Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [26]
Anselm Adorne was angry. Even now, alone with his niece and her husband, he would not burst into speech, but the grooves in his cheeks were bitten deep, and the brows above his eyes, normally amused, or detached, or quizzical, were heavy and straight. Since his wife died he had not touched a lute, or written verse, or laughed aloud. The mourning ought to be over, and Kathi knew that it might have been, but for something else he could not forget. Also, Margriet’s family had traded in Danzig — not that the Danzigers would allow that to affect them. Kathi said, ‘What happened?’
It was the usual problem: the Danzigers’ unshakeable determination to preserve their trade at all costs: even against the interests of their fellow Hanse cities. And against the Danzigers’ single voice, the divided one with which Anselm Adorne had to speak. On behalf of the Duke of Burgundy, a threat to clear the Hanseatic Kontor out of Bruges, unless he obtained the trading concessions and the redress for the ship that he demanded. And in private, from Adorne’s well-liked and respected fellow burghers and office-holders in Bruges, the brief to promise anything, do anything, so long as the Baltic trade came to Bruges uninterrupted. And all, of course, had come to focus upon this stupid case of Paúel Benecke and the San Matteo.
‘It sailed under a Burgundian flag,’ Adorne said. He recited it, as if she were a jury. ‘It had been Italian-built, with its consort, to go on Pope Pius’s Crusade, and when Pius died, the Medici leased the two ships from the Duke, who had not paid for them yet. This voyage was one of their regular trips between Pisa and Flanders. Both ships had a Florentine crew: one was captained by a Strozzi, and one by a Tedaldi. They left Flanders freighted for Florence, but also intending to stop at Southampton to pick up English wool, and to sell a consignment of alum from Tolfa worth forty thousand gold florins. Because the Hanse towns were at war with England —’
‘In reprisal for their unlicensed fishing in Iceland,’ Kathi said.
‘— in reprisal for Iceland, I agree. Because there was a war, Paúel Benecke and his Saint Pierre de Rochelle —’
‘His Peter von Danzig,’ Kathi said. ‘Or Das Grosse Kraweel, if you prefer. It’s outside the window.’
‘I have seen it. It carries over three hundred men. It intercepted the Burgundian ships and boarded the San Matteo, killing thirteen Florentines and wounding a hundred before making off with its whole cargo, including all that intended for Italy. The cargo has now been divided up and sold, despite Tommaso’s appeals at Hamburg and Utrecht, despite the promises made to the Duke that none of the Hanse cities would handle it. They all have.’
‘And the Peter’s owners and crew all got shares of the booty,’ Kathi said. ‘Their daughters are expecting fine dowries. Paúel Benecke made himself a fortune, but the ship wasn’t his.’
‘Of course not. He did the killing. He’s disappeared. The men who did own the ship were a syndicate from the Confrérie of St George. Valandt and Niederhof and Sidinghusen. Three of the very gentlemen who are attending the Town Hall and entertaining us so very pleasantly at the Artushof. Who are proposing, if I am not mistaken, to continue to delay us without profit, even though I have letters to present to the King, and every day the year is advancing … They make no bones about admitting what happened. It was justified: it was an act of legitimate war; the San Matteo was in English waters; if anyone is to blame, it is the English. They even admit to the two altar-pieces.’
‘Tommaso’s is at Oliva abbey,’ Kathi said. ‘You wouldn’t get in, but they might let me see it, if you wanted.’
‘Is it? How do you know?’ Her uncle stopped pacing.
Kathi said, ‘I thought I had a lot to tell you, but you seem to know it all. I’ve been with Paúel Benecke’s daughter all afternoon.’
‘Kathi?’ Robin said.