Caprice and Rondo (38 page)

He had guessed, although Jelita, bringing the wine-flask, had not. The drug this time had been light; enough, she had thought, to smooth this parting, and to give him ease afterwards. She had not expected confidences, although he had made her some without wine, and what he had
withheld then, she suspected he would withhold now. She began, none the less, by simply repeating his last words. ‘
This time, not even the ashes complained?
What happened the other time, Nicholas?’

He answered with no hesitation, slurring slightly. The readiness itself was a mockery. ‘Gelis once burned a toy and it screamed. She wanted to stop me divining where Jodi was. But of course, even ash is enough.’

He stopped, lifting a self-admonitory finger. Then he unfolded his other hand with the cup. ‘Shall I drop it again? Now you can guess all that happened.’

‘Don’t,’ Kathi said. She could guess. Destroying the poem, he must have thought it was over; the single agonising effort to make bearable the unbearable loss. But then he had found himself divining for Zygmunt, and the hungry spirit had abandoned the lesser child in its burning desire for a trace of his own. Eternal folly. Eternal punishment. She said, ‘You want to see Jodi again. You want Gelis. You aren’t really indifferent to Whistle Willie, to Tobie, to John. Use your brain.’

‘I did,’ he said. ‘Look what happened.’

She was exasperated. ‘Then take advice.’

‘Anna’s?’

‘If you are going where she goes. Or you have talked to Cailimaco.’

‘The hyacinth of Cracow.’

‘All right. But a learned man with a circle of sages and writers and artists who speak the same language as you. Nicholas, you see how they are struggling to find a new régime after the Knights. They have to teach these young boys how to rule, and keep their frontiers safe against all their neighbours. You could advise them.’

He was lying back in his chair, his eyes closed and both dimples showing. ‘Redeeming my soul after ruining Scotland?’

‘If you like.’ She wanted to groan.

‘Or ruining Poland? I might.’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘If you can’t control your own whims, then you might. In which case, you had better go off to Tabriz with the Patriarch, and give Jodi up. By the way, if he loses his mother, what then?’

‘Bel would take care of him,’ he said. ‘Or the van Borselen. Or you and Robin might, if you would. But you will have your own.’

‘If need be, we should make him our own,’ Kathi said. Looking at him, she found herself swept by inappropriate pity. She said gently, ‘You were not much older, were you, when your mother died? How did she die?’

His eyes were still shut. He had been seven years old, she had heard, when his grandfather had sent him to Jaak de Fleury. De Fleury and his wife had since been killed, and the grandfather ruined. The paralysed grandfather who had to be paid for.

Watching him, the closed eyes, the closed face, Kathi thought of her own mother, lost early to illness, but leaving her daughter and son tended and happy under the tutelage of their godfather Anselm Adorne. Nicholas had exchanged his mother’s home for something much harsher, had heard his mother reviled as a whore and repudiated by Simon, her fine Scottish husband. Small wonder that it had led to this: talents squandered, friendships in ruin, love cast away. And now, by the depth of the silence, she realised that she had asked a question of greater weight than even she might have guessed. How did she die, Sophie de Fleury, when just a year older than this, her second and only living son?

‘You don’t want to know,’ Nicholas said, as if she had repeated her question. He opened his eyes. ‘I should make you drink your own wine.’ Curiously, his face, although hollow, was serene. He added, ‘Or would you then give birth to Endymion? Robin wouldn’t mind. I have never seen a sane man in such a state of ecstasy. Have you chosen a name? Robert? Archibald? Anselm?’

The wine had worked, she saw, as she intended. He would sleep when she had gone. She said, smiling, ‘Or Margriet or Katelijne or Louise. Or what do you think of Aerendtken?’

‘Ask the Patriarch,’ Nicholas said. ‘He’ll tell you to wait till it’s ripe, and then boil it through twelve Ave Marias. Oh Christ, I’m going to sleep and I haven’t said what I wanted to say.’

‘Then say it,’ she said. She rose and came to him, sinking down by his chair, and trapping his hand in both her own before he could stir. ‘What was it?’

‘I am sorry,’ Nicholas said. ‘That was all. I am sorry. I am sorry.’

She swallowed. ‘I think you ought to be. But show me, don’t tell me. Show Anna. You have a great deal to make up to Anna for. Nicholas?’

He opened his eyes.

She said, ‘I have something to tell you. Nicholas!’

He smiled, his eyes closing again. ‘Tell me tomorrow.
Kochajmy się
,’ was all she caught.

Having brought him the respite, it seemed unfair to attempt to disrupt it. She kept his hand for a while, contemplating the broad palm and strong fingers that could both preserve life and take it away. She wondered if he would adopt her advice, or even remember it. She thought that she would knit him a glove with two thumbs, if he did. She gave him back his warm hand and walked away, turning at the door to scan him for the last time. He was wholly asleep by then, and no longer smiling.

S
HE
DID
NOT
TELL
HIM
the next day, or ever, for that night Julius sank, and Nicholas spent all its hours by his bedside, silently watching
with Anna. Then, when the sky paled and the house-signs creaked in the dawn wind, it was young Berecrofts who came to Straube’s door to say that the Burgundian envoy was leaving, and would presently call. Robin was standing alone in the hall when he heard the measured tread on the stairs, and saw that the man coming towards him in the half-light was Nicholas. He looked grey, as Kathi had said. Robin said, ‘Sir? They say he is still holding on.’

‘He is strong,’ Nicholas said. ‘Adorne is coming?’

‘He wanted to see you.’ Robin looked at him in distress. ‘Kathi and I wanted to stay. I meant to go with you.’

‘I know. You meant well, but it might not have been worth it. As it is, Kathi seems to think I should remain and rehabilitate Poland, in my customary manner.’

Robin felt himself flush. He said, ‘It was one choice we both knew you had. Or to help the Gräfin with her business, here or elsewhere. Kathi felt you might think she favoured one course over the other. She gave me a letter.’ He held it out.

In the growing light, he could see nothing but mockery. Nicholas said, ‘She suddenly realised she had compromised the entire future of Royal Poland and Royal Prussia by exposing both to my volatile nature? Let me see.’ And he took the letter across to the lamp, where he opened and read it at a glance. He looked across. ‘You know what this says?’

‘She told me,’ said Robin. ‘She tried to tell you herself, but …’

‘But she had misjudged the dosage. You will have to watch her,’ Nicholas said. ‘You may find you are conducting your entire family life from your bed. Will she drug the children, do you think?’

He had been awake all through the night by the bed of the man he had shot, perhaps killed. The words were random. Robin said, ‘I wish we could have helped. You may be better without us. Listen to Anna. We could write to you, if you tell us where you are. And if you have any …’ His voice faded.

‘Messages? No.’ Nicholas was burning the note. The light hardly reached under his lids. ‘Does anyone else know about this? Apart from Elzbiete and Paúel and, I suppose, the semi-bereaved Anna? Yes, certainly Anna. This longing to have her appointed my nursemaid.’ He looked up from crushing the ash. ‘Doesn’t anyone worry in case I take Anna, too, on to a raft?’

Robin sank his teeth in his lip. Then Nicholas flung down the platter and said, ‘Kathi was right to keep me speechless. You can’t possibly understand. All I can say is what I said to her. I am sorry. Go away. Expect nothing. But believe that I am sorry’

Robin had begun to move forward, saying something, when the main doors clattered open and men began to come in, escorting Kathi’s uncle, come to take his leave of Herr Straube, and visit the sick man and
his wife. And, briefly and finally, to part from Nicholas de Fleury of Beltrees.

It did not take long. Formal words were exchanged, ending in bows. Nicholas was a disgraced man in exile, who had betrayed the Burgundian trust in a country of moment to Adorne as well as himself. He was the man who, very possibly, had engineered the Polish rejection which had led to Adorne’s recall. Against that, his gesture in the sports field had very probably been no more than the act of self-interest he had called it. If Adorne were returning in anger, then at least his niece and nephew were also withdrawing unharmed from the orbit of this extraordinary man, in whom charisma and evil were so fatally mixed.

Adorne left, and Robin clasped hands and followed him. Nicholas watched them both out of sight.

J
ULIUS
LIVED
THROUGH
all that day and the next. On the third, Nicholas returned to the empty house that had contained Anselm Adorne, his young married kinsmen and the two sobered Danzig councillors, and was visited by the Patriarch of Antioch, also preparing to leave.

‘So!’ said the priest. ‘You’ve had your mind made up for you, I hope. Caffa and Tabriz.’ The energy vibrated into the room, released by the impending journey, rocketing papal and Imperial commands into the ether. He paused. ‘What’s the matter? The man’s recovering. The girl will set out on her own. You’ll follow me with her. You’ll try to bed her, if I know you.’

‘You don’t mind?’ Nicholas said.

‘You won’t succeed. She’s as capable as you are, behind all those pretty manners. I don’t know why she ever married that fancy lawyer: you may have done her a favour,’ said Ludovico da Bologna. ‘So why not come and enjoy yourself?’ His words, although encouraging, were accompanied by a perfunctory glare.

Nicholas found he wanted, rather feebly, to laugh. He straightened. ‘Might I have Cailimaco as well?’

‘Don’t be cheeky,’ the Patriarch said. ‘Make your plans. Hire your horses. Lay out all Signor Zeno’s good money. I’ll tell Uzum Hasan to expect you. You might get to climb into bed alongside him and all his four wives.’

‘Father,’ said Nicholas. ‘How can I resist?’

He meant it, in a distorted way. He did not say that of course he was going to Caffa: the decision was long ago made, and he was already well ahead with his plans. City of Tartars and Christians, set in blue waters, and hanging with vineyards and fig trees, cherries and peaches; its fields heavy with corn and its houses scented with flowers and the warm smell
of ripe watermelons … Caffa in summer, with Julius’s beautiful wife. How could he resist?

And especially how could he resist, now that he possessed Paúel Benecke’s secret: the piece of sea captain’s gossip that the bastard had jealously kept to himself all through winter, despite Colà’s cajolery? Of course Nicholas de Fleury was going to Caffa, my dears.

Kochajmy się
.

Et non est qui adjuvat
.

Help me, for I have no one, now. And right and wrong are the same.

‘
Nos
,’
BEGAN
THE
DOCUMENT
. Kathi read it, skipping the hard bits.

Nos proconsul de consules oppidi Dantzig in Prussia
 … We the governor and councillors of the city of Danzig in Prussia —

‘— attestamur quod reverindissimus pater et dominus Ludovicus, sacro-sancte apostolice sedis orator et nuncius, ac patriarche Antiochensis
 … attest that Ludovico da Bologna, papal nuncio —

‘— et eneroso domino Anselmo Adournes milite, domino de Corthuy, consilarii, ambassadore et cambellano serenissime Karoli …
and Anselm Adorne, Baron Cortachy, councillor of Duke Charles of Burgundy …

‘— absolvit —

‘— whom he acquits.

The word that mattered. The niece of the
enerosus dominus
stopped, sniffed, and scrambled at speed through the rest:

‘— of the charge and management of his Mission to the Prince Casimir, King of Poland … produced as evidence certain letters patent … but left behind at the Court of the aforementioned lord in the city of Thorn … who by no means appeared and was nowhere seen, as we are informed by the sufficient witness of Jerzy Bock and Johannes Siding-husen, our delegates to the general assembly of deputies.
Idcirco, in fidem huius et testimonium, secretum nostre civitatis presentibus est subappensum
.’

And the seal hung below the two signatures. The affirmation, written today and witnessed in the winter assembly room of the Town Hall in Danzig, that Anselm Adorne had carried out the commands of his Duke to the best of his ability, and that no blame attached to him for his failure to present his Duke’s letters to the King of this land.

Katelijne Sersanders closed the scroll and gave it back to her uncle and Robin, who had brought it. No one spoke. They were in their familiar noisy lodging at the Kogi Gate by the Green Bridge in Danzig, with the busy waters of the Mottlau outside their windows, and the last, bitter phase of their mission was now complete. King Casimir, having received no demands, was absolved from providing excuses or promises. And Danzig, left unconstrained, had replied with polite dismay to Adorne’s charges.
Piracy? Surely not. Nothing more than a dispute between merchants which, in extremity, might be settled by the normal processes of civil law. The Medici — Tommaso Portinari himself would recognise the justice of this. Tommaso Portinari, whose likeness now hung, not in obscurity in the monastery at Oliva but blatantly, on the altar of the Confrérie of St George in St Mary’s Cathedral in Danzig. Henne Memling’s greatest work had arrived, with a pirate’s help, where it was to remain.

There had been some small successes. Questions of trade had been ironed out, concessions made, arrangements reached, friendships formed. Communication with Bruges and Burgundy would henceforth be easier for a while. But nothing could compensate for the rebuff by the King and the Confrérie or — more wounding for Adorne than either — the recall which meant he would never travel the road his ancestors had taken, down the great rivers and over the steppes and the mountains to where his coat of arms decorated the frowning towers of castles, and he could make or stop wars with his letters, as his ancestors had done with their swords. If lost now, the opportunity would never be vouchsafed him again.