Caprice and Rondo

  Anselm Adorne read his son’s letter in his tent, and sent for his chamberlain, for here was something he could deal with which was personal to his own family. God knew, he had little time for de Fleury, but he knew more than Jan about the nature of David de Salmeton. De Fleury was not, of course, within reach of M. de Salmeton’s displeasure, but his family were, and Kathi, who had helped foil him in Cairo. Anselm Adorne wrote to her in Scotland immediately, and also to his nephew Sersanders. Lastly, he sent word to de Fleury’s wife, supposing she still held that name, suggesting a meeting in Ghent.

  IN PEACE AND WAR, Anselm Adorne, Baron Cortachy, was a frequent and favoured visitor to both the palace and castle in Ghent. His sister had married Daniel Sersanders, a political firebrand, but born of a great local family. His daughter had served the Duchess of Burgundy’s English mother in London. He was a friend of Louis de Gruuthuse who was a member of the permanent Council. With generations of fiscal skills behind him, Adorne was one of the advisers upon whom the Duchess Margaret relied when she was forced to raise money, yet again, for the ducal wars. The calls Anselm Adorne made to the Duchess’s court were rarely social ones: they were to guide and warn the Duchess and Chancellor Hugonet in their dealings with those independent and rough-spoken communities within Flemish Burgundy which the Duke so blithely regarded as his vassals.

  Technically, no doubt, they were. Technically, they had no right to revolt as Liège and Ghent itself had done in the past. As a boy, Adorne himself had been forced to flee with his family during another upset in his own Bruges. Merchants, diplomats, farmers of taxes incurred duties both to the burghers whom they represented, and to the Duke whom they also served. A clever man, trusted by both sides, could often keep both sides out of trouble. But not always. And sometimes wealth and high office did not seem worth the strain.

  On this particular warm day in June, Adorne rode first to the castle, where the Chancellor awaited him. Although different in nature, the two men had long formed a useful alliance which had produced, among other things, Jan’s present post with Cardinal Philibert, the Chancellor’s brother. The Chancellor knew the gossip of Rome. He also knew Gelis van Borselen, who was in Ghent these days almost as often as Adorne, and who seemed to be proving herself to be as useful to Burgundy as her husband had been at Trèves.

  The Chancellor had listened, in the interstices of a more urgent discussion, to the gist of Jan’s message. He said, ‘Camulio is a plotter; you know that. He will spy for anyone, but mostly for Genoa and Milan. With what he knows, he makes an excellent collector of taxes. But even he cannot travel everywhere. Your David de Salmeton will be expected to exert local pressure. You say he is a dealer?’

  ‘He was an agent of the firm of Vatachino. They asked him to leave, I was told, after some error of judgement in Cyprus which lost them all their property on the island. He has not been heard of from then until now.’ He was merely reporting. He did not expect Hugonet to possess information, but knew that he could rely on him now to make enquiries. Since the Vatachino had called in its agents and withered, there had been no comparable power in that field. One wondered if the infiltration of Gelis van Borselen had contributed to that failure. The other theory, of course, held that the Vatachino had only been created to vanquish Nicholas de Fleury in business. De Fleury had gone, and so had his strongest competitors; except for this man, for whom the contest, it seemed, had become personal.

  When, presently, Adorne repaired to the small house he still kept in Ghent, he found Gelis van Borselen already waiting, with the engineer John le Grant standing beside her. Their expressions puzzled him. Then comprehension broke, and he said quickly, ‘I have no news, good or bad, from the Levant; only a warning about David de Salmeton. You remember him?’

  Their response this time was all he expected, and more. ‘What? What about him?’ the engineer said.

  The woman who cared for the house entered and poured them some wine. He smiled at her. It was not the family mansion in which Anselm and Katelijne had been born: that had long since been sold. This small property still belonged to the Sersanders family: Adorne maintained it, and his nephew and niece used it when in Ghent. Kathi’s household would require, he thought, amused, to remain small. He raised his glass, and drank, and spoke when the woman was gone.

  ‘De Salmeton is going to Scotland. He has an advisory post with the Papal Collector. His dislike of your husband could affect your son and my niece, and I suggest it is worth exercising a little caution. Kathi intended coming to Flanders this autumn. I have told her instead to come right away, and bring your son and her husband and child. The man may have reformed. But until we know more, I feel our families will be safer in Bruges for a little while. I had no time to ask your permission. I hope you agree.’

  ‘How did you hear?’ the man said. The woman was gazing at him.

  ‘You do agree?’ Adorne asked her, troubled.

  ‘Yes! Of course, yes!’ Gelis said. She loosened her hands. ‘Of course, thank you. But how did you hear?’

  He told them, while the three glasses of wine lay untouched. Once only, the woman interrupted. ‘David de Salmeton had money?’

  ‘He was rich, according to Jan.’

  ‘He would be,’ said the engineer flatly. ‘My lord, you’ve got your niece there to think of, but our wee lad is sore threatened, too. What boat did ye send with your letter?’

  Our wee lad. It was not, perhaps, surprising. The marriage was broken, and this was a kind man, with a streak of genius about him, like the other one. Adorne said, ‘Not even the Banco di Niccolò, I promise you, could have provided anything faster. I mean no offence, but the post of Conservator of Scots Privileges has its uses. And I have asked Sersanders’s partner to bring them back personally.’

  ‘I’m sorry. We’re anxious,’ said le Grant.

  ‘You came here especially to tell me,’ said Gelis van Borselen. She was desperately pale. She said, ‘I cannot quite understand how such a man comes to be attached to a papal official.’

  It was what Adorne had sought to find out from Hugonet. Now he said, ‘He has been accused of nothing. Nothing has been proved against him but some maladroit behaviour in Cyprus. And even if it had, Prospero de Camulio has asked for him, and for this Pope, that is enough.’ He waited. Then he said, ‘You have worked with de Salmeton. You have seen what he did with the Vatachino. Is he clever? Is he dangerous? Or is he vindictive only where it is safe, at some petty court?’

  The woman answered. ‘He is clever. He is dangerous. And in Scotland, he has found just such another petty court.’

  LATER, IN THE GARDEN of the tavern where they did not share beds, Gelis raged to herself and to John, who sat, saying little. Her furious anxiety, beginning with Jodi, dwelt on all the possible victims: Kathi and her husband and baby; Bel of Cuthilgurdy; the Berecrofts family themselves. Then her voice changed. ‘Robin’s family don’t know de Salmeton. They may not believe he’s a danger. They may not let Kathi go.’

  At which John had stared at her in genuine derision and said, ‘You think they could stop Katelijne Sersanders if she wanted to leave? Dinna fret. She’ll tell them all she knows, and they’ll be the first to send them to safety. They’re a tough old crew, the merchants of Berecrofts. If de Salmeton wants a trade war, he’ll get one.’

  ‘If the warning comes in time,’ Gelis said.

  Neither of them had so far discussed de Salmeton’s affluence and, in his stubborn soul, John was glad to kick the subject aside. Two months ago, he had been present in Neuss when, returned blanched and stiff from a long absence, Gelis had found and opened the promised missive from Nicholas. Except that it had not been from Nicholas: the message was not in his writing, nor in code, and had arrived by no recondite path of the mind. It had come redirected from Bruges, and before that from Venice. Inform John and Moriz that the enterprise sadly is void. They should not speak of it.

  Nicholas had had to send the first message direct: if he died, the information was important. N
ow it was no longer important, and he hadn’t troubled to write.

  For Gelis, that was the blight; not the contents of the message, about which it was possible to be philosophic: endeavours did fail. Yet John had been surprised to notice how soon she recovered. It was as if her feelings were no longer engaged, or were differently focused, or as if she were armed by some unimaginable talisman. He wondered if she would have shown as much fear if Nicholas were in danger, not Jodi. Then he thought, ashamed, that she probably would, because he himself would. You didn’t need to be someone’s husband or wife to admire them, and be concerned for them, and desire to know they were safe. He wished he had the detachment of Nicholas; and then remembered, uncomfortably, the tales he had resurrected for Gelis which made the opposite point. A man who did not care for his fellows would have resented and shed them. Only an idiot would shower them with helpful statistics. He forced himself to remember, belatedly, just what Nicholas had done in Scotland, and to Julius, and why he deserved all that had happened to him.

  He looked at Gelis and said shortly, ‘It’s all right. We’ll hear from him soon.’

  IN EDINBURGH, where the month opened less warmly, Katelijne Sersanders, lady of Berecrofts, had no premonition of her uncle’s warning racing towards her, being satisfactorily immersed in a promising young household. Her greatest problem had lain in the handling of Jodi, Nicholas’s small son and her husband Robin’s disciple and critic. Her own care, above all, had been to refrain from replacing Gelis: to preserve, against all her inclinations, a demeanour towards Gelis’s son which was friendly, but not over-close: that of a sensible aunt. Her greatest triumph, had she been asked to name it, lay in the fact that Jodi had grown to be decently tolerant of his five-month-old co-habitant Margaret, who after all was only a girl, and not allowed to go hunting.

  It compensated for the professional friction between Jodi’s new master-at-arms and Raffo, his bodyguard. A brawny, middle-aged mercenary with spectacular scars, Raffo had been one of the two men engaged to look after Gelis and Jodi. Jodi was proud to be the pupil of Captain Cuthbert, but Raffo, eighteen months at his side, was his friend. This, since his parents were missing, and Clémence and Tobie were in the absent-minded stage of betrothal, appeared to Kathi to be extremely convenient. A boy needed someone to teach him how to kill things, and Clémence had reached her limit in that direction, now she had Tobie.

  In any case, Kathi had Bel. In a city of stout-hearted, strong-willed old women, Bel of Cuthilgurdy had had more than most to do with Nicholas and his estranged Scottish family, and had shared his voyage to Africa with Gelis. Although her home was in the west, close to the Beltrees of Nicholas and the Kilmirren castle of the vicomte de Ribérac, Bel shared an Edinburgh house with her neighbour the vicomte, and since his absence in Portugal, often stayed there. Jodi grew accustomed to climbing the steep hill of the Canongate, passing through and up to the High Street of Edinburgh, and then being hoisted by Raffo to chap at the door of his wee Aunty Bel.

  Today, to begin with, it was entirely as usual: he was welcomed in, his bonnet taken off, and his striped hose and new belt admired, while Raffo went off down the stairs, where the giggling always started, sooner or later. Then Jodi was given a biscuit and, seated beside his wee aunt (his old wee aunt), was asked to say what Margaret was doing these days (teething); when he had last heard from his clever mother (yesterday); and whether he had made any more drawings to keep for his father, who was away selling cloth to men with slanty eyes and flat faces.

  Jodi, who preferred to believe that his father was away fighting Turks with slanty swords and hooked noses, described his latest drawing, which showed himself on a horse hunting foxes, but without the leading-rein and Captain Cuthbert riding beside him. Drawing the fox had given him some trouble, as he had only been once, and they hadn’t caught any. He could improve on it next time. Or he could ask Master Cochrane to help him.

  It was just at this point that someone else chapped on the street door and unusual things started to happen, such as Aunty Bel’s serving-woman going to open it and then giving a cry, while the sound of trampling and jingling came from the outer room, as if a band of jousters had come in by mistake. Then, suddenly, Aunty Bel’s room was full of men. The door in front was flung back by the jousters, and the one at the back was thrown open by Raffo, who leaped through it, drawing his sword.

  It had happened before. It had happened in Trèves. Jodi’s lip trembled, and he opened his mouth. Then he squeaked, having the breath knocked out of him by Aunty Bel’s stout little arms clipping him fast to her side. ‘Now then!’ said Aunty Bel. ‘The first loon to take ane step for-rit will get a ball in the tripes. Hand me that gun.’

  Round-eyed, Jodi saw that there was a gun, propped up at the back of a cabinet. There was a wooden box by it. Raffo fetched them both. He said hoarsely, ‘Let me.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Aunty Bel. ‘I’m to load, you’re to split the first one that tries to stop me. You could light the match, mind.’

  Jodi loved Aunty Bel. He thought Raffo was the bravest man he had ever met, except for his father and, perhaps, Robin. He was amazed and alarmed when the leader of the men in the doorway just laughed. He wore spurs, and had proper armour under his tunic, but he was too small to be a real soldier, and his hair, when he pushed back his chain hood, was black and waving and scented — like a lassie’s, Captain Cuthbert would have said. And it was silly to laugh.

  The man said, ‘And when we have killed your henchman, what happens? Do you think you will have loaded the hackbut by then? Put the gun down, Mistress Bel. It isn’t Lagos. We’re not here to harm you. I only wish a word with the boy.’

  ‘Oh, aye?’ said Aunty Bel. You could see she knew what to do with a hackbut. She had taken some powder from a flask in the box, and was pouring it into the muzzle. She lifted a ball from a leather bag and gave it to Jodi to hold. It was heavy. The men in the doorway started to move, but the leader put out his hand. He was still smiling. Aunty Bel said, ‘And if that’s all, why the soldiers? Afraid the wee man will hit ye? I seem to remember, you fall down easy. Come another day. On your lane.’

  ‘So you do remember me?’ said the leader. ‘If for a somewhat unflattering reason. Under the circumstances, it is brave of you to refer to it. And the little boy’s mother, of course, was also present. Poor Gelis. The child has a look of her. I shall tell him tales of his mother. And his father, of course. How is Nicholas, wherever he is?’

  ‘Able to look after his own, even at a distance,’ said Aunty Bel. She held out her hand for the slow match.

  ‘I can see that,’ said the jouster. He had big dark eyes, and a dent in his chin, and the kind of teeth Mistress Clémence wanted to see Jodi have next. Jodi wished that Mistress Clémence was here, although he was glad to have Raffo behind him. The jouster said, ‘But does he have a writ that runs in the Curia? You may not know my latest appointment. Fate — and the good Prosper Camulio — have made me a Pustule Collector. You might say that I have come to collect your small charge.’

  He seemed to think he had made a joke. He was probably not a Pustule Collector. Aunty Bel gave a grunt. ‘And you might say that the charge failed to go off,’ she said, in a steady way, going on with priming the gun.

  It annoyed the jouster. He stopped making jokes. He said, ‘Take that thing from her and get rid of the man.’

  Aunty Bel stopped what she was doing. Raffo stepped forward. Several jousters started to run in as if they meant to hurt him and then slowed down, looking over their shoulders. One of them stumbled and fell. Others bumped into each other and went sideways.

  ‘Mercy me!’ said a loud voice. ‘What have we done, Mistress Bel? Come to mend the roof like we said, and here, we’ve jiggled your guests, and spoiled all their lovely new tunics.’ And sure enough, the loaded sacks now being carried into the room were dribbling powder all over the jousters.

  There were far more workmen than jousters, and the leader, who had big shoulders and black brows and a squa
shed face like a wrestler, was a much stronger-looking man than the Pustule Collector. Indeed, whatever a pustule might be, the newcomer didn’t seem to be afraid of him. He swung his load down, stood before him, and smiled. Jodi recognised him. He was a friend of Aunt Kathi’s brother Sersanders. He said, ‘Hello, Jodi!’ And then, turning back to the Pustule, ‘Hello, David.’

  ‘Well, Andro. I thought we were on the same side.’

  ‘We only came through the same door,’ the roof-mender said. ‘And now you’re going out by it.’ He took a look behind him. ‘And fast. She’s finished priming it.’

  Jodi gazed at his wee aunt. She had indeed finished preparing the hackbut. She had settled it. She was aiming it. A spiral of smoke rose from the match. She was staring at the roof-mender, and the roof-mender was looking back with a certain expression. It was the look Mistress Clémence put on, without speaking, when she wanted Jodi to bow or say thank you. Aunty Bel didn’t bow or say thank you. She just tightened her mouth, and set the match to the touch hole.

  The leading jouster gave a cry of annoyance and ran forward, knocking the hackbut aside. It exploded. Raffo pulled Jodi back and jumped at the Pustule Collector, so that their swords clacked and screamed. The roof-mender swung his bag at the Collector, hitting him on the shoulder. As he staggered, Aunty Bel pushed him hard, and he fell. There was a rumbling noise high above, and everyone opened their mouths and looked up as a hole appeared in the ceiling, and bits of wood and showers of grit and sections of plaster, big as tally-boards, began to fall down on them. Jodi sat down. The roof-mender sat down as well, as one of the biggest bits hit him. Aunty Bel, her headgear bent and full of pockets of plaster, cried out and jumped up to go to him. The Pustule Collector, his face and lips and eyelashes white, jerked up his sword and brought it whistling down on her head. But Raffo was there first.

  Jodi shrieked. The roof-mender got up. Through the whirling fog, you could see that the other men had stopped fighting. His Aunty Bel stood where she was, covered in powder, with one hand gripping her chair. On the floor was someone else covered in powder, except that it was all turning red. Jodi’s Raffo. And above him the man whose big sword had hit him, the Pustule Collector called David. There was red all over his sword, but it was getting salty-looking with white. He said, ‘You all saw him attack me. Give me the boy.’