Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [20]
They never spoke of what had happened to Nicholas: how he had taken his powerful Bank, and using it to obtain credit in Scotland, had plunged both the Bank and the country into near-ruin for the sake of a family feud. Kathi, numbed by the scale of the damage, would not herself have done what Robin was doing. To her mind, Nicholas now had to devise his own road to salvation. To pursue him simply burned the brand deeper; reiterated that he could not go back. Which was what the Patriarch wanted, of course.
IN DANZIG, Paúel Benecke sulked in his house, peaceably warded by the Town, who permitted him to go where he pleased, so long as it was not outside the walls, or any spot where he might find himself holding an unsupervised meeting with the Burgundian Mission.
Colà was in Danzig as well, but lodged in the palatial mansion of an Elder of the Order of St George, and escorted wherever he went. Danzig did not propose to lose either man in advance of the Mission.
Naturally, neither was allowed to send messages out. It did not prevent messages from slipping discreetly inwards in cowls, packs and satchels. For a while, so approached, Colà did nothing. Then he roused himself to draw up a plan. Finally, without taking more than he came with, he made a smooth and successful exit over his chosen part of the walls and, crossing the ice of the ditch, made his way through the stiffened snow of the suburbs to reach the frozen swamps of the country beyond. He had only six miles to walk, and moved quickly.
It was still daylight when he reached the monastery of Oliva, with its twin-towered basilica and its massive outbuildings and farmland and parks. They were looking out for him. The gates were opening as he approached, and a pair of horsemen rode up, with some squires. He saw the Florentine badges before they addressed him. ‘My lord of Beltrees?’
‘You are mistaken,’ said Colà dryly. He spoke, as they did, in Tuscan.
‘Naturally,’ said the spokesman a little quickly. ‘But you intend to accept, I trust, the hospitality of the abbey, and we should be happy to show you the way.’
He let them lead him to the Abbot’s wing of the monastery. He had been there often, and knew where the guest-quarters were. Every Cistercian priory held to the same plan; although here the little river was put to much greater use than in Scotland: the wheels of the wool-beater, the tanner, the miller thudded and creaked; and he could hear the axe-blows of the monks trimming the ice. They had already cleared the pathways with shovels and oxen: a task seldom necessary in Haddington. He encouraged his mind, as ever, to dwell on such comparisons. Nothing should be unthinkable.
In the guest-parlour, the man who rose to greet him was not, of course, Arnolfo Tedaldi himself, Medici agent from Florence, royal banker and wealthiest of all the Italians in Poland. This man was his kinsman Filippo Buonaccorsi, one of the more notorious of the Western World’s political refugees. Or, if you were more interested in his physical presence, a decorative man still in his mid-thirties, whose high cheekbones and long, curling hair merely acquired extra piquancy from the spectacles perched on his nose.
Colà squinted at them. ‘You got them,’ he said.
‘Better than the first pair. Caeculus no longer. Wait. Don’t move. So this is Ser Nicholas de Fleury, writer of informative letters. Rumour has not lied.’
‘Rumour?’ said Nicholas de Fleury. He waited, exchanged a handclasp, and sat down. He had been corresponding for a long time with this man, in the knowledge that Buonaccorsi could influence the expansion of trade east of Germany. Now that Colà’s interests had changed, he had hoped to avoid or at least postpone a meeting. It was inconvenient that the man had travelled north especially to see him, but at least it would get the matter out of the way.
Buonaccorsi had reseated himself slowly opposite. ‘We have a mutual friend, the