Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [243]
‘Yes, you dog,’ said Julius with meaningful malice; and was delighted to see Nicholas pull one of his faces. That for the Tabriz menagerie.
‘Well, I hope you’re hungry,’ Nicholas said. ‘Brother Gubka and Brother Ostafi have arranged a feast for us. In the inner room. Here.’
As prisons went, it was not unacceptable, and as guests, they received meat and wine. Also, in his disingenuous way Nicholas had arrived at a system of communication which satisfied the rules of the lavra while preserving some discretion. Among themselves, they spoke Russian. When Julius entered the conversation, Nicholas replied to him in Flemish, and translated both sides of the dialogue into Russian. If he missed a few items in the translation, Dymitr gave no appearance of noticing and the monks couldn’t tell.
Later, reporting to Anna, Julius recalled all he could of the talk. ‘It was mostly about setting up business. He’s been busy, and has found some good trading contacts in the monastery itself. To develop it properly, we’d need to visit the Hanse halls at Novgorod to set up an agent, but that’s only eight days away, so long as we travel in winter, by sledge. Once that is done, the best time to leave Russia altogether is in January or February, when the snow is still firm. Then we can catch the March ships at Danzig.’ Until he spoke to Nicholas he had assumed that they would have to wait until the spring.
Anna said, ‘Would they let him go to Novgorod with us?’
‘He thinks so,’ said Julius. He had waited, while she thought. She was a good planner. But when she spoke, it was about something different.
‘Did you tell him about the letter from Brother Huon?’
The letter had come to Caffa in March, too late to catch Nicholas, already expelled and on his way south to Tabriz. She had opened it. She had wanted very much to break the news to Nicholas herself, but had left Julius to do it.
He had not minded: he was deeply curious to know what Nicholas thought of Thibault de Fleury. In effect, the news of his death seemed to move him hardly at all. He read the letter, which Julius had handed to him with his condolences, and then folded and put it away. Julius, disappointed, had probed. ‘He says he’s sending the vicomte’s boxes to Gelis.’
‘So I saw. She visited him. How did you find out where he was?’
He had been surprised, for Anna, surely, had been explicit. ‘You know. Jan Adorne visited the monastery with his father. He heard the vicomte was there. He told me about it at Rome.’
‘You didn’t ever see him, then?’
Julius had stared at him. ‘My God, no! Don’t you think I would have told you if I had! We all thought the old fellow was senile. I didn’t think you would thank me for news of him. It was Anna who thought you should know.’
‘Then I have to thank you both,’ Nicholas had said. ‘And I do thank you. If you hadn’t told me, he would have died and I should never have known.’
‘But you didn’t learn any more about anything? About your childhood?’
‘No,’ Nicholas had said. ‘And I’m glad. I’d rather leave it alone. I want to work with you, and forget it.’
Repeating this, Julius caught Anna in a small grimace. ‘I don’t think he truly meant that,’ she said. ‘I wish I had been there. That news must have been sad for him. I told you what happened when his grandfather’s letter arrived. I saw his face then.’
‘Well, I saw his face this time. There was nothing on it,’ said Julius. It annoyed him when she tried to imply that she knew Nicholas better than he did. Then she chuckled, drawing him close.
‘These days, I think you are in