Caprice and Rondo

  Despite all of that, Kathi Sersanders sat by her uncle’s desk and put her proposal, and hard man though he could be, her uncle gave her the courtesy of a hearing. A just magistrate, a Flemish–Italian merchant prince with generations of Genoese nobility behind him, Anselm Adorne had not lightly given in, either, when his niece had proposed to marry young Robin. But he was fond of her, and he respected her judgement, and Scotland had offered security. Or so it had seemed to him then. So now, Adorne said, ‘It is Robin, not you, who wants to find and speak to de Fleury?’

  ‘I shouldn’t stop him,’ she said. ‘Robin was his page, then his squire. He can’t forget. He needs to speak to Nicholas; to satisfy himself over what has happened.’

  ‘And you?’ her uncle asked.

  She had not been dazzled, like Robin, by the compendium of assorted delights which made Nicholas at first sight so winning. She had been a critical admirer, a fellow lover of music and, latterly, unexpectedly, a friend. Until the catastrophe. She said, ‘Now I think Nicholas is best left alone.’

  ‘Certainly, that would be my opinion,’ her uncle observed. He did not elaborate, but he was thinking, she knew, of his task. This mission would be thorny enough, without inviting more trouble. Resentful of Adorne, Nicholas might be stirred, if resurrected, to find ways of obstructing the mission. And while he was free to impugn whom he wished, Adorne’s hands were tied. For what Nicholas had done had not been made public, and would not be, for the sake of his victims.

  She said, ‘I want this for Robin, not myself. Nicholas may never appear. He may not want to be found, or he may not be where the Patriarch thinks. I don’t intend to wander for ever, but I do want Robin to feel that at least he has tried. And if Nicholas is still alive, I can’t believe that he would harm you. Although, of course, no one can be sure.’

  ‘No,’ her uncle said. He paused. ‘You would not think of letting Robin travel without you?’ Then, as she looked at him in silence, he answered his own question. ‘No.’

  She wondered if he understood, and thought that he probably did. If Robin went, she must go, and not simply because they were newly united. The truth was that she would be twenty-one in November, while Robin was three years her junior. Soon, the difference would fade, and they would live the span of their lives as contemporaries, lovers and friends. But first, they had to secure the form of their union.

  It had never been her ambition to wed. She would not have done so, had she not seen within this sweet-tempered man all the promise of just such a future. But, wise as Robin was, it was for her, in these first weeks, to shape from intangibles — dreams, thoughts, sensations — the image of the marriage that they were going to have. She was not alone, for he was aware of it, and helped her as he could. There was a precedent.

  Adorne said, ‘I am not sure that it is wise. But I trust your good sense, and I would not have Robin waste his life mourning a scoundrel. Come with me, then. Let Robin satisfy himself, if he must, and bring you back to your own home, and your own life. Nicholas de Fleury has had his chance, and is worth no one’s pain now.’

  Chapter 2

  IN DANZIG, as the Mission approached, the captain communicated his plans to remove Colà, for a time, to the country. Colà, although compliant, had howled. ‘I didn’t know you had a wife!’ ‘I have to have one,’ said Paúel Benecke sourly. ‘Or I couldn’t be a schep-herr. It doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘So I’ve noticed,’ said Colà, still wheezing. ‘But she doesn’t live on the Vistula?’

  The captain had decided, some time ago, not to risk sending Colà up the River Vistula. He didn’t want Colà going south or east. He didn’t want Colà going anywhere except the near vicinity of Danzig, to which he would return when the Mission had gone. He had sent his wife Malgorzaty a bribe. Regard it as an investment.

  He should have known it wouldn’t work. He survived the dubious pleasure of a single day’s ride, with Colà at the top of his form, imitating every voice in the Town Hall, and then they rode through to the yard of his house to find the snow trampled deep by unknown horseshoes. The next moment, they were dragged from their own mounts, and their arms pinioned behind them. Colà objected, and was disciplined. The captain gloomily did as he was told. Their captors were Malgorzaty’s grooms. And standing before him was another familiar figure, six feet tall with a billhook over its shoulder. ‘Hello, tatko. Come on, you,’ said Paúel Benecke’s daughter Elzbiete.

  ‘Madame,’ said Colà obediently, and followed her into the castle. Benecke wasn’t invited. It was snowing, and none of his wife’s men would speak to him.

  He was sitting drinking hot ale in the gatehouse when Colà emerged with Malgorzaty. They were much the same height, the chief difference being that Colà was clean-shaven. He looked like an owl, with both dimples showing, and compressions of powerful brown hair distorting the shaggy rim of his kolpak. Malgorzaty said to the captain, ‘He’s too bright for you. Take him back to Danzig.’

  The captain got up. ‘He doesn’t want to go. I explained.’

  ‘But they want him to go,’ said his wife, jerking her head. He was being invited indoors, to the stockroom, where he was not surprised to find some indignant soldiers he knew from the Town Hall. He knew whose they were, and he understood perfectly well what had happened. The bitch had let slip to the magistrates that Colà was escaping from Danzig, and then had held up his pursuers, while she had a good look at Colà herself.

  And of course, the big man and she had got on. Despite which (or because of it), she had decided to hand Colà back to the Danzigers, instead of letting him vanish with Paúel. Malgorzaty thought that Colà would be a waste as a privateer, when the Danzigers could sign him into a guild, and marry him to somebody’s tall, spinster daughter. Once, that is, they knew whose side he was on.

  The captain wondered if Malgorzaty knew that there was a girl with the Mission. He hadn’t told Colà. With Colà away, he would have had a good chance with the little once-virgin Kathi. He still had a good chance. He had money.

  Infused with natural optimism, Paúel Benecke set off with his guard back to Danzig, his grinning companion beside him, and behind him the glare of his womenfolk, their folded arms solid as fenders. ‘Der harte Seevogel. Tough Seabird!’ jeered his wife.

  BY THIS TIME, twelve days out of Bruges, the Ducal, Apostolic and Imperial Mc the large port of Lübeck, carrying with it a silent Adorne, a blithely truculent priest, and the self-effacing persons of Kathi and her husband, contriving at all costs to be useful.

  Given that to agile minds, most journeys are delightful, this one had so far been less so. They did not see much of Adorne. For him, at each stop in their chilly itinerary, the daylight hours were crammed with meetings, disputes and discussions to do with trade between Burgundy, Bruges and the ports in the league of the Hanse. Frequently the Patriarch would intervene, referring to the discomforts of hellfire, and the nuisance it would be if the Ottoman armies came marching through Germany. Finally, as if that were not bad enough, there was the Paúel Benecke business, which forced Adorne to display the full weight of Burgundian anger in every miserable place that had dealt with the stolen cargo. The trail meandered over half of Europe. Every town in the Hanse seemed to have a share in the plunder, and lied about it, coolly, to his face. Adorne had disliked all he heard of Paúel Benecke from the moment their affairs crossed in Iceland. The dislike was mutual.

  In Lübeck it was the same; and after the meetings were over, the merchant societies, as was usual, politely sent to claim Adorne as their guest. His niece was not invited. It was by accident, therefore, that one of Adorne’s hosts arrived early to collect him one evening and, waiting, chatted to Kathi. Heinrich Castorp was the richest merchant in Lübeck; the King of Denmark (he said) had once pledged him his crown for a loan. He had also resided in Bruges for nine years. It had been a long time ago, but Heinrich Castorp still recognised a French–Flemish accent when he heard it. So he came to mention the companionable fellow who had passed throu
gh to Danzig this winter, and now spent his time, so they said, raising hell with that rascal Paúel Benecke. Name of Colà. Her uncle might know him.

  ‘No. I’m sure he doesn’t,’ Kathi said. The Patriarch was out. She could hear Robin breathing. Then her uncle came downstairs and he and the Lübecker left. They were to watch a special performance at the exclusive club of the Cirkelselschop where the Burgundian envoy would be offered, and would successfully drink, fifteen tumblers of wine. She turned to Robin, and smacked her hands shut in traitorous triumph. Then she gave a sniff.

  Robin said hoarsely, ‘Nicholas. It must be. Of course it is. Christ, what shall we do? He’s with Benecke! Your uncle won’t let us see him.’

  ‘We don’t tell him. Benecke is crazy,’ Kathi said. She and Robin had met him in Iceland. Benecke had courted her. Benecke had asked her to go with him to Danzig. She had no qualms at all about Benecke, she was worrying so much about everyone else.

  She sniffed again, and this time Robin looked at her. Then he took her shoulder and shook it. He said, ‘You didn’t believe it. You said he wouldn’t do anything stupid, but you didn’t really believe it.’

  ‘I did,’ she said. She felt weak.

  ‘But we ought to make sure,’ Robin said with sudden decision. ‘Look. There’s a club of cod-fishers here, the Bergenfahrers. Someone asked me to come. They allow women. We could both go and see what they know. Oh goodness, I knew he was going to be all right.’

  They went and ate pickled herring, and Robin sang, when he was invited, and drank, to Kathi’s admiration and alarm, as much ale as Adorne ever managed of wine, and with equal aplomb. There was gossip about people they knew, and Robin encouraged it. There were men who took fish into Bruges, and traded with the Banco di Niccolò; who had corresponded with Julius, its agent in Germany, and knew of his beautiful wife. But inquisitive Julius of the unfettered conscience had not passed through here yet, nor discovered, clearly, that the convivial Colà had another name. No one had, so it seemed. The cod-fishers sang, stamped and drank but had nothing to say of the sociable stranger. As the night wore on, the atmosphere thickened, and the reddened faces of Rolf and Hermann and Hanke reminded Kathi of others, swaying, gleeful, in fleets of small vessels off Iceland, while the smoke in her throat was that of a mountain about to explode. The greatest spectacle ever conceived, by a Master no man could ever compete with.

  It was because of Iceland, she knew, that Robin retained, unconfessed, that ultimate, ineradicable belief that the gleams of virtue in Nicholas could be coaxed into constancy; that one day he should be, through and through, what he seemed. Now all the early illusions had gone, but Robin, struggling to comprehend, would not be satisfied until he had found him.

  They never spoke of what had happened to Nicholas: how he had taken his powerful Bank, and using it to obtain credit in Scotland, had plunged both the Bank and the country into near-ruin for the sake of a family feud. Kathi, numbed by the scale of the damage, would not herself have done what Robin was doing. To her mind, Nicholas now had to devise his own road to salvation. To pursue him simply burned the brand deeper; reiterated that he could not go back. Which was what the Patriarch wanted, of course.

  IN DANZIG, Paúel Benecke sulked in his house, peaceably warded by the Town, who permitted him to go where he pleased, so long as it was not outside the walls, or any spot where he might find himself holding an unsupervised meeting with the Burgundian Mission.

  Colà was in Danzig as well, but lodged in the palatial mansion of an Elder of the Order of St George, and escorted wherever he went. Danzig did not propose to lose either man in advance of the Mission.

  Naturally, neither was allowed to send messages out. It did not prevent messages from slipping discreetly inwards in cowls, packs and satchels. For a while, so approached, Colà did nothing. Then he roused himself to draw up a plan. Finally, without taking more than he came with, he made a smooth and successful exit over his chosen part of the walls and, crossing the ice of the ditch, made his way through the stiffened snow of the suburbs to reach the frozen swamps of the country beyond. He had only six miles to walk, and moved quickly.

  It was still daylight when he reached the monastery of Oliva, with its twin-towered basilica and its massive outbuildings and farmland and parks. They were looking out for him. The gates were opening as he approached, and a pair of horsemen rode up, with some squires. He saw the Florentine badges before they addressed him. ‘My lord of Beltrees?’

  ‘You are mistaken,’ said Colà dryly. He spoke, as they did, in Tuscan.

  ‘Naturally,’ said the spokesman a little quickly. ‘But you intend to accept, I trust, the hospitality of the abbey, and we should be happy to show you the way.’

  He let them lead him to the Abbot’s wing of the monastery. He had been there often, and knew where the guest-quarters were. Every Cistercian priory held to the same plan; although here the little river was put to much greater use than in Scotland: the wheels of the wool-beater, the tanner, the miller thudded and creaked; and he could hear the axe-blows of the monks trimming the ice. They had already cleared the pathways with shovels and oxen: a task seldom necessary in Haddington. He encouraged his mind, as ever, to dwell on such comparisons. Nothing should be unthinkable.

  In the guest-parlour, the man who rose to greet him was not, of course, Arnolfo Tedaldi himself, Medici agent from Florence, royal banker and wealthiest of all the Italians in Poland. This man was his kinsman Filippo Buonaccorsi, one of the more notorious of the Western World’s political refugees. Or, if you were more interested in his physical presence, a decorative man still in his mid-thirties, whose high cheekbones and long, curling hair merely acquired extra piquancy from the spectacles perched on his nose.

  Colà squinted at them. ‘You got them,’ he said.

  ‘Better than the first pair. Caeculus no longer. Wait. Don’t move. So this is Ser Nicholas de Fleury, writer of informative letters. Rumour has not lied.’

  ‘Rumour?’ said Nicholas de Fleury. He waited, exchanged a handclasp, and sat down. He had been corresponding for a long time with this man, in the knowledge that Buonaccorsi could influence the expansion of trade east of Germany. Now that Colà’s interests had changed, he had hoped to avoid or at least postpone a meeting. It was inconvenient that the man had travelled north especially to see him, but at least it would get the matter out of the way.

  Buonaccorsi had reseated himself slowly opposite. ‘We have a mutual friend, the charming youth Nerio, who sends me word of you. But I take nothing at its face value. Childhood playmates do not mature to the same measure, like plums. Those who meet only through letters may mistake a slight tilth for common ground.’

  ‘You wish to harrow,’ Nicholas remarked. He set himself to be patient.

  The Italian considered. An elegant hand lifted and removed the nose-hold of the spectacles. ‘I know, I think, what I should find. A layer of Plato, a drill of Aristotle, some pockets of Horace and Homer. A generous mould of mathematics, astrology. Some evidence of divining, and Greek of the Trebizond kind. But also the mushrooms, perhaps, of illusion. An interest in home and family, rilled in tribes, but easily abandoned. A taste for luxury, without the application to sustain it. A mountebank’s fondness for disguise, pretending to hide under a nickname when none can fail to know his identity.’

  ‘All you say is true, Maestro Callimaco,’ Nicholas said. ‘Who would befriend such a person?’

  The man nicknamed Callimaco was smiling. ‘You, I trust,’ said Filippo Buonaccorsi. ‘How agreeable to find one’s conceits not only understood, but indulged. And in Teutonic Danzig, that bastion of the literal-minded.’

  ‘I have no objection to Danzigers,’ Nicholas said. His patience had slipped a little, and he felt no urge to retrieve it. ‘Nor has your King, I should think. Some of them have advanced him large loans.’

  ‘My lord Casimir knows what he owes them. But others, he fears, are less concerned with the future of Poland than with their own fortunes from commer
ce, or piracy. I am not sure where your sympathies lie?’ Buonaccorsi had switched to Latin halfway through the sentence, adding, ‘Unless you object?’

  ‘I do not object. Must I have any preferences?’ Nicholas said. He used Louvain Latin, being buggered if he was going to bother with the Tuscan variety. He was increasingly aware that a winter with Benecke had unfitted him for this sort of thing. Servants had come in, and were placing platters before them. There was a smell of fresh bread, and almonds, and fish. Trout, from Oliva’s own lake. With lovely sauces. With personally chosen lovely sauces.

  Buonaccorsi said, ‘You have closed your business in Scotland. You have withdrawn from Venice and Flanders, although your Bank continues, I am told, in the hands of its managers. You were the Duke of Burgundy’s agent, then the Emperor’s. You may still be working for either or both. Or you may have determined to stay idle, or to select another base for your talents. If you wish to stay in Poland, we cannot help you unless we know your intentions.’ He didn’t specify who we were.

  ‘Before the Mission arrives,’ Nicholas said. A hand over his shoulder poured wine, and he sat without touching it. He felt himself becoming annoyed.

  ‘Naturally, Ser Niccolò. Or, if I might …?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Naturally, my dear Niccolò, we are all aware that the members of this embassy are well known to you. Perhaps you have corresponded with them over the winter. Perhaps you feel that you must take their part. I believe you even grew up in Bruges with the Medici manager who is suing poor Benecke.’

  Tommaso, we should have booted more sense into you when you were young. ‘You are a friend of the Medici,’ Nicholas said, smiling a little.