Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [33]
‘Why should he?’ Adorne had said.
‘He’s reasonably safe. He was an employee of the syndicate, and they’ll protect him. His daughter says he wants rid of us all so that he can go into business with Nicholas.’
‘And his daughter is helping him?’
Robin had cleared his throat. ‘We aren’t sure what part his daughter is playing. Or his wife, for that matter. But it seems worth the risk, sir.’
She would never have expected Adorne to agree, but he did. She thought he did it for Robin. It did not occur to her that he might have done it for her. She hadn’t supported this scheme to find Nicholas.
Soon after that, she found herself riding south, with Robin and Elzbiete Benecke and a very small escort, some of them drunk. Kathi turned up her eyes, and Robin grinned, for he was happy as well.
THE TEUTONIC KNIGHTS’ CASTLE of Mewe was one of their chain of forts perched on the Vistula, each within signal-fire range of two others. In Mewe, as elsewhere, the domination of the Order had recently come to a gratifying end but, unlike elsewhere, the square, red-brick castle had not been razed or much tampered with. The private privy cubicles with their neat toleta planks had all crumbled, but the stables and internal courtyard were useful for horses and wagons, and the tower and two of the wings were used to store grain. The best chambers had been commandeered by the officers of the castle’s small, perpendicular township, who were also petty landowners and members, some of them, of the Confrérie of St George.
Elzbiete had avoided such properties on the way south, which was why they had bypassed Rudolf Veldstete’s fine farm and made the forty-mile ride in one day. Although strenuous, it was not a penance in May. For once, the weather was dry. To begin with, they had the pleasant company of the Mottlau and the Radunia, so cleverly engineered by the Knights, who had been good for one or two things, Kathi sometimes thought, especially when she considered latrines. It was not until after their circumvention of Dirschau that Kathi saw the mother river itself: the mighty Vistula, broad as a lake, with a dim line of trees and white sand on the far bank. Then she noticed the swaying flats and glossy swirls of its currents, dredging their own fickle channels. Hence the need to sail in the spring, when the river was brimming and swift from the Carpathian rains, and before the low waters of June and July. Hence you sailed, even though last autumn the rains had not come, and seagulls stalked on the water, and men sat and fished from the sandbanks, which rose all around them like opening graves.
For all the fortune of Poland flowed north on the river: the slithering grain and the unwieldy timber; the long tulip-barrels with their wax and their dull lumps of ore; the glittering hunks of sheared pitch; the faggots of gnarled iron bars and the bundles of stinking blond cable. A challenge, to vigorous men. A challenge to headstrong, irresponsible men like Paúel and Nicholas.
The travellers from Danzig arrived at the high ridge of Mewe just before dusk, when the rafts were already coming in on the broad shining curve of the river, small in the distance as woodlice, lumbering the water below like great turtles. Elzbiete was impatient to move, but Robin and Kathi stopped in silence to watch as the sun sank and the lights began to prick and ripple below, and the water brought them the thin, fluctuating clamour of voices: greetings, laughter, curses, the barking of excited dogs and even the screaming of children, for half the populace of Mewe was making its way down to the strand. The other half was up at the castle, preparing the wagons of grain or setting up the trestles within for the paperwork. Obeying Elzbiete at last, Adorne’s niece and her husband rode downhill past the church and the market to the handsome house where she had promised them a night’s lodging.
The woman who was called by her servant to greet them was handsome, too, and extremely hospitable, as could be judged from the laughter within,