Caprice and Rondo by Dorothy Dunnett Read Free Book Online Page B

and bring you back to your own home, and your own life. Nicholas de Fleury has had his chance, and is worth no one’s pain now.’

Chapter 2
    I N D ANZIG , as the Mission approached, the captain communicated his plans to remove Colà, for a time, to the country. Colà, although compliant, had howled. ‘I didn’t know you had a wife!’ ‘I have to have one,’ said Paúel Benecke sourly. ‘Or I couldn’t be a schep-herr . It doesn’t mean anything.’
    ‘So I’ve noticed,’ said Colà, still wheezing. ‘But she doesn’t live on the Vistula?’
    The captain had decided, some time ago, not to risk sending Colà up the River Vistula. He didn’t want Colà going south or east. He didn’t want Colà going anywhere except the near vicinity of Danzig, to which he would return when the Mission had gone. He had sent his wife Malgorzaty a bribe. Regard it as an investment.
    He should have known it wouldn’t work. He survived the dubious pleasure of a single day’s ride, with Colà at the top of his form, imitating every voice in the Town Hall, and then they rode through to the yard of his house to find the snow trampled deep by unknown horseshoes. The next moment, they were dragged from their own mounts, and their arms pinioned behind them. Colà objected, and was disciplined. The captain gloomily did as he was told. Their captors were Malgorzaty’s grooms. And standing before him was another familiar figure, six feet tall with a billhook over its shoulder. ‘Hello, tatko . Come on, you,’ said Paúel Benecke’s daughter Elzbiete.
    ‘Madame,’ said Colà obediently, and followed her into the castle. Benecke wasn’t invited. It was snowing, and none of his wife’s men would speak to him.
    He was sitting drinking hot ale in the gatehouse when Colà emerged with Malgorzaty. They were much the same height, the chief difference being that Colà was clean-shaven. He looked like an owl, with both dimples showing, and compressions of powerful brown hair distorting the shaggy rim of his kolpak . Malgorzaty said to the captain, ‘He’s too bright for you. Take him back to Danzig.’
    The captain got up. ‘He doesn’t want to go. I explained.’
    ‘But they want him to go,’ said his wife, jerking her head. He was being invited indoors, to the stockroom, where he was not surprised to find some indignant soldiers he knew from the Town Hall. He knew whose they were, and he understood perfectly well what had happened. The bitch had let slip to the magistrates that Colà was escaping from Danzig, and then had held up his pursuers, while she had a good look at Colà herself.
    And of course, the big man and she had got on. Despite which (or because of it), she had decided to hand Colà back to the Danzigers, instead of letting him vanish with Paúel. Malgorzaty thought that Colà would be a waste as a privateer, when the Danzigers could sign him into a guild, and marry him to somebody’s tall, spinster daughter. Once, that is, they knew whose side he was on.
    The captain wondered if Malgorzaty knew that there was a girl with the Mission. He hadn’t told Colà. With Colà away, he would have had a good chance with the little once-virgin Kathi. He still had a good chance. He had money.
    Infused with natural optimism, Paúel Benecke set off with his guard back to Danzig, his grinning companion beside him, and behind him the glare of his womenfolk, their folded arms solid as fenders. ‘ Der harte Seevogel . Tough Seabird!’ jeered his wife.
    B Y THIS TIME , twelve days out of Bruges, the Ducal, Apostolic and Imperial Mc the large port of Lübeck, carrying with it a silent Adorne, a blithely truculent priest, and the self-effacing persons of Kathi and her husband, contriving at all costs to be useful.
    Given that to agile minds, most journeys are delightful, this one had so far been less so. They did not see much of Adorne. For him, at each stop in their chilly itinerary, the daylight hours were crammed with meetings,