Caprice and Rondo (19 page)

For a century and a half, the Teutonic Knights had ruled Danzig, and it was not long since they left. The merchant families who had taken their place were, many of them, the same as those who had served the Knights as factors and agents, and their customs and tongue were still German. The husbands of these women knew every town of the Hanse, had lived in Veere and in Bruges, were familiar with London and Leith, Perth and Aberdeen, the Bay of Biscay and Brittany. Despite the hearty, disarming chatter, Kathi had to remember that they knew as much of her family as she did; and would wonder why she had married whom she had married, and what she was doing here. She would be regarded, of course, as her uncle’s spy.

Nevertheless, she was also a source of information and entertainment and they were not, she found, malicious in their enquiries as a Venetian, for example, would have been. They talked of her home town of Bruges, and their husbands, and invited her to trust them with any gossip attached to the members of the Kontor, the council of Hanseatic merchants living in Bruges. How could it be healthy, to demand that honest men live as monks, without their wives to console them? And such wine, such fabrics, such jewels, they said, could be bought for nothing in Bruges! Katelijne’s betrothal ring was passed round, then her earrings, then one of her shoes and a sleeve. They spoke admiringly of her handsome young husband — and Scottish, not Flemish: how important his father must be! They sought to compare German and Flemish wedding-bed customs, and exchanged reminiscences about the performances of their own husbands under the eyes of the statutory witnesses:

Did he pretend to do something, then?

Oh, the rogue, no: he pretended to pretend, but all the time …! The thumb-marks next day!

It was all comfortable, coarse and not unfriendly: the feminine equivalent of the Bergenfahrers. A little flushed, Kathi collected her wits and replied as cheerfully and uninformatively as she could. Fortunately, there was no one else to be embarrassed: Robin was at the Town Hall, where the Council and Jury were receiving my lord Anselm Adorne and the Patriarch on the first full day of official meetings. The morning was wearing away before she managed to enquire where Paúel Benecke lived.

She had asked Barbara Bischoff, one of the daughters, but a different girl remarked, ‘Why? Have you met him?’ The speaker was built like a bison, and was eight inches taller than Kathi. Barbara giggled.

Kathi said, ‘I met him in Iceland with Nicholas de Fleury, Lord Beltrees. Or Colà, he calls himself now.’

‘Did they share you?’ enquired the young woman.

‘Elzbiete!’ the girl Barbara said.

‘No, my brother and Robin were there, and Lord Beltrees, of course, was still married. You know Lord Beltrees?’ Kathi said with exquisite nonchalance. ‘Under both names?’ The conversation about her was dwindling.

‘Colà z Brugge the madman, of course. Everyone knew who he was: they all kept quiet, for they thought he was spying. You say,
was still
married?’ said the girl.

‘To a lady called Gelis van Borselen. They have separated since, and await an annulment. I hope he is in no danger,’ said Kathi solicitously. ‘I know that Captain Benecke owes him his life.’

‘I should not thank Colà for that,’ the young woman said. ‘Paúel Benecke is a black whoring rat.’

Through a chorus of screams, Barbara patted the girl’s brawny arm while explaining to Kathi: ‘Paúel Benecke is her father. What she says is quite true. Did you want to meet Colà? Nikolás of Fleury, as you say?’

Kathi swallowed. She said, ‘I should like to surprise him.’

‘That can be arranged,’ said the thoughtful bass of Elzbiete. ‘So, tell us what you know of Nikolás, Colà. Does he keep extravagant mistresses, or does he make do with inexpensive bought favours, as here? Was his wife, Gelis, frigid? Is he a vigorous man, and well made, as they say? Is he depicted in the great painting at Oliva?’

‘None of his wives was what you’d call frigid. What great painting?’ said Kathi, slow for once.

Someone coughed. Bischoff’s lady wife said, ‘A picture of men, unsuitable for unmarried girls. You do not need to reply. Give me a few hours to arrange it, and you and Elzbiete may surprise our wicked Colà z Brugge before supper.’

‘Wicked?’ said Kathi.

‘In charm,’ said Barbara’s stepmother. ‘In the extent of his charm, and his escapades. Look how Elzbiete is bewitched. And now, of course, our girls can command a good dowry.’

Someone else coughed. ‘That’s nice,’ Kathi said, and smiled at Elzbiete.

W
HEN
HER
UNCLE
and Robin returned, Kathi was sitting alone, half undressed, in her room. With dusk, the din outside her windows had reduced itself to the constant tramping of feet, and the roar of men’s voices in song or obscenity. Danzig was well provided with ale. Then a door banged from inside the house, and she heard her husband’s light voice, and the velvet timbre of her uncle’s polished German. The Patriarch, it seemed, was not there.

In a moment, Robin would leap upstairs to find her. She did not want that. Her gown lay by her bed. The opulent ladies of Danzig had already examined, in silence, its meagre proportions: she had always been small, with the slight, wiry build of a child. Her eyes were hazel, not blue, and her hair plainly brown, against the flaxen bounty of Elzbiete’s, for example. She smiled, thinking of Elzbiete, and then did not smile. The drunken voices had risen outside.
Does he make do with inexpensive bought favours, as here?
She dressed and walked down.

Anselm Adorne was angry. Even now, alone with his niece and her husband, he would not burst into speech, but the grooves in his cheeks were bitten deep, and the brows above his eyes, normally amused, or detached, or quizzical, were heavy and straight. Since his wife died he had not touched a lute, or written verse, or laughed aloud. The mourning ought to be over, and Kathi knew that it might have been, but for something else he could not forget. Also, Margriet’s family had traded in Danzig — not that the Danzigers would allow that to affect them. Kathi said, ‘What happened?’

It was the usual problem: the Danzigers’ unshakeable determination to preserve their trade at all costs: even against the interests of their fellow Hanse cities. And against the Danzigers’ single voice, the divided one with which Anselm Adorne had to speak. On behalf of the Duke of Burgundy, a threat to clear the Hanseatic Kontor out of Bruges, unless he obtained the trading concessions and the redress for the ship that he demanded. And in private, from Adorne’s well-liked and respected fellow burghers and office-holders in Bruges, the brief to promise anything, do anything, so long as the Baltic trade came to Bruges uninterrupted. And all, of course, had come to focus upon this stupid case of Paúel Benecke and the
San Matteo
.

‘It sailed under a Burgundian flag,’ Adorne said. He recited it, as if she were a jury. ‘It had been Italian-built, with its consort, to go on Pope
Pius’s Crusade, and when Pius died, the Medici leased the two ships from the Duke, who had not paid for them yet. This voyage was one of their regular trips between Pisa and Flanders. Both ships had a Florentine crew: one was captained by a Strozzi, and one by a Tedaldi. They left Flanders freighted for Florence, but also intending to stop at Southampton to pick up English wool, and to sell a consignment of alum from Tolfa worth forty thousand gold florins. Because the Hanse towns were at war with England —’

‘In reprisal for their unlicensed fishing in Iceland,’ Kathi said.

‘— in reprisal for Iceland, I agree. Because there was a war, Paúel Benecke and his
Saint Pierre de Rochelle
—’

‘His
Peter von Danzig
,’ Kathi said. ‘Or
Das Grosse Kraweel
, if you prefer. It’s outside the window.’

‘I have seen it. It carries over three hundred men. It intercepted the Burgundian ships and boarded the
San Matteo
, killing thirteen Florentines and wounding a hundred before making off with its whole cargo, including all that intended for Italy. The cargo has now been divided up and sold, despite Tommaso’s appeals at Hamburg and Utrecht, despite the promises made to the Duke that none of the Hanse cities would handle it. They all have.’

‘And the
Peter
’s owners and crew all got shares of the booty,’ Kathi said. ‘Their daughters are expecting fine dowries. Paúel Benecke made himself a fortune, but the ship wasn’t his.’

‘Of course not. He did the killing. He’s disappeared. The men who did own the ship were a syndicate from the Confrérie of St George. Valandt and Niederhof and Sidinghusen. Three of the very gentlemen who are attending the Town Hall and entertaining us so very pleasantly at the Artushof. Who are proposing, if I am not mistaken, to continue to delay us without profit, even though I have letters to present to the King, and every day the year is advancing … They make no bones about admitting what happened. It was justified: it was an act of legitimate war; the
San Matteo
was in English waters; if anyone is to blame, it is the English. They even admit to the two altar-pieces.’

‘Tommaso’s is at Oliva abbey,’ Kathi said. ‘You wouldn’t get in, but they might let me see it, if you wanted.’

‘Is it? How do you know?’ Her uncle stopped pacing.

Kathi said, ‘I thought I had a lot to tell you, but you seem to know it all. I’ve been with Paúel Benecke’s daughter all afternoon.’

‘Kathi?’ Robin said. She had felt his eyes on her, anxiously, throughout the recital.

Adorne said, ‘You’ve …? My dear, I am sorry. I have been thoughtless. Sit down. Tell us what has happened.’ He took her to a chair, and sat down beside her. ‘Now.’

She began with the conclusion, which was all that mattered. ‘Elzbiete,
Benecke’s daughter, thought she knew where he was, and we looked for him. Nicholas has been with him all winter, and she thought I should find them together. But as you already know, Benecke has gone, and Nicholas with him.’

‘Where?’ Robin said.

She shook her head.

‘Why?’ her uncle said. ‘I should have thought Nicholas would brazen it out. Unless he thought that I, like himself, would break my promise. There are two Scots ships in the Mottlau, and plenty of traders in Danzig.’

She did not answer. She knew that. One of the chief events of the deadening, deafening misery of the afternoon had been Elzbiete’s insistence on visiting the Dominican church of St Nicholas, its ancient red brick visible from the shuddering ground where eighteen millstones thundered beneath the half-open book that was the roof of the Knights’ mighty legacy. The Knights might have been banished, their castles razed, their trade usurped, but what remained, as with Rome, as with all the great military societies, was the skeleton, still intact, of their efficiency, evidenced in the voices and eyes of the councillors who had dealt smilingly with Anselm Adorne that afternoon. Three generations ago, a Walter van Niederhof had been one of the best overseas agents of the Teutonic Knights; as a Henry von Allen had factored for them in France. The Knights had gone, but the trade of Danzig was still in practised hands.

Paúel Benecke had not been in the Order’s great mill, although they had searched all seven storeys for him. Nicholas, of course, might frequent the church of his name — except that she discovered, too late, that this was the church of the Blackfriars commonly used by the Scots, who possessed here their own special altar. She had said, ‘Elzbiete, I’m sorry. M. de Fleury would not have come here.’

At which a priest, turning round, had said, ‘You speak of Colà? Why, Fräulein, we know him well: he spoke often to our Scottish friends here, these latter days. Our wicked friend, this lady’s father, first brought him. Is he well?’

The priest did not know where Colà was. They went to the market, pushing between vendors and buyers, storytellers and small gambling circles, stalls of second-hand clothes and worn furs and chipped clay pitchers. They crossed the sweet-water river, which the Knights had made into a canal, and rounded the shore to the smoking fires of the first of the boat-yards. Over there, amid the din of saw and hammer and voice was where the
Saint Pierre
, now the
Peter
, had first been brought, and her fine Breton caravel planking faithfully copied. This was the home yard of the
Fleury
, now loading salt and wine, so Elzbiete said, in
Bourgneuf. ‘But it does not belong to Colà now, but to some woman called Anna?’

They returned to the wharves where the immense
Peter von Danzig
was now moored. Once the wonder of the whole western world, the caravel was itself dwarfed by the sky-piercing bulk of the Crane. The hook was crawling down on its cable: above Kathi’s head, through the din, she heard the creak of two wheels and, peering up through the gloom, saw the great wooden roundels turning, and the plodding feet of the men who empowered them, their outstretched arms gripping the rims. Seeing them, the four men had looked down and bellowed salacious pleasantries. ‘Animals,’ Elzbiete had said.

They had intruded, against custom, into the Artushof, and found a drunken feast in one room, and a group of men gambling in another. In the Town Hall there was a trial, with people shouting. Last of all, they had gone to the elaborate house of a merchant. It was there that they learned that Colà had been there, but that the good captain had come and removed him. Where? No one knew.

Kathi, lady of Berecrofts, said to her uncle, ‘I think they may have gone because Benecke thought we should entice Nicholas home. And I think Nicholas may have gone to please Benecke. The
Peter von Danzig
is a privateer. And they expect Colà to join them this summer.’

She did not say, even to Robin, what else she thought. She did not repeat Elzbiete’s stories of how Nicholas had spent the winter, or her unbelievable, her sickening quotations from Nicholas, followed by the questions they inspired.

Old women prize youths: they are indefatigable
. (‘So, Katarzynka, what crone’s bed did he take?’)