THE COLD, at the same time, had begun to descend upon the besieging army of the Duke of Burgundy in Lorraine. Nothing momentous was happening, unless you counted the irritating frequency of enemy forays: well-organised bands from little garrison towns which fell upon the Duke’s foraging parties, killing them to a man; which shadowed outlying patrols and cut their throats while they slept; which infiltrated, on one fearful occasion, the fringes of the Duke’s siege camp before Nancy, and captured a large number of horses. The Duke’s comments on that had not been pleasant.
Nothing positive was happening, because both sides had run out of soldiers and money. The Duke, possessed of all the Moselle valley from Dieulouard to Thionville, with a lifeline to Metz and his arsenal and treasury stationed at Luxembourg, still had too few men to take Nancy. Duke René, aged twenty-six, and adhering obstinately to his land to the south, had likewise too few men to dislodge him. René (or L’Enfant, as the Duke chose to call him) had provisioned Nancy for two months and gone off to beg help from Alsace and the Swiss. Duke Charles, ignoring all advice to withdraw and re-form over the winter, was awaiting what troops his Duchess and others might send.
Captain Astorre and his hundred lances, with the unexpected bonus of Dr Tobias and the polite young lad Berecrofts, took his share of the drills and the foraging, organised games, conferred with other captains and greatly enjoyed, of an evening, relating to Tobie and Robin all the tales that Thomas and John had stopped listening to. The new, good quarters made out of boarding, replacing the huts lost at Grandson, resounded to Astorre’s opinions of the Duke, and his mercenary band of four hundred Italian lances, led by the famous Niccolò de Montfort, Count of Campobasso (real name Gambatesta), already flung out of Naples for supporting the old man, King René, and now, in the view of Captain Astorre, responsible for losing the Duke’s Nancy in the first place, by advancing so slowly that it had to surrender to young René the grandson. The Count of Campobasso, Astorre said, was surreptitiously back in Angevin pay, mark his words. He was then reminded of the days when he himself had fought in Naples, on the opposite side, and the trouble he had had with that damned mercenary Piccinino.
The boy, Robin, would always ask then for more information, while John would be sitting morosely in a corner, filing down something that had fallen short of perfection, and Thomas snored, and the doctor got up, like as not, and went to tramp round the camp. Astorre hoped he wouldn’t find himself run through by a pack of deserters. Cold and boredom led to that. The English, especially, had never encountered this kind of warfare and didn’t like it at all. And there were some units who didn’t get their provisions in, the way he did, and keep the men in good heart. Once they wearied, then you got the diseases. He ought to be glad Dr Tobie was here, even if it was years since he had been on campaign. But he had had his moments, by God, in the past. Captain Astorre thought he must remember, one night, to talk about Cyprus.
John le Grant, watching Tobie, could have told that he didn’t wish to talk about Cyprus, or Albania, or Volterra. The boy Robin had come mostly because he was nineteen, and courageous, and wanted to be able to say, one day, that he had fought with an army. Tobie had come for other reasons, and finding himself back in the field, was remembering why he had left it.
John had accompanied Tobie when he received his first audience with the Duke, in the great, gilded wooden pavilion lined with tapestry which had been erected in the grounds of the old Commanderie of the Knights of St John, a mile or two from the ramparts of Nancy. It was the same pavilion and the same site occupied by the Duke in October, when he had entered Nancy in triumph but left it so poorly defended that René had taken it back again. The Duke, short and burly, pious and wilful, had not impressed a man who had been military surgeon to Urbino. Tobie had got on better with Matteo, the Duke’s Portuguese doctor. Tobie had a new wife, and in John’s opinion, was an ass to be here. And of course, if Nicholas were alive, he wouldn’t be.
They had talked of Nicholas one night, he and Tobie. It was a subject he normally avoided, but recent conversations with Gelis had made him reconsider a number of things. At the end, Tobie had said, ‘You used to call him a wrecker. You’ve mellowed.’
‘That’s because I’m alive and he’s dead,’ John remarked. ‘Resurrect him, and I’ll toughen again.’
A week later, Tobie rode across the crusted mud to his smithy to find him. ‘Are you still interested in news of Nicholas?’ An icicle dripped down his neck, and he looked up. ‘Christ, I thought this place would be warm.’
‘So did someone else. The fuel supply’s gone, and I’ve just come from rewrapping the guns for the third time. So what about Nicholas?’
‘A letter from Clémence,’ said Tobie, shaking it in his gloved hand. ‘They think he’s alive. And Julius and Anna have come back to Flanders.’
‘What!’ said John. It came out sharply, and he saw Tobie’s reaction.
‘Ah,’ said Tobie. ‘Then we have something to talk about this evening. And I think we should include Robin.’
He didn’t need to be told, then, what it was about. He had warned Gelis himself about trusting money to Anna and Julius. He had thought there was something fishy about the girl Bonne. He had not guessed what Tobie was to tell him that night about Anna, before the meagre fire in their cabin, with Robin pouring their ale. Or what he was to find out, infuriatingly, about that scented snake David de Salmeton.
It was not all new to Robin. Robin, he had already discovered, had observed a lot about Nicholas in Poland: enough to temper the hero-worship, but not to dispel it. You could see in him now, as he moved about, listening, the mixture of involuntary thankfulness and horror that he supposed he felt in himself. It impelled John to speak, out of contrariness, at the end of the recital. ‘We still canna be sure about Nicholas. There was a rumour that he was dead. Gelis is now convinced that he isn’t. There’s no proof either way. Except that some envoy’s priest begging money from Venice has spread a tale that he’s met him coming from Moscow.’
‘Don’t you find that suggestive?’ Tobie said. ‘The priest knew him from Moscow, and Nicholas let himself be seen. If Nicholas thought Gelis was in danger, he would want it to be known as fast as possible that he was on his way. Shamming dead might have been his only way of escaping from Moscow.’
The boy said, ‘But he may think he has nothing to face but David de Salmeton. This other thing may be far more dangerous. If Anna is Adelina, she’s married Julius by trickery. She has deceived M. de Fleury all through their time together in Poland, in Caffa, in Moscow—’
‘But never once managed to harm him,’ Tobie said. ‘Again, doesn’t that suggest something to you?’
‘That she only wanted to plague him?’ said John slowly. ‘That business with the knife. Julius apparently claims Nicholas was trying to seduce her, but mightn’t it have been the other way round? Or maybe she genuinely fell in love, and he rejected her?’
‘There were some accidents when they were together in Poland,’ Robin said. He spoke without much expression.
‘But then they stopped,’ Tobie said. ‘Nothing happened to Nicholas after that.’
‘Because of the gold,’ the boy suddenly said. His face, faceted by the fire, seemed composed of triangles. ‘Kathi told her, before she went to Caffa, about Ochoa and the gold. She would want to wait till it came.’
Tobie was staring at him. He said, ‘And it took a long time to come, didn’t it? She must have been waiting still when Nicholas left her at Caffa. She nearly lost her life over that, when Caffa fell. But she also, surely, lost her hopes of the gold. Yet still, nothing happened to Nicholas in Moscow.’
‘Julius was with them,’ Robin said. ‘And he and Anna stayed for the winter in Novgorod.’
‘And Nicholas was always either in prison, it seems, or somewhere under the eye of the Patriarch. He got the news that David de Salmeton was in Scotland, but he obeyed Gelis and stayed where he was. He doesn’t seem to have made any effort to leave until the scandal
over the knife, when Julius and Anna were asked to go home, and he seems to have followed them.’
‘Did he have any choice?’ John said. ‘He was probably asked politely to get out, as well.’
‘But he seems to be coming home,’ Tobie said. ‘In spite of Gelis, in spite of Adorne’s embargo and the kind of reception he could expect to get from the rest of us.’
John said, ‘Perhaps he was attracted to Anna. Perhaps he was pursuing her. Perhaps that’s why he shot Julius in the first place.’
‘You didn’t see him afterwards,’ Robin said. Tobie looked at him.
‘And of course,’ Tobie said, still watching him, ‘Nicholas would have made sure that Julius didn’t survive the next time, if that had been so. In Tabriz, or travelling through occupied Caffa, it would have been easy to get rid of him, and then divorce Gelis and marry Anna. But he didn’t. He kept in touch, indirectly, all the time, with Clémence and Gelis. He didn’t push through his annulment.’
There was a silence. John broke it abruptly. ‘I think you are saying — Are you saying that Nicholas knows who Anna is?’ He saw Robin’s face change.
Tobie said, ‘That is what I am saying.’ His expression was grim.
Contemplating him, the engineer felt something close to nausea. He thought of all it explained, and became aware that he was cursing continuously, under his breath. He pulled himself together and found an objection, but not because he had any real doubts. ‘But if that is so, why didn’t he confront her, denounce her?’
‘Because Adelina is family, and he doesn’t do that to family,’ Tobie said. ‘He kept her with him. He drew her east, as far from Gelis and Jodi as he could. The only time he left her, she was on leash in Caffa, waiting for the gold that never came, or stranded in Novgorod, while Julius founded his empire. But then she was sent home, and he followed, obviously, as soon as he could.’
‘I must go back,’ Robin said. The bleakness in his voice said it all.
Tobie looked at him. ‘I thought the same, to begin with, but we’re too far away. It doesn’t matter. Clémence knows all that I do, and she and Gelis will be safe in the palace in Ghent, while Kathi can depend on Adorne. Robin, he won’t let anything happen to her, or the babies.’
‘Does Adorne know? Can he be told?’ Robin said.
‘About Anna? He’s a magistrate: he doesn’t like Nicholas; he might resist the truth without proof. But I think,’ Tobie said, ‘that you can depend on Kathi to find some plausible cause of alarm. And Gelis would have told them, now, at the Bank.’
Diniz and Father Moriz were the only partners now left in Spangnaerts Street. But, of course, it was a vast house, manned with employees and servants; bustling with the traffic of business. John said, ‘The way to deal with it all is through Julius. Someone has to get hold of Julius, and persuade him …’
‘… Persuade him that his wife’s a scheming bitch who has lied to him from the start, and is still lying? Who only married him to get within reach of Nicholas? Oh, that’ll be simple,’ Tobie said. ‘Meanwhile, let’s stay and do something difficult, such as remaining alive while the Duke makes up his mind what to do.’
He drained his beaker and handed it out for a refill. Then he sneezed in an explosion of ale. He said, ‘What are you worrying about? Young René won’t raise the forces he wants. The two months will expire. The garrison in Nancy will surrender. The war will be over by Christmas.’
‘Will you take a wager?’ said John.
‘Don’t let’s push it too far,’ Tobie said.
Chapter 39
OVER THE LATTER part of November, as the cold war continued in Nancy, so events hung in chilly abeyance in Flanders, where the Duchess, at the end of her troop-raising duties, had returned thankfully to the voluminous hearths of the Hof Ten Walle in Ghent, in company with the lady Gelis van Borselen, her son and the wife of her doctor. The Duchess’s step-daughter, who was the same age as Robin, had formed a liking for Jodi.
The lawyer Julius of Bologna called at the palace, but was informed, with great courtesy, that the Duchess could not spare the lady Gelis van Borselen at present. He left his address, from which Gelis learned that he and Anna were occupying a small gabled house leased from a cloth-weaving client, and situated close to the Ghent home, at present deserted, of Anselm Adorne and the Sersanders family.
Gelis presently sent Julius a note, in which she expressed her dismay at the account she had received of Anna’s injury. She felt there must be some mistake, and was disinclined to discuss it until she heard the story from Nicholas, whom she still firmly believed to be alive. She hoped Julius would excuse her meantime.
She received a small note in return, signed by Anna, saying simply that she quite understood, and Gelis was to think no more about them. The handwriting was shaky, and Gelis was again reduced to discomfort.
In fact, her claim to be busy was not exaggerated. Warded by the familiar rigours of winter, the Duchess’s court felt entitled to bend its thoughts towards the pleasures of Christmas. It began to dwell, in addition, upon the festive implications of the forthcoming marriage of the richest heiress in the world, the Duke’s daughter. The Emperor Frederick’s protonotary, arriving from Nancy and Metz, had already brought Marie jewels and a letter from her future bridegroom. In return, Marie had dispatched to the teen-aged Maximilian a diamond, her portrait, and her own personal note of acceptance. This entailed little effort, as she had done much the same for seven previous suitors, one of them being a former young Duke of Lorraine. Then the ceremonial planning began, and the dress fittings, and the recruitment of musicians and poets and painters, for which it would have been so convenient to have the assistance of the lady Gelis’s ingenious husband, Nicholas de Fleury.
M. de Fleury was, and sadly remained, beyond call. But his lady was, of course, staying in Ghent, and at hand to advise on every difficulty. Gelis did not object to hard work, having anxieties of her own to subdue. But her isolation irked her at times, and she was pleased to be asked to the Hôtel de Ville banquet, at which the town of Ghent were to honour the future bride and her stepmother the Duchess. It would be in public. All of them would be stringently protected. And David de Salmeton hadn’t come yet.
A MAN WHO HAS HELD the highest office in Bruges exerts a good deal of influence. He can ensure, for example, that an obscurely dressed traveller presenting himself at one of the portals of Ghent is discreetly challenged, surrounded, and swept directly to Bruges under an unobtrusive but competent escort. Once there, the man would be taken straight to the Lord Cortachy at the Hôtel Jerusalem.
None of the womenfolk of Anselm Adorne had attempted to alter this mandate. Quiet, aristocratic Phemie, that rare friend from Scotland, kept her thoughts to herself, and saw to the smooth running of the household and the care of the children. Katelijne Sersanders filled her days and often her nights with accurately executed projects, and found herself unable to eat. Rankin objected.
The men, of course, were the first to know when the trap was activated. Since the birth of Arnaud’s weak child, Dr Andreas had remained in the house, with the man Bel had sent. It was the physician who came to find her. ‘He is coming. Your uncle wishes you to be there, but no others.’
She had not dared propose it. She had forgotten how shrewd a man her uncle was. Adorne was a magistrate, and had spent half his life administering justice. He also believed that, because of this man, he himself had been recalled from Poland. Seated in a tall wooden chair, not far from the desk of her uncle, Kathi Sersanders jumped as the door opened, and wished Robin were here, and then was thankful that he was not.
The room was high-ceilinged and grand, but the man who came in was in harmony with it, both in his height and his carriage, and even his looks, once he had deliberately divested himself of all the muffling clothes and stood before his captor and judge. Nicholas de Fleury of Beltrees, at the end of a journey from Russia to Flanders, and a recent one, imposed upon him, from Ghent. He made two formal bows: one to Anselm Adorne, one
to herself. But, entering, he had already cast a glance round the room, and she had caught the single, bright spark as he found her. To her fevered imagination, it conveyed something explosive and foreign — Elzbiete’s clarion summons in Danzig: Katarzynka! Then it had gone.
‘My lord,’ he said to Adorne. He had been given no chance to remove the dirt of the journey. The familiar dimples were grooves, the eye-sockets trenches, and there was a sharp, thin line between his brows. He looked pre-occupied, rather than angry or nervous.
Adorne surveyed him, his fastidious hands on his desk, his heavy robe severe over his doublet, his embroidered cap set on the greying fair hair. He said, ‘What! No recriminations?’
‘Your captain gave me your message,’ his prisoner said. ‘My wife and child are safe in the palace at Ghent; the man de Salmeton has not arrived yet; and you wished to interrogate me.’
‘Yet I am told you tried to resist,’ Adorne said.
‘You would probably have done so yourself. No free man enjoys coercion, my lord.’
‘No man of sense courts it, unless for a reason. I wish to know, first, what your intentions are.’
‘The same as your own, I am sure. To make sure that David de Salmeton, when he arrives, is rendered harmless. Then I leave, without engaging in business.’
‘Leave for where?’ Adorne said. After thirty miles on the road, any other man would have been invited to sit, but Nicholas de Fleury was not. He appeared not to notice, standing on the other side of the desk with the air, Kathi thought, of a courteous younger commander come to confer with an elder of equal intelligence. It was the first marked change Kathi noticed in him.
Nicholas de Fleury said, ‘I shall tell you when I know, and see that it meets with your approval. I am not attempting to change the agreement we have already reached.’
‘We shall see,’ Adorne said. ‘But meanwhile, you have not been entirely frank, have you? You brushed aside your persistence at Ghent, but you had another reason, had you not, for wishing to enter? A somewhat discreditable dispute, I am told, with your former friend Julius.’