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By Root 2188 0

of hail on his shutters woke the captain. He had only been in bed for an hour, but land noises disturbed him. He grunted, considered, then dragged on his robe and, without taking a lamp, made his way to the leeward side of the villa. He had built this one only last year, and put in a brick chimney-wall: warmth from the stove below mellowed the air and his mood, although his throat was wrung dry, and he was still wearing his wrinkled day shirt and hose, as when he had dropped — or been dropped — on his bed. The sleeping rooms creaked and groaned as he passed them: his house was always full. Only the single chamber, as he half expected, was empty; the door ajar, the window unshuttered. Through it he could see a paring of moon, coarse as pomegranate. He walked over and looked down below, at the blood on the snow. Then he looked beyond his gates, at the city in which his fine house was set. At the walls, the watchtowers and the icy huddle of dwellings, above which reared the stiff-necked herd of her churches, scanning the west. Danzig, at four hours after midnight in the deep cold of January, 1474.

There were others awake. Beneath the congealed thatches there glimmered jointed hair-lines of light, fine as lettering. A squat figure, forced by the wind, plunged across a cake of pink light and disappeared. Here, the alleys were snow-filled and crooked. In the New Town, there were more lamps than shrines. In the New Town, the streets built by the Knights drove across and down to the river like prison-grilles, their crowns rutted and black with wheeled traffic. The Knights, the bastards. He was still celebrating Danzig’s victory over the Knights. Everyone was celebrating.

Within the room, the quality of the air underwent a change. He smiled. He said, his back to the door, ‘So, how was she?’

‘Whetting her claws,’ Colà said. He was the only man known to the captain who could move as silently as himself, despite his height. They engaged in these exercises sometimes, stalking one another, testing, deceiving. It was part of the return the captain compelled from his guests. In winter, a seaman required to be entertained. Der harte Seevogel, Tough Seabird, they called him.

Colà said, ‘Is there some problem? You need a friend to help with your buttons?’ He had picked up tinder, and was lighting the lamp by his bed. Paúel closed the shutters and turned.

‘I was contemplating the scene of the slaughter. You look as if the girl got to you first, then the father.’

Colà blinked. His eyes were like pewter platters, and his real name was not Colà. The captain knew what it was, and had called him by it throughout the campaign in the north, where they had met. Then, after the better part of two years, a merchant’s train coming in from the west had insisted on bringing their friend to the guild hall, even though they had only just met him in Lübeck two weeks ago — such a lively, remarkable fellow was he. Name of Colà z Brugge. A one-time merchant who had decided to let his business go hang and see the world. And Captain Paúel Benecke, looking up at this bland, bristle-chinned figure, had said slowly, ‘Oh, yes? Decided to give up your business?’

‘Yes,’ had said the newcomer meekly.

‘And come to Poland?’

‘Why not?’ had said the big man in a reasonable voice. ‘I could see, from the little experience I had, that its people needed advice. Some hints about etiquette. A touch of help as to manners and culture. A bit of —’

Here, he had been forced to desist by the pack of genial, hard-fisted arms that rose and fell on him: it had evidently happened often before, and he accepted it amiably. When, at last, the two were alone, the captain had set himself to pin the newcomer down in another way. ‘So, what’s the point of all this? Of course they will find out who you are. You have an agent here, haven’t you?’

‘Straube, yes. He’s gone to Portugal for the winter. Oh, they’ll find out,’ said the man they called Colà. ‘But they’ll also know by the time he comes back that he isn’t my agent any more. I’ve retired from my company.’

‘Why?’ had said Benecke.