Before he had taken two steps, rough arms pinioned him hard, and an admonishing voice was addressing him. ‘Hold there! Don’t you see there’s a fight?’ Beside him was the woman called Gerta, shaking her head in mock despair at his folly, even as her eyes darted back to the fighters. He saw the anxiety in them. He ceased struggling.
She had cause to be anxious. He had seen brawls. He had seen professional fights, and men wrestling for wagers. He had never seen deliberate, all-out fighting of the kind he was witnessing, in its last stages, now.
Now, their faces swollen, suffused, streaked with blood, two men fought toe to toe in short bursts of energy, kneeing, pummelling, elbowing, crashing to the ground and rolling over and over, before they scrambled upright again. Once at least they had plunged into the water, although the pulsing heat had already half dried their hair.
You could see, on their bare upper bodies, the other tracks of the battle. There were the marks of impromptu weapons: the gouge of a marline-spike; the scarlet weals raised by a lash. They both bore burns in glistening patches, and the pitted imprints of scorching-hot grain. Both were limping; both were breathing explosively, grunting when the blows fell. The blows fell like the quarry mallets at Fontainebleau. Pif, paf, pouf: hard rock; softer; here it is crumbling. There was something wrong with Benecke’s arm. He saved it by kicking Nicholas, which brought them both down again, with Nicholas this time at a disadvantage. Robin saw his teeth close on his lip. Then he looked up, and caught sight of Robin.
No message passed. Nicholas drew a shuddering breath and, having filled his lungs, held it. The movements he then embarked upon were quite few, and to achieve them required an extraordinary concentration, it was evident, of his will and his strength. Robin did not see what they were. There was a sudden jerk. Benecke screamed. Nicholas broke free and, rising, lifted his hand. For a moment he held it quite still. Then he chopped it down on Benecke’s neck.
Paúel Benecke slumped, his body collapsed, his head rolled to one side. Nicholas stood where he was, one hand holding the other. The privateer did not move. After the first moment of shock, the spectators began to surge forward. Robin broke free and went with them, pulling his knife from its sheath. He passed Nicholas and stood over Benecke with the rest, looking down. Nicholas said, to no one in particular, ‘So finish him off.’
Someone said, ‘He’s still breathing! Tough little bastard.’ Nicholas walked away, handing himself off other men’s necks and shoulders until he was clear of the crowd. He didn’t look round.
Before Nicholas spoke, Robin had been going to do just what he suggested: puncture the throat of an unconscious person; kill the prey another man had delivered. Now, slowly, he put his dagger away. His eyes ached, and his body. He turned. Beneath white clouds of steam, the last of the fires crackled and hissed on the raft, and water flowed in and out, where the coaming had gone. The smell of toasted rye and burnt wood was chokingly strong: at least the bastard would pay through his purse. The bastard. The bastards.
Kathi was half-sleeping still on the bank, but Elzbiete was now kneeling beside her. Elzbiete said, ‘She was raped. Are they dead?’
‘I haven’t been raped,’ Kathi said, with excessive gentility. ‘I don’t know who it was.’
‘They drugged her wine,’ Elzbiete explained. ‘He has done it before. And have you killed your friend, Colà?’
She was addressing Nicholas, who had appeared from the darkness and was standing looking down, as he had looked at the felled body of Benecke. He didn’t answer. It was not obvious how he had found them, unless by some primitive instinct: he looked detached from mankind.
Elzbiete spoke again, with greater distinctness. ‘Colà? Is my father dead?’
He heard that. ‘He ought to be. I think not.’
‘Now you have to fight me,’ Robin remarked. ‘Or explain exactly what happened.’
Kathi frowned. She said, ‘Nicholas didn’t touch me. He wouldn’t.’
‘Well?’ said Robin. He, too, had to look up to Nicholas. His voice was steady; the tears of shock gone.
Nicholas said, ‘Are you asking me to deny it? You will have a long wait.’
Elzbiete said, ‘Tell him, Colà. Tell them both. Katarzynka, it was Colà who sent for your husband, and for Gerta and her friends. It did not save you, but no one can ever be sure you were there.’
‘And the fight?’ Robin said.
‘Over Gerta, they claimed. Men would remember it. She was flattered.’
Gerta had not been flattered, Robin thought. She had watched the two men as he had, and had expected one of them, as he had, to die. The death of Paúel; the death of a witness.
Kathi sat, looking up at him as he looked down on her. Her face was clearing: she had begun to understand what was happening. She was going to be all right. There was a trampling behind: the captain’s men were taking Paúel off, no doubt to be tended at Gerta’s. Kathi spoke to Elzbiete. ‘Go with your father.’
Elzbiete looked at her in surprise, then pressed her fingertips, in welcome, on her shoulder. ‘He deserved it,’ she said. ‘You could come back to the house. I know my tatko. He will respect Colà, although of course he will hate him as well.’ She eyed Nicholas. ‘You should sit. I shall go and see that Gerta knows what is needed. The raft will take time to repair.’
Robin said, ‘We are not staying under the same roof as Paúel Benecke.’
‘Then I shall find you somewhere else,’ Elzbiete said. She walked away, and Robin followed and stopped her. Kathi could hear his voice, asking careful questions: about Gerta, no doubt; about Nicholas.
Nicholas was still here. Kathi shivered. Above her, Nicholas suddenly swayed and instinctively, Kathi shifted aside, until she saw he had regained his balance. His gaze, caught by the gesture, fell to rest on her sheltering hands, then travelled reflectively upwards. His eyes, open and clear on her face, were for a moment those of someone she recognised: the creator of marvels, the rare singer, the trusted friend. The man for whom — Emmanuel! — the silver trumpets had spoken in Holyrood.
He said, ‘Kathi?’
She let herself gently back, the better to see him. She knew what he had guessed. ‘Yes. I think so,’ she said. She lay, watching him examine and nurture the thought, slowly, tranquilly, as if tending a brightening spark. Her cramped heart stretched; her burdens dissolved into gossamer. She said, presently, ‘No one else knows. I want to be sure.’
He did not speak, but rested his eyes on her face, with a kind of abstracted contentment. Robin and Elzbiete were talking still. Kathi said, ‘Take my hand and let yourself down. I won’t let you fall.’
He blinked, rousing. ‘Now that,’ Nicholas said, ‘is altogether too big a claim.’ He took the hand she extended, but paused. ‘No. I should go.’
She said, ‘You must speak to Robin.’
‘But not tonight,’ Nicholas said. ‘You are not supposed to be here.’ He studied their hands, then gently rolled her fingertips in his own and returned them to her, looking into her face. He said, ‘I should have killed Benecke.’
She said, ‘No. He didn’t succeed. It was as much your fault as his.’
He was silent.
She said, ‘You let him think he understood you.’
‘He does,’ Nicholas said.
‘But you still wanted to kill him.’
‘It’s how we live,’ Nicholas said. Then he said, ‘It’s not how Robin lives. He would have died.’
She had long since realised that. She didn’t answer. Her thoughts, beginning with Robin, travelled elsewhere.
Nicholas gathered himself, preparing to leave. She did not expect any more words; but his mind, his echoing mind, had followed the same path as hers.
‘I am so glad,’ he said.
Chapter 6
‘YOU MUST SPEAK to Robin,’ she had said. But of course, what she meant was the opposite. That night, she could do nothing more. The opiate clung to her eyelids. By the time Robin carried her to her bed, she was too slee
py to ask where she was going, and had no recollection of arriving in the secluded house Elzbiete had found for them. When she woke in the morning, she was nestled within the hollow of Robin’s bare shoulder and he was lying awake, his eyes heavy.
Her deep affection for him overwhelmed her. She said, ‘I’ve made you numb from top to toe. I’m so sorry.’
His head turned quickly, and stopped. He said, ‘I wish you had. I’ve been such a fool.’
‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘May I say something lofty and priggish? I was proud of you yesterday.’
He closed his arm round her a little, resting his chin on her head. ‘I don’t think Nicholas was.’
‘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, himself, have stayed in the same building as Benecke.
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 steadily drinking. Robin said in a low voice, ‘Stop it. Nicholas, stop it.’
‘Do you apologise?’ Nicholas said.
‘Yes!’ Benecke howled.
‘You never touched Katelijne Sersanders, and you will deny it if anyone says that you did?’
‘Yes!’
‘And you understand that you will do everything in your power to make this man happy, and Anselm Adorne happy, and help the embassy obtain what it wants, or he’ll tell the world what you’ve done, and you’ll hang?’
‘I understand,’ said Paúel Benecke sullenly. Blood had burst through one of his bandages.
Nicholas looked up at Robin. ‘Well?’
Robin said baldly, ‘I am satisfied. We don’t tell Adorne, or anyone else.’ He paused. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘What we were doing,’ Nicholas said. He had reseated himself, with difficulty, in the chair with a back. ‘Taking the raft down to Danzig.’ Benecke, lurching to his feet, had gone to pour himself wine.
Robin said, ‘Together?’ Then after a moment, ‘Then we shall meet.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Nicholas said. ‘You’re going to collect the rest of your embassy and get on your travels at last. To Thorn and the Black Sea and Tabriz in Persia. You are going on?’