Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [173]
‘And the pretty woman?’ said the shipmaster. ‘I hear about the pretty woman. But surely you will go and get the gold first? You know I cannot do it.’ He brightened suddenly. ‘Perhaps the pretty woman could get it. She and I, while you go south.’
‘Her name is the Gräfin von Hanseyck,’ Nicholas said. ‘And she is someone else’s pretty woman. Do I take it, then, that you are going to stay here until spring?’
‘Why, it is kind of you to suggest it,’ said Ochoa. ‘It is a little expensive, but there might be somewhere cheaper nearby, and it would be worth the outlay to you, I am sure. I could ask my cousin, but then he would insist on sharing the gold, which would only spoil him.’
He could never keep a straight face with Ochoa. ‘But it wouldn’t spoil you?’ Nicholas said. ‘What will you do with your share? When I have decided, that is, what it will be.’
The toothless face expressed exaggerated surprise. ‘But what you and Paúeli decided. A third each, and the use of the Peter.’
‘Wait a moment,’ Nicholas said. ‘Paúeli? Paúel Benecke? I made no arrangement with him. I wasted a whole bloody winter trying to get him to say where you were, and the bastard sailed off without telling me. I’d never have known, except that his daughter wanted to spite him, and told someone.’ He stopped and drew breath. ‘You’ve been talking to Benecke?’
‘We communicate,’ said the Spaniard coldly. ‘Yes, he sails the vulgar Baltic, where a real seaman prefers the great Middle Sea, but there are rivers between. Messages pass. I am Catalan; I do not always sail galleys; I know the Western Ocean as your friend Crackbene does; as you do. We all know that the Portuguese hold on the gold trade has weakened. With the Peter there is nothing we could not do, given the gold to finance the voyage.’
‘To Africa,’ Nicholas said.
‘You are slow,’ Ochoa said. ‘The love nest with the pretty woman has made you slow. I tell you, keep to your plan. Go back to Caffa tomorrow. But excuse yourself from your trip to the south. Collect the gold. And then put it to use. What better way is there to spend the rest of your life than at sea, in a venture with seamen?’
‘I see,’ Nicholas said. He fell into silence. Ochoa drank, occasionally missing his mouth with the flask. Muffled, from behind the closed door came the somersaulting notes of a guitar, and high voices giggling, and the occasional hoarse shout.
Nicholas said, ‘There is a month to decide. I have to go back to Caffa, but I shall pay for your keep in Soldaia, or wherever you think you will be safe. If and when I go for the gold, I shall tell you.’
‘My dear, of course,’ said Ochoa de Marchena. ‘For if anything were to go wrong, our friend Paúeli would be very distressed. Now let us consider the details.’
They considered the details. It did not take long, and it was Ochoa’s idea to celebrate the occasion by calling upon the house’s resources.
‘Girls. Or boys. Or both together, if you wish. Come. Unless you have been mating with elk, you must have a mighty hunger to satisfy. Consider the young Tartar wenches — so modest, so lissom! They have this delightful practice: a gentleman sits, and they kneel, and then —’
‘I can imagine. What must it be like with two or three? Here. Purchase what you want, and there is my purse for your keep. I must go,’ Nicholas said. ‘I suppose I have to find my own way back to the trading-quarter? Why all the precautions?’
‘I did not know,’ said Ochoa simply, ‘whether the Niccolò that Benecke told me of would be the same crazy young señor that I knew. But as soon as I saw your bruises, I knew that it was.’
TWO DAYS LATER, after long absence, Nicholas set open the door of his parlour in Caffa to find Anna alone and in tears, cradling a frayed, loving note from her daughter. A moment later and, somehow, she was fast in his arms.
Chapter 24
OCHOA HAD BEEN RIGHT: it had been a long time since Nicholas had touched a woman of his own kind. Closing his arms about