Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [43]
Gerta greeted him in her own room. ‘You’ve come to find out how they are? Here is Colà, come to see me, and on his own feet, so that you may know he’s not dying. And Paúeli? Well, he is a very bad patient, who thinks, like Colà, that the best solace for everything is strong drink. You come and see Paúeli when you have finished with Nicholas.’
Robin said, ‘I have to thank you.’ He did not look at Nicholas, who had risen.
Gerta turned at the door. Her eyes were not smiling. She said, ‘You would thank me best by taking that man away. He is bad luck.’ The door closed behind her.
Nicholas, in the full picturesque panoply of blackened abrasions, purple bruising and misshapen swellings, certainly brought bad luck to mind. He had saved Kathi, but he had also endangered her. He had attacked Benecke to conceal what had happened, taking the onus from Robin. But he had also meant to kill Paúel for himself. Mixed with the breath-taking generosity, as ever, was the madness of vengeance, sometimes cold, sometimes hot, which had brought Nicholas where he was. And had brought Robin here, to Poland, where he had exacerbated the ill, not assuaged it.
Nicholas said, ‘It was a good idea to come. This needn’t take long. How is Kathi?’
‘She slept well. She understands everything, and so do I. I am here, sir, to apologise,’ Robin said. ‘I was … upset. I would trust you with my life, and with Kathi’s.’
‘That might be misguided. But if I ever harm you, it will be solely through ineptitude, like last night’s. I am sorry. And of course, it will not happen again, for we shall not meet again. When are you going back to Danzig?’
‘We shall not meet …?’
‘Today, I should suggest. And what will you tell Adorne about Kathi?’
Robin was silent. Then he said, ‘If I tell him the truth, he will report Benecke, and they will have to punish him.’
‘I have punished him. They will hang him,’ the other man said. ‘They can do no less. Attempted rape of the niece of an accredited envoy? He will be condemned after a trial, naming Kathi. The merchants will then discover, to their amazement, that the pirate Benecke was wholly unauthorised when he took the San Matteo; that the kingdom cannot be blamed nor, of course, the cargo recovered, since he disposed of it all. Alive, Paúel Benecke is valuable. Dead, he can be safely repudiated. And Kathi suffers.’
‘Adorne is her uncle,’ Robin said. ‘Surely her family ought to know.’
‘He is His Excellency Anselm Adorne, Baron Cortachy. He must act, if you tell him. What would men think of him later, if they found that he knew and did nothing?’
Again, Robin was silent. Nicholas, propped in a chair, did not move. Robin walked to a stool and sat down. He said, ‘Word might get out anyway.’
‘How? The women know, but they don’t want to imperil their Paúeli. And sweet Paúeli himself …’ Nicholas paused, and then said, ‘Wait here.’
He got up and walked out as if everything hurt. It probably did. Robin waited. When the door burst open, he jumped to his feet, his hand at his belt. Then he saw that Nicholas stood in the passage, gripping a doubled-up man by his shirt-neck. Then he pitched the man forward and came in, slamming the door.
Paúel Benecke hit the floor with his strapped arm and pushed himself up with the other, screaming a string of obscenities at Nicholas. His head was held to one side, and his neck was padded with linen and clay. He was drunk. Nicholas said, ‘Penitential prostration. So. Go on. Benecke, look at that man.’
‘I’ll kill you,’ Benecke said. He sat, where he was, on the floor.
‘You won’t get the chance. Look at that man. You tried to rape that man’s wife. He’s going back, now, to tell the Danziger Council. Apologise to him, or you’re dead.’
‘You apologise to him.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Nicholas said.
There was a knife in Benecke’s hand. Before Nicholas could touch him, the captain had thrown it. Nicholas dodged, and then they were at grips with one another again, crippled though they were. For the first time, Robin realised that Nicholas, too, had been