Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [50]
‘I don’t know. I’d like to think that I know. Because it is another kind of punishment?’ Robin said slowly, surprising her once again. For, of course, he was very probably right.
Later, thinking about it, she found herself thankful, despite everything, that Nicholas was going to Thorn. There, he would be among people of worth who might persuade him, this time, to accept office. Unless, of course, the Patriarch got his way, and Nicholas was somehow forced to come with them to Persia. But her uncle would never allow it. And if the Patriarch were to insist, she thought that her uncle would break his oath, honourable man though he was, and broadcast the truth about Nicholas.
She was among the few who knew what it was, and in general, she tried not to think of it. Now, sitting alone, she brought out and re-examined, for herself, what Nicholas had done.
It was six years since they had all gone to Scotland: Nicholas de Fleury to found a branch of his Bank, and Anselm Adorne to foster Scots trade with Flanders. They had worked and lived in Scotland, all of them. Her uncle had lost a child there, and found some good friends. Nicholas had won the fickle affection of the juvenile King and his kindred, and had endeared himself — open-hearted, entertaining, galliard — to the musicians, the merchants, the architects with whom he spent his work-time and his leisure. He had effortlessly won Robin’s love, and the respect of his family. He had befriended and was trusted by the King’s lonely sister. Nicholas was a Knight of the Scottish Order of the Unicorn, and so was her uncle. Her uncle had a Scottish barony and so had Nicholas, granted in gratitude by the King.
Her uncle had repaid what he was given by wise advice and good service to Scotland and to Burgundy. Nicholas had repaid it, in blind pursuit of a family feud, by deploying all the power of his Bank to bring about the ruin of Scotland; to carry out a programme of faulty projects and massive debt-creating commitments that would eventually beggar every person he had pretended to befriend, and leave the kingdom shorn of defences. And all the time the King and his advisers, suspecting nothing, had heaped him with rewards and affection.
They still suspected nothing. Nicholas himself had closed the Scottish branch of his Bank and withdrawn all his assets. The effects of what he had done were not yet obvious, or could not be traced directly to him. Nor could they be repaired, so that there was no object in compromising the integrity of the Bank or of his wife by disclosing them. So Kathi’s uncle had agreed: as long as Nicholas left the Bank, and held no controlling post in any business venture in Western Europe, he would keep silent. It had been a painful decision.
For Kathi, too, disentangling the justification for such a piece of methodical destruction had been a slow, sombre process, owed to Robin as much as to herself. No normal man would bring down a nation for the sake of a petty vendetta, however deep the injustice. No ordinary man, indeed, could have done it. The concept might have sprung from pure evil. It might be impelled by something less grand: by waves of uncontrolled spite, as events from the past could suggest.
To explain it otherwise, you had to understand how single-minded Nicholas was, and the ferocious powers of concentration that he possessed, as anyone might see who had watched him divining. Kathi could not excuse him, but she thought she did understand. He had wished to cast before his contemptuous family and his obdurate, untouchable wife a masterpiece of organisational planning; a demonstration of what he uniquely was capable of that could raise or dash nations. And, entranced by his creation, he had disregarded everything else.
Ludovico da Bologna