Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [27]
Adorne said, ‘You’ve …? My dear, I am sorry. I have been thoughtless. Sit down. Tell us what has happened.’ He took her to a chair, and sat down beside her. ‘Now.’
She began with the conclusion, which was all that mattered. ‘Elzbiete, Benecke’s daughter, thought she knew where he was, and we looked for him. Nicholas has been with him all winter, and she thought I should find them together. But as you already know, Benecke has gone, and Nicholas with him.’
‘Where?’ Robin said.
She shook her head.
‘Why?’ her uncle said. ‘I should have thought Nicholas would brazen it out. Unless he thought that I, like himself, would break my promise. There are two Scots ships in the Mottlau, and plenty of traders in Danzig.’
She did not answer. She knew that. One of the chief events of the deadening, deafening misery of the afternoon had been Elzbiete’s insistence on visiting the Dominican church of St Nicholas, its ancient red brick visible from the shuddering ground where eighteen millstones thundered beneath the half-open book that was the roof of the Knights’ mighty legacy. The Knights might have been banished, their castles razed, their trade usurped, but what remained, as with Rome, as with all the great military societies, was the skeleton, still intact, of their efficiency, evidenced in the voices and eyes of the councillors who had dealt smilingly with Anselm Adorne that afternoon. Three generations ago, a Walter van Niederhof had been one of the best overseas agents of the Teutonic Knights; as a Henry von Allen had factored for them in France. The Knights had gone, but the trade of Danzig was still in practised hands.
Paúel Benecke had not been in the Order’s great mill, although they had searched all seven storeys for him. Nicholas, of course, might frequent the church of his name — except that she discovered, too late, that this was the church of the Blackfriars commonly used by the Scots, who possessed here their own special altar. She had said, ‘Elzbiete, I’m sorry. M. de Fleury would not have come here.’
At which a priest, turning round, had said, ‘You speak of Colà? Why, Fräulein, we know him well: he spoke often to our Scottish friends here, these latter days. Our wicked friend, this lady’s father, first brought him. Is he well?’
The priest did not know where Colà was. They went to the market, pushing between vendors and buyers, storytellers and small gambling circles, stalls of second-hand clothes and worn furs and chipped clay pitchers. They crossed the sweet-water river, which the Knights had made into a canal, and rounded the shore to the smoking fires of the first of the boat-yards. Over there, amid the din of saw and hammer and voice was where the Saint Pierre, now the Peter, had first been brought, and her fine Breton caravel planking faithfully copied. This was the home yard of the Fleury, now loading salt and wine, so Elzbiete said, in Bourgneuf. ‘But it does not belong to Colà now, but to some woman called Anna?’
They returned to the wharves where the immense Peter von Danzig was now moored. Once the wonder of the whole western world, the caravel was itself dwarfed by the sky-piercing bulk of the Crane. The hook was crawling down on its cable: above Kathi’s head, through the din, she heard the creak of two wheels and, peering up through the gloom, saw the great wooden roundels turning, and the plodding feet of the men who empowered them, their outstretched arms gripping the rims. Seeing them, the four men had looked down and bellowed salacious pleasantries. ‘Animals,’ Elzbiete had said.
They had intruded, against custom, into the Artushof, and found a drunken feast in one room, and a group of men gambling in another. In the Town Hall there was a trial, with people shouting. Last of all, they had gone to the elaborate house of a merchant. It was there that they learned that Colà had been there, but that the good captain had come and removed him. Where? No one knew.
Kathi, lady of Berecrofts, said to her uncle, ‘I think they may have gone