Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [29]
A WEEK LATER, when no word had come, and Anselm Adorne was still held fast in Danzig, Katelijne Sersanders left her husband and, accompanied by a group of Teutonic ladies, rode out from the west gate of Danzig to visit the abbey of Oliva.
The church was tall, echoing and unusually narrow. The cloisters were like all other cloisters. The Abbot, although warned beforehand, seemed about to repudiate the arrangement. ‘The Confrérie have made me its custodian. I am not supposed to display it. Especially to …’ And he had glanced distractedly at Kathi.
‘My lord, she knows it’s here. Her uncle knows. Everyone knows. Does your lordship suppose we are about to help her carry it out of the country? Now, when the grain is about to come in, and you need all the advice you can get about taxes?’ The lady of Filip Bischoff could threaten.
The Abbot said, ‘Of course. I see your point. If Cracow knows, all the world knows, I suppose.’
‘Cracow? The King? The King has been told that the painting is here?’ asked Frau Bischoff.
‘Presumably so,’ the Abbot replied. ‘When his sons’ tutor was sent here, and saw it. And the other young man.’
‘His sons’ tutor? Signor Buonaccorsi, the scholar, was here?’
‘Callimaco,’ said Kathi to the air. ‘He attempted to murder Pope Paul, my uncle says. He used to live in Murano. Zacco helped him in Cyprus. He went to Constantinople, and tried to hand Chios to the Turks.’ She looked at the Abbot, who was old enough to think thirty-three young. She said, ‘Signor Buonaccorsi was here, my lord, to look at the painting?’
And the Abbot said, ‘No. I have already said. He wished to meet the foreign merchant with whom he had been corresponding. Colà. Nikolás. The surname escapes me.’
With whom he had been corresponding. ‘De Fleury,’ Kathi suggested. She heard the tremor in her own voice. ‘The King sent this gentleman to meet M. de Fleury?’
‘Colà,’ said one of the ladies. ‘We knew as much. Did we not mention it? Colà received an invitation from the Court, but refused it. We found it most gratifying. There is nothing at Court for a merchant. Danzig is the place for a merchant.’
‘Or a pirate,’ Kathi said. A conversation came into her mind. Tedaldi. One of the patrons of Callimaco was the Medici agent Tedaldi, chief of the Florentine merchants in Poland. The San Matteo, with its Florentine crew and its Florentine cargo, freighted by the Florentine Tommaso Portinari, had been commanded by a Tedaldi. Before, that is, it was captured by Paúel Benecke, with the loss of thirteen dead and one hundred wounded and the dispersal of all its cargo, including the great altar-piece by Hans Memling, which she was now about to be shown.
The King was interested in Nicholas, but Nicholas for some reason had rejected him. The meeting had been arranged in Oliva, where the painting was placed. The King might be under considerable pressure from his Italian colony to defy the Danzigers and hand back the Italian cargo. All these things her uncle needed to know. At the same time, of course, she would not have been allowed here unless everyone wanted her uncle to know them.
Kathi said, ‘So, my lord, might one see this magnificent work?’
It was a magnificent work. She had seen it before, or most of it. Angelo Tani and his wife on the back of the flaps, and then the triptych itself. The rainbow. The Elect, with Duke Charles curly-headed among them. And the Saved. And the Damned.
She couldn’t see Nicholas among either. He was probably somewhere in limbo. She did see someone else whom she knew. Tommaso. Tommaso’s neat coiffeured head on top of someone else’s limp body, kneeling piously in the pan of some scales.
It beat Sixtus. It beat Pope Paul’s successor, who provided his wealthier guests with ex-cathedra gold pots in the close stool. Despite everything, she found herself pink with foolish amusement.
Elzbiete saw it. She said, ‘Were you looking for someone?’
‘Yes,’ said Kathi. ‘I’ve found him. I can die happy, now.’
Chapter 4
DURING