Caprice and Rondo (26 page)

With Ludovico da Bologna, all news sounded dire, and he had perfected a style of delivery that Adorne found excessively irksome. He had not therefore immediately replied; nor had Katelijne, although she sat up as if roused by a drumbeat. It was left to Robin to exclaim, ‘Ser Nicholas has gone back to Thorn? But, Patriarch, why?’

‘Nostalgia. Curiosity. Lust. His lawyer Julius is in Thorn, with that fine-looking Countess, his bride. Nicholas wouldn’t miss that,’ said the Patriarch. ‘You’ll see him, most likely, when you arrive. I should have told you. My lord of Cortachy, you have to leave Danzig immediately. I have word from the Kanclerz. The King is coming to Thorn in ten days. If you want an audience, you have to go there.’

‘And you?’ Adorne had said after a moment. ‘Or have you perhaps seen King Casimir already on your travels?’

‘Me? Hardly,’ the Patriarch said. ‘He’s been in the south with his sons. If you want to find out what’s happening in Poland, there are more interesting people to talk to than Casimir. So can we tell the Council we’re leaving? I’ve sent a messenger south. There’ll be a house and free food and entertainment: ambitious countries look after envoys. When the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund visited Berne, he was given a three-day group pass to their brothel. I saw his letter of thanks. Casimir married his granddaughter.’

They had lived for over four weeks in Danzig and the Patriarch had provoked him throughout, travelling where he pleased when he pleased, and ordering the embassy as it suited him. Adorne said, ‘I am sorry, Father. I understand that you think we should go, but the talks here are still in progress.’

‘And they’ll still be in progress at Christmas,’ the Patriarch said.
‘Talk isn’t going to get you any further; only a shift in policy is going to do that. Sign the points of agreement. Give them an ultimatum over the rest. Then leave it to the lawyers. They’ll send you your answer to Thorn.’

‘And if they don’t?’ Adorne said. ‘We have to reach Tabriz before the summer is over.’

‘Get to Thorn. See the King. Worry about all the rest of it later,’ the Patriarch said. ‘Are the young people coming?’

The young people had become unaccountably silent. Then Katelijne had said, ‘Yes. If my uncle will have us.’ And, coming round to Adorne’s chair, had knelt. ‘Never mind about Nicholas. Leave him to us. What can we do for you next? You brought us, and we are determined to help.’

Her voice was earnest; her face reminded him, in its innocent glow, of his wife. Touched, Adorne made to say so, but was not given time to reply. ‘And so you shall,’ had said Ludovico da Bologna in his ripest voice. ‘So, my dear child, you undoubtedly shall.’

‘A
ND
SO
,
MY
DEAR
CHILD
, you undoubtedly shall
 …’ In private, Robin was a good mimic. He addressed his wife: ‘Didn’t that strike you as sinister?’

‘He meant it to. Nicholas is the Patriarch’s property, so do as you’re told. Never mind that,’ Kathi said. ‘The point is that dear Master Julius and the Gräfin have achieved the impossible and induced Nicholas to change his plans. Why, do you think?’

‘She’s pretty,’ Robin said. Until the recent unpleasantness, Kathi had been intrigued to discover, he had taken a lenient view of this aspect of Nicholas.

She said, ‘Anna is much to be admired, but I don’t think he has rushed off to … to ravish her. Perhaps he wants scraps of news, or to send some.’

‘Or the company of Master Julius?’ Robin said. ‘A sporting friend from the past, who won’t condemn him, as the rest of us do? Perhaps Julius will be another Paúel.’

‘No,’ she said. As a rule, she abstained from discussing Nicholas de Fleury; it was a mark of their joint anxiety that they were doing so now. ‘No, I think it’s the opposite. Paúel was a source of punishment: that was why Nicholas joined him. And I don’t think that’s changed. So why suddenly the soft life at Thorn, with tolerant friends who might even admire him?’

‘I don’t know. I’d like to think that I know. Because it is another kind of punishment?’ Robin said slowly, surprising her once again. For, of course, he was very probably right.

Later, thinking about it, she found herself thankful, despite everything, that Nicholas was going to Thorn. There, he would be among people of worth who might persuade him, this time, to accept office. Unless, of course, the Patriarch got his way, and Nicholas was somehow forced to come with them to Persia. But her uncle would never allow it. And if the Patriarch were to insist, she thought that her uncle would break his oath, honourable man though he was, and broadcast the truth about Nicholas.

She was among the few who knew what it was, and in general, she tried not to think of it. Now, sitting alone, she brought out and re-examined, for herself, what Nicholas had done.

It was six years since they had all gone to Scotland: Nicholas de Fleury to found a branch of his Bank, and Anselm Adorne to foster Scots trade with Flanders. They had worked and lived in Scotland, all of them. Her uncle had lost a child there, and found some good friends. Nicholas had won the fickle affection of the juvenile King and his kindred, and had endeared himself — open-hearted, entertaining, galliard — to the musicians, the merchants, the architects with whom he spent his work-time and his leisure. He had effortlessly won Robin’s love, and the respect of his family. He had befriended and was trusted by the King’s lonely sister. Nicholas was a Knight of the Scottish Order of the Unicorn, and so was her uncle. Her uncle had a Scottish barony and so had Nicholas, granted in gratitude by the King.

Her uncle had repaid what he was given by wise advice and good service to Scotland and to Burgundy. Nicholas had repaid it, in blind pursuit of a family feud, by deploying all the power of his Bank to bring about the ruin of Scotland; to carry out a programme of faulty projects and massive debt-creating commitments that would eventually beggar every person he had pretended to befriend, and leave the kingdom shorn of defences. And all the time the King and his advisers, suspecting nothing, had heaped him with rewards and affection.

They still suspected nothing. Nicholas himself had closed the Scottish branch of his Bank and withdrawn all his assets. The effects of what he had done were not yet obvious, or could not be traced directly to him. Nor could they be repaired, so that there was no object in compromising the integrity of the Bank or of his wife by disclosing them. So Kathi’s uncle had agreed: as long as Nicholas left the Bank, and held no controlling post in any business venture in Western Europe, he would keep silent. It had been a painful decision.

For Kathi, too, disentangling the justification for such a piece of methodical destruction had been a slow, sombre process, owed to Robin as much as to herself. No normal man would bring down a nation for the sake of a petty vendetta, however deep the injustice. No ordinary man, indeed, could have done it. The concept might have sprung from pure
evil. It might be impelled by something less grand: by waves of uncontrolled spite, as events from the past could suggest.

To explain it otherwise, you had to understand how single-minded Nicholas was, and the ferocious powers of concentration that he possessed, as anyone might see who had watched him divining. Kathi could not excuse him, but she thought she did understand. He had wished to cast before his contemptuous family and his obdurate, untouchable wife a masterpiece of organisational planning; a demonstration of what he uniquely was capable of that could raise or dash nations. And, entranced by his creation, he had disregarded everything else.

Ludovico da Bologna desired Nicholas to join his papal legation, and perhaps some sort of redemption lay there. But although the Patriarch might wish Nicholas to go, her uncle did not. Her uncle, conscientious, bereaved, did not deserve the extra strain of deciding the fate of the man who, to him, had once been the wayward, innocent, beguiling boy Claes, apprentice of Bruges. Nicholas must stay in Thorn, and must be kept, if possible, from meeting Anselm Adorne. His relations with the Patriarch he must manage for himself.

Lying awake that night, Kathi reached the conclusion that she and Robin should never have come. They had done little good, and it seemed to her that she had failed in her one wretched role, that of protecting her uncle and Robin from Nicholas. But although they should not have come, there remained one moment to relive and remember. She lay and thought of it now: of the fragmentary exchange in the flickering dark which suggested that, against all appearances, the gleam was not beaten out, that a trace of the friend she’d once had was still there.

But then, she was not present at Mewe when, three days before, Nicholas de Fleury had stood on the jetty and watched the raft with Paúel Benecke leave, bearing all his freedom away, along with the shadow of Colà.

W
HEN
THE
DECISION
to leave Mewe was made, no one alive but himself could have judged what it meant to Nicholas de Fleury, and no one was better placed to conceal it.

The raft gone, he did not have to think very deeply to decide his next moves. If Julius knew, then the whole of Royal Prussia would be aware that the seigneur de Fleury was coming to Thorn. Accordingly, the seigneur might — and did — take his time over the eighty-five miles of road and ferry which lay between the two ports.

The marks of his injuries faded. Riding at ease; crossing and re-crossing the river at leisure between Marienwerder, Graudenz and Kulm, he hired a servant and made certain adjustments to his wardrobe. It cost him the last of his aiguillettes and most of his small store of winnings. He was a good gambler, and he cheated (as the Patriarch had
observed) when he had to. Then, on a fresh day in the middle of May, groomed and barbered, booted and gloved and mounted on a remarkably fine-looking horse, he presented himself at the Kulm Gate of Thorn and, passing over the bridge, made straight for the lodging of Anna von Hanseyck and Julius, her husband. His face was quite calm.

Thorn was half as big as Danzig, and a fifth the size of Bruges or London or Ghent. But it had been built by the Knights, and the wealthiest of its ten thousand inhabitants lived, as in Danzig, within a grid of tall narrow houses whose south-sloping streets led to the quays through the thick river-portals. The heart of Thorn was in its central square, which held the red four-square bulk of the building which was at once Burgh Hall and palace and prison and, facing it, the inevitable Artushof of the Confrérie of St George. In the serried houses lining the square lived the nobles and merchants of Thorn and the royal and civic officials, cheek by jowl with the tailors, barbers, candle-makers and drivers who served them. And because the Knights were not long gone, and their Teutonic thoroughness survived everywhere, the city walls, the high towers and the moats were trim and well kept, the streets impeccably paved, and the houses, new-built since the fighting, presented a façade of paint and gold and ceramics that blinded the eye in strong sunlight, and glowed underfoot like church glass in the rain.

The house of the German agent Friczo Straube was painted red, black and white and was two windows wide, standing hunched between neighbours on the eastern side of the square. The Straube coat of arms was fixed over the portal, together with the arms of his visiting clients, one of which belonged to the family Hanseyck. Not that identification was necessary to a man who had received written reports from this address for six years. Now Friczo Straube would presumably be reporting to Julius. Nicholas did not own the Bank any more.

The square was excessively crowded. A fish market was in full cry at one corner, and a spate of hammering from the centre indicated that a podium for something — an execution, perhaps — was being erected before the Burgh Halls. Dogs barked, children screamed, seagulls shrieked overhead and, at the top of a fine flight of steps, the Straube door opened, and Julius stood in the entrance. ‘I saw you coming,’ Julius said. ‘It was either you or the Archbishop of Gniezno. Is that your man? Tell him the stable’s round at the back, and come up. You’re not staying anywhere else. I can’t wait. I want to hear everything.’

He looked the same: the vigour, the bonhomie, the bronzed, classical head with its oblique eyes. Nicholas would have thought him alone but for the scent, which he remembered from Bruges, from Augsburg, from Trèves. Anna, the blackhaired Anna of his dreams, leaned there, behind Julius, studying him.

‘You have been fighting,’ she said. ‘You arrogant man, when will you
learn? Oh, come in, come in. I see we shall have to find someone to look after you.’

H
IS
CHAMBER
, high at the back, overlooked the garden and was normally in use as a storeroom: it was only through Julius that he had obtained it. Straube’s house was crowded with visitors, and the welcoming meal had been served convivially below, with little chance to do more than exchange gossip. In any case, Nicholas was no longer a client, and Straube believed what he had been told: that having established his Bank, de Fleury had withdrawn his share and departed to enjoy it. Throughout the meal (a calf’s head with a full set of teeth) Straube could be seen eyeing Nicholas. Behind the disapproval lurked a flickering hope. Julius might run a business well enough, but de Fleury had created an empire; and with the right agent, might do so again.

His thoughts were easy to read, and to ignore. You couldn’t ignore Julius and Anna, interrogating Nicholas in their private room later. Not that Anna pressed him for answers. Anna sat still in her plain, fine-seamed gown without jewels, her hair veiled, her grape-coloured eyes moving from himself to her husband. Her second husband. Bachelor Julius had met this young widowed Countess and entered upon passionate marriage just over a year ago, long after his friends had despaired of him. Nicholas, nine years his junior, might boast that he walked off and founded a bank. But Julius of Bologna was happily married.

Julius also knew far, far too much, and was bursting, as ever, with joyous and indiscreet malice. ‘What a bloody fool you were, Nicholas! But only the company knows, and the Adornes, and they’re too pious to go back on a promise. You do have the devil’s own luck. I heard all the Scots merchants in Danzig were fawning over you, and you sent them a barrel of ale. I hope they thanked you.’