Caprice and Rondo (75 page)

Gelis did notice that. Putting up in a house near the Town Hall at Damme and riding back and forth to the sea-wharves at Sluys, she still kept enough sense to have word sent to her daily from Bruges. She had never really expected to discover an inheritance at Fleury for Jodi, but she would like to see it stay Burgundian. Nicholas had sold his wares cheerfully to every ruler in turn, but had virtually decided, she knew, that the Bank’s future lay with that of the Duke of Burgundy. It was what she was trying to consolidate, with the respectable backing of Diniz and Moriz and Govaerts. Well, they now had to manage without her.

Sixteen years ago, on this canal bank at Damme, although she did not know it, there had occurred the fateful meeting with a wooden-legged
daemon which had brought Nicholas and her sister together, and had led to his first marriage, and to his acquisition of the Bank. Seven years ago, and burned into her memory, was her own arrival from a sojourn in Scotland, and the silent Nicholas awaiting her, his grey eyes dark; and the look on his face when he saw her. And then the avowal. And then their marriage.

In meeting her, you have met me, or part of the core of me that does not seem to alter
. He was not here, seven years later, but he had written that to his grandfather. And he had left her his son to guard.

In July, on the anniversary of her wedding, a ship from Leith sailed into Sluys. The master, who brought ashore the first boat, was the Bank’s own man, Michael Crackbene. And on board were Dr Tobie and Clémence, and Kathi and Robin, and a six-month-old child with a tooth, and a tall boy with grey eyes who hung back for a moment on landing, and then put his head down and ran to her arms. They were both crying, she and Jodi. She tried to send it to Nicholas: tears and joy; he is safe,
are you safe?

And then, as she began to free herself to kiss Kathi, and admire the baby, and give her first embrace to Clémence de Coulanges, who was going to marry the month after next, Jodi said, ‘The man killed Raffo. Aunty Bel tried to shoot him, and Master Wodman knocked him down with a bag. Maman, maman; Raffo’s dead.’

Gelis looked up in horror. Behind the friends closing about her, she now saw there was a man whom she recognised: a broken-nosed, burly man with coarse black hair and a watchful expression.
I have asked Sersanders’s partner to bring them back
. Adorne’s new business associate in Scotland was Wodman. Andro Wodman who, before retiring to Scotland, had served the French King and Jordan de St Pol, vicomte de Ribérac, that massive cruel man filled with venom for Nicholas.

Gelis opened her mouth, and Kathi said quickly, ‘We’ll tell you later. It was bad. It’s all right now.’

T
HEY
SPENT
THE
NIGHT
with her at Damme, and Adorne sent an escort for Kathi next morning. The shock of the story they had to tell her remained. Gelis had never appreciated Nicholas’s lenience towards David de Salmeton, and she had been proved right: forgiveness makes a bitter pill. Adorne had been right to bring his family back to where he could guard them. She wished Bel had come. It sickened her that the episode had cost Raffo his life: that Jodi’s friend had had to die, and under his eyes. And even Kathi’s bracing pronouncements had not reassured her about Wodman’s new role as escort on the ship.

‘Crackbene and Robin were with us,’ Kathi had said. ‘He did save
Jodi in Edinburgh. I’ve seen him, too, in other places where he could have harmed Nicholas, but didn’t. Of course, Nicholas treats him with caution, but Wodman left his post in France to come back to Scotland. Bel knows nothing against him. My brother trusts him; my uncle says he has a good business head and learned a lot from those years when de Ribérac was France’s leading adviser. If David de Salmeton settles to do business in Scotland, Wodman should be on our side. He’ll be one of his rivals.’

‘Should be?’ Gelis had said. She was beginning to know Kathi, and her instinct to console and encourage.

‘I know. We’ll watch him,’ said Kathi. ‘My brother Anselm will watch him. No one will go back to Scotland until it’s safe.’ She paused. She said, ‘We could do with Nicholas to advise us. You said he divined where you were?’

Gelis had told them about the encoded message. As he had asked, she had not revealed its contents. Gelis said, ‘I can’t divine. It would take three months to get a letter to Caffa.’

‘All the same. If Nicholas has taken to using his pendulum, he may have sensed Jodi’s danger by now. Intense feeling travels,’ said Kathi. ‘He may come back.’

‘He can’t,’ Said Gelis. ‘Your uncle would quite properly charge him with fraud. And David de Salmeton would kill him.’

S
HE
SPENT
THE
WEEKS
that followed in Spangnaerts Street, secure with Jodi in the Charetty-Niccolò house. Andro Wodman went home. Crackbene stayed, and took part in a company discussion on the future use of its ships: Biscay had become the favourite target for pirates, in the lawful lawlessness sanctioned by the French and Breton and Burgundian wars. Picking up his wine and his salt, Crackbene had met a few old Hanse friends, he said, in compromising circumstances. He had come across the
Peter von Danzig
the previous summer.

Gelis had been the first to speak. ‘With Paúel Benecke still in command?’

Crackbene had allowed himself a twitch of the lips. He was a mercenary of the sea: a grim, heavy-limbed man of Scandinavian fairness, who had settled with no single master until he met Nicholas; and not even then until they had half killed one another. He was the only one of them whose trade had taken him regularly back to Scotland since the Bank itself had withdrawn. He had a woman and children at Coldingham.

He said, ‘The crew were sailing the ship. Benecke was sober, now and then. He was expecting M. de Fleury to join him.’

‘What!’ It was Dr Tobie.

‘Along with Ochoa de Marchena. I thought you knew. Ochoa de Marchena and the African gold, split three ways. Ochoa was having it sent on to Caffa, and M. de Fleury and he were to meet there. Benecke expected them to bring it to Danzig.’

His square face was bland. So far as it went, it was probably perfectly true. All these professionals knew one another. Gelis quite believed that Benecke and Ochoa had dreamed of a fine new career with the congenial help of Nicholas and his gold. They might even have tried to persuade him. Two winters ago, they might have succeeded. But not now, when he was safely established in Caffa, with Anna and Julius beside him. Crackbene must know that as well as she did. In any case …

‘You don’t believe it?’ said Crackbene.

‘Benecke’s an idiot,’ the priest Moriz said. ‘Of course, you have reported correctly. You do not, however, know all the facts. Mistress Gelis, may I state them?’

She nodded. There was no harm in it now. Moriz and John, who was not here, already knew, and Diniz, Govaerts and Tobie might as well learn.

The priest said, ‘I speak of the two messages sent Mistress Gelis by or for Nicholas. One was to say that the African gold was not on its way to the Crimea, as Ochoa told Benecke, but was still buried in Cyprus. The other, dated in January this year, indicated that the gold in Cyprus was gone, and that there was no prospect of its recovery.’

‘It was on its way to Ochoa,’ Diniz said. He was flushed. He knew Cyprus well. He had been there during the siege, with Gelis’s sister.

‘Surely not,’ Moriz said. ‘Or we should have heard by now from Julius, at least. Such paeans of triumph! More, the message would not have closed the matter so firmly. John and the lady and I were to say nothing.’

Tobie said, ‘But Ochoa told Benecke it was coming. Maybe he thought that it was. But now his plans must have changed. I wonder if he met Nicholas at all.’

‘He was afraid of the Knights of St John. Benecke wouldn’t let him aboard without gold. My guess,’ Crackbene said, ‘is that the little bastard would run to Caffa and pretend it was coming, so that someone would hide him. Let me sail to La Rochelle this autumn. I’ll find out what’s going on.’

It was agreed. Gelis could see on all their faces the mixed feelings that the story had brought, for she had felt them herself. A little fortune had gone; one which, again, Nicholas had not proposed to keep for himself, but which he had planned to extract for the Bank.

He had been forestalled. By whom had not been discussed. Nicholas had wanted the subject closed, she guessed, to save them all from further
danger. Their lives mattered more than the gold. But David de Salmeton’s connection with Cyprus was known to Diniz, and above all to Tobie and Crackbene, who both had reason to loathe him. As the meeting drew to a close, Gelis found herself silently praying that de Salmeton would stay in Scotland, and that these men, whom she liked, would be held by events safe in Flanders.

Her prayers were answered. From Anselm Adorne to the youngest fisherman on the quays, no one could afford to leave Bruges in the second Week in July, during that acutely uncomfortable time when the Duke called before him the representatives of the people of Flanders and reviled them as traitors and misers who had starved him of money for Neuss, and were permitting France to ravage Artois and Picardy.

He was given a hearing. But his demand for an army, to be raised in two weeks on pain of punishment, met with a polite but steadfast refusal. It could not be done. In any case, it was against the Duke’s own best interests. Flanders had already sent thousands to Neuss, and more had been raised to defend their own coasts. It was not their concern to mend fences outside their own country: the Duke’s father had never expected it. The Duke’s father had understood that he would get no more money from Flanders if its commerce failed, through all its merchants and weavers being haled off for soldiers.

The firmness belonged to the burgh delegates. The politeness and moderation came from Adorne, party to both sides, attempting to mediate in an impossible situation. When the Duke lost his temper, the Estates did not retaliate, but neither did they give way. The Duke of Burgundy marched from the assembly and took horse for Calais, where he rode through the camp of the new-landed English invasion force to meet and quarrel with King Edward his brother-in-law, who had expected to be welcomed by the flower of Brittany, the cream of the disaffected nobles of France and, of course, the forces of Burgundy, whose joint venture this was supposed to be.

Predictably, the King of England expressed his astonishment that the entire Burgundian army should be absent pillaging in Lorraine, on the assumption (he would not say pretext) that it would protect Edward’s rear until the joyous day of his anointment in Rheims. Predictably, the King of England went on to voice his surprise that a few Swiss and the little Duke of Lorraine should so concern (he did not say frighten) his brother-in-law. The Duke replied. He spoke very good English.

The shockwaves of the encounter travelled east, to where Anselm Adorne sat in Kathi’s small house in Spangnaerts Street, rubbing his cheek over and over. ‘The Duke is mad. He was ready to sacrifice us, to send fishermen marching to Ath, so long as he could stay in Lorraine.
Did he think England would ever accept that? How can the King of England risk a campaign without the full force of Burgundy? It will come to nothing. We have been forced to anger the Duke, and endanger his relations with Flanders, all for nothing.’

‘He will trust you,’ Kathi had said, touching his shoulder. ‘He and the Duchess know what they owe to you.’

‘Perhaps,’ Adorne had answered. ‘But it is going to cost everyone dear to mend this.’

His prediction was correct. As August opened, Edward of England stood on English soil at Calais in France, and formally declared war on King Louis. The herald by whom the challenge was sent returned with one hundred marks, thirty ells of red velvet, and a smile. The day after his dispute with Duke Charles, Edward of England quietly opened negotiations of quite a different nature with France. The declaration of war was withdrawn. Louis offered a truce, and Edward accepted it, along with an annual pension of fifty thousand florins for life, a deal for reciprocal free trade, a royal marriage, and a compensation of seventy-five thousand florins against war expenses.

To Duke Charles, thrashing the road from Valenciennes to Péronne in white fury, Edward had no inclination to apologise. Five days later, the new trust between France and England was sealed upon a bridge spanning the Somme, with the opposing armies lining the banks. Crossing each from his own armoured side, the Kings of England and France met and embraced in the centre, through the holes of a security grille. It was the end of the English invasion of France.

Diniz, accompanied by Father Moriz, left to attend the Duchess in Ghent, and follow Chancellor Hugonet to the meetings which would conclude, undoubtedly, with a painful peace treaty between Duke Charles and France. Gelis had made a half-hearted offer to go, but Tobie had restrained her. Jodi needed her.

In this, the last month before their marriage, Tobie and Clémence had lent her the kind of support she had seen Kathi attract, since Kathi, in turn, had made everyone’s troubles her affair, while Gelis had been wrapped up in one thing only.

Nicholas was still central to her every waking thought, but her child came next, and Bruges was safer for him than anywhere. Gelis no longer travelled to Ghent, or to Brussels, or to Veere, where she usually did business with her Borselen cousins. Now, she saw Paul van Borselen only when he visited Catherine de Charetty in Spangnaerts Street. Catherine, the
silly wee bitch
whom Nicholas had rescued from Trebizond, now a pretty fiancée, driving Paul to distraction because she would not marry without her stepfather’s sanction.

Catherine had written to Nicholas at Caffa, and Paul had added a line
recommending himself, endorsed by Robin. Paul should not be blamed (he said) for the shortcomings of the rest of his family. The approach did not mean in any sense a rapprochement between Nicholas and his stepdaughters: rather it indicated that, taught by experience, Catherine was intent on making sure that this time, her marriage was legal. Neither of the Charetty sisters spoke much of Nicholas, and it was hard to know what they thought. Tilde, the elder, was pregnant again after four years, and feeling poorly: Catherine, with Clémence’s advice, helped to keep little Marian amused.