Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [14]
‘They?’
‘At the Artushof, the taverns, the wharves. They say you are an agent of Germany, planning to bring the Knights back.’
The Order of the Teutonic Knights, once so holy, had just been prised free of Danzig. Danzig and all her wealthy cluster of satellite towns was now part of Royal Prussia, and hence Poland. The King had come once to Danzig.
Colà laid the bar on his shoulder. He said, ‘Well, I’m not. Haven’t they noticed the agents of Germany, watching me? The King’s agents as well. I don’t mind. I’m not going back. I’m betraying no secrets, stealing no business. They’ll see.’
‘You could pass secrets on,’ Benecke said.
‘In winter?’ Every movement was noticed in winter. From a bustling, free-flowing port, Danzig in winter was a snug Germanised town, its few foreigners remarked on and counted; its astute, inquisitive gaze, its rumbustious merriment all turned in on itself. Because it was winter, Danzig had had time to study Colà and reach an opinion. That it liked him was something quite separate.
‘In spring,’ said Benecke. ‘There’s to be a Burgundian mission passing through Poland in spring. Someone you know. The aristocratic uncle of your married, seraphic virgin, and a patriarch sent by the Pope.’
Colà’s eyes were sharp as the cat’s, but bigger, and grey. ‘Why?’ he said. And then, ‘Because of what you did? Because you seized a Burgundian ship and its cargo?’
‘Among other things.’ Paúel Benecke gave a prosaic answer to a prosaic question. He was a pirate. That was his career. He was a sea-borne mercenary leader of skill and renown, whose highly paid interventions might change the fate of a crusade, or a duchy, or a group of powerful towns like the Hanse. He sailed under letters of marque, empowered by kings, and his booty paid for cropland, and castles, and villas.
The coming summer might turn out to be different, for the Hanse war with England was ending. But there would be other quarrels; other vindictive men who wished to hire their own bullies. Next summer, unless some idiot babbled, this maniac Colà was going to agree to turn pirate and join him. Paúel said, ‘So keep clear of these envoys, I’d say. Or men will assume you are passing them secrets.’ He made a considering pause. ‘If you ask me nicely, I might even rescue you. You could come south in the spring, and help float my grain down to market. None of us conscious for weeks.’
‘Are you certain a mission is coming?’ Colà said. But he was surely convinced because, as he spoke, he gripped the rod like a whip and threw it, hard. It cartwheeled twice, giving tongue like a tocsin. The lynx, her pointed ears flat, ricocheted round her cage, squealing.
Benecke said kindly, ‘You’ve undone all your good work. Go and croon to her.’
The other man did not even glance over. He said, ‘No. You were right. Get some keeper to train her.’
JINGLING ITS WAY ROUND the shores of the Baltic, the cut-price Mission to Persia intended to enter Danzig in March, having been entertained on its way by the civic leaders of Lübeck, Wisenar, Rostock and Stralsund, and survived the unstinted goodwill of their clubs.
The two leaders were not, of course, unknown to their hosts. Every merchant who had conducted business in Bruges remembered the courtly Anselm Adorne, envoy now of the Duke who ruled Flanders. Others, wincing, had met Adorne’s unforgettable companion, the Papal and Imperial Legate. The Patriarch of Antioch had been this way before. Indeed, the unsavoury sandals of Father Ludovico da Bologna had tramped every byway in Europe, raising gold to fight Turkey. Between them, this powerful pair represented the three richest lords in the world, and their retinue, anywhere else, would have been gorgeous. But here, instead of silken banners and servants, soldiers and sumpter wagons of silver and mattresses, the train of the mission to Persia consisted of a number of packmules, eleven stoutly dressed men and, on sufferance, Anselm Adorne’s twenty-year-old niece and her bridegroom of three months.
The presence of Katelijne Sersanders and her very