Caprice and Rondo (23 page)

‘But you like it,’ said whoever it was. She was not even sure if it was the same person.

It was not something that Robin would say, although it was sometimes true. It was not true at the moment because, overwhelmed by the weariness of the day, she was going to disappoint him. It was why she had induced him, lovingly, to leave her the initiative.
Because you are still training him?
It had been cruel, that remark. ‘Dear little Kathi,’ someone said. ‘You need a real man. Two real men.’

And then she seemed to be on the ground; and something was being done, as well as being said, that was utterly foreign to Robin. And now Katelijne, dame of Berecrofts, wrenched her head sideways and started to scream.

The weight on and beside her disappeared. The whole raft tilted, throwing her on her side, her arms clasped round her body. Footsteps thudded. The man or men whose leap aboard had shaken the raft began to run towards the hut where she lay, cannoning into the man or men who had just left her. She could hear herself shrieking. As she struggled to rise, a whole group crashed backwards into the cabin beside her, all of them shouting or squealing. More shouting came distantly from the shore, and the sound of many feet running. The lamp rocked above her and someone, throwing himself to her side, began to lift her into his arms, talking in a quick, murmuring monotone all the time. The hands embracing her shoulders alarmed her, and she struggled. Then she saw that the man carrying her, his tears falling, was Robin. A voice said, ‘No,
not
that way, my dear one. And
do
keep her face covered.’

The speaker was Nicholas. The lamp, swinging, glared upon his impatient face and the grinning mask of Paúel Benecke. Both were dishevelled. About them was a struggling mass which, confusingly, included some complaining women. Two she didn’t know. One was Gerta. She felt Robin stop, with a gasp. Then he turned aside, furling her cloak high about her, and holding her close carried her away from the blaze of the lamplight. Except that, as she now noticed, the blaze did not come from the lamp but from the brazier, overturned in the stampede, and now casting its translucent red embers across a deck composed of three thousand square feet of prime timber. Then the cabin caught fire, and the real screaming began, as men and women fled from it. She looked up at Robin, but he seemed not to care.

B
Y
THE
LIGHT
of the blaze, Robin found a place in the dunes to conceal her. She was still as limp as a child. Sometimes a person woke with the mind of a child, after a shock such as that. He was not weeping now.

He wanted to take her away, but the shore was lit like a pageant, and swarming with Benecke’s crewmen, thundering down to rescue their vessel. On the raft, the cabin burned like an oriflamme, and all the flooring beyond was alight: the fiery lines of the logs were regular as the ridges of spring in-field planting.

Berecrofts, and all his love, and his hopes.

He wrapped her in her own cloak, and his own, and smoothed her brown hair back from her face. Her eyes were huge in the shadow. He watched the fire, holding her. Against the wall of light, men were fighting. No, men were swinging buckets over the side and emptying them into the fires. The water spewed out gleaming like fish, ruddy with the light of the fire, the puny, man-crafted fire. Kathi moaned and he hushed her as he watched. Then he saw that he had not been mistaken. On board, and now on shore, regardless of the fire and all that was happening, two men
were
fighting. And the two were Paúel Benecke and Nicholas.

He couldn’t ignore it; he couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened: he had to go. He wrapped the cloaks again tightly about her, murmuring in distraction, and got to his feet. ‘I shan’t be long. I’ll come back. I’ll come back directly.’ Then he ran, his hand on his scabbard.

At first, the heat drove him back. They had cut loose the neighbouring rafts and, commandeering small boats, were flooding the big craft with water. The centre was still alight, radiating heat on to the foreshore. Beyond its reach, the way was packed with spectators. Some were shouting advice to the fire-fighters. Others, turning away, formed part of a
shifting audience cheering a different cause. Colà and Benecke, displaying their short tempers and their prowess yet again, in the way that turned a normal man cold.

No one attempted to stop them. The raft might be on fire, their future livelihood might depend on both that and the life of the captain, but a fight was a fight, and must be permitted to reach its conclusion. Someone exclaimed, ‘All that over a woman! Would you believe it?’ And someone else cried, ‘But what else did these two ever fight about?’ Robin heard them. They all but mentioned his wife, whose honour was his to defend. He threw himself forward.

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

‘
Y
OU
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 sleepy 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.’