‘Well …’ Julius began. He looked doubtful.
Anna laughed and, stretching across, touched her husband with her knuckles. ‘You still don’t know when he is joking. Go and get us some wine, and give him a chance to think it all over.’
Julius left them. Nicholas watched the door close, and then met Anna’s astonishing eyes. Her regard was as direct as a man’s. She said, ‘I should feel more apologetic about Julius if you didn’t know his enthusiasms so well. His heart is set on this scheme. I am sure that you find it disagreeable: it must remind you of Scotland. If you did steel yourself to agree, your success would be brilliant, of course. But it isn’t fair to hold out false hopes. I believe it is too soon to judge whether you would ever be allowed back in Burgundy. Forgive me for saying so.’
‘Not at all,’ Nicholas said. ‘You know what happened. I drained the reserves of my Bank to finance a private vendetta. They think I might do it again.’
‘Would you?’ she said.
‘If you have to ask,’ Nicholas said, ‘I rather think that it would be unwise to employ me. But I expect you will manage perfectly well on your own. How is your daughter?’
Sudden questions seldom disconcerted her. ‘Bonne is well,’ she said, smiling a little. ‘There is a fine school at her convent, and the priest is teaching her Greek. And your son? It must be hard not to see him. How old is he now?’
Nicholas withdrew his eyes from the throng outside the window. ‘A year or so short of learning Greek: Jodi is five. But there can only be six years between my son and your daughter. There might be a place for another sort of contract between them one day. What do you think?’
She caught her breath. Her pale face had flushed. ‘Would you give it your blessing?’ she said. The words were French: sometimes she used a mixture of French and Flemish with him and with Julius.
Nicholas said, ‘I know nothing but good of young Bonne. Jordan would not object. And by marrying Julius’s shares to my son’s, we should have reconstituted two parts of the Bank. A blessing all on its own, don’t you think?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Anna said. ‘I thought you were serious.’
‘I thought I was, too,’ Nicholas said. ‘But sometimes I delude myself. Is Julius serious?’
He watched her slowly relax. ‘About things that matter,’ she said. ‘He was a good friend to you, when you were young.’
‘Did he tell you that?’ Nicholas said.
Her mouth quirked a little. ‘Of course. But other people say so as well. The greatest pair of practical jokers in Flanders, I have heard. Nicholas …’ She paused. ‘He misses you. I know this scheme is wrong, and it doesn’t tempt you. But if there is any part of it that you like; or if you can think of a better, would you tell us? Don’t reject him and leave. Give him a few days of your time. You won’t regret it.’
‘I should like to stay,’ Nicholas said. ‘In fact, I was hoping to stay, if Herr Straube can continue to lodge me. It is only fair to tell you that there have been other offers, all of them promising.’
She said, ‘Then it depends, doesn’t it, on what you want. Adventure? Money? Fulfilment?’
‘Expiation?’ he suggested.
She was silent. Then she said, ‘Julius would tell you it isn’t necessary. That your demonstration of what one man can do was more extraordinary than the damage it caused.’
‘And you?’
She said, ‘I see the marks on your face. And I think that you will dig your own grave if you are left alone very much longer.’
‘Do you? Anna, my dear,’ Nicholas said, ‘you must have a very low opinion of my resources. Who on earth have you been living with recently?’
They looked at one another. She said, ‘Of course. I am sorry. I was treating you as a child. I live with Julius; and he does take a long time to bring wine.’
Then Julius came, and Nicholas excused himself presently. The first encounter was over.
She was all that he remembered, and more. Back in his room, her scent stayed with him still. Nicholas walked to the window and stood. He wondered how long he had, before Adorne descended on Thorn. A week, little more. The King was coming to Thorn, and Adorne had been advised to be there by Pentecost. With the Patriarch. With Katelijne. With Robin.
Put yourself in the other man’s place. He had done that. He was fairly sure he knew what to expect. He was back in the vice. The Patriarch would not approve, but there was a certain grim pleasure in reviving the arts which had led in the first place to his success. Success, that implacable foeman of virtue, as someone had once observed.
IN THORN, the summer rains started early that year. Usually, the wet month was June, but the heavens giddily opened just before Pentecost, filling the streets with loquacious torrents and clouding but not improving the river, whose sandbanks and shallows made even short crossings a penance. The rafts had long since gone north, and the river would continue to shrink. The people of Thorn, throwing their rubbish into the ruins of the departed Knights’ castle, reminded one another of the great final days of the war, when the grain rafts had gone north in convoy, with the King’s warships and cannon escorting them.
That was Casimir for you: a careful King who looked after his own in the matter of taxes. Thorn was pleased when the King came to stay, in spite of the expense of preparing the Burgh Halls, and decorating the churches and streets, and painting the ferries. Even when he proposed to lodge at his castle on the opposite bank, they were tolerant, for all his audiences, of course, would be held in the city; and the town would fill up just the same with surplus courtiers and petitioners. Also, of course, the boys sneaked across. Casimir had thirteen children, and some of them were always about, with their tutors and dancing masters and nurses. Thorn was a lively place then. It was lively even before the Court arrived, or the princely delegation they said was coming from Danzig. One of the reasons why it was lively was the high spending of Friczo Straube’s clients.
Julius had always enjoyed making an impression. His social ambitions, carefully monitored, had been one of the assets of the Bank in the days when he controlled the Casa in Venice, and his marriage had given him cachet in Germany. His name therefore was already familiar in Poland, and Herr Straube’s recommendation did the rest. Invitations poured in.
On the first morning, he had found Nicholas resistant. ‘Who are they?’
‘One of the old Cracow families. I’ve done business with them in Cologne. They want to meet you. All right, you’ll need to mind your manners and dress up and shave, but their castle will be really worth seeing.’
‘I mustn’t piss on the hangings, or blow my nose into my hat?’ Nicholas had complained. ‘You’ll have to tell me what to do. I’ve been in Danzig all winter, fishing from a hole in the ice.’
Anna was smiling. She had warned him that Nicholas might be difficult. To begin with, Julius had thought she was wrong, for the conversation over the morning ale had been all that he had looked forward to. Expertly quizzed over Scotland, Nicholas had obligingly described how he had divined gold where there was none, and had brokered loans that could never be repaid. He brushed aside Julius’s good-natured strictures on the harm he had done to the Bank, adding that Julius hadn’t seen Gelis’s face when she found out. It confirmed what Julius had already been told: that by this success, Nicholas had won some sort of contest in Trèves with his wife.
Julius, setting aside the details for future dissection, had repaid these confidences with a helpful précis of all that his former colleagues were doing while avoiding, under instruction, any mention of the same Gelis and her young son. The reuniting of Nicholas with his family, he quite agreed, was Anna’s province. His intelligent, beautiful Anna upon whom the gaze of the gallant Nicholas so often dwelled, to the amusement of her new husband. For Julius knew that, however ardently he might try, Nicholas could never steal Anna’s affections.
At the same time, Nicholas was right in suspecting his motive for this week of superior junketing. The wealthier merchants of
Poland and Germany were impressed — over-impressed — by the intimacy between Julius and the former banker Nicholas de Fleury of Beltrees, and made certain assumptions about the future. Julius would be the last to deny them and Nicholas, so far, had not done so. Nicholas had still to make up his mind, but meantime acceded, for the most part, to the grandiose schemes laid before him, in which Anna nearly always took part.
The week that followed was not free of incident. In elevated company, Nicholas might not take a red cloth to a bear-hunt, but he did lead an unwise attack upon elk which nearly speared Julius in an area which, at the very least, would have ended his effective contribution to the marriage-bed. The following day, riding in a highly competitive relay race, Nicholas nearly fell to his death, taking Anna down with him. It was a miracle that neither was injured and Anna, thereafter, was debarred from rough sports. It saved her at least from the wolf-baiting in the moat when, after a vast drunken dinner in someone’s magnificent dwór, Julius and Nicholas were both carried out, gored and spluttering curses and laughter.
‘You both drink too much,’ Anna had said to her bandaged husband that night. ‘I know you are happy in his company, but he cannot partner you if he is disabled or dead. Let me speak to him again.’
Julius agreed, out of guilt. He often spoiled her quiet, logical plans through lack of caution, he knew. He had accepted, eventually, her view that Nicholas required looking after, and that this would best be achieved by bringing him to reconciliation with his wife. She would do nothing so crude as to suggest it to Nicholas outright. Reporting early progress to Julius, she had remained wryly determined rather than hopeful. Nicholas did not seem to mind when she mentioned how Gelis had abandoned her defiant post with the opposition after her husband’s departure and, against all expectations, had carried her private fortune and the business secrets of the Vatachino to the Venice branch of the Bank, where the lawyer Gregorio had welcomed her. ‘Welcomed her! The bastard!’ Nicholas had apparently remarked cheerfully at this point; but with so little engagement that he had remained perfectly amenable when Anna steered the conversation elsewhere.
The next time, when she spoke of his son, Nicholas had neither encouraged nor discouraged her, which Anna had supposed a good sign. ‘I told him all I knew about Jodi in Venice: about the dog and the bird and his swimming, and how he could shoot with a bow. He didn’t speak, but he listened. The little boy had sent him a poem, and when I held it out, Nicholas took it. He didn’t hand it back, or show disgust, or dislike. He loves them both still — he must do. If we persuade him to stay, he will send for them.’
It had seemed to bode well, but when Anna called on Nicholas later that evening she found that, although his candles were lit, he had departed to spend the night elsewhere, in the manner no doubt of the Emperor Sigismund at Berne. Then, leaving, she had noticed the charred heap on the platter, which was all that remained of the child’s loving, laborious missive.
Julius had been sympathetic. ‘Nicholas was humouring you. I suspected as much. Look, don’t worry. If he hates his family, that’s up to him.’ Julius was not entirely sorry, himself. He was not attracted to Gelis.
Now, however, several extremely vinous days later, he agreed with Anna that something more ought to be attempted. Since Nicholas was seldom in his chamber, they chose to tackle him during a hawking expedition, conducted over the extremely lush land of a party so rich and so noble that all conversation was conducted in the third person. The birds were superb, and the hounds tender-nosed and well taught. The silver bells shook, and the light silks and cuffed gloves and great jewels shimmered and glowed and gleamed in the sun. At midday, carpets were spread under trees for refreshments. Nicholas arrived and, sliding down beside Julius, provided the opening himself. ‘You’d better know: I’ve just mentioned to Anna that my marriage is being annulled. One should not live in the same basket as a snake. It will take some little time, but for all practical purposes, I am a free man. You wouldn’t like to let me have Anna, siren of sirens?’
‘No,’ said Julius happily. ‘Also, you’ve to stop swilling wine. I hope she told you.’
‘She did, but I’m not married to her,’ Nicholas said. ‘And not even allowed to receive favours. Therefore I shall succumb to diabetica passione all by myself, and you will drink water. Tell me about Bonne.’
Julius was first startled, then peeved. ‘You know about Bonne. Anna’s daughter.’
‘I know she has a daughter, natural, adopted or prematurely installed by some well-plotted design of the Graf’s. I need to know more, if Jodi’s to marry her.’
Julius sat up. ‘What?’
‘Your wine has spilled. Anna doesn’t seem to object. But it’s a long way ahead: he’s still young. Who is Bonne’s father?’
Julius gazed at him. ‘I thought you knew. You just said. The Graf Wenzel, Anna’s late husband. Anna’s mother told me herself. Bonne was born to Anna in Augsburg while Wenzel’s first wife was still alive, and Anna’s parents looked after the baby. Then, when Wenzel married Anna, he adopted their love-child.’ He paused, and said, ‘She is illegitimate, but you couldn’t fault her bloodline. But, Nicholas? She is eleven, and Jodi is five?’
‘I’m not suggesting that we draw up contracts yet,’ Nicholas said. ‘You and Anna might have a daughter yourselves. Come to think of it, what’s the delay?’
Julius supplied an acid answer; Nicholas laughed and rose, saying something, and that, Jesus be praised, was the end of it. Julius had no desire to dwell upon the delay. Anna’s failure to conceive continued to be a surprise and a disappointment to her husband. Naturally, he hoped for an heir, but that was not quite all. In the various theatres that made up his life, Julius preferred the occasional exquisite performance to the predictable and diligent routine. When Anna bent over and touched him, smiling, at bedtime, he responded, of course, but not at once. Yet he had no real complaint, my God no. He was the envy of every man he met. And while they awaited their child, she was his.
Before the repast was over, Julius did however find her and draw her aside. ‘Nicholas spoke to you about Jodi and Bonne?’
Her lips parted. ‘I thought he was teasing. Does he mean it?’ In the open air, she had never looked lovelier, with the colour roused in her skin and her eyes glowing and brilliant as lapis. Serious conversation suddenly appeared idiotic. Nevertheless, he persevered.
‘Unless we have a daughter,’ Julius said. ‘And, of course, Gelis might not agree.’
‘To a van Borselen-von Hanseyck betrothal? I think she might,’ Anna said gravely. ‘And I suppose Nicholas might really be serious. He is leading a dangerous life, and you have been his mentor for a long time, and the only person who hasn’t rejected him. Is that why?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Julius. He felt perplexed. ‘He’s never said this before.’
‘He’s never been so isolated before.’ Her brow wrinkled. ‘But what should we do? The boy is charming, of course, but his parents are parting, and Nicholas has nothing to leave.’
‘Or not yet,’ Julius said. ‘A lot may happen. Perhaps the annulment won’t take place. Or we have a child of our own. But you of course must decide about Bonne. You know what is best.’
He felt discomfort, as always, about Bonne, firmly lodged in her convent because Anna would not burden him with the presence of a thin, sullen child who had outgrown her strength. Anna’s daughter might not want to marry. She might want to become a nun, for all he knew. Anna said, ‘You are always so kind about Bonne. Let us wait and see. There is no hurry yet.’ Shortly afterwards, they all left for home.
Julius’s saddle-girth broke as they approached the town moat at full gallop, and he was cast rolling and tumbling among the pounding hooves and yelping, slavering hounds. Nicholas was the first to help him up and he was able, cursing, to remount. He had been lucky. And it was the last mishap between that day and Thursday, the day when Anselm Adorne rode into town with his married niece and the Patriarch and the Danzigers, followed almost at once
by the King.
Chapter 8
BLESSED AS Anna von Hanseyck was not, the Burgundian Ambassador’s niece participated in his ceremonial entry to Thorn, deeply thankful that it wasn’t timed for the morning. Kathi was sick in the mornings.
She had told Nicholas that she wished to be sure, and now she was. She had not told her husband. It was fairly typical, she thought, that the first high-water mark of her family life should be disrupted by a riverside brawl. The Danzigers had gone to stay at the Artushof. Dismounting at the handsome house they’d been allotted next door, she observed that Robin looked grim, the Patriarch smug and her uncle superbly composed. Of course, the papal nuncio was well known: his voice exploded in sonorous syllables from a raceme of tonsures, birettas and mitres. But Anselm Adorne, too, was acquainted with some of these officers. He was accustomed to occasions of state. And he was here to conclude at least part of his mission: to present and have answered his Duke’s personal message to the King. The King who was arriving tomorrow, and who might, among other things, overrule decisions made or not made further north.
Before nightfall, she had found out where Nicholas was. Ludovico da Bologna had informed her, taking her up to the top of the house and pointing out the Market Square she had just left, its bunting obscuring the vacant trestles and stalls and the arched entrance of the vast quadrilateral edifice at its centre, where the Mayor and Council would receive the King, and the King would receive Anselm Adorne and his Mission this Pentecost. The rain poured down, and a sodden triangle flicked in the wind, striping a passing dog yellow. The Patriarch said, ‘You are facing north. Half the merchants and most of the officials of Thorn stay in the residences lining this square. Look to the east, to the right of the Halls. The agent of the Banco de Niccolò occupies one of those houses. It is tall, narrow and painted red, black and white. You can see it from here.’
‘And Nicholas is staying with him?’ she said. The lower windows were tall enough to give a good view. It was like one of the thinner houses of Bruges, except that it had a wooden awning over its door, and its doorstep, spreading outwards and sideways, formed a narrow stone apron upon which, presumably, the inhabitants sat when it wasn’t raining. There was a simple balustrade round it, and steps led down from that to the street. Most of the houses had similar shelters or balconies, some of them of wood. There were cellars beneath them. She added, ‘It’s very near.’