Caprice and Rondo (24 page)

His eyes closed, on a smile. She knew that was not all he had been thinking of. Like herself, like Nicholas in his self-imposed limbo, he must be grappling with the implications of the wretched thing that had happened, and the best means to deal with it. It came to her again that, if Paúel Benecke was not dead, it was because Nicholas had seen what it
would lead to. Or that he did not really dislike him. Or that he had other plans, which he did not intend to give up.

T
HAT
MORNING
IN
M
EWE
, the Patriarch of Antioch rode in early from his overnight lodging and made his way up to the castle, from which he looked down on an empty foreshore tenanted by one blackened raft, pulled up out of the river and surrounded by the bent backs and flailing arms of a carpenter’s work-team. The officials of Mewe made light of it. ‘A carousal that got out of hand. Paúeli was always a devil for ladies.’

‘Paúeli? Paúel Benecke?’ The Patriarch, accepting a sausage, set it up for his thumb and his knife.

‘And the big fellow, Colà. You won’t see either of them in the chapel this morning. Came to blows over Benecke’s women and beat each other to pulp.’

‘What women?’ said Father Ludovico, posting a roundel of pig-meat. The landowners of Mewe were always flattered when the Patriarch patronised them on his regular visits to Poland and his constant travels to and from Court. Nevertheless, there were times when they felt he might have attended, at least, to his tonsure; washed the frenzied grey and black hair that covered his neck, his powerful torso, his fingers; and repaired the snagged gown and the disgusting sandals. The groom he travelled with was as unkempt as himself. Only the poor Franciscan monk who did his bidding was neat as a good secretary should be.

The councillor of Mewe said, ‘Oh, the usual. Gerta, Benecke’s mistress, and her friends. You’d think he’d be careful, with his own daughter staying in Mewe with the Burgundians. But Elzbiete knows her father just as well as the rest of us.’

‘I suppose she does,’ the Patriarch said. He laid down the sausage and picked up a tankard of water. ‘But Anselm Adorne must have a strange idea of the customs and culture of Mewe. Is he still here?’

‘He never came. He’s still in Danzig. It was his niece and her husband who came. They knew Colà and Paúeli in Iceland. It’s my belief,’ the councillor said, ‘that this Adorne of yours sent them to find out what they could about the
San Matteo
.’

‘That sounds likely,’ said Father Ludovico da Bologna. ‘But he’s not my Adorne, and you’d better not suggest that he is, if you want to be welcome in Bruges.’

He belched, and tapped himself ruminatively with his fist. ‘So Katelijne and her husband are here, and a few other people who, by the sound of it, could do with some spiritual counselling. I can see a hard day’s work ahead for a conscientious man like myself. Is that a hare roasting? Why don’t you kneel, and I’ll say a few Parcias till it’s cooked, and then an Adoremus, perhaps, just to crisp it.’

• •

N
ICHOLAS
HAD
SPENT
the same night in Gerta’s tavern, sharing Paúel’s sleeping quarters, and jointly submitting, with noisy alarm, to the brusque ministrations of Gerta herself, the ostensible cause of the battle.

It was the talk of hilarious Mewe, and the first thing Robin heard when, leaving Kathi that morning, he set out to find Nicholas. Restored now to his own, sober senses, Robin understood why it was necessary to keep up the fiction. He could not, himself, have stayed in the same building as Benecke.

Gerta greeted him in her own room. ‘You’ve come to find out how they are? Here is Colà, come to see me, and on his own feet, so that you may know he’s not dying. And Paúeli? Well, he is a very bad patient, who thinks, like Colà, that the best solace for everything is strong drink. You come and see Paúeli when you have finished with Nicholas.’

Robin said, ‘I have to thank you.’ He did not look at Nicholas, who had risen.

Gerta turned at the door. Her eyes were not smiling. She said, ‘You would thank me best by taking that man away. He is bad luck.’ The door closed behind her.

Nicholas, in the full picturesque panoply of blackened abrasions, purple bruising and misshapen swellings, certainly brought bad luck to mind. He had saved Kathi, but he had also endangered her. He had attacked Benecke to conceal what had happened, taking the onus from Robin. But he had also meant to kill Paúel for himself. Mixed with the breath-taking generosity, as ever, was the madness of vengeance, sometimes cold, sometimes hot, which had brought Nicholas where he was. And had brought Robin here, to Poland, where he had exacerbated the ill, not assuaged it.

Nicholas said, ‘It was a good idea to come. This needn’t take long. How is Kathi?’

‘She slept well. She understands everything, and so do I. I am here, sir, to apologise,’ Robin said. ‘I was … upset. I would trust you with my life, and with Kathi’s.’

‘That might be misguided. But if I ever harm you, it will be solely through ineptitude, like last night’s. I am sorry. And of course, it will not happen again, for we shall not meet again. When are you going back to Danzig?’

‘We shall not meet …?’

‘Today, I should suggest. And what will you tell Adorne about Kathi?’

Robin was silent. Then he said, ‘If I tell him the truth, he will report Benecke, and they will have to punish him.’

‘I have punished him. They will hang him,’ the other man said.
‘They can do no less. Attempted rape of the niece of an accredited envoy? He will be condemned after a trial, naming Kathi. The merchants will then discover, to their amazement, that the pirate Benecke was wholly unauthorised when he took the
San Matteo
; that the kingdom cannot be blamed nor, of course, the cargo recovered, since he disposed of it all. Alive, Paúel Benecke is valuable. Dead, he can be safely repudiated. And Kathi suffers.’

‘Adorne is her uncle,’ Robin said. ‘Surely her family ought to know.’

‘He is His Excellency Anselm Adorne, Baron Cortachy. He must act, if you tell him. What would men think of him later, if they found that he knew and did nothing?’

Again, Robin was silent. Nicholas, propped in a chair, did not move. Robin walked to a stool and sat down. He said, ‘Word might get out anyway.’

‘How? The women know, but they don’t want to imperil their Paúeli. And sweet Paúeli himself …’ Nicholas paused, and then said, ‘Wait here.’

He got up and walked out as if everything hurt. It probably did. Robin waited. When the door burst open, he jumped to his feet, his hand at his belt. Then he saw that Nicholas stood in the passage, gripping a doubled-up man by his shirt-neck. Then he pitched the man forward and came in, slamming the door.

Paúel Benecke hit the floor with his strapped arm and pushed himself up with the other, screaming a string of obscenities at Nicholas. His head was held to one side, and his neck was padded with linen and clay. He was drunk. Nicholas said, ‘Penitential prostration. So. Go on. Benecke, look at that man.’

‘I’ll kill you,’ Benecke said. He sat, where he was, on the floor.

‘You won’t get the chance. Look at that man. You tried to rape that man’s wife. He’s going back, now, to tell the Danziger Council. Apologise to him, or you’re dead.’

‘You apologise to him.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Nicholas said.

There was a knife in Benecke’s hand. Before Nicholas could touch him, the captain had thrown it. Nicholas dodged, and then they were at grips with one another again, crippled though they were. For the first time, Robin realised that Nicholas, too, had been steadily drinking. Robin said in a low voice, ‘Stop it. Nicholas, stop it.’

‘Do you apologise?’ Nicholas said.

‘Yes!’ Benecke howled.

‘You never touched Katelijne Sersanders, and you will deny it if anyone says that you did?’

‘Yes!’

‘And you understand that you will do everything in your power to
make this man happy, and Anselm Adorne happy, and help the embassy obtain what it wants, or he’ll tell the world what you’ve done, and you’ll hang?’

‘I understand,’ said Paúel Benecke sullenly. Blood had burst through one of his bandages.

Nicholas looked up at Robin. ‘Well?’

Robin said baldly, ‘I am satisfied. We don’t tell Adorne, or anyone else.’ He paused. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘What we were doing,’ Nicholas said. He had reseated himself, with difficulty, in the chair with a back. ‘Taking the raft down to Danzig.’ Benecke, lurching to his feet, had gone to pour himself wine.

Robin said, ‘Together?’ Then after a moment, ‘Then we shall meet.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Nicholas said. ‘You’re going to collect the rest of your embassy and get on your travels at last. To Thorn and the Black Sea and Tabriz in Persia. You
are
going on?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps. But Adorne couldn’t leave. They wouldn’t let him move until they’d reached an agreement.’

‘They’ll let him move now,’ Nicholas said. ‘You’ll be out of Danzig before I get there.’

‘And after that?’ Robin said. He felt cold.

‘After that, you go south, and we stay and start our new season’s sailing,’ Benecke said. He turned round, his black bristles dripping, waving the flask. When Nicholas nodded, he filled up two tumblers.

‘Together?’

‘Why not together?’ said Benecke, astonished. ‘Don’t you think we get on well together? He can’t quite kill me; and so far, I can’t quite kill him. You don’t need a Bank to be rich.’

‘I thought you needed a war,’ Robin said. ‘You’re talking of going to sea?’

‘I’m talking,’ Benecke said, ‘of running the first truly international force of seagoing mercenaries. My seamanship, Colà’s fancy for numbers. Any job, provided the money is right.’

Robin was silent.

‘What’s wrong?’ Nicholas said. ‘Have you some other suggestion?’ ‘No,’ said Robin at last. ‘It is none of my business.’

T
ELLING
THE
STORY
later to Kathi, Robin held nothing back, and she listened, gazing out of the window. She was already packed to return. At the end, she said, ‘I thought he would join us. I was sure he would leave Benecke.’

‘No. When Nicholas didn’t kill him, he tied himself to him. There is no future in it. They will die from drinking, if nothing else.’

She knew as much, from Elzbiete, who had come to see her that
morning to do what Gerta had done: to ask her to persuade Colà to leave Paúel and go home. But she could not do that. She was as powerless there as any of Benecke’s forceful circle of women.

‘We thought,’ Elzbiete had said, ‘that perhaps you and Colà were lovers, and he would give up his new plans to follow you. Or that my father’s bad conduct would drive you all away. But …’

At which point Kathi had interrupted. ‘Elzbiete? Who prepared the drugged wine?’

And the girl had flushed before saying, ‘Gerta has a stock of these things. Also a drug which makes a man ill if he drinks. I would give you some if you took Colà away. We wish to be friends with you.’

‘I’m sure,’ Kathi had said drily. ‘But we can’t take him back home, and he doesn’t want to go to Tabriz. So how do you persuade him?’

‘A woman?’ Elzbiete had said.

Kathi looked at her, and thought of Gelis van Borselen, and wondered how to deal with this. In the end, she said, ‘He has a beautiful wife. He can’t go back to her, but I think he finds it hard to forget her. Until he does, no one else would have much chance.’

‘But he does not need to marry. A mistress would serve. What kind of girl does he like, Katarzynka?’ Elzbiete had asked.

Kathi looked at her a trifle wildly. ‘How would I know?’ The ideal woman for Nicholas? She considered the question, intrigued. Someone beautiful, which poor Elzbiete was not. Someone clever, amusing, experienced. Not a virgin. Not an older woman again. Dark, perhaps, since Gelis was fair. Childless, or without close attachments to children: he would not want to displace Jodi. Someone he could trust, and feel safe with, and who would put up with his mistakes and stand up, too, for herself. Not the daughter of a hard-drinking wild Polish captain.

Kathi said, ‘Elzbiete, I have no idea what he likes, except that it probably doesn’t exist. He’s had his share of the world’s beauties. He was married once to a courtesan. It would take a lot to surprise him, or hold him.’

Elzbiete had thought. Then she had said, ‘I do not know who would suit. But you must find him one, as my mother went out and found Gerta. A sick man can be healed by a woman.’

She had a high opinion of Elzbiete’s good sense, but had not mentioned this conversation to Robin. She did, however seek his advice.

‘Do you know that Nicholas wanted some information from Benecke, which Benecke was holding back?’

‘Was he? What about? I shouldn’t think he’ll get it now,’ Robin said. ‘They may be partners in business, but Benecke isn’t going to do Nicholas any favours at the moment.’

‘That’s what Elzbiete said,’ Kathi said.

‘Elzbiete? She knows what it was?’

‘Yes. She didn’t tell me this time. But I think she would, if I pressed her.’

‘And what good would that do?’ Robin said.

‘I don’t know. But failing a quite exceptional Gerta, I would snatch at absolutely anything.’ Kathi said, ‘to keep society safe from a second Tough Seabird. A pair of leg-irons. A contagious disease. An attack of religion.’

Robin stared at her. He said, ‘We might just manage that. I was going to tell you. Father Ludovico’s in Mewe.’

‘S
O
THERE
YOU
ARE
,’ said Father Ludovico, skipping over the wet-beds and sitting down on an outcrop of stone. He peered round at the man already sitting there. ‘You’re lucky to have a set of strong teeth. Benecke’s lost so many now, he’ll have to resort to a liquid diet, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘You’ve seen him,’ Nicholas said.

‘He tells me you’re going to be pirates together. Your early promise fulfilled. Why did you write to me, then?’

Below them, the renovated raft, somewhat smaller, was in process of being refloated. To the right, dim in the distance, more rafts could be seen coming in. Paúel Benecke was going to be far behind in the race. Nicholas said, ‘I’d forgotten that we didn’t get on.’