Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [223]
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.’
THEY 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.’
SHE 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