Caprice and Rondo (92 page)

The boy said, ‘But he may think he has nothing to face but David de Salmeton. This other thing may be far more dangerous. If Anna is Adelina, she’s married Julius by trickery. She has deceived M. de Fleury all through their time together in Poland, in Caffa, in Moscow—’

‘But never once managed to harm him,’ Tobie said. ‘Again, doesn’t that suggest something to you?’

‘That she only wanted to plague him?’ said John slowly. ‘That business with the knife. Julius apparently claims Nicholas was trying to seduce her, but mightn’t it have been the other way round? Or maybe she genuinely fell in love, and he rejected her?’

‘There were some accidents when they were together in Poland,’ Robin said. He spoke without much expression.

‘But then they stopped,’ Tobie said. ‘Nothing happened to Nicholas after that.’

‘Because of the gold,’ the boy suddenly said. His face, faceted by the fire, seemed composed of triangles. ‘Kathi told her, before she went to Caffa, about Ochoa and the gold. She would want to wait till it came.’

Tobie was staring at him. He said, ‘And it took a long time to come, didn’t it? She must have been waiting still when Nicholas left her at Caffa. She nearly lost her life over that, when Caffa fell. But she also, surely, lost her hopes of the gold. Yet still, nothing happened to Nicholas in Moscow.’

‘Julius was with them,’ Robin said. ‘And he and Anna stayed for the winter in Novgorod.’

‘And Nicholas was always either in prison, it seems, or somewhere under the eye of the Patriarch. He got the news that David de Salmeton was in Scotland, but he obeyed Gelis and stayed where he was. He doesn’t seem to have made any effort to leave until the scandal over the knife, when Julius and Anna were asked to go home, and he seems to have followed them.’

‘Did he have any choice?’ John said. ‘He was probably asked politely to get out, as well.’

‘But he seems to be coming
home
,’ Tobie said. ‘In spite of Gelis, in spite of Adorne’s embargo and the kind of reception he could expect to get from the rest of us.’

John said, ‘Perhaps he was attracted to Anna. Perhaps he was pursuing her. Perhaps that’s why he shot Julius in the first place.’

‘You didn’t see him afterwards,’ Robin said. Tobie looked at him.

‘And of course,’ Tobie said, still watching him, ‘Nicholas would have made sure that Julius didn’t survive the next time, if that had been so. In Tabriz, or travelling through occupied Caffa, it would have been easy to get rid of him, and then divorce Gelis and marry Anna. But he didn’t. He kept in touch, indirectly, all the time, with Clémence and Gelis. He didn’t push through his annulment.’

There was a silence. John broke it abruptly. ‘I think you are saying — Are you saying that Nicholas knows who Anna is?’ He saw Robin’s face change.

Tobie said, ‘That is what I am saying.’ His expression was grim.

Contemplating him, the engineer felt something close to nausea. He thought of all it explained, and became aware that he was cursing continuously, under his breath. He pulled himself together and found an objection, but not because he had any real doubts. ‘But if that is so, why didn’t he confront her, denounce her?’

‘Because Adelina is family, and he doesn’t do that to family,’ Tobie said. ‘He kept her with him. He drew her east, as far from Gelis and Jodi as he could. The only time he left her, she was on leash in Caffa, waiting for the gold that never came, or stranded in Novgorod, while Julius founded his empire. But then she was sent home, and he followed, obviously, as soon as he could.’

‘I must go back,’ Robin said. The bleakness in his voice said it all.

Tobie looked at him. ‘I thought the same, to begin with, but we’re too far away. It doesn’t matter. Clémence knows all that I do, and she and Gelis will be safe in the palace in Ghent, while Kathi can depend on Adorne. Robin, he won’t let anything happen to her, or the babies.’

‘Does Adorne know? Can he be told?’ Robin said.

‘About Anna? He’s a magistrate: he doesn’t like Nicholas; he might resist the truth without proof. But I think,’ Tobie said, ‘that you can depend on Kathi to find some plausible cause of alarm. And Gelis would have told them, now, at the Bank.’

Diniz and Father Moriz were the only partners now left in Spangnaerts Street. But, of course, it was a vast house, manned with employees and servants; bustling with the traffic of business. John said, ‘The way to deal with it all is through Julius. Someone has to get hold of Julius, and persuade him …’

‘… Persuade him that his wife’s a scheming bitch who has lied to him from the start, and is still lying? Who only married him to get within reach of Nicholas? Oh, that’ll be simple,’ Tobie said. ‘Meanwhile, let’s stay and do something difficult, such as remaining alive while the Duke makes up his mind what to do.’

He drained his beaker and handed it out for a refill. Then he sneezed
in an explosion of ale. He said, ‘What are you worrying about? Young René won’t raise the forces he wants. The two months will expire. The garrison in Nancy will surrender. The war will be over by Christmas.’

‘Will you take a wager?’ said John.

‘Don’t let’s push it too far,’ Tobie said.

Chapter 39

O
VER
THE
LATTER
part of November, as the cold war continued in Nancy, so events hung in chilly abeyance in Flanders, where the Duchess, at the end of her troop-raising duties, had returned thankfully to the voluminous hearths of the Hof Ten Walle in Ghent, in company with the lady Gelis van Borselen, her son and the wife of her doctor. The Duchess’s step-daughter, who was the same age as Robin, had formed a liking for Jodi.

The lawyer Julius of Bologna called at the palace, but was informed, with great courtesy, that the Duchess could not spare the lady Gelis van Borselen at present. He left his address, from which Gelis learned that he and Anna were occupying a small gabled house leased from a cloth-weaving client, and situated close to the Ghent home, at present deserted, of Anselm Adorne and the Sersanders family.

Gelis presently sent Julius a note, in which she expressed her dismay at the account she had received of Anna’s injury. She felt there must be some mistake, and was disinclined to discuss it until she heard the story from Nicholas, whom she still firmly believed to be alive. She hoped Julius would excuse her meantime.

She received a small note in return, signed by Anna, saying simply that she quite understood, and Gelis was to think no more about them. The handwriting was shaky, and Gelis was again reduced to discomfort.

In fact, her claim to be busy was not exaggerated. Warded by the familiar rigours of winter, the Duchess’s court felt entitled to bend its thoughts towards the pleasures of Christmas. It began to dwell, in addition, upon the festive implications of the forthcoming marriage of the richest heiress in the world, the Duke’s daughter. The Emperor Frederick’s protonotary, arriving from Nancy and Metz, had already brought Marie jewels and a letter from her future bridegroom. In return, Marie had dispatched to the teen-aged Maximilian a diamond, her portrait, and her own personal note of acceptance. This entailed little effort, as she had done much the same for seven previous suitors, one of them being a
former young Duke of Lorraine. Then the ceremonial planning began, and the dress fittings, and the recruitment of musicians and poets and painters, for which it would have been so convenient to have the assistance of the lady Gelis’s ingenious husband, Nicholas de Fleury.

M. de Fleury was, and sadly remained, beyond call. But his lady was, of course, staying in Ghent, and at hand to advise on every difficulty. Gelis did not object to hard work, having anxieties of her own to subdue. But her isolation irked her at times, and she was pleased to be asked to the Hôtel de Ville banquet, at which the town of Ghent were to honour the future bride and her stepmother the Duchess. It would be in public. All of them would be stringently protected. And David de Salmeton hadn’t come yet.

A
MAN
WHO
HAS
HELD
the highest office in Bruges exerts a good deal of influence. He can ensure, for example, that an obscurely dressed traveller presenting himself at one of the portals of Ghent is discreetly challenged, surrounded, and swept directly to Bruges under an unobtrusive but competent escort. Once there, the man would be taken straight to the Lord Cortachy at the Hôtel Jerusalem.

None of the womenfolk of Anselm Adorne had attempted to alter this mandate. Quiet, aristocratic Phemie, that rare friend from Scotland, kept her thoughts to herself, and saw to the smooth running of the household and the care of the children. Katelijne Sersanders filled her days and often her nights with accurately executed projects, and found herself unable to eat. Rankin objected.

The men, of course, were the first to know when the trap was activated. Since the birth of Arnaud’s weak child, Dr Andreas had remained in the house, with the man Bel had sent. It was the physician who came to find her. ‘He is coming. Your uncle wishes you to be there, but no others.’

She had not dared propose it. She had forgotten how shrewd a man her uncle was. Adorne was a magistrate, and had spent half his life administering justice. He also believed that, because of this man, he himself had been recalled from Poland. Seated in a tall wooden chair, not far from the desk of her uncle, Kathi Sersanders jumped as the door opened, and wished Robin were here, and then was thankful that he was not.

The room was high-ceilinged and grand, but the man who came in was in harmony with it, both in his height and his carriage, and even his looks, once he had deliberately divested himself of all the muffling clothes and stood before his captor and judge. Nicholas de Fleury of Beltrees, at the end of a journey from Russia to Flanders, and a recent one, imposed upon him, from Ghent. He made two formal bows: one to Anselm Adorne, one to herself. But, entering, he had already cast a glance round the room, and she had caught the single, bright spark as he
found her. To her fevered imagination, it conveyed something explosive and foreign — Elzbiete’s clarion summons in Danzig:
Katarzynka!
Then it had gone.

‘My lord,’ he said to Adorne. He had been given no chance to remove the dirt of the journey. The familiar dimples were grooves, the eye-sockets trenches, and there was a sharp, thin line between his brows. He looked pre-occupied, rather than angry or nervous.

Adorne surveyed him, his fastidious hands on his desk, his heavy robe severe over his doublet, his embroidered cap set on the greying fair hair. He said, ‘What! No recriminations?’

‘Your captain gave me your message,’ his prisoner said. ‘My wife and child are safe in the palace at Ghent; the man de Salmeton has not arrived yet; and you wished to interrogate me.’

‘Yet I am told you tried to resist,’ Adorne said.

‘You would probably have done so yourself. No free man enjoys coercion, my lord.’

‘No man of sense courts it, unless for a reason. I wish to know, first, what your intentions are.’

‘The same as your own, I am sure. To make sure that David de Salmeton, when he arrives, is rendered harmless. Then I leave, without engaging in business.’

‘Leave for where?’ Adorne said. After thirty miles on the road, any other man would have been invited to sit, but Nicholas de Fleury was not. He appeared not to notice, standing on the other side of the desk with the air, Kathi thought, of a courteous younger commander come to confer with an elder of equal intelligence. It was the first marked change Kathi noticed in him.

Nicholas de Fleury said, ‘I shall tell you when I know, and see that it meets with your approval. I am not attempting to change the agreement we have already reached.’

‘We shall see,’ Adorne said. ‘But meanwhile, you have not been entirely frank, have you? You brushed aside your persistence at Ghent, but you had another reason, had you not, for wishing to enter? A somewhat discreditable dispute, I am told, with your former friend Julius.’

Still the other man did not move. He said, ‘Certainly, I was hoping to find out where Julius was. There has been a misunderstanding. It is personal, and affects a lady’s honour. I propose to deal with it myself.’

Adorne’s face reflected a weary distaste. ‘The story runs that you injured the lady in Russia, and that her husband challenged you, and will revive the challenge as soon as he learns you are alive. It is your affair, as you say, but it also defiles all who deal with you. I wish you to conclude the matter quietly. My niece claims she can help, knowing the lady better than most. I may say I have tried to dissuade Katelijne.’

Nicholas turned. Kathi rose to her feet as he faced her. This time,
what passed between them was not the single splinter of joy between friends. It was a flicker somewhere in his mind that began in what had been a deliberate vacuum and passed through growing devastation to full, mortal comprehension. Kathi saw the light leave his eyes as he realised, first, what she might know; and then what his prevarication just now must have betrayed to her. His gaze rested on hers, grey and unseeing; then he returned it to Anselm Adorne.

‘The quarrel is mine: I shall settle it. The issue for you, surely, is the handling of David de Salmeton. He will first try to kill me and mine, but Kathi and Robin are also in danger.’ Here, warned perhaps by the atmosphere, he interrupted himself. ‘What? Something is wrong?’

‘It depends,’ said Anselm Adorne, ‘on what reliance you place on your army. Katelijne’s husband has joined it, feeling bound in conscience to fight for Duke Charles. He is in your Captain Astorre’s camp at Nancy. And Tobias your doctor is with him.’

The magistrate’s flick of the lash. The practised face of the grown man, repelling it. Nicholas said, ‘Astorre is good company round a camp fire. They may not have much to do, Tobie and Robin, but they will enjoy it.’

‘I am less certain than you,’ Adorne said, ‘that the army of Duke Charles will be idle. And if the fighting continues we must hope, must we not, that your band is well equipped and well led and well funded, and that this family does not suffer, yet again, because of you.’ He stopped, and started again. ‘Nevertheless, as you say, some plans must be made, and it will be convenient if you are here to make them. A room has been prepared, and you will remain with me until we hear of de Salmeton’s arrival.’