Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [51]
Lying awake that night, Kathi reached the conclusion that she and Robin should never have come. They had done little good, and it seemed to her that she had failed in her one wretched role, that of protecting her uncle and Robin from Nicholas. But although they should not have come, there remained one moment to relive and remember. She lay and thought of it now: of the fragmentary exchange in the flickering dark which suggested that, against all appearances, the gleam was not beaten out, that a trace of the friend she’d once had was still there.
But then, she was not present at Mewe when, three days before, Nicholas de Fleury had stood on the jetty and watched the raft with Paúel Benecke leave, bearing all his freedom away, along with the shadow of Colà.
WHEN THE DECISION to leave Mewe was made, no one alive but himself could have judged what it meant to Nicholas de Fleury, and no one was better placed to conceal it.
The raft gone, he did not have to think very deeply to decide his next moves. If Julius knew, then the whole of Royal Prussia would be aware that the seigneur de Fleury was coming to Thorn. Accordingly, the seigneur might — and did — take his time over the eighty-five miles of road and ferry which lay between the two ports.
The marks of his injuries faded. Riding at ease; crossing and re-crossing the river at leisure between Marienwerder, Graudenz and Kulm, he hired a servant and made certain adjustments to his wardrobe. It cost him the last of his aiguillettes and most of his small store of winnings. He was a good gambler, and he cheated (as the Patriarch had observed) when he had to. Then, on a fresh day in the middle of May, groomed and barbered, booted and gloved and mounted on a remarkably fine-looking horse, he presented himself at the Kulm Gate of Thorn and, passing over the bridge, made straight for the lodging of Anna von Hanseyck and Julius, her husband. His face was quite calm.
Thorn was half as big as Danzig, and a fifth the size of Bruges or London or Ghent. But it had been built by the Knights, and the wealthiest of its ten thousand inhabitants lived, as in Danzig, within a grid of tall narrow houses whose south-sloping streets led to the quays through the thick river-portals. The heart of Thorn was in its central square, which held the red four-square bulk of the building which was at once Burgh Hall and palace and prison and, facing it, the inevitable Artushof of the Confrérie of St George. In the serried houses lining the square lived the nobles and merchants of Thorn and the royal and civic officials, cheek by jowl with the tailors, barbers, candle-makers and drivers who served them. And because the Knights were not long gone, and their Teutonic thoroughness survived everywhere, the city walls, the high towers and the moats were trim and well kept, the streets impeccably paved, and the houses, new-built since the fighting, presented a façade of paint and gold and ceramics that blinded the eye in strong sunlight, and glowed underfoot like church glass in the rain.
The house of the German agent Friczo Straube was painted red, black and white and was two windows wide, standing hunched between neighbours on the eastern side of the square. The Straube coat of arms was fixed over the portal, together with the arms of his visiting clients, one of which belonged to the family Hanseyck. Not that identification was necessary to a man who had received written reports from this address for six years. Now Friczo Straube would presumably be reporting to Julius. Nicholas did not own the Bank any more.