Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [28]
She did not say, even to Robin, what else she thought. She did not repeat Elzbiete’s stories of how Nicholas had spent the winter, or her unbelievable, her sickening quotations from Nicholas, followed by the questions they inspired.
Old women prize youths: they are indefatigable. (‘So, Katarzynka, what crone’s bed did he take?’)
Never trust blacks: they are vermin. (‘Did some servant steal from him, then?’)
‘And why, Katarzynka, do you say his wife is not stupid and prudish, when Colà has described her to Paúel as both, and her son as a bastard?’
That had been just before Elzbiete and she parted company at the end of the long, fruitless search. Elzbiete had begun to express her regrets. But Kathi, her perceptions rubbed raw by distress, suddenly exclaimed in a low voice, ‘You knew! You knew from the beginning that Nicholas — that Colà had gone.’
And Elzbiete, pausing only a moment, had said in her most reasonable voice, ‘Well, Katarzynka, yes. But my father would be sorry if Colà left Poland.’
There was such a difference of height that Kathi had to strain to look up, as if she were trying to convince God of her innocence. She said, ‘But we don’t want him back. He couldn’t go back. I want to persuade him to stay here in Poland. Elzbiete, tell me. Tell me, where is he?’
Elzbiete gazed at her, frowning. ‘He can’t go back? Why?’
‘Because of something he did. I can’t tell you what, but your father would approve, I am sure. A great coup. The biggest act of piracy you could imagine.’
‘So he is rich? He has been ransoming prisoners?’
‘No. You don’t sell vengeance, you buy it,’ Kathi had said bitterly; and recovered. ‘So will you tell me? Please, where is he, Elzbiete?’
And Elzbiete had looked at her in silence and then had said, ‘With my father. My father will write. He writes a good hand, and can decline and conjugate too. Then, if he allows, I shall tell you.’
‘Without telling Nicholas?’
‘If you like. You still want to surprise him?’
‘That is one way of putting it,’ said Kathi.
But she revealed none of that to her uncle. To Robin, later, she said, ‘Benecke thought we’d take Nicholas home. I think I’ve convinced his daughter we shan’t. If we’re lucky, her father will send for us. Not my uncle, but us.’
‘Why should he?’ he said. They were in their bedchamber, and he was standing, fully clothed, at the window.
‘Because he wants me,’ Kathi said. ‘And he has discounted you. He thinks you aren’t really my husband.’
Robin turned. She could rely on him, always, to understand her. Youth and crones. She thought of what else went into that delicate equation. She thought of Marian de Charetty, who had fallen in love with her apprentice, who, from love and from pity, had married her. She studied, with furious affection, the young man before her who was the age now that Nicholas must have been then. Robin of Berecrofts had long guessed, before she had told him, that she was not a sensual being; that bodily pleasures meant little or nothing; that all her joy came from the mind. He had entered open-eyed into this marriage, feeling his way, never intruding, always controlling, as well as man could, the surging impulses of the blood. And she, fallen silent that first night at the sheer comeliness of him, unclothed, had made an equal pact with herself and with him, to give him all that she could, and nearly all that he could want. Only, always, she made the first moves.
As now, when she said, ‘And of course, he must be right. Or why else are you standing there clothed?’
Once he was with her, he could not always be gentle, nor did she want him to be, but studied how to bring him to deeper fulfilment; to realise the great urge that overwhelmed him. She learned too, how swiftly young hunger returned, and how to welcome and satisfy it. Working with him, she took a craftsman’s delight in his quickening breath, his moist skin, his clenched