Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [42]
‘Nicholas makes mistakes,’ she said. ‘He didn’t know about the drugged wine. He didn’t expect Benecke to misbehave, and if he did, he expected me to call much more quickly. And then he had no way of warning you that he was about to turn the whole thing into an orgiastic inferno.’ He was on board all the time, Elzbiete had said. He stopped Benecke. He tipped over the brazier.
‘And he fought. It was my place to fight,’ Robin said.
‘But that would have given me away. I expect you to fight for me every other time,’ Kathi said. ‘I shall insist on it.’
His eyes closed, on a smile. She knew that was not all he had been thinking of. Like herself, like Nicholas in his self-imposed limbo, he must be grappling with the implications of the wretched thing that had happened, and the best means to deal with it. It came to her again that, if Paúel Benecke was not dead, it was because Nicholas had seen what it would lead to. Or that he did not really dislike him. Or that he had other plans, which he did not intend to give up.
THAT MORNING IN MEWE, the Patriarch of Antioch rode in early from his overnight lodging and made his way up to the castle, from which he looked down on an empty foreshore tenanted by one blackened raft, pulled up out of the river and surrounded by the bent backs and flailing arms of a carpenter’s work-team. The officials of Mewe made light of it. ‘A carousal that got out of hand. Paúeli was always a devil for ladies.’
‘Paúeli? Paúel Benecke?’ The Patriarch, accepting a sausage, set it up for his thumb and his knife.
‘And the big fellow, Colà. You won’t see either of them in the chapel this morning. Came to blows over Benecke’s women and beat each other to pulp.’
‘What women?’ said Father Ludovico, posting a roundel of pig-meat. The landowners of Mewe were always flattered when the Patriarch patronised them on his regular visits to Poland and his constant travels to and from Court. Nevertheless, there were times when they felt he might have attended, at least, to his tonsure; washed the frenzied grey and black hair that covered his neck, his powerful torso, his fingers; and repaired the snagged gown and the disgusting sandals. The groom he travelled with was as unkempt as himself. Only the poor Franciscan monk who did his bidding was neat as a good secretary should be.
The councillor of Mewe said, ‘Oh, the usual. Gerta, Benecke’s mistress, and her friends. You’d think he’d be careful, with his own daughter staying in Mewe with the Burgundians. But Elzbiete knows her father just as well as the rest of us.’
‘I suppose she does,’ the Patriarch said. He laid down the sausage and picked up a tankard of water. ‘But Anselm Adorne must have a strange idea of the customs and culture of Mewe. Is he still here?’
‘He never came. He’s still in Danzig. It was his niece and her husband who came. They knew Colà and Paúeli in Iceland. It’s my belief,’ the councillor said, ‘that this Adorne of yours sent them to find out what they could about the San Matteo.’
‘That sounds likely,’ said Father Ludovico da Bologna. ‘But he’s not my Adorne, and you’d better not suggest that he is, if you want to be welcome in Bruges.’
He belched, and tapped himself ruminatively with his fist. ‘So Katelijne and her husband are here, and a few other people who, by the sound of it, could do with some spiritual counselling. I can see a hard day’s work ahead for a conscientious man like myself. Is that a hare roasting? Why don’t you kneel, and I’ll say a few Parcias till it’s cooked, and then an Adoremus, perhaps, just to crisp it.’
• •
NICHOLAS HAD SPENT the same night in Gerta’s tavern, sharing Paúel’s sleeping quarters, and jointly submitting, with noisy alarm, to the brusque ministrations of Gerta herself, the ostensible cause of the battle.
It was the talk of hilarious Mewe, and the first thing Robin heard when, leaving Kathi that morning, he set out to find Nicholas. Restored now to his own, sober senses, Robin understood why it was necessary to keep up the fiction. He could not,