As the intransigent months gave way to spring, outside news began at last to trickle in. In Venice (Gregorio wrote), Doge Mocenigo had died, worn out by his ten Turkish concubines rather more than by his exploits at sea. The Sultan of Turkey had recovered from his sickness of gout, the Queen of maladies, and the Turkish armies were moving westwards again: the governor of Albania, Francesco Contarini, had been killed in the fighting. There was plague in Rome. Despite or because of it, the Pope had imposed a punitive crusading tax on tentless Burgundy, and Jan Adorne, defiant in celibacy, had found himself unable to leave for the coming birth of his brother’s offspring in Bruges.
Her uncle, Kathi noted, was not stricken. As burgomaster of the councillors of Bruges, Anselm Adorne had little time these days for anything but the management of the city, and perpetual journeys abroad as its representative. After entirely friendly exchanges between Scotland and Flanders, he had given up his post as Conservator of Scots Privileges in Bruges, opportunely for James of Scotland, who was to make political capital out of it. On the list of appointments routinely reviewed on the King’s attainment of his majority appeared the name of Anselm Adorne, divested of his Conservatorship ‘partly on the grounds that he was an alien.’
Brought this news by her husband, Kathi had been rendered thoughtful. ‘Do I detect the hand of David de Salmeton somewhere in this?’
‘I don’t know,’ Robin had said. Firmly happy, confident in his marriage and in his work, he carried still, as she did, a cache of painful misgivings. He jogged the baby, who hung over his shoulder, and added a casual question. ‘Your uncle didn’t tell you who the next Conservator is to be?’
For once, she misread him. ‘No, but I expect we shall hear. Not you, or Archie, or Sersanders, because you’re all connected with Adorne. A Scot with good connections abroad. John Bonkle? Too naïve. Thorn Swift? Not too young, but possible. Same with Haliburton. John Napier? Too important to travel so much. Andrew Crawford, or perhaps even Richard?’
‘I meant, the new man’s been chosen,’ said Robin. ‘That’s him puked. Will I put him down now?’
‘It depends who you’re talking about,’ said Kathi, taking the child. ‘So who is the next Conservator?’
‘Andro Wodman,’ Robin said.
Kathi put the child down. It turned red. ‘Andro …? He doesn’t qualify as a Scot!’
‘He does,’ Robin said. ‘Family from Aberdeen. Brother an abbot. Fine connections with Flanders and France.’
‘Friend of de Ribérac and his son, who want rid of Nicholas. Robin!’
‘They’re in Portugal,’ Robin said. ‘And that’s over. Wodman has worked for Bel, too. And your brother thinks enough of him to have suggested him. Your uncle agreed.’
His son screamed. Kathi, sitting down, felt like doing the same, but restrained herself, because Robin looked so harassed as well.
Then, next day, it was swept from her mind by Dr Tobie, banging on her door on his way to a patient, and throwing himself into a seat in her parlour, his box and his man left outside.
‘News at last. By Russian trader from Moscow to Novgorod; German dealer from Novgorod to Reval; amber official from Reval to Lübeck; fish merchant from Lübeck to Antwerp …’
‘Tobie?’ Kathi said. She said it quite politely, and he laughed and gave up.
‘Nicholas is safe, and out of the Crimea. Some Russian fur traders got him to Moscow in December. It seems he’ll have to stay for a while, but he could travel anywhere he likes after that.’
‘Except the Crimea,’ Kathi said. She let herself down at his feet. ‘Was he alone?’ She looked up.
‘Ludovico da Bologna was already in Moscow. They’re together.’
‘Thank God,’ said Kathi, ‘for quite large blessings, if doubtless in rather poor Latin. You haven’t told me about Julius and Anna.’
‘They’re in Moscow as well,’ the doctor said. ‘But not in the same place. Nicholas and the Patriarch, I am told, are in prison.’
Kathi stared at him. Her whole face, gradually warming, felt suffused. She said, ‘Whom else have you told? Have you told Gelis?’
‘The first,’ Tobie said.
‘And how did she take it?’
‘The same way as you,’ Tobie said. ‘Sensible questions, and big, silly tears. So, show me the children. According to Clémence, they are still surprisingly normal.’
AFTER THAT, Kathi waited for Gelis to come. It would not be, she knew, for several days; they were not young, impetuous girls, although, Heaven knew, they were not old. Their occasional meetings, of which Robin was not necessarily aware, did not even mean they were confidantes, never mind bosom friends. She did not know how to describe the rapprochement between them, except to say that they were two sides of the triangle, and that the third side was Nicholas. And jealousy did not enter into it. If Gelis was envious of Kathi, it would be because she was properly married, with a loving husband and children. And Kathi could not be jealous of Nicholas’s wife, for what she had, Kathi did not have, or want to have.
Kathi knew, as did Tobie, the story of the boxes from Montello. With gentle hands, she had helped Gelis finally turn out the contents, and had studied the pages of harmony. There was no doubt, now, where Nicholas’s gift of music had come from. A coded message, it seemed, had also passed between Thibault and his grandson, but was now in Gelis’s keeping. Gelis referred to it, smiling, but did not offer to produce it, and Kathi was careful not to ask. It had brought happiness in some way, she could see, and she was thankful.
They spoke of Moscow, and Wodman, and David de Salmeton. Gelis used measured tones, even when speaking of the exquisite, sardonic man who had cheated her, and brought about the refined torture Nicholas had suffered in Cairo and, more than once, his near-death. She said, ‘You realise that if we know where Nicholas is, so does David. Now his threats against us will reach Moscow.’
Kathi said, ‘If we can see through his motives, so can Nicholas. We are guarded. We know who the enemy is. Nicholas would gain nothing by coming.’
‘I have told him,’ Gelis said. ‘I have written to Moscow, telling Nicholas not to come back.’
She fell silent, and Kathi said nothing, for she thought, given the courage, that she would have done the same. Then Gelis said, still looking down, ‘Father Moriz ought to be here very soon. By now he should have spoken to Bonne. Since he went back to Germany, I think he has begun to feel, too, that he would like to know more about her and her mother. So does Tobie, I think.’
‘The truth can hurt,’ Kathi said. ‘Worse than death, for some people.’
‘I know,’ Gelis said. She gave a half-laugh and exclaimed, in a shaken voice, ‘Father Ludovico!’
‘Never underestimate the Church,’ Kathi said.
A TENSE SPRING evolved into an overstrained summer, during which no news of moment reached Bruges from Russia except for the concerted wails of displaced Genoese on their way home to their relatives. Robin, exiled from Scotland, tried to concentrate on building his business, but was visibly restless. The same was true of Gelis, hitherto single-minded in her devotion to the wellbeing of the Bank. It was as if, having explored every possibility and set in train every project she could think of, she had found herself sated, or had reached the margins of her interest and perhaps of her considerable ability. Certainly, she had accomplished what she had set out to do. With some small help from Nicholas himself, the Bank stood where it was before he had plundered it.
It was true also that, although she possessed friends, Gelis was more solitary than once she had been. Jodi, aged between seven and eight, divided his time between his various tutors, and had found playmates among the polyglot children of the Bruges merchant community, as his father had done, in the moments he could spare from the dyeyard. But Jodi, sturdy though he was, was not impressed by the impertinent wildness of the common apprentices, and would never, in years to come, find himself haled before Anselm Adorne, or beaten and locked in the Steen, although he would not connect his di
staste with incidents which had occurred once in Trèves, and in Scotland. He liked jokes, and singing, and stories, and had a taste for drawing, caught from his early childhood in Scotland: if mislaid, he was often to be found in some kindly workshop, tied into a smock smeared with paint. He still visited Mistress Clémence in her new house from time to time, but was never made to accompany her when she went to see his wee younger aunt’s second baby, which Mistress Cléce helped with now and then, even though the baby had a very good nurse of its own. Jodi didn’t like boy babies at all, but found Margaret innocuous enough; and his Robin always had time for him.
Gelis also missed John le Grant and, against her will, felt concerned for his safety. Now, in the high season of fighting, the great, coagulating mass of the Duke’s troops, with their quarrelling Burgundians and Picards and Lombards, their companies of trained English archers, their packs of loot-seeking Italian mercenaries, seemed to move from blunder to blunder, and with them trundled the hapless foreign envoys, the court, and the Duke’s entourage. The low point of the campaign came in June, when — having made a pact of perpetual peace with the Emperor and his son — the Duke resolved, against all advice, to risk his whole Swiss campaign in an attack to free Morat, a Savoy fief occupied by a strong army from Berne.
It failed. In the ensuing battle with the rescuing armies of the Confederation and Lorraine, hampered by torrents of rain and a witless intelligence service, the Burgundian army endured defeat followed by carnage in which the Duke’s soldiers had their throats cut in their tents, or were drowned in the lake; noble commanders and condottieri were cut down; and the Spanish ambassador received two sabre cuts on the head. The Duke and the Grand Bastard escaped, and so, it was later learned, did the greater part of Captain Astorre’s company, including his master gunner.
Gelis was not present at Salins when the Estates of Upper Burgundy, harangued by the Duke, agreed to pay to defend their own frontiers provided that the Duke should no longer risk his person in battle, and that he should make peace whenever the chance should occur. She was in Ghent, later in the same month, when the Estates of Flanders not only rejected all the demands of the Chancellor Hugonet, but proposed to withdraw their grants to the army, on the grounds that the army no longer existed.
This was optimistic. Whatever happened, Duke Charles was determined to master Lorraine, and make of its capital, Nancy, the seat of all the Burgundian states. The King of France, who had spared himself the effort of fighting, pityingly watched the Duke doing it for him, and mentioned that he thought the poor man was mad. The Milanese, his allies, agreed. A Milanese, carrying messages, called in to Bruges and was entertained by the burgomaster of councillors in the Hotel Jerusalem, where, for the period, Anselm Adorne had again made his home.
Adorne, although polite, made a distracted host, as his son’s wife had been brought to bed of a child, and the health of both was giving Dr Andreas concern. Even when his Italian visitor had gone, it was a day before matters settled, and Adorne felt free to ask Gelis van Borselen to call on him.
She came, full of concern for young Agnes, and genuinely thankful, he saw, that the child at least was well. It was a daughter. Adorne did not make much of the fact, and neither did his guest. Of all his vast family, every son was childless but one, and that son had nothing but girls. And now Arnaud, too. Anselm Adorne had once, to his bitter shame, betrayed how much he yearned for a son who might carry his name, and his wife, striving to please him, had died of it.
This young wife of Arnaud’s would have the best nursing his nuns could provide, and the infant as well. He had already thought he might invite Phemie from Scotland. Kathi would enjoy her company, and being only of the tertiary order in her priory, she could mix with his friends. He had fallen into some kind of waking reflection when he realised that de Fleury’s wife was still sitting quietly beside him, smiling a little. She said, ‘You are tired. You had a message for me?’
She was relieving him, courteously, of the need to prolong her visit. In the last eighteen months, he had revised his opinion of Gelis van Borselen. Adorne said, ‘I am not so tired that I cannot enjoy entertaining a handsome young woman. I have news of your husband. See: take this glass and let us drink a salute to the child. And then hear what our Milanese friend had to say.’
It was interesting enough. The man had been at court with the Duke of Milan when a young man, Andrea Fioravanti, had arrived from Russia with a gift from his father. Recounting the gossip of Moscow, the youth had mentioned the group of Italians and Germans who had escaped from the Crimea. Two of them were in Moscow: Niccolò de Fleury, and a Latin prelate called Ludovico da Bologna. Two, a merchant called Julius and his wife, had travelled north to the trading centre of Novgorod, where they were building a business. It was the man Julius who had entrusted a message to Andrea. Not simply a message, but a warning of danger.
‘I have a letter for you,’ said Anselm Adorne. ‘Julius wrote it for you, but he also gave its message to Andrea, in case the letter did not survive. He has heard about David de Salmeton’s attempt on your son in Scotland. He wants you to know that he and his wife intend to bring Nicholas back with them to protect you.’
The young woman’s eyes, of a very pale blue, were quite steady. She said, ‘But Nicholas knows he couldn’t come home. So does Julius.’
‘I imagine,’ said Adorne dryly, ‘that he would guess the embargo might be lifted, in time of exceptional need.’
She appeared to consider this. ‘You are saying that he might be allowed to return to protect us, provided that it didn’t last long, and he left when we were safe?’
He was a little disturbed, but did not show it. ‘That would seem to me fair.’
Gelis van Borselen said, ‘Thank you. I agree. But in fact, I have written telling Nicholas not to come. We can defend ourselves from de Salmeton. Nicholas would give up his livelihood and waste months of his life to no purpose.’
He studied her. ‘You have not thought of joining him, by any chance?’
‘I thought of it,’ she replied. ‘But communications being what they are, we should probably cross one another on the journey.’
There was a silence. Adorne said, ‘You were affected, as were we all, by his brutal dealings in Scotland?’
‘I am not excusing him,’ Gelis said. ‘He has tried to make recompense, to a degree. Many of us believe, now, that he is ashamed of it. I do not know, though, whether or not he would do it again.’
‘His colleagues feel as you do?’ Adorne said. He had wondered. Nicholas was a disarming young man, hard to forget. His partners had all worked closely with him. As time elapsed, a movement towards clemency might well gather.
‘I don’t know,’ Gelis said. ‘But even if they do, they would not agree, unless you did, to permit him to work again in the West. I think it is better if he does not come home meantime.’
‘I think you are right,’ Adorne said. ‘And if he comes, he should know that he cannot stay.’
He watched her leave, presently. He could not guess the pitch of anxiety to which he had brought her. Julius meant to bring Nicholas from Moscow. Whether or not he received, or agreed with her letter, now Nicholas had to decide whether to come, or to be branded a coward. And if Milan and Bruges thought that Nicholas might be coming, Scotland would know. Nicholas might be coming, and it was time — so David de Salmeton would be deciding — it was time for all the adversaries in this war to assemble in Bruges. So that, whether Nicholas did come or not, she would have to face his enemies for him, this autumn.
It was then, arriving home, that she saw that the yard, busy with porters and wagons, displayed also the small, extra activity connected with visitors. A horse she did not recognise was being led away, and boxes carried indoors. At the same moment, at her back, she heard the voices of Diniz and Tobie. Diniz said, ‘I was going to find you. Father Moriz is back. We should have a meeting.’
THERE WERE NO OTHER women in the room where they gathered, for Father Moriz did not wish
to report, as yet, to Kathi or Clémence, or even to Tilde and Catherine de Charetty, the step-daughters of Nicholas. So Gelis found herself with three men whom, however, she trusted: Diniz Vasquez, the young Scots-Portuguese director of what had been the house of Charetty-Niccolò, and Dr Tobias, its physician, who had gone with her to Montello. And beside her, the formidable little chaplain from Augsburg who had spent a winter with John and Nicholas in the Tyrol and had been with them in Scotland and Iceland, and who had just returned from re-establishing Julius’s business in Cologne — and from making some enquiries.
He made his statement quite simply, relegating the details of Julius’s affairs to a future discussion, with the assurance that all should now be well. Fluent in several languages, the priest retained, as ever, his uncompromising German accent. If anything, it was thicker than Gelis remembered it. ‘That is,’ Father Moriz was saying, ‘the records were well kept in the early days, and are now being returned to that state. The confusion between, which has occupied me, related to the estate of Graf Wenzel von Hanseyck, and its integration into the Bank’s affairs.’ He was looking at Gelis.
She said, ‘I was in Cologne when they met, Julius and the Gräfin. He was bewitched.’
‘Yes. Well, so were the accounts,’ said the priest dryly. ‘I have pursued the anomalies as best I could. I have spoken, perforce, to many of the Graf’s noble kinsfolk, and have felt entitled to press, rather more than polite usage allows, for information about the Count’s business and marriage. I have even spoken to relatives of the Graf’s late first wife.’
‘And?’ said Tobie. His dress, since his marriage to Clémence, showed a startling absence of stains, and round his neck hung the cord of a pair of spectacles.
Father Moriz looked round at them all, and delivered his answer. ‘The distortions cannot be laid at the Graf’s door. When he died, his affairs were in order, and he left property of reasonable value, which Anna inherited, with some provision for Bonne. The confusions started thereafter. The money she was supposed to invest in the business, and in the ship, came from unsecured loans. She was married to the Graf, but there is no evidence for anything she has ever said of her life before that. More, there seems a strong probability, some say a certainty, that the child Bonne is not the Graf’s daughter. I have found people to swear that she already had a young child when the two met. She has never used the name she called herself then, and I have not been able to trace it in Augsburg or anywhere else.’