Caprice and Rondo (27 page)

‘They couldn’t speak,’ Nicholas said. He had expected this, and so dealt with it.

‘Well, I hope they made the most of it. Although you look prosperous enough. I’m surprised. Laid hands on your African gold? Or got something else salted away?’

‘How did you know?’ Nicholas said. Neither guess was correct. The gold in question had been waylaid by the Knights of St John, who still had it, or believed that they did. And he had nothing now salted away, barring the money that guarded his son and his wife. But very few knew about that: least of all his son and his wife.

‘All the same,’ Julius said. ‘You’ve had a winter to play. Funds won’t last for ever. Here’s something I wanted to put to you.’

Nicholas half listened to what followed, since he could have guessed
most of it. He was being offered, of course, a share in Julius’s branch of the Banco di Niccolò, refounded as a Polish-Imperial company. The capital would be put up by Julius and Anna; Nicholas would bring his experience and the goodwill of the Emperor Frederick. Nicholas ought to face the plain fact that men would speak out if he worked in the West, while Julius didn’t mind what he had done.

Nicholas wondered how much money Anna had. Julius would have some, of course. After his suicidal triumph in Trèves, Nicholas had resigned his shares in the Bank: some to his son, the rest to his partners. The latter had used them as he intended: Diniz his step-son to take over the business in Bruges, with Father Moriz to help him; Captain Astorre and John le Grant to make his mercenary troop fully independent; and the lawyer Gregorio to run the Banco di Niccolò in Venice with (according to Kathi) the help of Gelis, his wife. Whatever else that might do, it should improve the health of the Venetian business: Gelis had acquired half his fortune when he married her. And now Julius had spotted, of course, the opportunity that existed — not through the blocked road to Cathay, but in the broad, fertile lands east of the Oder.

Julius was going on. ‘We heard you turned down Callimaco. You should have let him explain. Poland needs every skill that you’ve got: your divining alone would refill your coffers. And when Duke Charles gets what he wants and rules Germany, you can go back to Burgundy with a solid reputation behind you and your old sins forgotten. Keep in touch with Gelis, why not? And the little one. You’ll be back in Bruges and Antwerp and Venice one day.’

‘And in Scotland?’ said Nicholas encouragingly.

‘Well …’ Julius began. He looked doubtful.

Anna laughed and, stretching across, touched her husband with her knuckles. ‘You still don’t know when he is joking. Go and get us some wine, and give him a chance to think it all over.’

Julius left them. Nicholas watched the door close, and then met Anna’s astonishing eyes. Her regard was as direct as a man’s. She said, ‘I should feel more apologetic about Julius if you didn’t know his enthusiasms so well. His heart is set on this scheme. I am sure that you find it disagreeable: it must remind you of Scotland. If you did steel yourself to agree, your success would be brilliant, of course. But it isn’t fair to hold out false hopes. I believe it is too soon to judge whether you would ever be allowed back in Burgundy. Forgive me for saying so.’

‘Not at all,’ Nicholas said. ‘You know what happened. I drained the reserves of my Bank to finance a private vendetta. They think I might do it again.’

‘Would you?’ she said.

‘If you have to ask,’ Nicholas said, ‘I rather think that it would be
unwise to employ me. But I expect you will manage perfectly well on your own. How is your daughter?’

Sudden questions seldom disconcerted her. ‘Bonne is well,’ she said, smiling a little. ‘There is a fine school at her convent, and the priest is teaching her Greek. And your son? It must be hard not to see him. How old is he now?’

Nicholas withdrew his eyes from the throng outside the window. ‘A year or so short of learning Greek: Jodi is five. But there can only be six years between my son and your daughter. There might be a place for another sort of contract between them one day. What do you think?’

She caught her breath. Her pale face had flushed. ‘Would you give it your blessing?’ she said. The words were French: sometimes she used a mixture of French and Flemish with him and with Julius.

Nicholas said, ‘I know nothing but good of young Bonne. Jordan would not object. And by marrying Julius’s shares to my son’s, we should have reconstituted two parts of the Bank. A blessing all on its own, don’t you think?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Anna said. ‘I thought you were serious.’

‘I thought I was, too,’ Nicholas said. ‘But sometimes I delude myself. Is Julius serious?’

He watched her slowly relax. ‘About things that matter,’ she said. ‘He was a good friend to you, when you were young.’

‘Did he tell you that?’ Nicholas said.

Her mouth quirked a little. ‘Of course. But other people say so as well. The greatest pair of practical jokers in Flanders, I have heard. Nicholas …’ She paused. ‘He misses you. I know this scheme is wrong, and it doesn’t tempt you. But if there is any part of it that you like; or if you can think of a better, would you tell us? Don’t reject him and leave. Give him a few days of your time. You won’t regret it.’

‘I should like to stay,’ Nicholas said. ‘In fact, I was hoping to stay, if Herr Straube can continue to lodge me. It is only fair to tell you that there have been other offers, all of them promising.’

She said, ‘Then it depends, doesn’t it, on what you want. Adventure? Money? Fulfilment?’

‘Expiation?’ he suggested.

She was silent. Then she said, ‘Julius would tell you it isn’t necessary. That your demonstration of what one man can do was more extraordinary than the damage it caused.’

‘And you?’

She said, ‘I see the marks on your face. And I think that you will dig your own grave if you are left alone very much longer.’

‘Do you? Anna, my dear,’ Nicholas said, ‘you must have a very low opinion of my resources. Who on earth have you been living with recently?’

They looked at one another. She said, ‘Of course. I am sorry. I was treating you as a child. I live with Julius; and he does take a long time to bring wine.’

Then Julius came, and Nicholas excused himself presently. The first encounter was over.

She was all that he remembered, and more. Back in his room, her scent stayed with him still. Nicholas walked to the window and stood. He wondered how long he had, before Adorne descended on Thorn. A week, little more. The King was coming to Thorn, and Adorne had been advised to be there by Pentecost. With the Patriarch. With Katelijne. With Robin.

Put yourself in the other man’s place. He had done that. He was fairly sure he knew what to expect. He was back in the vice. The Patriarch would not approve, but there was a certain grim pleasure in reviving the arts which had led in the first place to his success. Success, that implacable foeman of virtue, as someone had once observed.

I
N
T
HORN
, the summer rains started early that year. Usually, the wet month was June, but the heavens giddily opened just before Pentecost, filling the streets with loquacious torrents and clouding but not improving the river, whose sandbanks and shallows made even short crossings a penance. The rafts had long since gone north, and the river would continue to shrink. The people of Thorn, throwing their rubbish into the ruins of the departed Knights’ castle, reminded one another of the great final days of the war, when the grain rafts had gone north in convoy, with the King’s warships and cannon escorting them.

That was Casimir for you: a careful King who looked after his own in the matter of taxes. Thorn was pleased when the King came to stay, in spite of the expense of preparing the Burgh Halls, and decorating the churches and streets, and painting the ferries. Even when he proposed to lodge at his castle on the opposite bank, they were tolerant, for all his audiences, of course, would be held in the city; and the town would fill up just the same with surplus courtiers and petitioners. Also, of course, the boys sneaked across. Casimir had thirteen children, and some of them were always about, with their tutors and dancing masters and nurses. Thorn was a lively place then. It was lively even before the Court arrived, or the princely delegation they said was coming from Danzig. One of the reasons why it was lively was the high spending of Friczo Straube’s clients.

Julius had always enjoyed making an impression. His social ambitions, carefully monitored, had been one of the assets of the Bank in the days when he controlled the Casa in Venice, and his marriage had given him cachet in Germany. His name therefore was already familiar in
Poland, and Herr Straube’s recommendation did the rest. Invitations poured in.

On the first morning, he had found Nicholas resistant. ‘Who are they?’

‘One of the old Cracow families. I’ve done business with them in Cologne. They want to meet you. All right, you’ll need to mind your manners and dress up and shave, but their castle will be really worth seeing.’

‘I mustn’t piss on the hangings, or blow my nose into my hat?’ Nicholas had complained. ‘You’ll have to tell me what to do. I’ve been in Danzig all winter, fishing from a hole in the ice.’

Anna was smiling. She had warned him that Nicholas might be difficult. To begin with, Julius had thought she was wrong, for the conversation over the morning ale had been all that he had looked forward to. Expertly quizzed over Scotland, Nicholas had obligingly described how he had divined gold where there was none, and had brokered loans that could never be repaid. He brushed aside Julius’s good-natured strictures on the harm he had done to the Bank, adding that Julius hadn’t seen Gelis’s face when she found out. It confirmed what Julius had already been told: that by this success, Nicholas had won some sort of contest in Trèves with his wife.

Julius, setting aside the details for future dissection, had repaid these confidences with a helpful précis of all that his former colleagues were doing while avoiding, under instruction, any mention of the same Gelis and her young son. The reuniting of Nicholas with his family, he quite agreed, was Anna’s province. His intelligent, beautiful Anna upon whom the gaze of the gallant Nicholas so often dwelled, to the amusement of her new husband. For Julius knew that, however ardently he might try, Nicholas could never steal Anna’s affections.

At the same time, Nicholas was right in suspecting his motive for this week of superior junketing. The wealthier merchants of Poland and Germany were impressed — over-impressed — by the intimacy between Julius and the former banker Nicholas de Fleury of Beltrees, and made certain assumptions about the future. Julius would be the last to deny them and Nicholas, so far, had not done so. Nicholas had still to make up his mind, but meantime acceded, for the most part, to the grandiose schemes laid before him, in which Anna nearly always took part.

The week that followed was not free of incident. In elevated company, Nicholas might not take a red cloth to a bear-hunt, but he did lead an unwise attack upon elk which nearly speared Julius in an area which, at the very least, would have ended his effective contribution to the marriage-bed. The following day, riding in a highly competitive relay race, Nicholas nearly fell to his death, taking Anna down with him. It was a miracle that neither was injured and Anna, thereafter, was debarred
from rough sports. It saved her at least from the wolf-baiting in the moat when, after a vast drunken dinner in someone’s magnificent
dwór
, Julius and Nicholas were both carried out, gored and spluttering curses and laughter.

‘You both drink too much,’ Anna had said to her bandaged husband that night. ‘I know you are happy in his company, but he cannot partner you if he is disabled or dead. Let me speak to him again.’

Julius agreed, out of guilt. He often spoiled her quiet, logical plans through lack of caution, he knew. He had accepted, eventually, her view that Nicholas required looking after, and that this would best be achieved by bringing him to reconciliation with his wife. She would do nothing so crude as to suggest it to Nicholas outright. Reporting early progress to Julius, she had remained wryly determined rather than hopeful. Nicholas did not seem to mind when she mentioned how Gelis had abandoned her defiant post with the opposition after her husband’s departure and, against all expectations, had carried her private fortune and the business secrets of the Vatachino to the Venice branch of the Bank, where the lawyer Gregorio had welcomed her.
‘Welcomed
her! The bastard!’ Nicholas had apparently remarked cheerfully at this point; but with so little engagement that he had remained perfectly amenable when Anna steered the conversation elsewhere.

The next time, when she spoke of his son, Nicholas had neither encouraged nor discouraged her, which Anna had supposed a good sign. ‘I told him all I knew about Jodi in Venice: about the dog and the bird and his swimming, and how he could shoot with a bow. He didn’t speak, but he listened. The little boy had sent him a poem, and when I held it out, Nicholas took it. He didn’t hand it back, or show disgust, or dislike. He loves them both still — he must do. If we persuade him to stay, he will send for them.’

It had seemed to bode well, but when Anna called on Nicholas later that evening she found that, although his candles were lit, he had departed to spend the night elsewhere, in the manner no doubt of the Emperor Sigismund at Berne. Then, leaving, she had noticed the charred heap on the platter, which was all that remained of the child’s loving, laborious missive.

Julius had been sympathetic. ‘Nicholas was humouring you. I suspected as much. Look, don’t worry. If he hates his family, that’s up to him.’ Julius was not entirely sorry, himself. He was not attracted to Gelis.

Now, however, several extremely vinous days later, he agreed with Anna that something more ought to be attempted. Since Nicholas was seldom in his chamber, they chose to tackle him during a hawking expedition, conducted over the extremely lush land of a party so rich and so noble that all conversation was conducted in the third person. The birds were superb, and the hounds tender-nosed and well taught. The silver
bells shook, and the light silks and cuffed gloves and great jewels shimmered and glowed and gleamed in the sun. At midday, carpets were spread under trees for refreshments. Nicholas arrived and, sliding down beside Julius, provided the opening himself. ‘You’d better know: I’ve just mentioned to Anna that my marriage is being annulled. One should not live in the same basket as a snake. It will take some little time, but for all practical purposes, I am a free man. You wouldn’t like to let me have Anna, siren of sirens?’