beltrees might be worth? Except that they weren’t worth anything: the money that bought them was borrowed by Nicholas. But Govaerts didn’t know that. The ledger showed a good sale, the equivalent money was there, and he accepted it. So what are the Duke’s chances at Neuss?’

  ‘Slim,’ le Grant said, though not immediately. He stared at her, his mind on Nicholas’s eccentric behaviour. ‘You’re saying that Nicholas made a camouflaged gift of his own private funds to the Bank, and didn’t tell anyone? Why? What did Govaerts think, and the rest, when you told them?’

  ‘Remorse, the theory goes. There wasn’t so much: he had showered his own money as well as the Bank’s into all those neat, faulty schemes that were meant to pull Scotland apart. He’ll acquire another fortune, I’m sure, but he’ll have to work for it. The next offer the army receives may be from the rulers of Tabriz or Caffa. Astorre might even accept.’

  ‘He might, but I wouldn’t,’ said le Grant. ‘And these days, I’m part of the deal.’ He added bluntly, ‘So you’re not here about Fleury. You’re here to make sure that we shan’t sign our next contract with Nicholas?’

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t,’ Gelis said. ‘Nicholas knows it as well, I’m quite sure. No. I wondered if he had pretended to ask you. He would mean it to tell us something.’

  ‘What?’

  She looked at him with momentary surprise. ‘About the course of events where he is. Trouble in the Crimea affects Russia and Poland, which affects Julius and Cologne and, in the long run, might damage Diniz in
Bruges. He has been sending warnings ever since he went east.’

  John le Grant set down his cup. ‘You’ve been in touch with him? You trust what he says?’ Then, with increasing incredulity, ‘Is this why you’ve been learning the business? You’ve managed to forget how Nicholas fooled us? You’d like us to invite Nicholas back to head a new combined Bank with his wife!’

  Annoyingly, she didn’t look defensive; just tired. She said, ‘I thought I’d just told you. I knew you wouldn’t tolerate him for a minute. Neither would Diniz or Moriz or Tobie. Neither would Gregorio. He can’t come back.’

  John le Grant listened. Then he said what he had held back until now. ‘And you? It wouldn’t have happened but for you.’

  ‘I know that,’ she said.

  He didn’t know Gelis well. His world was a masculine one: he had been struck in Alexandria and in Iceland by the exuberant intelligence and sweetness of Kathi, but knew Gelis only through other men’s eyes, and by her sharp-witted performance at events where application and analysis were required. Had he stopped to think, he might have deduced that Kathi was an asexual being with a very feminine form of intuition, while Gelis was a ravishing woman with a mathematical brain.

  He had now stopped to think. He said, slowly, ‘You don’t expect Nicholas back. You expect to go to him?’ Until then, he had thought the marriage already part sundered.

  She smiled. Her eyes were still tired. She said, ‘It isn’t as easy as that. And I have work I want to do first. About your expiring contract, for a start. I need to know what you and Astorre want to do about that after Neuss. What do you think? Leave Fleury out of it.’