Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [258]
THERE WERE NO OTHER women in the room where they gathered, for Father Moriz did not wish to report, as yet, to Kathi or Clémence, or even to Tilde and Catherine de Charetty, the step-daughters of Nicholas. So Gelis found herself with three men whom, however, she trusted: Diniz Vasquez, the young Scots-Portuguese director of what had been the house of Charetty-Niccolò, and Dr Tobias, its physician, who had gone with her to Montello. And beside her, the formidable little chaplain from Augsburg who had spent a winter with John and Nicholas in the Tyrol and had been with them in Scotland and Iceland, and who had just returned from re-establishing Julius’s business in Cologne — and from making some enquiries.
He made his statement quite simply, relegating the details of Julius’s affairs to a future discussion, with the assurance that all should now be well. Fluent in several languages, the priest retained, as ever, his uncompromising German accent. If anything, it was thicker than Gelis remembered it. ‘That is,’ Father Moriz was saying, ‘the records were well kept in the early days, and are now being returned to that state. The confusion between, which has occupied me, related to the estate of Graf Wenzel von Hanseyck, and its integration into the Bank’s affairs.’ He was looking at Gelis.
She said, ‘I was in Cologne when they met, Julius and the Gräfin. He was bewitched.’
‘Yes. Well, so were the accounts,’ said the priest dryly. ‘I have pursued the anomalies as best I could. I have spoken, perforce, to many of the Graf’s noble kinsfolk, and have felt entitled to press, rather more than polite usage allows, for information about the Count’s business and marriage. I have even spoken to relatives of the Graf’s late first wife.’
‘And?’ said Tobie. His dress, since his marriage to Clémence, showed a startling absence of stains, and round his neck hung the cord of a pair of spectacles.
Father Moriz looked round at them all, and delivered his answer. ‘The distortions cannot be laid at the Graf’s door. When he died, his affairs were in order, and he left property of reasonable value, which Anna inherited, with some provision for Bonne. The confusions started thereafter. The money she was supposed to invest in the business, and in the ship, came from unsecured loans. She was married to the Graf, but there is no evidence for anything she has ever said of her life before that. More, there seems a strong probability, some say a certainty, that the child Bonne is not the Graf’s daughter. I have found people to swear that she already had a young child when the two met. She has never used the name she called herself then, and I have not been able to trace it in Augsburg or anywhere else.’
‘An adventuress?’ Diniz said. He had flushed. Tilde had always rallied him on his admiration for Anna.
‘We rather suspected it,’ Gelis said, glancing at Tobie. ‘Maybe Julius did, too. But if she wanted someone to keep her, she was generous in the way that she paid for it. She could be wise. She was gifted. She was beautiful. Kathi found her a friend. So did I. So, we thought, did Nicholas. She was always thoughtful with Nicholas.’
‘You might almost say,’ Moriz said, ‘that it was Nicholas she was interested in, and that marrying Julius was only a means to an end. Julius did not pursue her, although he thought he did. Anna was already enquiring about Nicholas from everyone she met, and had placed herself in Cologne before Julius encountered her at all. When Nicholas went to Poland, she followed. When he went on to Caffa she followed, too.’
‘She wanted the gold,’ Gelis said.
‘I expect that played a part,’ Moriz said, his voice softening a little. ‘I expect Julius wanted it too, for his business. But now, of course, that has gone.’
‘But,’ said Diniz, ‘why should she be interested in Nicholas? She married Julius. Nicholas had a wife and a family.’ He broke off. He said,