Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [241]
‘I wondered,’ said Gelis. After a while she said, ‘If he could, he would come. I was thinking of it when Crackbene was here. Nicholas would come, but whatever he did about de Salmeton, he couldn’t stay. And rather than go back, now that so much has changed, he might be tempted by Benecke. He might choose to go on to Africa, and make a life for himself, sailing and trading. Slaves. Gold. Exploring the coast. The spices of India, maybe, one of these days. Fighting off the Spanish, the English, the Portuguese. Perhaps fighting off Jordan de Ribérac, and Simon his son, and even young Henry, his grandson. That was what Mick Crackbene was thinking, too.’
‘It’s possible,’ le Grant said. Mention of de Ribérac reminded him just how much he disliked that fat nobleman and his spoiled grandson Henry. John le Grant had personally fought against the grandfather at Trèves, and had nearly found himself killed while trying to teach the boy gunnery. He could understand Nicholas being tempted to retaliate. But not, surely, on Benecke’s ship. He said, ‘I wouldna say Crackbene dotes on the notion of Nicholas drinking his way round to India in another man’s ship. And for sure, he doesna love David de Salmeton. He took time to mention to Benecke that Ochoa’s precious puckle of gold had been lifted by David from Cyprus.’
She was sitting upright. ‘He did? So that Benecke …’
‘So that, if David de Salmeton is sailing anywhere, he would be well advised,’ John said, ‘to look out for pirates.’
It was daft, of course. She examined him, and then smiled and said, ‘They’ll never meet, will they? But it makes me feel better, imagining it.’ She seemed to hesitate. She said, ‘Will you be back? In the spring?’
‘It might be difficult,’ he said. ‘But all the others are here.’
‘I know. I am lucky,’ she said.
JULIUS, DESCENDING upon Moscow at last, found himself in a ducal city of low wooden cots and squat Russians. His resentment was hardly dispelled by the helpful welcome he received from Dymitr Wiśniowiecki, from whom he learned, to his further irritation, that Nicholas had already arrived. Nevertheless, by the time he and Anna had been installed in their inferior lodging, with stables, in the old merchant quarter of Kitay-Gorod, his spirits had lifted.
‘They’re in prison!’ he had exclaimed, shutting the door on the Russians and joining the exquisite bundle of furs that was Anna, huddled before the smoking, newly lit stove. Happily convulsed, he sank his arm round her. ‘Nicholas and the Patriarch. Representatives of the heinous Roman church, from which Orthodox believers must be protected. The Metropolitan took one look at them and stuck them into quarantine in the Troitsa.’
In Rome, the Cardinal Bessarion had trained the future Grand Duchess Zoe-Sophia in the Latin mode of worship, to which it was hoped she would convert her untutored husband, leading to a union of the Greek and Latin churches. Much, unfortunately, had depended on her personal charms, but there seemed no reason for total despair: she had two daughters already, and might be about to carry a son.
‘Upon which Ivan will convert out of gratitude, and the Patriarch and Nicholas will be freed? Poor things,’ Anna said. ‘I think we might try to release them before then.’
‘I’ll go and see them,’ said Julius vaguely. He felt better about being stranded in Moscow. The prospects were not as bad as they looked. There were a lot of merchants about, some from Poland and Germany. There was an engineer from Bologna he knew, and a goldsmith, and an elderly compatriot of the Grand Duchess’s from the Morea whom Nicholas would certainly recognise. Julius looked forward to telling him when he saw him.
Anna’s cheek settled into the curve of his shoulder. He cast an oblique glance, to note how her furs opened. Even to have his